November is Native American History Month; next year (2025) will mark the 350th anniversary of King Phillip’s War, the beginning of the end for the native people as the dominant polity on this continent. I’m marking the occasion with a series of daily posts related to the history of the Native Americans and their interactions with encroaching Europeans. Some will have to do with pop culture; others will be weightier. This series is dedicated to Sterling and Samantha.
In contrast with the religious refugees of New England, money was the sole motivation of the speculators and settlers of the Virginia Company who founded Jamestown. While hopes for literal gold finds were quickly dashed, there was a general feeling that this was a virgin continent ripe for the exploitation. One of the most promising and most obvious resources, seldom talked about, was the abundance of timber. The forests of England had long since been chopped down and they were an island that required ships, and then an Empire and trade behemoth which required more ships. American timber would make that possible. But it was a while before they could engage in such profitable pursuits. First the men who arrived had to survive.
In 1610 after four years of colonization, only 60 of some 500 colonists remained in Jamestown, due to starvation, disease, a hurricane, and altercations with the local population. In 1612, John Rolfe began growing a popular new tobacco strain for which he was able to establish a European market. In 1613 he married Pocahontas, initiating a period of relative peace and growth that lasted almost a decade.
New shipments arrived each year bearing new colonists. Then in 1622 a new period of turmoil. As would happen in New England 50 years later there was a change in leadership . Pocohontas had died during a goodwill tour of England in 1617. Chief Powhatan died in 1618. His son Opechancanough became chief. Relationships with the natives deteriorated drastically. Opechancanough launched an all-out war in 1622 to wipe out the colonists. The attack killed 347 colonists, about a quarter of the population, including some of my ancestors.
In 1623, Captain William Tucker (my 11th great grandfather) orchestrated a reprisal. He invited a large group of natives to a peace gathering. He served them all a poisoned drink and then proposed a toast. Over 200 natives were poisoned to death and another 50 were killed in combat. As it happened, this treacherous maneuver did not eliminate their chosen target, Opechancanough. The following year, Tucker registered in the book of infamy yet again when the first person of African ancestry born in America was named after him. His namesake was the son of two of Tucker’s African indentured servants. The legalistic architecture of slavery had not been worked out yet.
The fighting would continue for decades. In 1644, there was another outbreak of war with the Native Americans, initiated by the local tribes, in which over 500 colonists were killed. A couple of my 9th great grandparents were caught up in this tumult. Dr John Woodson, was caught in the open on his way home from visiting a patient, and killed. His wife Sarah and and a neighbor managed to survive by fighting their attackers off. According to stories that have been handed down they killed nine. She loaded the gun while her neighbor fired, and hearing a noise up the chimney she threw the bed upon the coals, the stifling smoke bringing two natives down, whom she dispatched. As two of them tried to enter the house, Sarah scalded one and brained the other with a hot spit. Her hid her sons, Robert in the potato hole and John under the tub, and they were saved. For many years the boys were known by the names “Potato Hole” and “Tub.” And that’s probably the most characteristally southern part of this story.
In 1646, Opechancanough was caught and killed, thus ending this period of strife in Virginia, 3 decades before King Philip’s War. At the end of the 17th century the colonial capital was moved to Williamsburg and Jamestown ceased to exist, which is another reason why we don’t use it as our national origin story. There is no Jamestown. it’s an archeological site. The oldest continuously existing English city to be founded in North America is Plymouth.
Terence Malick’s The New World (2005) is an excellent (if slightly fictionalized) telling of this chapter of American history, with Collin Farrell as John Smith, Christian Bale as John Rolfe, Q’orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas, Wes Studi as Opechancanough, and Christopher Plummer as Christopher Newport.
Far less rewarding is the British tv series Jamestown (2017-19), which has very little to do with history, and is essentially a frivolous soap.