JIM GRACIE

THE NEW WORLD
BY JAMES GRACIE ©

 

When the motion picture "The New World," was released it reopened interest in the beginnings of the United States of America.

It tells the story of Jamestowne, founded in 1607, England’s first permanent colony in North American.

Filmed in and around present day Jamestowne, it also tells of the love affair between Pocahontas, an Indian princess, and Captain John Smith, one of the colony’s leaders. It stars Colin Farrell as John Smith, Q’orianka Kilcher, a 15 year old Native American/Swiss actress, as Pocahontas and Christian Bale as John Rolfe.

The Virginia Company of London had financed an expedition to America to search for gold, and one hundred and four men survived the journey to establish a colony in Virginia, alongside the James River. They never found gold - instead they found starvation, disease, drought, and death. By mid 1608 only 38 or the colonists remained.

In 1994 the site of the original fort was rediscovered, and an archaeological dig is discovering what life was like for the settlers. Over half a million objects have been uncovered, from wine bottles to weapons. The dig looks like a battle site, but guides are on hand to interpret its layout.

Nowadays, the whole Jamestowne area is a living museum dedicated to those first settlers. The landscape is one of woodland, lagoons and creeks - exactly what the colonists found in the early 17th century.

There is a huge museum and interpretation building inland from the dig that explains the history of the settlement through films, exhibits and artefacts.

Among the hickory and pine trees the original fort (used as a location in the film) has been recreated, as has a typical Indian village, and a glassworks manned by the colonists. The foundations of the original glassworks can also be seen - the first factory on American soil, and the forerunner of the country’s industrial might.

At the Riverfront Discovery Area there are replicas of the three boats that set out from England - the Susan Constant, the Discovery and the Godspeed. They are tiny, and you wonder how they ever managed to survive the Atlantic gales.

Jamestowne survived against all the odds, and gradually a city (called Jamestown, without the “e”) was built to the east, which became Virginia’s state capital. But it too didn’t survive. When the capital moved to Williamsburg in 1699 it went into decline, and now all that remains are a few brick foundations in a field.

It was at Jametowne that the love story between Pocahontas and John Smith was played out.
She was an Indian princess, daughter of the local Algonquian chief, Powhatan, and if it hadn’t been for her there would have been no Jamestowne - with or without an “e” - at all. Her real name was Matoaka, Pocahontas being as nicknames that meant “the frisky, or spoiled, one”.

She was her father’s favourite. Resourceful and capable, she moved confidently between the Indian and European cultures.
Her first meeting with Smith - which Smith recounted several years later - has become part of American mythology. He had been out hunting and was captured by Algonquian warriors, who brought him before Powhatan. At first he was treated like an honoured guest, being given food and drink. But at a nod from the chief things changed, and Smith was thrown to the ground, his head being placed on flat stones.

Warriors raised their clubs, and were about to bring them down on his head when a ten year old girl - Pocahontas - kneeled down and put her own head on top of his. Instead of being angry, Powhatan smiled, and declared that Smith was his now his son.

The whole episode sounds wonderfully melodrama, but what Smith didn’t know was that he had taken part in a bonding ceremony. The warriors had no intention of dashing his brains out, and Pocahontas’s “rescue” was symbolic.

Pocahontas and Smith - 27 years old at the time, and short and stocky with a full beard - became inseparable. But times were still hard, and they were to get harder during the winter of 1607-08. So much so that the only food available was brought by Pocahontas. The Algonquians were also starving, and her visits to the fort were bitterly resented by many tribespeople.

But she continued to bring food, at great risk to herself, and the colony survived. John Smith later said that she was the “instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine and utter confusion”.

Pocahontas and Smith were to take their love affair no further. Smith returned to England to receive medical treatment to an injured leg, and Pocahontas was told he had died there. In 1614 she married John Rolfe, a tobacco grower, and gave birth to a son called Thomas. Two years later they sailed to England, where Pocahontas was presented to the king. She also met John Smith again, for he had not died. The meeting affected her greatly, and some people claim that she was still in love with him.

But it soon became apparent that Pocahontas was ill. Just after boarding ship in 1617 to sail back to Virginia, she died, and was taken ashore at Gravesend, where she was buried in the local churchyard. Rolfe and Thomas continued on alone.

There is no doubt that Pocahontas single-handedly saved the colony from extinction, and in doing so laid the foundations of colonial America, which lasted until 1781, when the country threw off the cloak of colonialism at the Battle of Yorktown, whose site lies only a few miles north of Jamestowne. It is strangely poignant to visit the area, and know that you are walking in the footsteps of Pocahontas, Smith and Rolfe, seeing at first hand where a great nation was forged. - a nation that partly owes its existence to a Native American girl who died when she was only 22 years old.

James Gracie ©

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Virginia (www.virginia.org).can be reached by US Airways (www.usairways.com) from Gatwick to Philadelphia and then Philadelphia to Newport News, near Jametowne. The nearest hotels are in Williamsburg (www.williamsburg.com), ten miles away. You can return to Gatwick via Newport News to Philadelphia or Charlotte, North Carolina.