The Glenn Beck Program - April 11, 2026


From Columbus to Jamestown： America's Messy Origins ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 1

Topics
jamestown's salvation comes from tobacco
Hosted by
Glenn Beck
Mentioned
John Smith Jamestown Martin Luther John Rolfe Samuel Argyle John Holland Africans Christopher Columbus David Barton Tim Burton Scripture Bohaten Thomas Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Leonard Wolseley Bacon Amerigo Vespucci George Bancroft George Yeardley King Ferdinand Queen Isabella and 17 more
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Episode Stats


Length

49 minutes

Words per minute

141.85

Word count

6,978

Sentence count

449

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

45

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In 1831, a woman in Massachusetts stumbled across a human skeleton that looked like it belonged to a man who died on a rocky hill in the early 19th century. For years, it was thought to be the remains of a Scandinavian explorer who died at sea, but was it actually a Native American? And if so, who was he?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.140 In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields.
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00:00:14.640 Hello, America. You know we've been fighting every single day.
00:00:17.860 We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you.
00:00:24.100 We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it.
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00:00:58.920 Now let's get to work. 0.97
00:01:00.640 It started with a shovel.
00:01:04.620 May, 1831, Fall River, Massachusetts. 1.00
00:01:08.560 A woman digs into the side of a sandy embankment.
00:01:11.620 The earth collapses just enough to reveal bones.
00:01:17.320 They're not scattered like an accident.
00:01:19.520 They're arranged, intentional.
00:01:22.680 She clears more sand, and there he is,
00:01:26.320 a human skeleton partially wrapped in bark cloth,
00:01:30.740 seated upright, legs doubled back so the thighs are parallel to the chest,
00:01:34.880 almost as if posed.
00:01:38.280 Across his sternum is a triangular brass breastplate.
00:01:42.500 Around his waist, a belt, not made of leather or rope,
00:01:46.320 but multiple brass tubes, each the length of a man's hand,
00:01:50.680 arranged close together like something you'd find in an armory or a costume chest.
00:01:57.220 Beside him are several arrowheads made of copper or brass.
00:02:02.720 In 1831, America doesn't have CSI.
00:02:06.700 There's no chain of custody, no forensic pathologist on call.
00:02:10.500 So they do what you do in a 19th century New England mill town.
00:02:15.620 They put the skeleton on display in a glass case at the local library.
00:02:21.440 For 12 years, the skeleton draws gawkers and scholars and one very famous poet,
00:02:26.840 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
00:02:29.600 Longfellow stares at the relics and imagines Vikings.
00:02:33.380 He writes a poem, The Skeleton in Armor,
00:02:35.600 about a 10th century Scandinavian explorer who sailed far from home
00:02:40.180 only to die here on this sandy hill in America.
00:02:44.280 Other visitors spin wilder theories about the skeleton.
00:02:48.460 He was a Phoenician trader, an Egyptian sailor,
00:02:51.700 a traveler from Asia who crossed the Pacific long before Columbus.
00:02:56.260 One historian in the late 1800s insists this is the body of Thorvald,
00:03:01.340 the brother of Viking explorer Leif Erikson,
00:03:04.440 brought down by a poisoned arrow around the year 1000.
00:03:08.760 It was all mostly speculation, of course,
00:03:10.960 but it was speculation fueled by two other curiosities located not far from Fall River.
00:03:17.780 the carved petroglyphs of Dighton Rock and the stone Newport Tower.
00:03:23.840 The petroglyphs inscribed on a 40-ton boulder have never been translated.
00:03:29.680 Were the images Native American, Viking, or something else entirely?
00:03:35.840 Newport Tower is a round stone tower, likely the remains of a windmill built in the 1600s.
00:03:41.980 But there are plenty of other theories about origins, Viking, Chinese, Portuguese, even the Knights Templar.
00:03:50.140 Then, July 2nd, 1843, the Great Fire of Fall River destroys most of downtown, including the skeleton in armor.
00:04:00.900 Only a few remnants survived the flames, including two brass tubes that today sit in a museum at Harvard University.
00:04:09.280 Much later, historians decide that the skeleton in armor was most likely Native American,
00:04:14.280 one who had traded with Europeans, thus the brass breastplate and belt.
00:04:19.460 But the void of definitive evidence leaves fertile soil for legends to grow.
00:04:25.080 The truth of the skeleton in armor?
00:04:27.440 We may never know.
00:04:29.760 America's ancient beginning is mysterious, provokes wonder.
00:04:34.240 But the origin of liberty in America, well, that's easier to trace, but no less astonishing.
00:04:42.440 In exploring that story, there is one constant,
00:04:46.020 described so well by George Bancroft, known as the father of American history.
00:04:50.800 In a speech to Congress in 1866, he said,
00:04:54.920 That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as any truth of physical science.
00:05:01.240 Nothing is by chance, though men, in their ignorance of causes, may think so.
00:05:09.340 This is the American story, The Beginnings.
00:05:13.600 Adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:05:19.840 Episode 1, From Columbus to Jamestown, America's Messy Origins.
00:05:25.160 context it's essential in history but it's sometimes conveniently ignored by historians
00:05:35.920 with an agenda so we need to rewind a little bit before jamestown before plymouth rock before
00:05:42.960 there's even the faintest idea of a united states there was one man three small ships
00:05:48.740 and a bet that the whole world had been looking at the map all wrong.
00:05:54.680 In a biography titled The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus,
00:05:59.320 Columbus's son, Ferdinand, described his father, quote,
00:06:02.960 The Admiral was a well-built man of more than average stature,
00:06:07.840 the face long, the cheeks somewhat high, his body neither fat nor lean.
00:06:13.640 He had an aquiline nose and light-colored eyes.
00:06:16.640 His complexion too was light and tending to bright red.
00:06:21.040 In his youth, his hair was blonde, but when he reached the age of 30, it all turned white.
00:06:27.860 In eating and drinking, and in adornment of his person, he was very moderate and modest.
00:06:33.700 He was affable in conversation with strangers and very pleasant to the members of his household,
00:06:39.420 though with a certain gravity.
00:06:41.220 He was so strict in matters of religion, that for fasting and saying prayers,
00:06:46.200 he might have been taken for a member of a religious order.
00:06:56.200 Christopher Columbus is not out to prove the earth is round.
00:07:00.200 He isn't worried about the ships that might sail over the edge of the world.
00:07:03.200 That's a myth.
00:07:05.200 By 1480, educated Europeans already know the globe is spherical.
00:07:10.200 What Columbus wants is a shortcut, a western sea route to Asia, 1.00
00:07:15.200 bypassing the Muslim-controlled choke points on land. 1.00
00:07:19.400 For Columbus, the quest is much more than gold or spices.
00:07:23.280 In his journal, he says he wants to, quote,
00:07:25.860 bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathens, end quote.
00:07:30.220 He spends nearly a decade pitching his plan
00:07:32.900 like a 15th century startup founder in search of seed money.
00:07:37.860 Portugal, hard pass.
00:07:39.440 England, no thank you.
00:07:40.820 France, dream on.
00:07:42.140 You see, the experts say his math is bad. He's underestimating how far it is to Asia.
00:07:49.880 Here's how Columbus later himself describes his motivation in spite of all of the rejection.
00:08:12.140 inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because he comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination
00:08:17.580 from the Holy Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus desired to perform a very obvious miracle in the voyage
00:08:24.100 to the Indies, to comfort me and the whole people of God. I spent seven years in the Royal Court,
00:08:32.120 discussing the matter with many persons of great reputation and wisdom in all the arts.
00:08:36.320 And in the end, they concluded that it was all foolishness, so they gave it up.
00:08:42.800 No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour,
00:08:47.400 if it is just and if the intention is purely for his holy service.
00:08:54.680 Finally, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain say yes.
00:09:00.140 It couldn't have hurt that Columbus tells the Catholic monarchs
00:09:03.300 that he wants to find gold to help pay for the new crusade 1.00
00:09:06.580 to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims.
00:09:10.900 August 3rd, 1492, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, 0.52
00:09:15.780 three ships, 90 men, and one uniquely motivated admiral
00:09:20.400 at the wheel with a course set for Japan.
00:09:27.700 The crossing isn't easy.
00:09:29.120 10 weeks in, they've gone further than anyone
00:09:31.680 thought they could without hitting land.
00:09:33.760 The crews are edgy and on the verge of mutiny.
00:09:36.720 Columbus pleads with the men, give me just three more days.
00:09:40.620 Well, on October 11, they start to see hopeful signs,
00:09:45.000 sticks, and bits of vegetation in the churning water.
00:09:48.720 Finally, around 2 AM on October 12, the lookout spots land.
00:09:55.560 Columbus thinks they've arrived in Asia.
00:09:58.180 Instead, it's Watling Island in the Bahamas. 0.71
00:10:02.280 Well, it doesn't take long for the explorers to encounter members of the Irawak tribe.
00:10:07.460 Columbus famously refers to the natives in these islands as Indians.
00:10:11.980 In his log that day, Columbus warns his men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.
00:10:19.380 Quote,
00:10:20.340 In order to win the friendship and affection of their people,
00:10:23.520 and because I was convinced that their conversion to our holy faith would be better promoted through love than through force.
00:10:30.560 I presented some of them with red caps and some strings of glass beads which they placed around their necks
00:10:36.020 and with other trifles of insignificant worth that delighted them
00:10:39.840 and by which we have got a wonderful hold on their affections.
00:10:43.640 They afterwards came to the boats of the vessels swimming, bringing us parrots,
00:10:47.860 cotton thread in balls and spears, and many other things which they bartered for others we gave them,
00:10:54.220 as glass beads and little bells. I saw some scars on their bodies, and to my signs asking them what
00:11:01.260 these meant, they answered in the same manner, that people from neighboring islands wanted to
00:11:05.920 capture them, and they had defended themselves. And I did believe, and do believe, that they came
00:11:12.260 from the mainland to take them prisoners. Within weeks, Columbus and his men encounter
00:11:18.540 the Caribs, the tribe of cannibals terrorizing the more peaceful tribes of the island. 1.00
00:11:24.740 They find human bones scraped clean and in one hut, the neck of a man boiling in a pot. 0.99
00:11:31.380 Captive women tell Columbus's men that they've been captured and raped for the purpose of
00:11:35.300 bearing children who will then be eaten by the Caribs.
00:11:38.660 On Christmas Eve, 1492, the Santa Maria runs into the coral reef on the northern coast of present-day Haiti. 0.99
00:11:47.620 The crew spends their Christmas day salvaging the ship's cargo.
00:11:51.360 Columbus then returns to Spain aboard the Niña,
00:11:54.640 leaving behind 39 men who couldn't fit on the return trip since the Santa Maria had been lost.
00:12:00.740 When Columbus returns on his second voyage a year later,
00:12:04.240 he finds the 39 men who are left behind all dead, killed by the cannibal tribe.
00:12:12.300 Columbus establishes a colony of Spaniards in modern-day Cuba and leaves his two brothers to
00:12:18.240 govern. Needless to say, it doesn't go well. The people revolt and the brothers can't maintain
00:12:24.440 order and King Ferdinand appoints a new governor who arrests Columbus and his brothers and ships
00:12:30.320 them back to spain in chains the king and queen free columbus and he's cleared of any wrongdoing
00:12:36.720 but his explorer dream is now tarnished amazingly he mounts a fourth voyage in 1502
00:12:44.400 he gets shipwrecked and stranded in jamaica for an entire year the adventures take a toll on his
00:12:50.840 health columbus returns to spain in 1504 less than two years later he's dead at the age of 55
00:12:56.960 right now there are a lot of voices in our culture and most of them are really loud
00:13:03.080 pushing in one direction but truth doesn't always shout too often it gets lost in the noise and that
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00:14:30.060 all. For centuries after his voyage, Columbus was almost universally celebrated. Around the world,
00:14:39.020 over 600 monuments were built in his honor. Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia,
00:14:45.240 meaning Columbus. But in the late 20th century, the tide turned. Historians like Marxist Howard
00:14:52.600 Zinn in his book A People's History of the United States reoriented Columbus as the starting point
00:14:58.300 for centuries of oppression. Suddenly, Columbus was portrayed as a genocidal villain because of
00:15:04.560 his alleged criminal treatment of native people groups. U.S. cities began to replace Columbus Day
00:15:10.460 with Indigenous Peoples' Day.
00:15:12.780 And in 2018, even Ohio's capital, Columbus,
00:15:16.500 stopped observing Columbus Day.
00:15:20.420 Columbus attempted to treat the native tribes well
00:15:23.100 and ordered the men under his command to do the same.
00:15:26.560 At the same time, he also took slaves from tribes
00:15:29.520 he encountered back to the king and queen of Spain. 1.00
00:15:32.840 Most of these slaves were from the cannibalistic Carib tribe 0.97
00:15:36.540 or others captured in warfare. 0.80
00:15:39.120 Several others volunteered to travel back to Spain with him,
00:15:42.720 including an important chieftain and his family.
00:15:46.040 One became a member of the royal court.
00:15:48.540 Another took Columbus's last name and traveled with him as an interpreter.
00:15:53.140 The Columbus story is complicated, like honest history usually is.
00:15:59.920 Slavery existed in the Americas long before Columbus arrived.
00:16:04.160 Between 20 and 40 percent of natives in the tropical New World were enslaved by other natives.
00:16:11.160 And what about the disease question?
00:16:13.720 Well, epidemics swept through native populations even before direct European contact.
00:16:19.000 The New World was not some Garden of Eden.
00:16:21.980 At the same time, natives were ravaged by diseases that arrived with European explorers,
00:16:27.400 though the true numbers are impossible to pin down.
00:16:30.280 exploration and colonization meant displacement it meant war it meant death for countless
00:16:37.460 indigenous people and europeans the clash of the old and new worlds was a volatile flashpoint in
00:16:45.000 history that produced both beauty and pain this clash was neither entirely tragic nor entirely
00:16:52.160 triumphant, but it was entirely human. Now here's what's not up for debate about Columbus.
00:17:01.220 He put the new world on Europe's radar, but it was a quirk of history that the new continents
00:17:07.320 would not be named after him. While Columbus was on his third voyage, another Italian explorer
00:17:13.900 named Amerigo Vespucci made a separate expedition that sailed all along South America's eastern
00:17:20.800 coastline. Vesbucci confirmed this was not Asia, but an entirely different continent.
00:17:28.060 And his documentation of this fact led to a German cartographer naming the new land mass
00:17:33.900 America on a world map produced in 1507. Columbus opened the floodgates to the new world.
00:17:42.300 And yet, the flood didn't happen right away. You see, it would be over a century before
00:17:47.680 England made its first permanent foothold in North America. The question is, why did
00:17:52.560 it take so long? Well, because Europe itself was about to be ripped apart, not by warships
00:17:59.200 or gold lust, but by revolutionary words. 0.86
00:18:03.000 it's now april 1521 the city of worms germany charles v the holy roman emperor has summoned
00:18:21.000 a monk to stand trial before the imperial diet the monk's crime and not murder not theft but words
00:18:30.680 books written by the monk are stacked up on the table in front of him they are the evidence the
00:18:39.400 sentence well if he's found guilty it could mean burning him at the stake the emperor wants just
00:18:45.540 one thing from this monk recant take it all back this isn't just a gag order this is the complete
00:18:54.680 erasure of everything the monk has said, preached, and written his entire challenge to the authority
00:19:00.880 of the Roman Catholic Church. This monk's name? Martin Luther. He knows his life hangs in the
00:19:08.720 balance, but he has no idea that the future of Western civilization depends on what happens next.
00:19:16.740 When Columbus returned to Spain from his fourth voyage in 1504, Martin Luther was a 21-year-old
00:19:23.720 Catholic monk in Germany. In an introduction to the collection of his writings, this is how
00:19:29.100 Luther described his younger self. Keep in mind that I was once upon a time a monk and a crazy
00:19:36.180 papist before I entered the struggle. I was so drunk, sloshed, you might say, with the Pope's 0.75
00:19:43.340 dogmas. With all my heart, I would have attacked everyone who would to attract even an iota of 0.92
00:19:50.380 their obedience to the Pope. Indeed, I would have supported anyone who attacked them. 0.71
00:19:57.080 I was like Saul, just like so many in our time.
00:20:03.180 A decade later, as a professor and pastor at the University of Wittenberg,
00:20:08.100 Luther wrestled with the Church's teachings. He came to believe, from Scripture itself,
00:20:12.840 that salvation comes by God's grace alone, through faith in Christ alone.
00:20:19.620 But the church had a revenue stream to worry about.
00:20:23.320 That revenue stream was called indulgences.
00:20:26.500 Basically, an indulgence was the promise of reduced time in purgatory
00:20:30.660 in exchange for a donation.
00:20:34.100 Luther's conviction from studying Scripture was that this was not just bad theology.
00:20:39.160 This was a distortion of the gospel itself.
00:20:42.240 So, on October 31, 1517,
00:20:45.680 Luther did what scholars were supposed to do when they had an issue to debate.
00:20:50.600 He wrote to his archbishop, enclosing a list of 95 theses on indulgences, along with an essay.
00:20:58.620 He sent it off.
00:21:00.500 Well, the act was routine, almost boring,
00:21:03.440 but instead of disappearing into the archbishop's inbox or in a stack of other complaints,
00:21:09.200 these theses are read, copied, printed,
00:21:12.120 and began to spread across Europe like a slow-moving fire.
00:21:17.440 We like to imagine the moment as cinematic.
00:21:20.640 Luther striding up to the Wittenberg castle church door,
00:21:23.760 hammer in hand, nailing his 95 pieces into the wood in open defiance.
00:21:29.780 But the truth?
00:21:31.260 Luther never mentioned doing that.
00:21:33.400 I mean, he might have, but the story came from a friend years later, after Luther's death.
00:21:38.960 In reality, posting notices on the church doors was almost as rebellious as pinning a flyer on a bulletin board.
00:21:46.280 Still, the idea he explored in those first pages were explosive,
00:21:51.380 and they pulled Luther into a confrontation with the most powerful religious institutions in the West.
00:21:59.420 Back to 1521, four years after Luther's infamous 95 Thesis,
00:22:05.220 Luther stands now in front of the Holy Roman Emperor,
00:22:08.120 who asks him again,
00:22:10.420 will you recant?
00:22:12.740 Luther looks at the stack of books in front of him.
00:22:15.540 It's his life's work.
00:22:17.960 And he says this.
00:22:19.480 Because your sublime majesty and your lordship seek a straight answer,
00:22:23.040 I will provide it.
00:22:24.640 I need to be convinced by the testimony of the scriptures
00:22:27.480 or by obvious reason because I do not trust the pope or councils in themselves.
00:22:31.860 We know they have all too frequently made mistakes and contradicted themselves.
00:22:38.040 I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted.
00:22:40.720 My conscience is captive to the word of God.
00:22:43.880 I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.
00:22:50.080 That's all I can do. God help me. Amen.
00:22:54.800 Luther's plea for God's intervention was answered.
00:22:58.860 The authorities let him go.
00:23:01.420 He was later condemned and a bounty was offered for his capture, dead or alive,
00:23:05.980 but he was never captured.
00:23:07.440 Instead, he continued to write and to teach,
00:23:09.920 and the brush fire started by his 95 thesis billowed into a wildfire
00:23:15.500 known as the Protestant Reformation.
00:23:18.860 Across Europe, leaders and nations faced a choice,
00:23:21.800 remain Catholic or join the new Protestant cause. 0.85
00:23:26.920 The Reformation changed everything, 0.75
00:23:28.920 everything, not just theology, but politics, literacy, and personal freedom. Protestant 0.94
00:23:35.580 teaching urged a return to scripture, emphasizing that every believer has direct access to God's
00:23:42.100 word. This meant reading became a spiritual duty, and it meant questioning earthly authorities who
00:23:48.700 contradicted the word. But it also meant that when colonists eventually sailed for the new world,
00:23:54.760 they brought with them a very different vision of the relationship between church and state.
00:24:01.400 That couldn't have happened without the Reformation.
00:24:04.800 One Congregationalist pastor, Leonard Wolseley Bacon, would later write, quote,
00:24:09.940 By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of ages has been kept from premature disclosure.
00:24:17.300 If the discovery of America had been achieved four centuries or even a single century earlier, 0.82
00:24:22.380 the Christianity to be transplanted to the Western world would have been that of the Church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence. 0.89
00:24:31.600 When North America was finally settled in earnest, it would be through the people that were shaped by Reformation, 0.73
00:24:38.740 resistant to tyranny, convinced of their God-given rights, and ready to build something new.
00:24:44.300 something that would begin
00:24:46.940 on the edge of a swamp
00:24:48.880 50 miles up a river
00:24:51.160 in Virginia.
00:24:54.040 For 250 years,
00:24:55.960 Americans have believed
00:24:56.920 in one powerful idea,
00:24:58.860 that they were meant to live free,
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00:26:09.320 the crowded room smells of smoke not the gentle aroma of hearth fire but thick pungent wood smoke
00:26:24.980 that coats the back of your throat john smith kneels in the dirt rough iron-like hands suddenly
00:26:32.540 he force his head down onto two flat stones. Veins pop in his neck as he strains against
00:26:38.760 the vice grip of his captors. Around him, a semicircle of warriors, muscles taut, painted
00:26:45.320 faces glistening with sweat. He glimpses the clubs in their hand. One signal from the man
00:26:52.040 sitting above Smith, wrapped in a robe of raccoon skins, and the Englishman's skull
00:26:56.940 would be pulverized.
00:26:59.660 The English knew this man as Chief Pohotten.
00:27:03.740 The warriors wait.
00:27:05.880 The air is tense.
00:27:07.280 They raise their clubs.
00:27:09.580 And then she appears out of nowhere.
00:27:14.100 She's a girl, maybe 12 or 13.
00:27:16.020 She rushes forward, her hair loose, eyes wide.
00:27:19.920 She kneels beside Smith and lays her head over his.
00:27:24.320 Smith is stunned to feel her cheek pressed against his.
00:27:27.880 What does this mean?
00:27:30.240 The warriors lower their clubs.
00:27:32.160 The chief leans forward.
00:27:34.140 No one saw this coming.
00:27:37.020 Or maybe they did.
00:27:40.420 After all, this girl is Pocahontas, Chief Pohotten's favorite daughter.
00:27:46.280 And her action that day preserved a lot more than John Smith's life.
00:27:50.520 Almost two years before John Smith nearly had his brain smashed in
00:27:55.840 The Virginia Company was finalizing plans in London for a new colony
00:28:00.240 The charter for this venture invoked the providence of Almighty God
00:28:04.500 To assist the colonists in the, quote
00:28:06.600 Propagating of the Christian religion to such people 0.81
00:28:10.100 As yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance, end quote 0.96
00:28:14.660 Well, while the company invoked Christianity
00:28:18.740 And while many of those first colonists were devout Christians, make no mistake, this was primarily a business mission.
00:28:26.640 The Virginia Company was a 17th century version of what we would call a startup,
00:28:31.080 with investors and high-pressure expectations of a very profitable return on their major investment.
00:28:37.460 The company would own the land and appoint the governor, and the colonists were all considered employees.
00:28:43.280 three ships once again set sail this time from britain with 104 men on board no women
00:28:50.840 this was the first of many blunders after a four-month voyage they landed at cape henry
00:28:58.080 in present-day virginia beach in april 1607 on the beach they planted a wooden cross
00:29:04.720 and the reverend robert hunt led them in prayer of gratitude committing their venture to god's
00:29:10.300 plan, purpose. From there, the 26-year-old captain, John Smith, piloted the ships 50 miles up the
00:29:17.900 James River, where they settled on a swampy, mosquito-ridden peninsula to their base camp.
00:29:23.280 They called it Jamestown, in honor of King James I. The location was good for defense,
00:29:30.280 but terrible for health. By May, under the leadership of the brash, often abrasive,
00:29:35.240 Captain John Smith, they had built a triangular fort with bulwarks at each corner, each armed
00:29:41.140 with a few small cannons. And trouble started almost immediately. The first major problem?
00:29:48.640 The wrong skill set. Most of the 104 men were gentlemen or tradesmen eager to find gold. They
00:29:54.680 weren't farmers or laborers ready to clear fields or plant crops. The gold diggers thought they'd 0.99
00:30:00.420 hit pay dirt fast and returned to England as wealthy men. Instead, food ran short. The daily
00:30:08.240 ration became half a pint of wheat and half a pint of worm-infested barley. Mosquitoes brought
00:30:14.480 malaria. The river water was brackish and made them all sick. By September, 46 men were dead
00:30:20.820 out of the original 104 who had arrived at Jamestown. John Smith wrote, quote,
00:30:25.540 God, being angry with us, plagued us with such famine and sickness that the living were scarce able to bury the dead.
00:30:33.780 The only reason the rest survived? 1.00
00:30:36.300 The Pohotten people brought them corn and bread, and the occasional wild game.
00:30:42.340 Smith, unimpressed with his fellow settlers, wrote,
00:30:45.000 Most of our chiefest men were either sick or discontented,
00:30:48.100 the rest being in such despair as they would rather starve and rot with idleness than be
00:30:54.640 persuaded to do anything for their own relief. With most of the leaders laid out sick or already
00:31:00.020 dead, Smith essentially put himself in charge. He didn't mind bossing people around. He imposed
00:31:05.760 order, military discipline, along with his famous biblical edict, he who will not work will not eat.
00:31:14.360 Under his rule, they started to recover.
00:31:17.000 They built a small village of huts with thatched roofs.
00:31:20.120 Morale stabilized, at least temporarily.
00:31:23.040 But then, in 1608, Smith got captured.
00:31:27.280 Out exploring the Chickahomedy River,
00:31:29.620 he was taken prisoner by a hunting party led by Chief Pohotten's brother.
00:31:34.200 Smith was held for weeks.
00:31:35.800 He was fed so well that he feared that they were fattening him up to eat him.
00:31:40.840 Then one day, he was finally brought to Chief Pohadden.
00:31:44.760 Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead,
00:31:48.040 he sat, covered with a great robe made of raccoon skins,
00:31:52.620 and all the tails hanging by. 0.51
00:31:55.660 On either hand did sit a young wench of sixteen or eighteen years, 0.65
00:32:00.100 and along on each side the house, two rows of men, 1.00
00:32:04.060 and behind them as many women,
00:32:06.240 with all their heads and shoulders painted red. 0.52
00:32:09.580 Many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds,
00:32:13.080 but everyone with something,
00:32:15.880 and a great chain of white beads about their necks.
00:32:20.840 Then came the execution scene.
00:32:24.080 Remember Smith's head, forced on the flat stones, 1.00
00:32:26.600 the clubs, the last-second intervention by Pocahontas?
00:32:33.360 Well, today, many historians think this wasn't an execution at all,
00:32:37.600 but a ritual adoption, meant to symbolically bind Smith to Pohotten as an ally.
00:32:44.660 But Smith clearly did not see it that way.
00:32:47.740 Regardless of what was actually going on,
00:32:49.880 it was a turning point in the relationship between the colonists and the Indians that lived all around them,
00:32:55.800 and a major turning point for the survival of what would become the United States of America.
00:33:02.460 According to Smith, two days after Pocahontas' intervention,
00:33:05.480 he was taken to a large house in the woods and sat on a mat in front of a fire.
00:33:11.000 Suddenly, with blood-curdling cries, Powhatan appeared.
00:33:14.420 200 men behind him, all of them with their faces and bodies painted black.
00:33:19.160 Smith wrote that Powhatan looked more like a devil than a man.
00:33:23.460 Smith was told that he and Powhatan were now friends
00:33:25.820 and that he would be allowed to return to Jamestown.
00:33:30.840 Well, for a while, there was peace. 0.91
00:33:33.620 Pocahontas even visited Jamestown, bringing food and performing card wheels to entertain the men.
00:33:39.120 Her name and her language meant, playful one.
00:33:42.760 But eventually, relations broke down again.
00:33:45.760 Pohotten tired of the constant English demands for food. 0.97
00:33:48.920 He moved his home base further inland and stopped allowing Pocahontas to visit Jamestown. 0.99
00:33:54.680 The Virginia Company was stubbornly determined to wring a profit out of this investment somehow. 0.96
00:33:59.820 it sent more people to Jamestown, this time indentured servants willing to work for seven
00:34:05.420 years in exchange for passage. In 1609, a fleet of nine ships embarked with 600 settlers.
00:34:13.160 One of the ships sank. Another one ran aground in Bermuda, where it was stuck for months.
00:34:18.700 Meanwhile, John Smith suffered severe burns in a gunpowder explosion accident
00:34:23.360 and had to return to England to recover.
00:34:26.740 Without his disciplined leadership, the colony really began to unravel.
00:34:34.360 Winter, 1609 to 1610.
00:34:38.320 It is now known as the Starving Time.
00:34:42.420 500 colonists shrank to 60.
00:34:46.900 Jamestown was a nightmare.
00:34:48.580 They ate dogs and cats and rats.
00:34:51.140 They ate leather.
00:34:52.600 According to both written accounts and archaeological evidence, they even ate each other.
00:34:57.980 Excavations have found human bones with knife marks mixed with the remains of animals in trash pits.
00:35:04.260 When a relief ship finally arrived May 1610, the captain was appalled by what he found.
00:35:10.520 He said Jamestown looked like the ruins of some ancient fortification.
00:35:14.840 Survivors were hollow-eyed, ravaged by famine, disease, and ongoing skirmishes with the local tribes.
00:35:21.900 In June, the survivors decided to abandon the colony and return to England.
00:35:26.600 They sailed down the James River towards Chesapeake Bay and met another incoming resupply ship.
00:35:33.200 The colony was saved, but barely.
00:35:36.680 But life in Jamestown was incredibly harsh.
00:35:39.940 The new leadership cracked down.
00:35:42.640 There were forced labor gangs, floggings, even hangings for those who broke the rules.
00:35:47.540 Intentured servitude became entrenched.
00:35:50.780 Contracts often extended to nine years, far longer than in England.
00:35:55.500 Children, if their parents died in debt, were bound into labor until the debt was paid.
00:36:01.320 Jamestown's socialist model of a communal storehouse of food only enhanced the misery.
00:36:07.860 No matter what an individual's work effort, he knew the communal food effort would keep him from starving.
00:36:14.520 The dream of gold?
00:36:17.060 Well, that had long since evaporated.
00:36:18.920 But something else quite valuable was about to take root in the soil of Virginia.
00:36:29.700 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at wallbuilders.com.
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00:37:57.500 jamestown's salvation comes not in the form of gold but in the form of a leaf
00:38:10.120 This is the year 1612, and John Rolfe is taking a gamble.
00:38:15.600 Tobacco had already hit England.
00:38:17.500 Smoking is fashionable now among the upper classes, and the demand is growing fast.
00:38:22.520 But the local Virginia strain is bitter and harsh and unappealing to the English taste.
00:38:28.020 So John Rolfe obtained seeds of a sweeter variety from the Caribbean.
00:38:32.760 How?
00:38:34.080 Well, do you remember the Virginia company ship that ran aground in Bermuda in 1609
00:38:38.120 and didn't arrive at Jamestown until May 1610.
00:38:42.540 Rolfe was on that ship.
00:38:45.240 When he finally makes it to Jamestown,
00:38:47.020 he plants the new strain of tobacco seeds in Virginia soil,
00:38:50.380 and they flourish.
00:38:51.700 It's a game-changer. 0.97
00:38:53.920 But with the Jamestown colonists, 1.00
00:38:56.360 it always seems like one step forward and three steps back.
00:39:00.680 In 1613, a new English captain, Samuel Argyle,
00:39:05.180 thought it would be a great strategic move
00:39:07.580 to kidnap Pocahontas. Working with a rival tribe, he tricked her into boarding a ship where she was 1.00
00:39:14.360 captured. Captain Argyll held her for ransom in an effort to get her father, Chief Pohotan, to
00:39:19.800 return English prisoners and stolen weapons. Her captivity dragged on for months, so long in fact
00:39:26.680 that she learned to speak English, accepted Christianity, and was baptized and given the name
00:39:31.280 Rebecca. She also met and possibly fell in love with a tobacco innovator, John Rolfe.
00:39:38.660 In 1614, they got married in Jamestown's only church, the first Protestant church building
00:39:44.420 in America. The marriage sealed another truce between Powhatan and the English.
00:39:50.620 Historians debate whether John Rolfe married Pocahontas for love or as a convenient alliance,
00:39:55.800 But regardless, Chief Powhatan consented to the Union, and for a few years, the peace held.
00:40:02.320 Rolf and Pocahontas had a son named Thomas, and in 1616, the Virginia Company saw an opportunity.
00:40:08.840 They brought the Rolfs to England as a kind of a living advertisement for the civilizing power of colonization.
00:40:17.700 Pocahontas became a celebrity, a big one, dining with aristocrats, even meeting King James and Queen Anne.
00:40:24.860 While the couple was still in England, John Smith came to visit.
00:40:28.620 He found a very different Pocahontas, dressed in a stiff, stuffy British dress. 1.00
00:40:34.780 When Pocahontas first saw him, she couldn't speak. 0.99
00:40:37.960 She turned away from him, overcome with emotion.
00:40:41.460 When she regained her composure, she unloaded on him for how he treated her father and her people,
00:40:48.060 reminding him that Pohotten had welcomed him as a son.
00:40:51.380 She said the Jamestown columnist reported that Smith had died after his gunpowder accident in 1609,
00:40:57.840 but her father suspected that it wasn't true because the English had a habit of lying.
00:41:03.020 The playful one was not really so playful anymore.
00:41:08.340 In March 1617, the Rolfe's were preparing to sail back to Virginia,
00:41:12.780 and Pocahontas fell suddenly ill, possibly pneumonia.
00:41:17.080 She never saw Virginia again.
00:41:19.400 The illness took her life.
00:41:21.380 She was only 21 years old.
00:41:26.180 Her tribe's oral tradition about her life tells a much, much darker story.
00:41:31.480 According to the Bohaten version, while Pocahontas was held captive at Jamestown,
00:41:35.980 she was raped and became pregnant with her son, Thomas.
00:41:39.440 This tradition also held that before the Rolves were set to return to Virginia,
00:41:43.940 they were invited to dinner aboard Captain Argyle's ship,
00:41:47.420 the man who arranged her kidnapping four years earlier. 0.91
00:41:50.640 After that dinner, Pocahontas felt sick and started convulsing. 0.97
00:41:54.400 The tribesmen who accompanied her on the trip to England
00:41:57.160 claimed that she had been murdered, possibly poisoned,
00:42:01.400 during the final dinner on Captain Argyle's ship.
00:42:06.320 Thanks to John Rolfe's tobacco, Jamestown was no longer just scraping by.
00:42:10.480 It was actually profitable for the first time.
00:42:12.620 The Virginia Company started granting 100-acre plots
00:42:16.320 to those willing to cross the Atlantic and farm.
00:42:19.640 It was a major change, allowing individual settlers to own land,
00:42:24.020 and caused a boom in tobacco production.
00:42:27.420 By 1617, a decade after the first landing at Cape Henry,
00:42:31.920 the colony shipped 20,000 pounds of tobacco to England.
00:42:35.060 The next year was more than twice that.
00:42:38.320 Within 12 years, they exported over 1.5 million pounds.
00:42:43.300 This was a new gold, and it fueled a land rush.
00:42:48.840 As the colony expanded, labor became its central challenge.
00:42:53.500 Morality rates were still brutal.
00:42:55.860 To keep up, the Virginia Company imported more workers and indentured servants from England.
00:43:01.180 They also enlisted London's so-called superfluous street children over the age of 12 to go to work in Virginia.
00:43:09.000 When some of these children resisted, the Virginia Company requested and received official permission from the city of London to force them to go anyway.
00:43:18.840 Then came 1619.
00:43:23.580 In July, Governor George Yeardley called the first legislative assembly in America,
00:43:29.840 Virginia's House of Burgess.
00:43:31.940 Burgess, or representatives, from 11 areas, they met in a Jamestown church,
00:43:36.800 fixing tobacco prices, reducing punishment for crimes like idleness, gambling, and drunkenness,
00:43:42.320 and recommending fair treatment of the Indians.
00:43:46.720 Just days after this first assembly, another ship sailed into James River.
00:43:51.620 It was a Dutch vessel carrying 20 Africans.
00:43:55.660 These individuals were traded for provisions. 0.66
00:43:59.320 The central lie of the New York Times 1619 project framed this event as America's true founding, grounded in exploitation and black oppression.
00:44:10.760 The notion is ludicrous, of course, and a bleak origin story.
00:44:15.780 Europeans in Virginia in the 1600s were hardly the inventors of slavery.
00:44:20.940 The legal status of those 20 Africans was murky.
00:44:24.880 Most historians believe they were initially treated as indentured servants,
00:44:28.880 with the terms of service and the possibility of freedom like their white counterparts.
00:44:34.280 Documents from the 1600s confirm that some black laborers were held by so-called owners for life,
00:44:40.960 while others gained their freedom after working for a set number of years.
00:44:45.780 In those early years, some Africans owned land after gaining their freedom.
00:44:50.860 But over the decades, the overwhelming need for laborers
00:44:53.940 gradually shifted Virginia's culture towards permanent race-based slavery.
00:45:00.000 In 1640, a runaway black indentured servant named John Punch
00:45:04.520 became the first documented slave for life.
00:45:08.660 He ran away with two white indentured servants,
00:45:12.080 but after getting caught, the white servant's punishment was extended servitude.
00:45:15.780 while Punch's was lifelong slavery.
00:45:21.380 For a time, it wasn't considered proper for a Christian 0.56
00:45:24.940 to enslave a fellow Christian, but that eventually dissolved.
00:45:28.320 By 1670, blacks and Indians could no longer own white indentured servants.
00:45:33.280 By 1691, interracial marriage was illegal.
00:45:36.040 By 1705, lifelong slavery was codified in Virginia law.
00:45:40.800 Chief Bohaten died in 1618.
00:45:48.380 His brother took over the leadership for the vast confederacy of tribes.
00:45:52.740 For the first few years, he played the role as a friend,
00:45:55.700 lulling the English into a false sense of security.
00:45:59.220 Then, in March 1622, his people launched a coordinated assault
00:46:03.380 on 19 settlements along James River.
00:46:08.220 347 colonists were slaughtered,
00:46:10.320 about a third of the total English population in Virginia.
00:46:13.940 In London, the attack on the colony shook the Virginia Company and its investors.
00:46:19.220 The king appointed a committee to examine the company amid accusations of mismanagement.
00:46:24.740 In 1624, the king revoked the company's charter,
00:46:27.820 and Virginia became a royal colony under the direct control of the crown.
00:46:32.280 From a swampy fort with 104 men, half of them dead within a few months,
00:46:41.560 Jamestown became a tobacco powerhouse, a political experiment,
00:46:46.160 and the site of both cooperation and bloody conflict with the people who lived there long before. 0.87
00:46:53.640 It was the place where early forms of representative government and African slavery sprouted. 0.93
00:47:00.220 Jamestown was a garden of liberty and inequality. 0.99
00:47:05.680 While the messy Jamestown experiment limped forward,
00:47:09.660 a new expedition was being readied on the southern coast of England
00:47:13.020 in a town called Plymouth.
00:47:16.540 But this venture had a very different purpose,
00:47:21.200 forged by a small group of men and women known as the Pilgrims. 0.94
00:47:29.220 Coming up on The American Story, The Beginnings. 1.00
00:47:36.820 In a split second, John Howland is plunged into a nightmare.
00:47:41.500 A massive rogue wave smashes over the ship's railing, sweeping John overboard into the frigid abyss.
00:47:48.780 He's gone, vanished into the deep.
00:47:52.960 And no one even notices at first.
00:47:55.500 In an era when most people can't swim, and the ship can't just throw it in reverse, this is a
00:48:01.420 death sentence. John thrashes in the freezing water, his lungs are burning with the ocean,
00:48:07.500 as the ship labors on without him. Then, he glimpses a rope in the water within reach.
00:48:14.100 Instinctively, desperately, he snags it and clamps on with both fists. The rope trailing behind the
00:48:20.520 ship is one of the halyards used to raise and lower the sail. It's his only hope. He clings
00:48:26.720 for dear life, dragging through the pounding surf like a ragdoll, the saltwater scraping down his
00:48:33.420 throat and burning his eyes, and finally, incredibly, crew members spot him bobbing in the water.
00:48:39.620 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast
00:48:52.640 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.
00:49:09.620 You