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Four months alone …

When Newport left for England, conditions in Jamestown crumbled.  They didn’t have enough food, and leadership was consumed by faction fighting.  Illness ran rampant, and soon half the colonists were dead.  Kendall was executed for mutiny after threatening to tell the Spanish about the colony, and Ratcliffe’s participation in the Gunpowder Plot was revealed.

John Smith decided to take matters into his own hands, and sailed the local rivers, trading and raiding until he’d fed the colonists.

He returned only briefly, and then went exploring again.  Soon he was taken hostage and met the local peoples in a way he hadn’t before.  He learned of the Roanoke settlers, and met Wahunsenaca, leader of the Powhatan empire.  Soon, he met Pocahontas, when she (according to him) threw herself over his body to prevent him being killed.

Transcript

At the time of the attack, most of the weapons were still packed away, and the colonists could only access a few pistols and swords.  They were planting corn in newly cleared fields, when 200 warriors descended upon them.  The fort wasn’t completed, and most of the settlers ran for cover behind one bulwark.  All five council members attempted to fight back, but were repelled, with every single one sustaining injuries, except for Wingfield, though an arrow had passed through his beard.  They fought for an hour, and one boy was killed and sixteen laborers wounded.  They would have all been killed if the sailors hadn’t shot off one of the ship’s cannons.  When the projectile hit a tree near some of the attackers, it caused them to retreat, and Wingfield ordered the fort to be palisaded.  Wingfield’s bravery in the situation bought him quite a bit of loyalty from the settlers.

Fort building became the first priority, and as such it became the primary source of conflict.  Wingfield rejected Archer’s town plan, Kendall chose the worst shape for a fort, the usual. One day, though, a young man came crawling back into the fort with six arrows sticking in his body, saying “arm, arm” as he collapsed.  He died eight days later, and the rate of Indian attacks began to increase.  Soon, another person was killed, and morale plummeted.

As morale dropped, infighting increased.  Archer accused Wingfield of setting up a kingdom, and Wingfield accused Archer of setting up a parliament.  Now, this didn’t mean it was an authoritarian versus a democrat.  A parliament wasn’t a means to democracy.  It was Archer’s only viable path to power, enabling the colony as a whole to vote for Archer to replace Wingfield if he could erode confidence in him.  He was accusing Archer of using whatever means possible to get the power he wanted, while stirring up discontent in the colony.  The sailors petitioned to have Smith put back on the council, and it worked.  Wingfield was even forced to pay him compensation.  Neither Wingfield nor Newport attended Hunt’s Calvinist sermons, and others accused them of atheism.

The Kind Consort returned before fighting got too out of hand, though, with two unarmed envoys.  He told them the attack was staged by enemy tribes, and that the Powhatan people, including the Pamunkey, were still their friends.  They could relax, finish the fort enough to slow a full-scale attack, and feel confident enough for Newport to leave.

When Newport left, he took back a sample of ore he hoped was gold, or at least copper, some sassafrass (valuable as a syphilis remedy), and plenty of reports brimming with optimism.  They had to be optimistic to encourage investors, but they’d also seen far more good than bad in Virginia and they had every reason to be optimistic.  He also took back a private report sent directly to Cecil from William Bruster, a Cecil spy related to the Plymouth founder, describing what was actually going on in the colony.  Cecil tore off the secret part of that letter and it’s never been found.

The ore was nothing valuable, though, and Newport’s sailors illegally sold the sassafrass for their own profit, effectively stealing it from the Virginia Company and depriving both settlers and investors of profits that could be used to mount a supply mission.  Essentially, the Colony was running months behind schedule and attracting increased Spanish scrutiny while providing no value to investors.

Things weren’t going better in Virginia.  Because they’d arrived in Virginia late, they had only 12 weeks to become self-sufficient.  By August, they were down to 500 calories a day.  Only three of the chicken that they’d brought from England survived, and their food included half a pint of wheat and half a pint of barley per day, boiled in water.  Meanwhile, they had the choice between filthy swamp water (and if you have ever been to Jamestown, you know that it smells), salty river water (at full tide), and slimy river water (at low tide).  Disease began to sweep through the camp, killing about a person per day.  The settlers were lost, they were stranded, and they were scared.

It’s actually a good time to begin to address an accusation which has been very common in discussion of the Jamestown settlers, both at the time and to this day.  The Jamestown Settlers were lazy opportunists.  They came looking for gold, and brought their problems on themselves when they refused to work.  They were upper class people who thought themselves too good for menial labor, and that they were due a life of ease, and the middle class and Indians had to try, unsuccessfully, to pick up the slack.  This accusation was leveled at multiple groups of settlers, pretty much any time the colony suffered or struggled.

These people had no real experience making a life in the wilderness.  They were destitute, they were inexperienced, and while about half were considered gentlemen, most were fairly poor.  One, for example, was a former Sussex MP who had lost everything in a legal dispute with a local aristocrat, and was trying to get some money to support his wife and eleven children.  They hadn’t crossed the Atlantic and put themselves in the predicament in which they now found themselves because life at home had been so easy, but because it had been so hard.  The colonists were about half gentlemen, but the majority were poor.  Of the other half, twelve were skilled laborers, but the rest were unskilled workmen recruited from the squalor of London.  They were going not because of how much they had to gain – Roanoke had shown otherwise – but how little they had to lose.

Most of the gentlemen had military backgrounds, and had lived in rough conditions on the battlefields of the Low Countries, but this was different.  Only the thinnest of lines separated survival from death, and every little problem was a big one.  Being held up for six weeks off the coast of England now meant they couldn’t plant crops in time to harvest them, even if they had the skills necessary to do so.  The weather was suffocatingly hot.  The long voyage also meant they’d used more of their provisions than expected, and didn’t have any left.  People in London questioned why they didn’t simply hunt, fish and scavenge to make up the deficit, but even the Indians who had lived off the land for centuries hadn’t been able to make an abundance of the land there.  A third of their diet came from hunting, fishing and scavenging, and the rest came from corn.  The English were people with no experience living on swampy wasteland.

Even John Smith, who saw himself as the only person who could really make the Colony work, dismissed the idea that these people were lazy.  Nonetheless, soon enough people were ill that they didn’t even have enough healthy people to man the fort’s bulwarks.  No one knew when Newport might return, and in late August, Bartholomew Gosnold died.

He had remained the strongest leader they had, and the one man who really rose above the factions and infighting while commanding the confidence and respect to help minimize it.  He was the person they looked to to lead them out of their miseries.  It would be interesting to know how Jamestown history would have been different if he’d lived, but he didn’t.  He was interred with full military honors.  At a similar time, Cecil’s spy Bruster, and Martin’s son died, too.  That Sussex MP I mentioned also joined them and by the end of September, HOW MANY were dead.

Without Gosnold to steady the colony, and rapidly losing hope of survival, paranoia skyrocketed.

Soon, the colonists started to suspect active sabotage promoted by sectarianism.  They turned to Kendall, who had been one of the two people mysteriously put on the council.  Had he been a spy for the Spanish in the Low Countries?  He denied the claims, saying he wasn’t a Spanish spy, but that he was a spy for Cecil and that others on the council were, too.  He had answers to the most pressing accusations, so attention went to Wingfield.

Why had Wingfield been refusing to attend Hunt’s services?  No no no, more important, why had he lost less weight than the rest of them?  Ratcliffe, Smith and Martin accused him of hoarding supplies, and Martin was particularly adamant, saying Wingfield had “defrauded his son of the rations he needed to survive.”  They said his accusation of Smith’s mutiny en route was malicious, and that he had been giving preferential treatment to members of the council.

Wingfield in turn accused Jehu Robinson of plotting to escape with the shallop and go to Newfoundland, but it wasn’t enough to deflect attention from himself, and he was removed from the council.  Ratcliffe took his place as president, and immediately arrested him for a list of crimes against the colony Archer had carefully tabulated.

Suddenly, Ratcliffe found himself at the center of scrutiny.  Which Ratcliffe was he?  Was he the one who had acted as a Catholic spy in the Low Countries?  Was he the one who had been imprisoned with Guy Fawkes following the Gunpowder Plot?  Was he the one who was in Cecil’s inner circle?  How had he gotten such a prominent position in the company?  Kendall helped divert attention from himself by increasing scrutiny of Ratcliffe, and soon, Smith, Percy and a few others started to agitate for Ratcliff’s removal.  Percy had remained a supporter of Wingfield following his bravery in the battle against the Indians.  It says something, though, that Smith was plotting to restore the presidency of the man who had almost had him shot on Nevis.

A blacksmith named James Reed had regular access to the pinnace to help maintain it, and he acted as their messenger, asking Wingfield if he’d take the presidency if offered.  Ratcliff discovered the plot, though, and beat Reed for his participation.  Reed threatened to hit back, saying skilled laborers deserved more respect than that.  Ratcliff immediately tried him for mutiny and sentenced him to death, to be hanged from a makeshift gallows.  He fought back as they pushed him up the ladder, and finally begged for a private word with the president.  Ratcliffe agreed, and told him about Kendall’s involvement in the plot.  Ratcliffe agreed, freed Reed and ordered Kendall to be arrested and confined to the pinnace with Wingfield.

With each accusation, paranoia intensified instead of diminishing.  But here’s the weird thing, the accusations were all startlingly true.  In a way, that makes sense.  They had been 104 people with no one but each other for company, confined to ships and then a small fort together, alone for months.  At the same time, though, these are some pretty grandiose claims.

Smith took the position of Cape Merchant, which he felt put him in charge of relations with the Indians.  At any rate, he felt Ratcliff and Martin weren’t fit to run the colony, not industrious enough, and not good at making the tough call.  The people were too overcome with sickness and despair to work for their own relief, instead slipping into a depressed idleness.  Virtually no one else knew the language, and only a handful were healthy enough to go with him.  So he took a few of those people and headed for Kekotan to trade for food, but met a very different reception from before.  The people laughed at him, offering him a handful of corn and some bread in exchange for swords, musket and apparel.

This … is where Smith becomes Smith.  Up until this point, he had been a peripheral character, very involved in faction fighting but not particularly noteworthy.  In response to the Kekotan offers, Smith piloted his boat to the shore and ordered his men to fire their muskets.  When the Kekotan retreated, Smith followed, and they approached him with a doll of one of their gods, Ochius.  Smith and his men shot some of the people carrying the doll, and when it fell out of their hands, his men took it.  Soon, a priest came to ask for their Ochie, offering peace, to which Smith responded that if he would load their boat with corn, he would not only return their Ochie, but also be friends and give them beads and copper.  They agreed, and Smith triumphantly returned to Jamestown, stopping by a few other villages to trade for corn.

This was very much against the rules of the Virginia Company’s Charter.  Smith was not supposed to initiate any hostility with the local peoples.  This is the kind of behavior that has made Smith both a legend and a controversial figure.  On the one hand, he was the man who succeeded in getting them food.  On the other hand, he did so in a blatantly illegal way.  On the one hand, he showed determination and ingenuity.  On the other hand, he was clearly, in Percy’s words, a vainglorius fellowe, to the point that we can’t fully be sure about the accuracy of some of his stories.

Regardless, Smith returned to Jamestown with enough corn to feed the company for 4-5 days.  Only two weeks of food were left from the store from England, though, so this was only a temporary fix.  No one knew when Newport would return.  Ratcliffe suggested that Smith’s next voyage be taking the pinnace back to England to secure a supply, and this prompted a violent argument.  Smith brought up the fact that Ratcliffe wanted the colonists to turn back for England as soon as they’d reached the Chesapeake Bay, and accused him of wanting to remove their one means of escape from Spanish attack.  Smith accused Ratcliffe of being the saboteur, and Smith won the argument. Ratcliffe agreed that Smith should take the pinnace and shallop to the falls to get more food.

He went from village to village, trading, often in a similarly heavy handed manner.  He made a point of always taking less food than was eventually offered, though, so that the Indians wouldn’t think he was too desperate for food.  He kept his focus in the future, never outright stealing, and never doing anything to put the English in a weaker position in future negotiations.  On the way, he passed an uninhabited village with plenty of corn, but refused to steal from there because he wasn’t to spoil or loot.  He wasn’t behaving legally, but he wasn’t behaving irrationally, either.  Soon, he was able to bring a couple months worth of food back to Jamestown.

As he approached, he noticed the Pinnace marooned on a sandbank near the fort.  Kendall had hijacked the ship and was preparing to take it to Spain, where he would tell the Spanish about English plans.  He’d beached the craft, though, and was convicted of mutiny.  In a desperate attempt to avoid being shot, he revealed Ratcliffe’s real name, John Sicklemore.  Only a former Cecil agent would know this, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from being shot.

And you remember how I said a lot of the accusations among the settlers had their basis in truth?  Well Sicklemore was a pretty unique name, and the only known Sicklemore at the time was a Catholic priest operating under the alias of John Ward.  As part of Cecil’s investigation into the Gunpowder Plot, Sicklemore was found conducting secret masses in houses across Northumberland, which is the home of the Percy family, including at a house owned by a family named Ratcliff.  He then became a Cecil informer, and was thought to have escaped to the continent.

Of course, no one at the time had the resources to understand the full importance of Ratcliffe’s real name, and the only real issue was how to circumvent the pseudonymity on legal documents.  Archer was Ratcliffe’s right hand man and a trained lawyer, so that’s not an issue.  Ratcliffe’s powers were funneled through John Martin, and he remained in control.

At this point, Wingfield wouldn’t even take power again when he was asked, and just wanted to get out.  He tried to steal the Pinnace to sail to England and tell the London Company about the disarray, but Smith stopped him by threatening to sink the pinnace with musket and cannon fire.  Smith didn’t particularly want to stay at the fort, either, and took a handful of companions including an Indian guide, to go exploring.  He didn’t need to get food, as the colonists still had some and birds migrating south for the winter had alleviated their food concerns.

A couple days after Smith took a group of 19 Englishmen and two Powhatan guides to explore in the shallop, a shivering and hungry Englishman ran back to the fort in fear of his life, but it wasn’t anyone from their company.

It was William White, leader of the Renegades who had first jumped ship when they’d reached the shores of the Chesapeake.  Now, to sum up his adventures, when he and his companions had left, they’d found themselves in a small village named Chopoc.  Chopoc was a town that was very happy to engage and trade with the English, because it helped them get goods that it could offer as tribute to Wahunsenaca when they couldn’t find enough deer for both food and tribute.  Everyone in Powhatan territory had to send a specified amount to Wahunsenaca each year as tribute.

The Renegades had ended up in a village happy to have him, but a village that couldn’t afford to take care of additional people.  They tried, though, and the Renegades tried to contribute and assimilate into their society.  They lived peacefully, though humbly, together.

It’s also worth noting here that for the settlers, the defection had been damaging enough for morale that future colonists instituted a death penalty for any Englishman who went to live with the Indians without permission.  When life was hard, people could wonder whether it was easier with the Indians, questioning English technological superiority, and the point of their struggles.  What if?  What if life was easier with the Indians, and they could just escape into the woods and be free of the hunger, the disease and the faction fighting?  If they could, then what was the point of living like this and trying to make this work?  It was damaging enough that Percy made a point of referring to White as a “made man,” an “arriviste” or “parvenue,” or a person of low social standing who had unexpectedly come into a fortune.  He was so inferior, he wasn’t even worth talking about.  And they didn’t talk about the Renegades.  The Renegades weren’t even officially recognized until 1612, when that death penalty was introduced.

Opechancanough had brought a badly injured man who White recognized as George Cassen into the hut Cassen was staying in.  He tied Cassen up, close enough that the fire burned his back, while his front was still freezing.  He used White as an interpreter as he interrogated Cassen about who his companions were, who his leader was, who had been raiding villages up and down the Chicahominie, what his leader (John Smith’s) intentions were, and where he could find John Smith.  Cassen, who had been enticed to shore by some women after Smith had left him in charge of the Shallop, answered the questions.  As he questioned him, the Pamunkey warrior used sinew and reeds to detach one limb at a time, throwing them into the fire.  Finally, he cut the skin from his head and disemboweled him, throwing the rest of the remains into the fire to burn.  Then he let White go, presumably to tell the people at Jamestown what he’d just seen.

Now, this wasn’t a standard way of killing in Powhatan culture, and in fact there are only two known instances in which this type of a killing occurred.  We don’t know exactly why Cassen got such treatment, though it isn’t hard to guess.

When the Jamestown settlers heard this news, they went to look for the explorers.  They found the bodies of Emory and Robinson, but no sign of Smith.

Smith, Robinson, Emory and their guide had explored a local creek by canoe.  One day, while they were making lunch, Smith went off to check out the nearby lands.  He took one of the guides and instructed the others to stay alert and keep their guns ready to fire.

After a few minutes, he heard a shout and immediately put his gun to the head of his guide and asked what was going on.  “Flee.”  Before he could obey, an arrow hit him in the thigh.  Keeping the guide as a shield, he shot three or four times, and tried to back toward the river.  Out from the trees emerged two hundred Pamunkey warriors, all armed, all aimed at him.  Smith lowered his weapon, and they lowered theirs, but when he asked to be able to return to his boat, they told him all his companions were already dead, and demanded his surrender.  True to his reputation, he initially refused, and kept trying to back toward the river, but when he fell through a bog, he knew he had no choice.

Aware it might be a trap, they waited until Smith was “nearly dead of cold,” and pulled him out.  They then took him to the campfire and let him get warm, even rubbing his limbs to help restore feeling to them.  As he was warming up, he saw the arrow-ridden bodies of Emory and Robinson lying where he’d left them.  Then he was taken to Opechancanough.

Smith’s philosophy when dealing with the Indians was pretty straightforward, and oddly similar to Wahunsenaca’s approach to dealing with the English.  Be as tough as necessary, but not tougher, be as kind as possible when you have the opportunity, and above all, never, ever, ever show weakness.

So, the days of Smith’s captivity were fairly pleasant.  They treated him well, and he did his best to impress them.  He gave Opechancanough his compass, and told told them about the fact that the earth was round, that it revolved around the sun, and that there were many different peoples and complexions on the planet.  He also talked one-on-one to Opiechancanough as the two enjoyed feasts so extravagant that Smith wondered if they were fattening him up to eat him.  It’s in these conversations that Smith got his first evidence of the Roanoke settlers.

When a man entered Smith’s hut to try to kill him to avenge a son that Smith had mortally wounded, the guards protected Smith, who offered to examine his son.

In his conversations with Opiechancanough, Smith had begun to worry that the Pamunkey were preparing another attack on Jamestown, and that they were trying to get him to give them insider information to help with an attack.  It’s more likely that Opiechancanough was trying to get confirmation that Smith was the leader of the English, and that he was worth taking hostage for ransom.  Fearing another attack, though, Smith was trying to figure out how he could warn his compatriots at Jamestown.  First, he asked to go back to fetch some medicine for the dying boy, but they refused.  Soon, he asked if he could send a message to his compatriots to tell them how well he was being treated to prevent their launching any reprisals.  This request was accepted, and Smith wrote a note on a piece of paper, including a list of items the king desired.  The messengers returned from Jamestown with all the items requested, and Opiechancanough was impressed with the detail of communication that could be expressed through the notebook’s marks.  He was probably also pleased with the confirmation of Smith’s authority within the colony, and soon Smith was taken around to various Indian villages, eating, meeting their leaders and seeing their dominions.  At Toppahannoc, residents wanted to make sure he wasn’t the person who had visited them a few years ago and killed a bunch of people, including their king, but because Smith was short and the other guy had been tall, they were happy to confirm his innocence in the matter.

His tour ended in Werowocomoco, capital of the Powhatan Empire, where Smith became the first Englishman to meet the leader of the 37 Powhatan tribes, and the father of Pocahontas.  He was happy with Smith’s conversations with his brother, and had decided to meet him personally.

Now, I’d be willing to bet that the conversations between Wahunsenaca and John Smith were some of the most interesting conversations in history.  John Smith had lived a life full of adventure, and Wahunsenaca had built one of the strongest “Empires” in North America at the time.  In their very different experiences, they had both developed a very similar approach to relations between the two peoples, as I said before.  This means that in these conversations, they were both going to try to figure out as much as possible about the other, while revealing as little as possible about themselves.

Both saw alliance with the other as a potential asset.  John Smith hoped to get food, and learn about precious minerals or a route to the South Sea or Pacific.  Wahunsenaca wanted weapons that he could use both as insurance against the English, and to solidify power over his own dominion and defeat his enemies and expand his territory.  He’s in a war with neighboring Siouan and Iroquoian peoples, and some of his own tribute tribes are only in his empire out of fear.

Wahunsenaca asked Smith why the English were in Tsenocomoco.  Smith told him that he and his “father” Newport were fleeing the Spanish, driven to these shores after a battle with their enemies.  They had lodged to protect themselves while their ships were being repaired, and would eventually return back to England.  If their stay was temporary, asked Wahunsenaca, why were they exploring so much?  To this, Smith was reasonably honest.  The English wanted to find access to the South Sea, and to avenge the slaying of one of Newport’s children.  Wahunsenaca replied that he had heard of such a sea, and near that a description of people similar to the English, who had stone houses and lots of brass.  This was reference number two to the possible Roanoke settlers.  Smith described England, and Wahunsenaca described his own dominion.  He even offered the English a better place to live, near Werowocomoco, but Smith refused the offer.

According to Smith, their conversation, his head was put on a large stone, and men raised their clubs to kill him, when Pocahontas threw herself over him and saved him.  After that, Wahunsenaca was happy to let him live, and help make him metal items as tribute.  He said they were friends, and that he should go to Jamestown and send him two great guns and a grindstone.

This is, of course, the most iconic scene in Jamestown history.  We don’t fully know what happened there, though.  We know Smith’s interpretation wasn’t the whole story, and a variety of others have arisen.  Some Powhatan descendents say that the story doesn’t fit their traditions, and that they believe it didn’t happen at all.  This is possible, and Smith was known for spinning a good tale, sometimes exaggerating the facts.  Also likely is that it was a ceremony to show Smith’s relationship to Wahunsenaca.  When his head was put on the rock and he was about to be killed, it showed Wahunsenaca’s strength over him.  When Pocahontas threw herself over him, she showed the fact that Smith would receive mercy.  Powhatan Indians often used children as a symbol of peace.

Another interpretation is that it was a ceremonial “killed and reborn” ceremony inducting Smith and therefore the English into Powhatan society.

Details of the exact ceremony aside, the outcome was clear, though.  Wahunsenaca did make Smith the Werowance of the English, and asked for English goods including two cannons and a grindstone.  He told Smith that he could come and go in safety, and gave him two guides to take him back to Jamestown.

 

Back in Jamestown, life was, well, same old same old.

Ratcliffe had appointed Archer to the council in Smith’s absence, and against Martin’s wishes.  Food was scarce, and the weather was cold.  We now know that there was a mini ice age going on, and back in London, even the Thames froze over.  Colonists had assumed that Virginia would have a similar climate as Southern Spain, which shared its latitude, and this assumption had been substantiated by the hot, hot summer.  It wasn’t, though, and the colonists, yet again, found themselves struggling.

They got Smith’s note, which said that Opiechancanough had taken him prisoner and offered him land, women and life if he would reveal Jamestown’s weaknesses.  Smith said this meant that a full-scale attack on the fort was being planned, and that they should send the requested objects and fire a volley of shot to demonstrate the fort’s strength.  This united most of the residents in a sense of common purpose, but Ratcliffe, Archer and a handful of others were considering taking the pinnace to England and leaving the rest of the colonists to their fate.

As tensions heated, Smith entered the fort accompanied by two Indians.  To the shock of the rest of the colony, he ordered the guards to bring two cannons and a millstone, and instructs them to take them back to “Powhatan.”  The cannons were both 1.5 tons each, though, so this was an obviously impossible task.  They tried to move them, but couldn’t, as Smith reassured them that they could take them back to Werowocomoco.  Eventually they gave up, and as they left, Smith loaded the cannons with rocks and fired them into the nearby trees, bringing ice, snow and branches crashing down around them.  Then he gave them some other things to assure him of his good intentions, and because they hadn’t been able to take the cannons he’d offered.

It was quite an entrance.  Most people were happy to see Smith, hoping he’d brought an arrangement for food or gold.  Archer and Ratcliffe took the opportunity to accuse him of treachery, though, saying he was directly responsible for the deaths of the people who were under his command when he was taken prisoner.  They cited his offer of the cannons to the Indians as evidence that he was tempted by Wahunsenaca’s offer of power for guns.  After yet another trial, Ratcliffe found him guilty and sentenced Smith to hang the following day.

Deus ex machina, though, this was the moment that Newport’s ship sailed back into Jamestown.  He’d brought food and settlers, and a sense of relief so overwhelming that the settlers forgot their fights and their woes, let Smith go, and celebrated.

Learn More:

My favorite book on Jamestown:

A Savage Kingdom by Benjamin Woolley

• This book is also available as an audiobook.  I particularly like Woolley’s writing style, and the way he integrates all the primary source material.  This was the best-researched book on Jamestown at the time it was printed, and I’d say that’s still true today.

A Land as God Made it by James Horn

• I strongly prefer A Savage Kingdom, but Horn’s book is worth mentioning because it does better address the colony’s later history.  Early on, it lacks some of the detail and scope of Woolley’s work (it’s too John-Smith-centric), but it does do a better job of discussing the colony’s history from 1619-1630.

Primary Source Documents and Articles:

John Smith’s account of early colony happenings, including his meeting Pocahontas