May 02, 2007
Memo From Mexico,
By
Allan Wall
Celebrate (Don’t Just
“Commemorate”) Jamestown!
This month
marks the 400th anniversary of the
establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English
colony in North America, and the foundation of the
United States of America.
There had been earlier attempts.
Perhaps the most famous: the “Lost Colony”
sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh on Roanoke Island.
That’s where Virginia Dare
was born in 1587, the first English child born in North
America. VDARE.COM was named
for her—read about it
here.
Should we celebrate Jamestown? Some
say we shouldn’t.
For the past 200 years, major
public observances have been held at or near Jamestown
every 50 years.
In 1807, it was called
a "Jubilee".
In
1857, it was the "Jamestown Anniversary".
Former president John Tyler spoke. The
1907 "Jamestown Exposition" featured
President Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain,and
Booker T. Washington. And in 1957 the "Jamestown
Festival"
was visited by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
What about
the 400th anniversary?
The good news: there are many
activities planned, it’s being referred to as "America’s 400th Anniversary,"
Queen
Elizabeth and Prince Philip are returning,
President Bush is speaking. There are
exhibitions and special
events.
The bad news: in 2007 we are not
supposed to call it a "celebration". The official
Jamestown 400 committee says it is not a celebration
but a "commemoration".
Can you imagine throwing a birthday
party for your son or daughter and calling it a
"commemoration"?
American Indian activists nixed the
use of "celebration". As Mary
Wade, commemoration official puts it "You can’t
celebrate an invasion." Some have gone as far as
calling it a holocaust. [Historic
Jamestown marks 400 years since 'invasion'|
'Celebration' banned as events condemn 'holocaust' that
resulted Posted: March 8, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern by
Bob Unruh © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com]
At the confusingly named
"Jamestown Settlement" (not the original settlement,
but close to it), a state of the art exhibition
belittles the colonists and 17th-century
Britain , in contrast to the Virginia Indians who lived
"in
harmony with the life that surrounds them" and
lived in "an advanced complex society". One panel
explains that
"Past
Jamestown anniversaries were referred to as
‘celebrations.’ Because many facets of Jamestown’s
history are not cause for celebration, like human
bondage and the displacement of Virginia Indians, the
Jamestown 400th Anniversary is referred to as the
Jamestown 2007 Commemoration." [Captain
Smith, the Tides Are Shifting on the James by
Edward Rothstein, New York Times, March 2, 2007]
A couple of authors claiming to be
descended from the Powhatan Tribe have come out with a
book called The True Story of Pocahontas,
claiming
that the famous princess was raped and murdered by
Englishmen. What’s their source for that? Why,
"sacred Mattaponi oral traditions", of course.
For environmentalists, there was
a gabfest entitled
"The Ecology of Jamestown – Origin of Environmental
Injustice in America".
The Virginia legislature (founded
in Jamestown, 1619)
got into the act, passing a self-righteous feel-good
measure expressing
"profound regret" for slavery, wrongs visited
against Native Americans and "all other forms of
discrimination and injustice that have been rooted in
racial and cultural bias and misunderstanding."
All this sort
of thing was aptly summarized by the London Sunday
Telegraph:
“England’s first successful colonists in America have
been branded as rapists and murderers who
imported slavery and oppressed the local Indian
population. The controversial portrait of pioneer life
in 17th-century Jamestown has become a central part of
the year’s 400th anniversary of the colony, whose
settlement led directly to the birth of the world’s most
powerful nation. An exhibition by the
US National Park Service… plays down the
achievements of the first 107 settlers, who brought with
them the English language and the traditions of English
justice and common law that still underpin modern
America.” [It's
hardly Pocahontas: new exhibits portray Jamestown
colonists as killers and rapists By James
Langton, Sunday Telegraph, March 17, 2007]
But if we can’t celebrate Jamestown
, aren’t we saying it would be better that the
U.S. was never founded? Every
country in the world has injustices and unpleasantness
in its history. Do we for that reason reject our country
and cease to identify with her?
A nation is
a family. You identify with your family,
not because it’s perfect, but because it’s your
family, your heritage, your point of origin.
Our nation has accomplished a lot
of good things in the past 400 years. Even the
Jamestown-bashers are demanding the
very rights provided by the American society which
began there.
People who have bad relationships
with their parents have identity crises.
So do nations confused about their
origins.
It’s no
accident that the entity we know as the United
States of America was
founded by Englishmen. It wasn’t founded by
Spaniards, nor Frenchmen, nor
American Indians.
If it had been, it would be a
different country.
It’s also no coincidence that our
nation was founded when it was founded. The
Elizabethan era and the
Jacobean era which
followed it in 1603 formed a high-water
mark in the history of
England. English society was bursting with energy,
ambition, and creativity. It
was the age of Shakespeare and other literary greats.
England was advancing intellectually, economically,
scientifically and
militarily. English explorers were
circling the globe.
That Elizabethan/Jacobean can-do
spirit gave birth to our own American can-do spirit.
William Shakespeare was caught up
in the excitement of English
exploration and colonization. His play The Tempest
(1611) was
inspired by it. And in
his play "Henry VIII" (1612),
Shakespeare
predicts the establishment of "new nations"
(Act V, Scene 5) during the reign of James I.
England’s rival and enemy was
Spain. The defeat of the
Spanish Armada was followed by years of conflict on land
and sea. A 1604 treaty had officially ended the war, but
the two nations were still rivals.
In 1607,
England was way behind Spain in the colonization
department. Spain had founded colonies from
Mexico to South America. Intrepid Spaniards
traversed deserts, mountains and jungles.
Hernan Cortes
and Francisco Pizarro had
toppled mighty empires, and
sent tons of gold and silver back to Spain.
The Spaniards were also exploring
what is now the U.S. Southeast, and had set up a series
of coastal settlements from Florida to what is now South
Carolina.
The English had
claimed what is now the eastern U.S. seaboard. But
without settlements, these
claims were worthless. If they waited much longer, Spain
could grab the whole territory. (Now, 400 years later,
Spanish-speakers may yet grab
the whole territory—through
immigration.)
Jamestown, however, was settled in
1607, survived, and gave birth to a nation. In the words
of President Theodore Roosevelt, Jamestown is "the
blessed mother of us all."
In order to denigrate our country’s
origin, a Mexican once told me that
the United States was founded by
aventureros
(adventurers).
OK, call them
that. And what a 400-year adventure
it has been!
The story of Jamestown is as
thrilling as any adventure story, with action, suspense
and colorful characters.
Founded by the
Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock company,
the goals of the Jamestown colony were to spread
Christianity in the New World and turn a profit for the
company.
The settlers landed on Cape Henry,
Virginia on April 26th, 1607. After opening
sealed instructions which named the colony’s 7-man
council, they held America’s first election to choose a
president.
Edward Maria Wingfield was elected (and removed from
office only 4 months later).
On May 14th, 1607, the
colonists disembarked on Jamestown Island. It was
marshy, mosquito-infested and unhealthy. But
strategically, it afforded an excellent view up and down
the river, in case a Spanish warship
came calling.
Shortly after the English colony
was founded, the Spanish
ambassador to England,
Don Pedro de Zuniga, began sending King Felipe III
reports on it, urging the Spanish monarch to have it
destroyed. The Spaniards even managed to plant a spy
within Jamestown, Don Diego de Molina, who was
discovered and deported in 1611. Felipe III would
doubtless be happy today to see
more Spanish-speakers in Virginia than ever before.
The local American Indians
encountered by the Jamestown
settlers were members of the Powhatan
Confederacy, really an empire, ruled by
Wahunsunacock, known to the
English as Chief Powhatan, father of Pocahontas.
Wahunsunacock
had greatly expanded this empire. When he became ruler,
there were only 4 tribes, but after a period of
expansion, he held rule over 30 tribes. Those who like
to talk about holocausts might bring up the fate of the
Chesepian tribe, wiped
out by the Powhatan shortly before the arrival of the
English.
Anglo-Powhatan relations had their
ups and downs, but before the 17th century
had ended, the mighty Powhatan Empire was destroyed.
Some of the Indians assimilated with the English.
However, there are still a few reservations in Virginia
peopled by descendents of the Powhatan who still
identify as Native Americans, though the language is
long-since extinct.
After Jamestown’s founding in 1607
the first few years were harsh. The colonists owed much
to
John Smith, who was in charge from 1608 to 1609 and
who continued to promote Virginia after his return to
England.
The roots of the American military
also are found at Jamestown. According to The Story of the Noncommissioned Officer Corps,
by Fisch and
Wright,
"The
British settlers in colonial America …brought with them
a tradition dating back to the Anglo-Saxons. Every free,
able-bodied adult male was expected to
own arms and to be
part of the militia…The colonists created militia
units to face two major potential threats:
Indians along the frontier and the warring European
powers….The local militia quickly divided into squads,
each with its own NCO, to share the burden of rotating
guard duty. Jamestown, Virginia, organized by squads as
early as 1609. Such small units were well suited to
counter Indian hit-and-run tactics and to operate in
heavily wooded country around the settlements, where
larger units had no chance of chasing and catching
raiders."
From Jamestown 1607 to
Iraq 2007, the American
Fighting Man has exhibited great adaptability to
changing circumstances. This
characteristic goes all the way back to
Jamestown. English colonists found their coats of armor
unsuitable to
the Virginia environment. So they chopped the
coats into pieces and put
them back on, so they could move more easily.
Jamestown’s first cash crop was
tobacco, which John Rolfe
began to grow in 1612. In 1614
Rolfe married Pocahontas. Their son Thomas is the
ancestor of 100,000 Americans today.
By 1619, the colony included about
1,000 settlers, and had begun to branch out into
satellite settlements. In that year, some 90 single
women arrived from England,
encouraging the development of families who would stay
and build the colony, rather than return to England as
many of the Jamestown men did.
Also by 1619, blacks had
begun to arrive in Jamestown. It appears that the
first blacks were indentured servants, not slaves. The
first black man legally recognized as a slave in
Virginia was
John Casor in 1654. Ironically, his owner was
Anthony Johnson, a black man and former indentured
servant.
In the early
days, Jamestown had no legal bar against
inter-racial marriages, and there were cases of free
black men marrying white women. One
African, John Graweere,
became a Jamestown court officer, others were
landowners.
Also in 1619, the Jamestown colony
established the House of Burgesses, the first
legislative body of our country, "to establish one
equal and uniform government over all Virginia" and
to provide "just laws for the happy guiding and
governing of the people there inhabiting". This
legislative body still exists. In
1775 it was renamed the Virginia General
Assembly. In January of 2007
it held a special session at Jamestown.
Virginia expanded westward,
and Jamestown remained the
capital until the end of the 1600s when it was replaced
by the Middle Plantation (renamed
Williamsburg). Later, it was believed that the
original James Fort had washed
into the river. But in 1994, William Kelso of the
Jamestown Rediscovery Project
located it once again. Dr. Kelso is still there,
excavating artifacts and buildings of Jamestown,
possibly including the body
of Bartholomew Gosnold, one
of the principal organizers of the colony.
Jamestown showed that Englishmen
could found colonies. They were soon followed by others,
until 13 English colonies were thriving. These 13
colonies were our first 13 states,
represented on our flag by the 13 stripes.
The state of Virginia is important
in American history for many reasons. It’s called the
"Mother of Presidents" (8 were from there,
including 4 of the first 5) as well as many other
prominent Americans. Millions of Americans outside
Virginia descend from old Virginia families.
The Wall family, I’m proud to say,
is of Virginia colonial stock.
Were the Jamestown settlers
perfect? Of course not. But
they started our country. They brought the English
language, English common law, and English Protestant
Christianity to American shores. They began our economic
development and started our first legislative body and
military units.
They claimed the
"Rights of Englishmen",
which would later become
our American constitutional rights.
Celebrate Jamestown? You’d better
believe it!
American
citizen Allan Wall (email
him) resides in Mexico, with a
legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan
recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the
Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are
archived
here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM
articles are archived
here his "Dispatches from
Iraq" are archived
here his website is
here.
