Jamestown not worth it

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Jamestown not worth it				July 8, 2006

A few days ago a woman in the Ewell Station parking lot stood eyeing a Virginia commemorative license plate that read: “1607 Four Hundred Years.” “Four hundred years of what?” she asked as I passed by. So much for Jamestown.

Let’s face it. We’re spending millions of dollars and entirely too much energy on a place that few people outside of Eastern Virginia ever heard of, much less care about. Bottom line is that we’re going to whack ourselves out of joint for a whole year over a gaggle of English aristocrats who thought that establishing a colony in a malarial, disease-ridden swamp among hostile Indians was about as good as it gets.

Why did they come? They came because some loose-screwed intellectuals in London formed what was called the Virginia Company of London and somehow got their half-witted (“I rule by divine right”) king, James I, to give them a charter in 1606. The driving force behind this lunacy was partly exploratory, but mostly a desire on James’ part to convert Virginia’s Indians to the Anglican religion. In other words, it was a mini- Crusade to turn perfectly happy infidels into Episcopalians.

In December 1606, then, off sailed Captain Christopher Newport with a band of 105 uppercrust Englishmen who eventually found their land of dreams on the swampy shores of the James River in April, 1607. The fact that they squatted right in the middle of territory ruled by a potentially-ripe-for-Anglicanism Indian chief named Powhatan only added to their euphoria.

But before they could do much proselytizing, the enervating Virginia climate worked its wonders and, combined with a lack of food, a lack of clean drinking water and a prolonged drought, did in many of the colonial campers. In addition, and much to their surprise, they discovered at the last minute that they had brought no skilled laborers and no farmers. Uh-oh.

Nor had they brought any women. The first two didn’t arrive until 1608. What happened to them as they bustled about among what was left of 105 men is probably best left unprobed.

John Smith brought some sanity to the whole process in 1608, when he became Head Crusader. Unfortunately, he was injured by burning gun powder and immediately left for England. His departure was followed by the so-called “starving period,” during which Powhatan and his boys became very irascible, and the Swamp Thing sucked to death even more colonists.

But in 1613 John Rolfe saved the day by introducing the smoking weed as a cash crop, and tobacco became even more revered than Anglicanism in Virginia. Another very positive step for the colony was the introduction of the first slaves into America from Angola in 1619.

They puttered around in Jamestown until 1699, when the seat of Virginia’s government was moved to the even goopier climate of Williamsburg. By the middle of the 18^th century, Jamestown had virtually disappeared.

Thus for a whole year or more we shall celebrate the fact that a bunch of British buffoons who knew nothing of what they were doing colonized a swamp for the sake of Christianizing Indians. In order to save their sorry sortie, they planted tobacco in virgin soil, unleashed the smoking habit and, to top it all off, brought the first slaves to America.

Lovely.

And this is the stuff that we’re advertising across the land for the sake of a few measly tourist bucks? For shame. Four hundred years of what, indeed. Better that we spend our moolah to keep this sordid story as much under wraps as Mary Magdalene’s tomb.

On May 25, Sam Roberts of the New York Times wrote an article advocating the suppression of the Jamestown debacle and the celebration instead of what, in 2009, will be the 400^th anniversary of Henry Hudson sailing up the river that now bears his name.

What resulted from Hudson’s trip was the founding of New Netherland, which eventually became New York. As Roberts rightfully points out, New York is still thriving today, with a population of 8.2 million, as opposed to Jamestown’s two: an archaeologist and his wife.

According to Columbia University history professor Kenneth Jackson, “In Jamestown they discover a town that disappears into the mud. New York becomes the greatest city in the world. The Hudson becomes the river west, the river of empire.” So also Barbara C. Fratianni, the director of New York’s Hudson Fulton Champlain Quadricentennial. “They went to Jamestown, “she says, “but never stayed there. New York was the entryway.”

As someone who has lived in New York and visited Jamestown I can tell you that these people know whereof they speak. While Jamestown and the Virginia that followed it became a mecca for tobacco farming and conservative religiosity, New York developed into a vibrant city of diversity, an economic powerhouse and a purveyor of the arts. Its influence is transcontinental, whereas the influence of Jamestown resides locally in archaeologically resurrected forts and the periodically replaced replicas of three small ships.

In the end, perhaps we should all divert our precious gas money from the 1607 Swamp Thing and take a ride up the Hudson in 2009. Visit a city that has survived its disasters and still has a cornucopia of goods to offer those who wish to partake of them.