American History Hit - Jamestown: The British and The Powhatan

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

From suspicion, to siege, to collaboration, to all out war - in this episode we uncover the complex reality of the Jamestown colonists' relationship with the Indigenous peoples of the East Coast. What were their first impressions of one another? How did the Powhatan view their dynamic with the British settlers? And how crucial were figures like John Smith, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe to this story?Don is joined once again by Mark Summers, Educational Director of Youth and Public Programmes for Jamestowne Rediscovery. They explore the shifting alliances, conflicts, and consequences that shaped early colonial America, with the help of discoveries made by archaeologists at Jamestown.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. From its southern Cape looking northward, the Chesapeake Bay stretches endlessly to the horizon and beyond. For the haggard cruise of three ships, the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed,

who just spent months at sea traveling from England, lush Chesapeake coastline with towering forests and dense shrublands, offered the dreamt-for promise of safe harbor and stable settlement. Days earlier they'd first made landfall to plant a cross. cross on the Cape, then embarked inland, exploring some 50 miles along a wide, welcoming tributary, one that offered a deep channel able to accommodate their vessels. Searching for suitable anchorage, they opted for a small peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow land bridge. Here, they figured, they could settle. Here, they could expand and grow. Here, they could build a strong defense against enemy attack, particularly from the Spanish to

the South, but not to mention, native peoples believed to inhabit this region, whose hunting grounds the English are about to claim as their own. Hello, welcome to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman. Last week, we heard about the historic journey to a land called Virginia in 1607, how some 100 men set sail from London to build a colony, their instructions sealed in an envelope only to be opened upon their arrival. If you haven't listened to that episode, I invite you to do So we'll be right here after you caught up. As for today, we rejoin our hundred men on Jamestown Island, about 50 miles up from the Chesapeake on what is now called the James River,

as they build upon their new land, and a flaw in their grand plan becomes increasingly apparent. These lands, they've been told, are already occupied. So claiming this area won't be as simple as raising a cross or staking a flag. It will lead to conflict, to blood. Eventually, to the destruction of a population, a nation that will never be the same again. In this episode, I am joined once more by Mark Summers, educational director of youth and public programs for Jamestown Rediscovery. From collaboration to suspicion to outright war, we explore the tumultuous relationship between the British and the Poetan, native to this area.

Mark Summers, welcome back to American History Hit. Thank you. Appreciate it. When last we discussed the Jamestown Colony, they had just landed, began to clear land, cut trees, begin looking for how they're going to accomplish the tasks that they've been hired to do, because this is a company that's being sent over to make money. They are going to encounter some unexpected elements in this new life, am I right? Well, they're going to be resisted. And to backtrack a bit, even when they landed at Cape Henry, there was a band of warriors that shot at them. And that should have been an omen that perhaps this was supposed to be.

wasn't going to be so welcoming. But that being said, they do take a few weeks to finally select the location of what becomes Jamestown. And they do split their forces and sail farther up the James River. They end up in the site of what's now our city of Richmond. But they're going to be encountered. And one of the things I want to clear up that I like to clear up with the public is we've had a lot of films and documentaries, movies throughout the years about James Sten and other colonies.

And there tends to be this cliche. in Hollywood that, you know, the three ships come up the river, and there's a scary, tense, dramatic music. And they always show the Native American people hiding behind the trees, terrified, frightened, the world's coming to the end, who are these strange godlike people? And it's really going to be more like, oh, it's those guys again. That is something that I think films never seem to show, is that there have been prior contact with Native American people in what's now Virginia before,

How much education was done for these new settlers back home? How much did they know about these cultures? Well, even though the lost colony of Roanoke, of course, disappears, you know, some of the people didn't disappear because they had left before the disappearance occurred. So they had diaries, journals, accounts. They already, for example, knew that Native Americans in this region valued copper and they should bring copper with them, metal hatchets, tools. They called them trash and trinkets. We would say small items. So they knew that there were things they could bring to trade. knew that even in Roanoke, they were told about the great palates and people to the north by the locals don't go up there. So even other Native American communities feared the very people that the English and Sixthews were going to sail right into the middle of. They had no awareness just how vast the local population is going to be and how close they were to them.

They are settling right in the middle of a vast society, correct? Correct. So a little backstory, We do know from archaeology that Native American people have been in this region as much as perhaps 12,000 years ago. But to come to the chase, the Palatine people start out as one tribe. So Palatin means the falls of the river in Algonquin. That's the site of Richmond. They grew to six tribes the same way everyone else grows through agriculture, maize agriculture. They developed a stronger government. But what's often missing is they go from six to about 30 tribes before Jamestown based on conquering.

other nations and exacting tribute to them. So we have what's called a paramount chieftain, a collection of 30 tribes, many of them have been conquered. The Palatin people have strong political leadership, bands of warriors that can chase away their enemies, including other Native Americans. The Spanish had run into the Palatin in the 1570s, and their priests were killed. So there had already been. The idea that the English regards is ridiculous because the Palatin referred to them by this

where Tasanas, which means foreigners. And what's happening is they're watching the English land, but they're not like, you know, there for a day or two or trading. I mean, that's not a big deal. I mean, think about how many ships go up the River Thames. It's that these people are chopping down trees and unloading months worth of supplies. I use the analogy,

so the difference between me knocking on your door trying to sell you something and me camping out in your backyard and eating all the food out of your house. That's what's going on here. It's not fear of Europeans. It's not that they're God. is that they're on the land without permission and they look like they're going to be there for a long time

and they don't have any women and children which could be interpreted as a war party. Sure, yeah. The name Powhatan actually comes from an individual, from a chief. So it's a title. So similar to England. So it would be like calling, you know, John Howard, the Earl of Norfolk. Norfolk is a place. It's also a title and it sometimes uses a name. So the man that we call Chief Palatant for simplicity's sake is actually

Wachunsonak. He's a pair of the people. We're a Mount chief. So again, he's the head chief. It's like we have a president and 50 governors. And each local tribe has their own wearerwants or local chief. So he has nations that he has to have counsel with and those that he's conquered where he has a lot more political authority over. But he's clearly a 60-year-old man. He has somebody who has defeated his opponents. He has strong warriors. He's intelligent. I even call Machiavellian. I mean, he is almost always two, three steps ahead of the English in this story. not someone who would fear these people. Right. How would they compare and scale to, say, the Algonquin up north? I mean, this is a very widespread group of people and very developed society. Correct. So what's similar to them is they share similar cultures and similar languages. So it's not that the language is exactly the same. But for example, Native Americans along the coast of Maine or the Lenape and what is now New York would be able to communicate with the Palatins. So they have a dialect of the same language. They hunt the fish, they farm, they have villages. Now, their population,

is about roughly 20,000 spread between what is now North Carolina border in Washington, D.C. So the way I describe it if you're American, if you drive up Interstate 95 and you look to the right, all that land in eastern Virginia around the Chesapeake Bay would be the palatine land. They called it Sinacomica, the crowded country. Crowded to them, 24,000 people. Today it's 5 million people live there. Well, but full of resources and also temperate zone, et cetera, it would have been very envied. I imagine throughout the land.

And these are people who actually communicate and travel very quickly by canoe. So they navigate those waters in Virginia. They communicate very quickly. They can strike at their enemies very quickly through raids. They can exact tribute. They're in a very good strategic position. They are, I will say, there are more numerous groups, but they are the most complex and politically powerful Native American group for miles and miles around.

Yeah. So the English couldn't have picked a more dangerous opponent than they did. They have dealt with threats in the past. from their own land. Now these folks come across the ocean. What's that first meeting like? Well, there is an attempt. So each tribe has some autonomy, you know, local autonomy. And there's a tribe called Paspehahe. It's only four miles up the river from here. They actually come a couple days later by canoe and have a what we would call a sit down with the English. And now, according to the Native American old tradition, the local chief tells them, you know, yeah, we live over here,

but you've settled on our hunting ground. And you've chopped down trees that don't belong to you. You didn't bring us gifts. And it's interesting because I imagine this very tense scene where there's warriors and soldiers with weapons, Andy, staring at each other awkwardly around a bonfire. The local chief sort of tells them to leave, but of course he does so in Algonquin.

And so the English write the same story down. Well, this man is yelling at us. We don't know why. They leave upset. But they've been warned to get off. It's much more simple than I think people realize. if you want to know why two high school students fight in the hallway or two guys fight in a street corner or two nations go to war, it's a sense of disrespect. The local population feels disrespected because these people are camped out where their food is.

This is always confused me because any human being, especially someone who is equipped for war, who walks on to someone else's land, understands the dynamics at hand. You know, it's not like, oh, they're not Christian, therefore we own this place. It's not as simple as that. So that has always confused me, you know, the lack of sophistication in approaching this situation. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some arrogance here. I mean, and in fact, you know, to be charitable to my British friends are not blaming the average citizen. But if you look at the four-year-old history of the British Empire, this story repeats itself all over the world. Yeah.

There are people who are, you know, common soldiers and laborers who kind of get it quicker than the leadership. So I think the arrogance, the sense of superiority, which has already developed, Europe. You can see it in their writings. It's that, yes, these people may have warned us, but they simply have bows and arrows. We have guns, ships, and cannons. We'll be able to withstand any assault. And this, of course, repeats itself.

Through India, through Africa, Ireland. Lawrence of Arabia, you know? Yes, right, right, this sort of sense. That's what I mean. It's come down to us as a stereotype. But it's a reason for the stereotype. Okay. And I do think, to be fair, that there are fair-minded individuals, Richard Hacklett, who most likely wrote the instructions, kind of a professor type,

is certainly one is this take care not to offend the local population. He does write that. So there obviously are English people self-aware not to pick a fight. But we're talking about who sit here. You're talking about investors, soldiers, hardened people, some of them, making decisions that, yes, there might be trouble, but it's not trouble we can't withstand. At the same time, there are going to be people on the ground who said, I wouldn't do that if I were you.

You know, so again, that's a tough thing about saying, well, the English, right? We're really talking about the people in charge. Right. We'll make mistakes. And there might be other Englishmen there who said, John Smith is one. We should be better prepared. And this is the important thing to keep in mind. This is a job they're doing.

This is something they've been hired to do. This is a commercial endeavor, first and foremost. Right. So if they're thinking that first, right? And I will tell you, what shocks them into reality is on major, 26, 1607. So the English had divided their force and they're going, exploring up the river. So think about history, historically speaking, when you want to resist them and you wait for them to divide their force. And the local chief comes back with 200 warriors, meaning he went to his

neighbors, the same way Paul Revere does in 1775. And there are 200 warriors in a crescent formation and the English haven't built the fort yet. And so there's actually this major raid where, you know, the Powhatan warriors may have bows and arrows, but they outnumbered English nearly four to one. Their bows and arrows can fire eight times faster, and they use surprise on their side to get the English to fire a volley and then have another band attack them. Long story short, within about a half hour,

the Powhatan have overtaken the English camp and have nearly wiped them out until the English run to the shoreline and call for help and the ships unload their artillery and fire small shot, golf boss side. shot and Bar shot looks like aerobics weights to chase off the palatine. So the importance is the English arrive underestimating the palatin. They've been warned.

They've had that first encounter in Virginia Beach. And now they have this raid where they nearly get wiped out. Only the ships save them. And that's important because they tell you after the battle is over. We'll build a triangle-shaped fort with half-monds for bulwarks in 19 days. See, when we land to English and then they build the fort, we're missing a very huge part of the story. story. Yeah. And that is they build the fort quickly based on the resistance of the palatown.

Wow. Okay. Tell me about that fort, the design of it, the whole concept. Well, one of the things, especially any potential Irish or British audience might be interested in, is the design of the fort is carried out by Wingfield, the president. And he had served in Northern Ireland. So they used a design similar to what was going on in Ulster. And I really do think that the roadmap for the Palatine is the English occupation of Ireland. There There's a lot of similarities. They're going on simultaneously. So they're going to build this for it because they build a triangle shape for several reasons.

It's a quick and easy design. It also takes advantage. You'd have to almost stand here with me to see it, but it takes advantage of the landscape. And it's built with three bulwarks where they had 12 what's called Demi-Colvern cannon, basically eight-pound shot. That's the same cannon that took down to Spanish Armada. Now, when you stand here, you actually can tell the English put their cannons in the perfect location. to prevent a Spanish attack from the east,

a palatin canoe connect to the west, and to the north they have cannons in case they come by foot. So they pick high ground, they have perfect places for their cannons, and they build a fort where the walls were 14 feet tall. Now, why do we know this? They wrote about it,

and we've done archaeology since 1994, and have found the footprint of the fort and have been able to reconstruct it. So we can speak with accuracy about where the fort was, where the cannons were, and how strategic it was. From a military point of view, it is an amazing fort.

It is top of the line. It is well thought out. It is an amazing design. And they are well defended from the palatine once the fort is up. And how big an area, square footage wise? It's about the size and shape of a baseball field. That's kind of the analogy. That's not very big, but it is in a good location.

Are there shelters built for these people to live in? So they mainly relying on tents at first. And that's going to end up being a problem because over time the tensile rot way. I don't think they're planning to build long-term structures, to be fair, because many of the men thinking, well, they're going to get rich quick and go home in a year or so. So imagine a kind of campsite that's attacked. Now they have a palisade around it, and they have well-placed cannon. So militarily speaking, there's not an issue. But it ends up becoming a triangle-shaped coffin within six months because the fatal flaw, and I do actually train.

military groups today. You know, I don't train military groups to come to the park and learn about statues or firing muskets, but the lesson we can still teach today is you can have the best fort and the best weapons. But if you can't provide food and water to your men, it's rather irrelevant. So they were so obsessed with finding the militarily financially secure location, they didn't consider there was no freshwater source above ground. Oh, interesting. So if I'm standing outside, If I was a palatina standing outside looking about this and thinking about attacking it, how big are these bullers? How tall is the wall? Yeah, so the walls are 14 feet tall.

And each corner, again, has four cannons that allow for crossfire. We've also done some research. IndyK., there were various moats and ditches. We also have the archaeological evidence of caltrops. They look like metal spikes. These have been found outside the walls of the fort. So no one's going to sneak up on the place and no one is going to get close enough to be able to raid it. In other words, the path of themselves are quite aware, after failing to wipe out the English in this raid,

it would not be successful to try to attack the fort directly. So the English are, their bodies are safe from arrows essentially once they're in the walls. And the ships stick around, right? For a few weeks. They're here for a few weeks. I've always conjectured that most likely, because we know the sailors were here for six weeks, they're most likely the men they're actually building the fort because they would be under orders, and they also have the carpentry skills.

They don't say this. We do have other records of sailors building buildings at Jamestown. So my guess is the sailors would allow for them to build this palisade within 19 days. How long does it take before a more peaceful contact has been made? When do things calm down? It never really does completely. There's always, we use the term to time that goes on from time to time. But to fast forward a bit, what kind of happens is the palatin, I like looking at their strategy,

once the English built a fort. Because think about the news of this raid reaches Chief Palatine. He's about 20 miles away. Well, as someone who's 60 years old, who understands and has seen Europeans before, he also recognizes, well, the English has settled on ground that doesn't have fresh water. So essentially, he can sit back. Now, he attempts to spy on the English. We do know the Palatin.

We're hiding in the grass, counting their numbers, watching their patrols. We would say gathering intelligence. But for the most part, they're going to confine any attacks on the English when they leave the walls. But to oversimplify, they're sitting back and perfectly content to let the English kill themselves on. How do they not identify a water source? That's weird. Well, the mistake they make is we do have a large swamp that's above ground, and they know not to drink out of the swamp. They also brought beer with them to drink. So this beer, it's low alcohol content. We know from Europe you drink beer rather than water. It's safer. It also keeps on a voyage. Well, they run out of the

beer, their resupply ships are going to be delayed because remember they landed much later than they expected. So they're going to run out of supplies quicker. So they have to look for a source of water. Well, they begin to drink out of the James River. I mean, we are literally next to the James River. And so the James River is a little tricky because it's brackish. Yeah. And it is far enough upriver where you don't always taste the salt. But it's got enough closest to the Chesapeake Bay where there's a salt content in the water. One conjecture. is that there's a lot more snow back than now because of the many ice age. And so perhaps a lot of the snow melt in the spring has masked the taste of the water.

So they're not wear right away of just the salinity levels that they're going to find out. Wow, interesting. But they would have understood tidal that they were in an estuary and all that. Right. I mean, very quickly they realized the mistake. So what they're going to try to do very quickly is try to get to an aquifer to dig a well. And they will dig a well. And the problem is we know that there's a drought going on.

We know from tree ring studies. One of the things your listeners might be not aware of is that we now know scientifically the worst drought in the last 800 years of Virginia history occurred during the first few years of Jamestown. Wow. The second worst occurred during Roanoke. So one can look at tree rings to predict violence between Native Americans and Europeans and periods of peace correspond with rain. Yeah. The other problem with that is if you have a lack of rain, your well water, your awkward is going to start sucking in swamp, water, river water, and we can also find

E. coli bacteria from human and animal waste. All of that is causing dysentery, typhoid, salt poisoning, arsenic poisoning, and all of the people who work here argue over what killed the English the most. I, as a political story, would argue it's bad leadership, but clearly there's all these factors. Well, that leads to a lot of bad choices, but climate is a huge factor even then. Very huge factor. I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like this to cover anything specifically, if you have any

ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at a H-H at history hit.com. We'd love to hear from you. Tell me about how Captain John Smith, who he really emerges as a much more sophisticated guy than people thought of him at the time, right? Correct. So he's going to be to answer, you know, an earlier question. I mean, like, well, how did they get better? Because I'm just naming all the mistakes that kill off two-thirds of the people the first year. Yeah. Well, to list them, they're dying of disease. They have poor supplies, they have a king who doesn't care, a company pressuring them for money, a hostile relationship with the local population, and their first two leaders,

Wingfield and Radcliffe, are fired, essentially for incompetence. So John Smith does kind of emerge because on the governing council, he's essentially the last man standing that didn't die, quit, or got fired. And he sort of, even before he officially becomes the boss, he becomes a de facto kind of strong man. Now, why, right? because one of the things a lot of Americans don't know about John Smith, because he's seen as his romantic figure or he's seen as somebody in a cartoon.

Well, I had teachers who didn't like him because he wrote six books about himself. He is from Lincolnshire. For your non-U.K. audience, he's from the most rural county in England. He is a small farmer's son. He's Luke Skywalker, who wants off the planet. He becomes a soldier of fortune. He survives three wars by the time he's 25. He fights the Turks in Romania and gets a coat of arms by beheading three Turks in duels.

That's a gruesome reminder. Don't mess with me. And he's very American in a sense because he is a nobody trying to become a somebody. Therefore, he's obnoxious. He brags about himself. He's self-made. He's likable today for many Americans, but at the time he's a threat and a danger to the class system. But in a rural environment away from London, John Smith's negatives.

England, rural, lower class origins, self-made ambitious, those very traits become useful, positive traits in Virginia. Yeah. And that vibe certainly is felt among his fellow settlers, but also is felt by the native people who come and meet him, right? Right. So, I mean, he's seen already through, you know, remember, the Palaton have a pretty good intelligence network.

They recognize this guy seems to be a stronger leader. For example, Smith, and I'll switch to the Palaton in a minute, because the Smith does orchestrate the building of army barracks when you mentioned what were they living in so he purries the favor of his own troops he also has a work order that he that will not work shall not eat so a lot of gentlemen weren't willing to do labor he's going to force him to do labor but the problem of smith is he has fixed the labor problem he's fixed the housing problem but he has to find a source of food now you can rely on london gentleman to grow crops but he knows that's not a good idea he's always by the way complaining about londoners he is somebody who's a way

that the supply ships might be too late if they show up at all. So he recognizes he needs to trade with the palatin, but the palatin can easily give the order, don't trade with the English. Now as a betting man, he says, well, there's 30 tribes. I bet I could find one I can play ball with, and he does. We've already mentioned the late arrival of these ships. That's going to affect everything from certainly the growing of crops, you know, getting crops into the ground, which I suppose was the idea, right,

that they would get there in the early spring and suddenly in the summer they'd have plenty to eat. But that doesn't really happen that way, does it? Right. They're kind of suggested to trade with the locals, but they also know that that's a bad policy because you can't rely on the friendship of others who may not want you there. So they're supposed to very quickly get their own crops together. I think the problem is in the recruiting. They recruited too many urban people.

And actually, it's funny because Smith does say this. He says, can you please stop sending me people from London? Send me people from Lincolnshire or Lancashire. So I tell Americans, John Smith is essentially, who's the modern John Smith if he was American? He would be a staff sergeant from Alabama who's done three tours in Iraq. He hates the Pentagon. And he's saying, stop sending me New Yorkers or people from L.A., give me some guys from Montana and Arkansas. I mean, that's what he's kind of saying, you know.

But the problem is that's not who they recruited. And so I think more than even the lack of experience, it's not recruiting the right people. It's relying too much on gentlemen, relying too much on people whose families are connected. And I think that's a fatal mistake. The wrong people are here. You mentioned the supply ships. When are they supposed to have come? There's usually a cycle every four to six months that they should expect supplies. But remember, I think a lot of people aren't aware just how much corruption there is.

Sometimes sailors would trade away the food. They have a pill for it. There were also occasions where ships could be late. They could wreck in a hurricane. I think we've even seen this in recent times. You know, think about the fear that people have when they're stranded on a space station too much. It requires constant resupply. Now we live in a world. We have communication. and if there's a problem, it instantly can be solved. But imagine 400 years ago, if a ship is late, you don't know.

You can't guarantee where your next meal is coming from, and you don't have the people to be self-reliant yet. So this is why Smith is going to do what to many seems rash, which is to engage the palatine people, which will lead to a great story about his capture. Exactly. Before, I just want to understand the logistics. By the fall, have they kind of settled into a routine?

because it's going to be a couple of years before anybody goes home, right? They're supposed to. It's a fellow to our team. But the problem is the fall of 16-0-7s when they lost two-thirds of their people. Oh, my goodness. There seems to be a lot of malaise, almost an emotional death. There seems to be, you know, I can't just blame the laziness on the class system. I think it's partly sickness, its weakness, its fear being ripped off.

I think a lot of people aren't aware that when people wrote letters complaining about Jamestown, the company would censor the mail because they didn't want the investment. to pull out. I think the real flaw in James Town is in the boardroom when they first planned it. And I think what makes Smith remarkable is I think he's saying, I don't care what they say. We got to survive and this is what we got to do. So I think that Lincolnshire rural education, I also think that time being a mercenary, he had once been enslaved by the Turks. I think those life experiences have sort of taught him, we can't be listening to the company. If we want to survive, we got to this. He does

attempt to trade. There's a tribe called Chickahominy. They're very close by Jamesdom. Long story short, they're neutral. They're not officially palatine yet. That's a smart move. Engage them, trade copper for food. He does it several times. But on his last journey to them in December 1607, he

hires a couple men to be his guides. It's a couple of Englishmen with them. They're in a small little boat rowing up the river, called the Chick-Ommany River. It's about 20 miles from Richmond. It's funny because there's gas station there. Anyway, we have a lot of gas stations on history sites. But what he does is he stops the boat, gets out, takes one of the guides with him, says, okay, you guys stay here by the stuff. You don't know where this guide is taking you. And Smith is wearing armor, probably a red cape,

a big feather in his helmet. And he's going to the woods. If I'm the guide, I might be taking this guy intentionally to his death. We don't know. But they cross a border into the tribe called Pamunkey, and they're the most powerful Palatine Nation. Opa Chan Canoe, Power. Palatins' brother is the war chief. They're out hunting, and Smith is surrounded by what he calls 200 warriors. And he claims that he used his guide as a shield and fought them off by himself for several hours. Do you know that he's exaggerated. But if he's taken prisoner, it's because he's high-ranking.

And they take him after a 60-day period to a place called Ware-Makomico, that's Palatans village, where he meets the great chief. Now, that's the story that many people know. They know a very famous legend I'm about to mention. and it's Smith spends his time in this large village that we know in archaeology existed for 600 years. It's palisaded. He sat on the floor of a large house. So there's enough food to feed 100 men. And he sees palatine, 60-year-old palatine with his feathers, with his deerskin robe, with his copper and his pearls, sitting above him, the way a king sits above a commoner.

Now Smith claims I'm charming the old man, but he also claims in a later book that he was dragged out of the village about to be. to be murdered. And of course, 10-year-old Pocahontas, daughter of the chief, comes out of nowhere, and I'm saying this facetiously. I as a kid, you know, was supposed to believe that 10-year-old Pocahontas throws off full-grown warriors like an NFL defensive end and scoops up Smith into her loving arms. Daddy, don't kill him. Sure, of course. The real story is probably more interesting, whatever it is, because there's various versions. But I liken it to more like this. Chief Pouten can snap his fingers and kill Smith, and he can snap his fingers and rescue. Smith. It's a power move. In other words, to borrow from a film, I'm going to make you an offer

you can't refuse. I'm going to provide you with food, but I want you to know you, the English, are a conquered people. In other words, you are being absorbed by my empire. I'm your king, not James. You pay me tribute. So when the English start being fed by the palatine, which we know from oral history, written history, and physical archaeological evidence, we do know they're being fed corn, beans, squash, venison, turkey. Never make the mistake of thinking that's free. Yeah. All conquer people's pay tributes.

The English are supposed to give up copper, metal tools, and of course the Palatin want their guns or at least access to them. That's how Palatin and Smith keep the peace. Right. Peace through strength, I suppose, is the old cliche, right? Right. And it's trying to remind Americans not to see the Palatin as weak, because there's a tendency to say, well, they're innocent people in the forest.

You know, yes, they were victimized by this story, but they weren't weak and they weren't going to lay down. These are people who resist it, but they also are in a stronger position early on. Just because we know the end of the story, doesn't mean we know the beginning. They're playing a political game where the English might be annoying, but they have a source of copper, and they have a source of weapons we might have access to. So feeding them temporarily is not a bad move. If you can control this, I liken it to controlling a fire. Just make sure you don't have that fire burned down.

the forest and to seal that deal both sides would trade boys to serve as translators since young people can learn a language quicker so this is how Smith is really a good leader despite his negative qualities right until his removal and how there are long sustained periods of peace right I mean the conflict continues but it will come up and down based on who they're dealing with right correct because chief palatine is always reminding the English to his translators I gave you a good deal yeah I let you live on my land, I overruled my local chiefs, you had to pay me tribute. Smith's a tough warrior. He can run you. He's like a chief of mine. Yeah. That's how he sees it. But, you know, remember, the Virginia

company doesn't see it that way. They see the English attempts to trade with the path in his weakness. They see the attempts to negotiate his weakness. They see Smith's leadership is actually a negative, not a positive, and he will be fired for it. It's got to be reassuring that there aren't many ships coming and many more men getting off these ships and settling. It's not a growing colony through these years. Correct. And I think you have to keep in mind, the Palatin worldview is going to be limited to what they know. I mean, they know, I don't want to oversell this. They are aware of Europeans. They are aware of different tribes of Europeans. They know the Spanish and English aren't the same. But they don't get the full intelligence

of who they're dealing with until several years later, a couple Palatin advisors are sent on the ships with the English. And one makes it back. And let Chief Palatin know, I've seen London. There's more people than the start. ours. Right. You don't know who you're dealing with. And Powell Tan's politics shifts radically once he gathers intelligence about who he's really dealing with. Oh, they're more dangerous than I thought. There's a fateful explosion, isn't there, in the fall of 1609? Correct. If I want to be safe, I'll call it an accident, but I don't always like to be safe because I think that it's very suspicious. I want you to know that Smith has been fired from his position by the Virginia

company, but his replacement has not arrived. Why was he fired? Well, I mean, they mentioned that he, you know, making the sons of noblemen work with their hands. He's very heavy-handed. He's negotiating with a foreign prince. They use an uglier word. I think in many ways, they see the very things I just praised him for is weakness. But obviously, he also made very powerful enemies. Imagine making somebody's nephew work really hard and they have connections. So there's lots of factors, but he's removed from power, but key words is he refused to leave. And then he ends up on a small boat, and his gunpowder just happens to blow up. And if, official report says it's an accident, but I'm very suspicious of that accident. So there is an

accident, and his number one enemy, George Percy, takes command. Now, to be a conspiracy theorist, Percy has two relatives involved in the gunpowder plot against King James. So I don't know, but it does seem suspicious. Now, to be fair, Smith doesn't die. They ship him back to England, but it does explain why he spends the rest of his life writing books pretty negative about James Town. He's still upset about what happened to. Well, he leaves, in our October 1609, things get really bad in the following year. Right. So I consider that two things are going on.

The Palatin recognized the English aren't worth the trouble. In other words, the fire is burning out of control. And Smith is gone. So obviously, there was some respect of Smith's ability as a leader and a warrior. In many ways, I think the Palatin respected him more than English. And the fact that they await for his departure is very telling. And essentially, they throw down a siege. The English ships are gone.

They throw down a siege outside the range of the guns and guns. cannons, they patrol the river, and anyone attempting to leave will be shot. And so this, more than even the climate, is a true cause of what's called the starving time period. And describe what happens during that period. It's due to a drought, right? Drought is a factor. Military siege is a factor. Incompetent leadership is a factor. All those are factors, right? But what you also have is there was a fleet that was supposed to resupply Jamestown that wrecked in a hurricane. So six of the nine ships make. it with a bunch of civilians, including now women and children, without any supplies. So you have

a worsening food situation. You have a leadership vacuum. You have an angry palatine population. And there are too many people in around the fort. Once the food is cut off, once the trade is gone, and once the siege is set, that population of over three to 400 is whittled down to 60 in 60 months. And we are told by the survivors, they ate cats and snakes, rats, dogs, mice, even our dead fellows and I will assure you that all of that evidence including cannibalism has been proven by archaeologists in the last decade. Wow. Through digging up what you know to be those people at that time? We found one individual, a young woman that had eight of the nine criteria for survival cannibalism. If you look her up, we named her Jane. We don't know her real name. Found in a cellar in

2012. This is the same year the English found Richard III. It was the same time period and found through the markings on her skull in the context that she was a victim of cannibalism. And we have horse bones and dog bones by the dozens. So the physical evidence and the written evidence, even without the physical evidence, as an historian, when six writers all tell you something that makes them look bad, you know, people don't tend to make up bad things about themselves. So all of that was proven 10 years ago. So somehow 60 people hang on.

They finally broker a piece. Is that fair to say? Well, with the sea jens, because technically the palatin have to. to lift the seeds to go back to farming. I think they assume they've killed the English off. And those that survived just happened to get rescued in the nick of time. Yeah. And May to June of 1610.

It's also a complicated story. So when he mentioned the fleet of nine ships, well, one ship called the Sea Venture missed the starving time because they crashed in Bermuda. And this is the founding story of why Bermuda is still British. Took them eight months. They built a couple of ships there. They arrived to find the colony in disarray.

And they attempt to feed these people. And then they want to abandon Jamestown. What's very complicated is yet another fleet arrives and June of 1610 and says you're going back where you came from. It's led by a titled Lord named Lord Delaware. And this man, Thomas West, Lord Delaware is going to give the order to clean up the fort of its garbage, which is why we have all these artifacts today, introduce martial law and essentially treat the palatin like the Irish by engaging in catar insurgency, by knocking out every village within 20 miles of Jamestown. it will start a major war.

We've already mentioned her, Pocahontas, related to the John Smith story, which is a legend in itself. But the Disney version of Cocahontas begins at this point. Many years have passed or several years have passed. We're down the road. Explain before we get into this very famous episode, what are the relations with the native population at this point? They're going to be pretty much bad from 1607 to 1614 with a brief period of peace when Smith's running their show. In other words, when there's trade, there's peace. but there's more conflict, sporadic conflict.

Pocahontas pops in and out of the story. So she's involved with Smith as, he refers to her like a procrecious child, not as someone he's in love with. She's a little kid. But she certainly is a curious child. She seems to be a diplomat of sorts that go between the English and the Palatan. But by 1610, what's happened is its gloves off. It is direct counterinsurgency warfare against the Palatan.

And the Palatin do the same thing in response. They take to the fall. forest, they ambush the English. And what happens is from 1610 to 1614, we don't hear from Pocahontas much because they're not trading anymore. There's this constant warfare like Southeast Asia in the 1960s where there's no front lines where anyone can be a target, whatever gender, whatever age, whatever ethnicity is not a constant war, but there's a threat. And there's these reprisals and counter reprisals and it's bad for business on both sides. What a misery. I mean, it just sounds awful. Right. So what ends up happening is Pocahontas comes back into our story in 1613. During the war,

Pocahontas was, according to Palis and oral tradition, married to a Native American man in what's called the Padawomac village near D.C. Potomac. Probably to bring that tribe into Palatens orbit, she's now about 17. An English privateer essentially uses gunboat diplomacy to capture her and hold her hostage so her father will negotiate. And Palatin won't negotiate for his daughter's release. Well, he'd have to give up so much he'd lose face. So it puts Pocahontas into the hands of the English during the war longer than she was supposed to. Long enough for her to learn English language. She wears English clothing. She's baptized as an English Christian. The problem with that is we don't know her point of view. We know the English point of view that she's become one of us.

at that moment, John Rolf, he missed the starving time he was in Bermuda, who happens to be the same fellow planning the tobacco that will make this colony successful, says he falls in love with her. Now, whatever she thinks about him, politically, and I'm a political historian, if you're Chief Poutin and if you're the English and commanded Jamestown, and you both need the war to end, and you both need to save face, allowing Rolf and Polkaunas to marry is the perfect way for both sides to leave behind the weapons, go back to business, and either one looks bad.

It's an old story. Yeah, so it's just like what would happen here. It's a political union. And it does happen on the 5th April 16, 14, and we know the spot where it happened. We found the site. Wow, really? Where is it? So it's in Jamestown's first church.

And there's other candidates, but they mentioned having the wedding at the church at the capital. And there is a 60 by 24 foot outline we found of Jamestown's first church. And the wedding would have occurred there probably because of the wedding. it's political, and they would have been Palantan and English people in attendance. So I think it's interesting to notice that the war began when Lord Delaware made a speech in the same spot. In other words, we could show you the spot where the war began and ended on the same spot in a four-year period. Wow. And does she end up back in London?

Right. So you've got to think what a PR move this is for the English. So Rolven Poe-Connor's marriage, whether it's a love story or not, does lead to seven years of peaceful relations. It also is the peaceful relations that allows for the English to expand their population, make a whole lot of money off tobacco, and create a representative government in 1619. In the process, though, right? If you want to curry favor with the English people, Rolf and Pocahontas go to England, and what we would call today a PR trip, they're trying to get money from the church.

They didn't really mention the church much earlier. Now, we've converted the daughter of a king to Christianity. The church might end up kind of helping to sponsor this colony. Yeah. She meets the king and queen. There's a play written in her honor. She's a celebrity, just like when Elizabeth I came here 15 years ago. Problem is, they already have a child named Thomas Rolf. On her way back to Virginia, she's sick on the Thames River, and she dies and is buried in graves in England, which is in Kent, England, her actual grave site not known. But that is what happens to her. And she dies in England at the age of 22. Was she a charismatic woman? Did she engage with the society? Yeah, I think she's seen as very charming. I mean, I'll put you this way, even though a lot of her story is legendary and conjecture.

What we do know about it is when people quote her secondhand, she seems like someone who speaks very regally, you know, thinks before she says something politically, but is also somebody who seems to be able to charm the king and queen of England. Rolf is seen as a commoner. So she is seen by the English people as much higher ranking than John Rolf. And she might be seen as more higher ranking than her own culture does. She's a princess. Right, right. The English see her as that.

And I definitely think the English see her as a PR opportunity for their purposes. Does Rolf go back after he comes back with her or not? Yeah, he's a businessman. I mean, anyway, he leaves his child to be raised in England. He comes right back here. You got to keep mind, in this timeline, they planted back when 1612, ship 400 pounds a year in 1614, and by 1620, they're shipping 25,000 pounds. Wow.

So Rolf is somebody who, long story short, goes from a no-bite to a somebody very quickly. Yeah. I mean, he's really the reason that tobacco takes off in England, right? Right. We are tied to a cash crop that remains Virginia's number one money-making crop until something like 2006, 7,9, something like that. Wow, that's incredible. There's consequences to that, but yes. Poutin, the chief that we know Pouton through most of the story actually passes away.

He was a 60-year-old guy when they arrived. He is replaced by a man named, I'll leave the pronunciation. to you. Opichan canoe. Yeah, this is another thing. So Opichan canoe is not exactly next in line. He's a war chief. He's a George Patton. He's William Wallace. He's crazy horse. He's a war chief. Every culture has them. So there's a brother called a Pichapan that's supposed to be in charge. But you can get the impression he's pushed aside by Opechan canoe, right? And that should have been a signal to the English. This isn't good. Because he is a war chief. He captured John Smith. He has a reputation for being a fighter. He's over six feet tall. He's a tough guy.

Now, I swear to you, it's almost as if the man read Sun Su Because one of the principles of Sun Su is if you want to defeat your enemy, convince him of your weakness. Sure, the art of war. Right, right. And so, Opechancu visits Jamestown, unlike his brother, he visits four times. And basically every time he tells the English, I will be your friend until the sky falls. He tells them your culture, your religion, your language, all your ways are superior to ours. We should be more like you.

And you can read the English letters where they completely buy it. Oh, well, see what the good we're doing. But he's got something he's planting. They had already been planting tobacco, obviously. I mean, that's where the English learned it from. Had they been growing it on a large scale? Did they see what the English were doing with it and understood the threat? Yeah, this is another thing that's kind of not always taught in Virginia.

So there already is tobacco in Virginia, and that's a good point. It's called Rustica. It had a bitter flavor, and it was mildly hallucinogenic. So the English didn't care for the local brand. They were, since 1560, interesting. in the milder Caribbean brand. But the problem is they're addicted to something sold by the number one enemy, the Spanish corner of the market.

So once Rolf finds the Spanish tobacco seeds, we don't know where, I guess it's probably Bermuda. Once he cultivates it in Virginia and realizes that this milder, more popular blend, well, think about it, you can cut the Spanish out of the business. Now, it's a business with a reputation, and I mean this very carefully since my own grandfather was a tobacco inspector. But, you know, in England, it did have a drug business

reputation. The king wrote various pamphlets against its usage. But you got to think of it geopolitically. If we have our customers in England buying it from the Spanish, that's not good. We got a source in Virginia, then we can basically corner the English smoking market in Virginia alone. And that's why it's so successful. And this mercantile leap forward, we can chalk up to the marriage with Poconhas. It was that piece that came in because of her and John Rolf marrying that allowed this new business to take hold over time, right? Correct, right? Because you're acquiring a new land, you have peace of relations. You now have a guaranteed way to make money.

I should say, they abandoned martial law. They returned to common law, which we still have the United States, represented a government. We still have the United States. All of this is tied to reforms based on making money off tobacco and maximizing the amount of people willing to come here so they can grow it and profit off. Wow. No one wants to come here and starve,

and no one wants to come here live under military rule, and no one wants to come here when there's a major war going on. So if you have peace, represented government, and you reform their charter will allow for private land ownership,

you can see why now people in England see it as a more attractive opportunity. Of course. But this new chief is going to stand up. A new wave of resistance will happen around 1622. So there was this peaceful,

almost 10 years, eight years at least, of time, thanks to Pocahontas and Rolf and other events as well, that allowed for the growing of tobacco sort of an entrenchment of a new kind of business model, and off we went. At that point, Opechancanoo launches an attack.

Right. Now, you've got to think that he's probably bided his time for several years. Remember, he spent years convincing the English of the peace and his own weakness. But you have to keep in mind that, you know, all the stuff I mentioned is a great deal for the English. It's a fantastic deal for the English. It's the very economic, political, and judicial

foundation the United States is already here, but it's a bad deal for the palatine because the simple question is, where is the land coming from? Yeah. Right. And so as the population pushes, by the way, they go from Jamestown to a 90 mile stretch of the James River between what is now Virginia Beach and Richmond within a decade. That's an enormous fast rate of growth. If you are the palatine, leadership, you see this as a long-term threat. You ultimately can't win. So you have to use this last such effort. And what that is, is the English were used to. There's a lot of these Western settlements west of here.

They were used to seeing palace and warriors eat breakfast with them. They were used to the site that they may have known these people by name. Sure. March 22nd, 1622, 8 to 8.30 in the morning, on a 90 mile front, along dozens of settlements simultaneously, these warriors took weapons, well instruments, and killed every English person they found, man, woman, and child within a couple hours. 300 settlers killed. Yeah, it was nearly a third or a fourth of the population.

nearly instantaneously. And the targets selected were economic targets, like the Ironworks, political targets such as this school that was being used to teach Palatin children, Christianity, but again, negative connotations with the parents losing their children. And also Jamestown was attacked, but it was worn ahead of time. So Jamestown managed to survive, but the outlying settlements were wiped out within a day. And this initiates a period of war of 10 years, right? Right. I mean, again, there are. are so many global parallels today and in the past. But what tends to happen is the English initially are shocked, right?

One can't blame them. Shock, satin, all that. But then, of course, that sense of anger grows. First, they start blaming their own leaders for failure. But what happens is King James finally steps in it says that the Virginia Company, any weapon you want in the Tower of London is yours. They start recruiting more people in London. All these genealogies people bring to me, why'd my family come here in 1623?

They're recruiting people to replace those who. died, and if you hit us, we're going to hit you back times 10. Search and destroy it. So it escalates to a major counterattack. But important to keep in mind, the backdrop of this is in England that's not doing well, you know, civically. It's in the midst of wars. The civil war period of England is going on at this time. Oh, it's coming. Yeah. I mean, all this, I think it's interesting to note that it's, it is interesting to watch James finally care. And perhaps it's his names on it. Perhaps it's the reputation of the English. Perhaps they've made so much money.

They don't want to give it up because I think they assume that if they ever leave the Spanish will swoop right in or the Dutch or somebody. Because all those other countries are aware of the Chesape. So much money has been invested, so much blood has been invested. This is the moment where, no, we're going to counterattack and see this through. You know, had this uprising occurred 10 years earlier, they would have wiped them out. It's probably more successful. Yeah. There's another big attack, 1644, another three to 400 people killed out of at that point, 800 settlers.

There's a huge population growth that does occur. I think what's ironic is Obiechanku was presumed to be dead. And in 1644, tradition is that he was carried in a stretcher in his 90s and launched an even bigger attack. He was captured in this last war and put to death by his guard illegally. And the reservations we have in Virginia today date from 1646 that very war. Wow. So at that point when Opichankanoo dies, what then happens? Is there a brokered piece?

Is it really official that way? Or does just things keep going? It is official. Yeah. So what I would say is this is similar to even British history. So you've conquered the Palatine. They become vassal states. Oh, okay.

So there's a treaty where the surviving tribes essentially are under the protection of the English crown. They have designated reservation lands. And, of course, the lands that are taken over by the English, then get carved up into new settlements. But the surviving Palatian tribes are essentially client states of the English. and what ends up happening as time goes on is there's other encounters with other peoples, for example, the Susquehannics and others to the west and north. And the surviving Palatine nations will end up eventually being caught in the middle of conflict between westward pushing settlers in incursion from other Native American groups.

But the Palatine do not rise up against English ever again after 1644. What is the relationship between Jamestown and, say, Massachusetts Bay Colony and the other English settlements. Yeah, they're more aware of each other. So, you know, maybe your listeners were thinking, well, I learned about Plymouth. I didn't learn about Jamestown. If you're from the American South, it's the same thing in reverse. You know, we never learned about Plymouth. Well, anyway, we have this rivalry that I find very silly because the rivalry between Plymouth and Jamestown is completely a byproduct of the American Civil War. It is not a rivalry at the time. It is simply another settlement. There were several people at Jamestown and ended up in Plymouth.

my own ancestor, Stephen Hopkins is on the Mayflower. He was at Jamestown. John Clark, the pilot of the Mayflower, was once a river pilot in Virginia, and the Allerton family had a son and ended up becoming a Virginia tobacco planner. So there's actually simple people that trade colonies. It's like if you had two corporate space stations on Mars, they might be funded by different sources, they're going to talk to each other. They're going to share people. They're going to be from the same country. So I don't think there's this rivalry. In fact, when 1622 have, happens, the Pilgrims in Plymouth actually learn from it and say, we might want to improve our defenses. Even though those two, those are not linked with the Native Americans in England, they

kind of say, well, maybe we don't want to follow the same trap. So they are clearly aware of each other and they are communicating with each other. And right in the middle, there's the Dutch New Netherland right there. It's a land grab. Once this foothold of James Town is there, it's very quickly lots of Europeans get into the game. It is the success, particularly the tobacco that encourages other colonists to say, hey, we can do something. In the Dutch, it's, of course, furs and that sort of thing. But that's the idea is that they can do this and make money doing it. So for 30 years or so, things settled down, lands are subdivided, estates are started, I imagine. We have what's called Bacon's Rebellion, 1676. So one thing I might help your listeners, and I do this

with teachers and students, is I want you to think of Virginia history is a very big book. And I want you to consider the Jamestown story. When we say Jameson, we catch all in the 17th century, I should say. But think of it as the first three chapters of that book. And most of what we talked about in this podcast, or even at our park, is really chapter one. John Smith, Pocahontas, there's a fort. Chapter two is the 1620s. They turn into a wooden town, tobacco grows. So I want you to think of chapter three, James Town proper becomes a brick city. The palisand have been defeated. The colony essentially spreads to all of eastern Virginia. you also have the rise of indentured servants doing most of the labor.

You have Africans being forced into slavery, even when it's not quite legal yet. So you have this growing block population, this poor white population. You have people moving farther west who are poor because the rich people had the better land. That's going to push people who are native north and west and south, and that's going to lead to tensions. Now, all this is connected, because what you have is you now start having older. families become kind of a gentry and an elite at Jamestown, the establishment, if you want to call them that. You have poorer people, white and black and middle class pushing to the west. You have new groups of Native Americans feeling offended by this land ground. And you have the

sense that people in the frontier aren't being listened to by the people in the urbane part of eastern Virginia. Again, there's so many parallels today. But anyway, what happens is, and it's a Very complicated story. To me, it's complicated as the Russian Revolution or Mexican Revolution. But my cliff note version will be, there are raids by a small tribe called the Doegs from Maryland. The English and Virginia and them are accusing each other of stealing. The English tried to kill them and end up attacking Susquehannics by mistake, which leads to this, and that's the last group you want to offend.

Yeah, right. Large-scale attacks on the Western Frontier. It's the poor people being killed in the West. By the way, Wild West means Richmond and Fredericksburg. And what's the government going to do about it? We'll build your forts. We'll raise your taxes. We're not going to let you have a militia.

And what ends up happening is the frontiers people, the rural people. And rural and urban politics, whatever side you guys are on, has always been very similar, rural versus urban. So the rural people are like, we're going to kill these people ourselves, the establishment under Governor Barclays, no, you're not. And they end up fighting each other in what's called Bacon's Rebellion. And again, very simplification, it leads to the burning down to Jamestown, which it never really recovers from.

The rebellion is crushed, but it leads to all this upheaval. It's when laws are passed to separate white and black. It's when the final treaties with the palatana are actually negotiated, where the English government apologizes for everything they did, which has never happened before. And it's where, long story short, the 17th century Virginia becomes the 18th, 19th, Virginia that you recognize. In other words, the American South, as you know it, is being born out of the ashes of this Civil War. So Virginia could have turned out to be more like New England

or some other place had this Bacon's ability not transformed the racial, political, social laws into a more aristocratic version. Amazing. Incredible how the name Bacon has been such an important... Daniel Bacon, yeah. It wasn't over food. It was just the guy's name. But yeah, but definitely, and it's interesting to know, the English Civil War certainly is being paid attention to in Virginia. And I definitely think the rebels here see what Cromwell does and says, you know, we can do the same thing to our aristocrats. So there is connections. Those news stories are getting there and inspiring people to rebel. But at heart, it's a class warfare, is it not? There's a lot of that. Even though Bacon himself was upper class, how many times our rebellions of the poor led by aristocrats,

they used to say condescend to the poor. That's a classic story. But Bacon is a very self-interested, man, I don't know if he would have kept his promises for the servants and slaves he intended to free, whether he's self-interested or he really does care about the people. But the people are angry for a reason. And the government rightly doesn't want to escalate a war either for a reason. But it just shows you that actually there's more upheaval when the English fight each other in Virginia than when they're fighting anyone else. Wow, interesting. So what's the upshot of this period of time? You say an entirely new kind of governance takes place? Yeah, so by the 1650s and 60s, English Civil War, many of the people in Virginia supported the crown during the English Civil War.

The Cavaliers, that's when the Lees, the Carters, the Washington, these famous families get here. They're royalist refugees. One reminder is the University of Virginia is known as the Cavaliers. And our nickname the Old Dominion State comes from Charles II telling us we're loyal. I didn't know that. Yeah, so those are little anecdotes. But the poor were a little different on that. And I definitely think people who are not well to do, noticing that, yeah, well, if a king,

can be beheaded in England. What's the governor? What's a tobacco planter? I've noticed that during the English Civil War period, there was a rise in indentured servants and enslaved Africans rebelling and running away. So people are clearly hearing, you don't like people in charge, you can do something about it. Well, at the end of the day, eventually the aristocrats win. And when they win, they create a social, political plantation order that by the end of the 1600s looks like the Annabelle himself. That's what emerges. But see, early, Jamestown didn't have to turn out like that. So the early period is interesting because this whole story could have turned out much differently. So it's really the English Civil War that creates the

fundamentals of the plantation system in the South. Tobacco is at first, but then that's replaced by cotton. And there you go. Yeah, because all these other southern colonies were initially peel off Virginia. Yeah. I mean, you know, those elements we mentioned are already there, social and economic, but the separation of people into races, slavery being legalized, the putting people on reservations, having a 5% elite and everybody else is poor. Notice how different this is going to turn out than those New England colonies, right? So you start to recognize the aristocratic Virginia, the stereotypical plantation gentility culture, all of that. That's being born out of the refugees of the English Civil War who have their own

civil war and when and creates a very different society than those New England colonies that will have I'll put you this way. Winston Churchill once said that the American Civil War was caused by the English Civil War, and he made a very good argument of how. And if you go back to Jamestown, you will see it. I just put a big piece of the jigsaw puzzle in there and went, wow, there. I did the sky. Tell us where it lands all for the Native American tribes, though, at this point,

because we've talked so much about Poitans. Sure. It ultimately is the beginning of the Pallitan culture. So the Palatin tribes, there are nine that are still recognized today out of the original 30. many of them died of disease or merged into other existing groups, two to the stay have reservations. But they never rise up against English again. Nevertheless, their history in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries is one of trying to remind folks we're still here. And in many, for many decades, Virginia did not recognize Native American as a racial category.

Many palatine descendants up until 1970 could not go to high school in Virginia or college. So many of them went to North Carolina or Pennsylvania, supporting schools or married into Cherokee families. Many palliative descendants ended up in Philadelphia during World War II. It's only in the last decade that our Virginia tribes have been getting federal recognition and actually sending people to college and law school and getting land back. But it's only been within the last few years. And notice how even people like me are telling better stories

based on being more aware of that oral history and tradition because we're having conversations with people from this background where, hey, in 1970 at Jamestown, that wasn't happening. You weren't getting that point of view. Had there originally been an expectation that the native, the indigenous populations would become the labor force for the expansion of this white kingdom that was going to be planted here? Right. There seems to be, it's part of why the English are writing down so many palatin words. For example, many of the audience don't realize how much Algonk when they speak. Moccasin, powwow, Tamahawk, raccoon. those words enter the English language at Jamestown, these trade words.

There's a guy called William Straitje who writes a dictionary of about 600 words or so. He's starting to write. It's as ironic. The English are saying, we should be more like the Spanish. You know how like they always say we'll never be the Spanish. Some of them start saying we need to be more like the Spanish. Again, a complicated subject, but what's called the Incommianza system, which is the best way to describe it, it's Mexico,

if we knock out the Native American leadership but keep the Native American base population, then our tribe called the English becomes the top of the pyramid, and that labor and resources goes up to us. That's not what ends up happening in Virginia, but the fact that there are people saying that's what we should do shows you really what's behind a lot of the trade, and even the conversion of Pocahontas, is to attempt to, irony of ironies, be more like the Spanish,

when they spent decades saying we'll never be the Spanish. But it's the resistance of those tribes that prevents this from happening. Correct. That and the use of English inservent labor, but also Africa. That's what I'm saying. The door is open for the need for labor, and that's all been established down in the Caribbean,

so that's brought up. And suddenly we have the real building blocks of what becomes the 18th, 19th century. Right. And again, this is a whole other episode, but the Caribbean actually has a huge influence. Barbados and Bermuda have a huge influence on Virginia policy. We always presume that we're telling them what to do,

but it's actually, in many cases, those Caribbean colonies are influencing Virginia's racial and economic policies as time goes on. Mark, this is such exciting stuff. I am writing down notes as I go here because that's why we're drilling down on this subject, because Jamestown is so fundamental to the building of this country. We're not even at the point of it becoming, you know, the beginning of Williamsburg and all of that. That's to come in a couple new episodes that we're doing next. But that's how important this is. What we all think of as being the Pocahontas legend is actually an incredibly important part of the building block of this nation. Thank you so much. Can you hear me sputtering? I'm so excited. about this. Yeah, there's probably a two years worth of stuff, but I appreciate you you try your best to get it's such a complicated. Well, you're talking to a guy who's father dragged him down there, and he was 10 years old, and I walked around, I got on the ship, and, you know, these sort of like infantile memories are all I have of Jamestown. Of course, I was raised in New Jersey, that's

why. But now here I am late in life, finding out that without Jamestown and an education about it, you really don't understand how America really got started. Yeah, it is fundamental. And even though I grew up here, it wasn't until I worked here that I really totally got it. Thank you so much, Mark. Mark Summers is the educational director of youth and public programs for Jamestown Rediscovery. What is Jamestown Rediscovery, Mark? It's the name of the archaeological team that takes curators, historians, and scientists and archaeologists to work together to find the historical records, but also the physical evidence of Jamestown. So it's a fun team to be a part of. This is a gigantic day, if one did spend a day there.

Because there's so much to see in this place, isn't there? There's lots of order effects you can see during the warmer months. You can watch archaeologists find things that we usually do about two tours a day, historical, archaeological. We have so many different interests. If you're more scientific, more historical, political, whatever size you're on, whoever you are, you existed 400 years ago here. That's why it's a good place to begin your American journey. What's the website?

www. www. Historic Jamestown, with an E on the end of it, dot org. There you go. Check it out, folks. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History yet. Coming next in this Jamestown series, we explore what life was like in colonial Jamestown. Spoilers, moldy grain, disease, and martial law.

Sounds like a fun place to be. In the meantime, don't forget to check out our back catalog and like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you very much.