Jamestown, VA 6/20/14

We spent the day touring Jamestown, the site of the first English settlement in America in 1607.  Until 1994, the original settlement was assumed to be buried beneath the James River.  As a result, a replica settlement based on written documentation and tradition was built on adjacent land.  One archaeologist who believed otherwise began excavations on the existing shoreline and found the original James Fort.  Excavations are ongoing and provide data which is changing our understanding of what occurred here.

This settlement predated the Pilgrim’s landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts by thirteen years.  The expedition was sponsored by the Virginia Company, named for Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen.”

 

Under a charter from King James I, the company sent three very small ships carrying 104 men and boys.  Women did not arrive in the colony until later.  Following are photos of replicas of those ships.

 

King James’ charter specified that the settlement was to be located inland so it wouldn’t be visible to the Spanish who considered this area part of Florida, which they had already claimed.  Jamestown was built in a good location militarily, but because it was located next to swamps and in the middle of Powhatan Indian territory, it wasn’t a healthy location.  The swamps still exist.

A replica of a Powhatan village of the 1600s.

 

Colonists built a fort for protection from the Spanish and the Powhatans.  The model below and photos that follow illustrate the location of the original fort based on recent archaeological evidence.

Disease, starvation and warfare killed nearly 2/3 of the settlers during the summer of 1607. 

 

The first Jamestown victim in a war between European settlers and Indians that would last until 1875 was a teenage boy who died at this entrance to the fort.

 

 

The colonists arrived during a drought that archaeological evidence shows lasted several years.  Even though new colonists and supplies continued to arrive, during the brutal winter of 1609/10 only 60 of nearly 300 colonists survived “the starving time.”  Recent archaeological research shows that a few colonists practiced survival cannibalism.

John Rolfe, a colonist, married Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indians.  She had been captured by the colonists and converted to Christianity.  Their marriage was finally agreed to by Chief Powhatan and the governor of the Virginia Colony because they saw it as a way to keep the peace, which it did for the next eight years.  The portrait of Pocahontas shown below was painted when she later toured England.  She died there in 1617 at the age of 22.

 

They were married in the first church built within the fort. The archaeological site and a replica of the church are shown below.

 

When John Rolfe arrived in 1610, he began to grow tobacco from seeds he brought with him.  Because tobacco exports to Europe were so popular and profitable, many people began growing the “golden weed,” even in the streets of Jamestown.

 

In 1617 a new church was built within the fort.  Only the stone foundation of that exists; four other churches have been subsequently built over it.

 

It was in this church that the first representative legislative assembly in North America took place in 1619.  The assembly was convened by Sir George Yeardley, and he is believed to be buried here.

 

In 1622, members of the Powhatan chiefdom attacked English settlements in the area and killed 1/3 of the population.  In spite of an excess of hardships, Jamestown survived as the capital of the Virginia colony until 1699 when the government was moved to Williamsburg and the land at Jamestown was cultivated by local plantation owners.

HIKING TIP:  When hiking in a replica of an Indian village, keeping moving.  Otherwise…