Jamestown Settlement new Permanent Exhibition:

Three Cultures - English, African, American Indian

   One Century

AMERICA'S GLORY

 

Also visit the newly opened "World of 1607" with art and artifacts from civilizations that existed  400 years ago

  

 

  Walk slowly, ladies and gentlemen and mind your kinfolk.  You are starting on a journey to your ancestors and destinations 400 years away - an Angolan village where the first "slaves" destined for the New World were born, a street scene in London where you'll hear a horse-drawn carriage clopping toward you down cobblestone streets - exciting a dog to bark, and a collection of family-size homes in 17th Century Virginia for Indians, slaves and English settlers.

Three cultures in a vast wilderness petri dish creating a new nation.

And that's just the beginning of your historic adventure.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

    This is where America really began - in 16th century boardrooms in London where early English white-wigged equivalents of Bill Gates, Dwight Eisenhower and Warren Buffet gathered to talk about fighting the Spanish, and exploring and conquering the New World. Then how to divide and spend the anticipated vast riches from New World natives who didn't know the value of the gold and silver at their fingertips.

Their dreams of riches from New World proved premature.

Instead their Corporate Colonists harvested strange new diseases, bitter cold winters and droughts, and  the enmity of  shy natives who suddenly turned into spear-throwing warriors. They harvested everything but enough food or fresh water to keep most of them alive.

And most perished with a few bitter months.

 

  

 

 

Don't walk too fast friends. You don't want to miss what an ancient  People magazine might call "17th Century Celebrities."

You'll find a graphic of Captain John Smith, the controversial English soldier often credited with helping to save the Jamestown Settlement. People magazine might also add the colorful note that he once was a mercenary for European armies and escaped capture by the Turks by wearing a woman's dress.

The hatchet  wielded by  Angola Queen Ninga came in handy in the 17th Century when she led an army to keep the Portuguese from capturing her people as slaves.

Unfortunately, unsuccessfully.  A group of captured natives aboard a Portuguese vessel were seized by English privateers and brought to the Jamestown fort.

America's petri dish of intermingling nationalities and cultures was beginning to fill and bubble.

 

  

 

If  paparazzi had existed in the 17th century, they would have gone wild at the appearance in London streets of three exotic celebrities from the New World - Mrs. John Rolfe (the former Indian maiden Pocahontas) and baby and her husband John Rolfe, famous in his own rights as the man who secretly obtained tobacco seeds in the Caribbean and created the first cash crop that made money for the beleaguered Jamestown settlers. What the paparazzi missed are now on display as statues on your continuing tour of the galleries.

P.S. Don't believe the Hollywood film fantasies of a torrid romance between Pocahontas and John Smith. She barely knew him. As one critic said, (Hollywood films) "are to history what Godzilla is to biology."