From Columbus to Jamestown： America's Messy Origins ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 1
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Summary
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
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Give us five stars and lead a comment because every single review helps us break through
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This is a movement and you're part of it, a big part of it.
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So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push
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A woman digs into the side of a sandy embankment.
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The earth collapses just enough to reveal bones.
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a human skeleton partially wrapped in bark cloth,
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seated upright, legs doubled back so the thighs are parallel to the chest,
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Across his sternum is a triangular brass breastplate.
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Around his waist, a belt, not made of leather or rope,
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but multiple brass tubes, each the length of a man's hand,
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arranged close together like something you'd find in an armory or a costume chest.
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Beside him are several arrowheads made of copper or brass.
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There's no chain of custody, no forensic pathologist on call.
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So they do what you do in a 19th century New England mill town.
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They put the skeleton on display in a glass case at the local library.
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For 12 years, the skeleton draws gawkers and scholars and one very famous poet,
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Longfellow stares at the relics and imagines Vikings.
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about a 10th century Scandinavian explorer who sailed far from home
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only to die here on this sandy hill in America.
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Other visitors spin wilder theories about the skeleton.
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He was a Phoenician trader, an Egyptian sailor,
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a traveler from Asia who crossed the Pacific long before Columbus.
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One historian in the late 1800s insists this is the body of Thorvald,
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brought down by a poisoned arrow around the year 1000.
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but it was speculation fueled by two other curiosities located not far from Fall River.
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the carved petroglyphs of Dighton Rock and the stone Newport Tower.
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The petroglyphs inscribed on a 40-ton boulder have never been translated.
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Were the images Native American, Viking, or something else entirely?
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Newport Tower is a round stone tower, likely the remains of a windmill built in the 1600s.
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But there are plenty of other theories about origins, Viking, Chinese, Portuguese, even the Knights Templar.
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Then, July 2nd, 1843, the Great Fire of Fall River destroys most of downtown, including the skeleton in armor.
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Only a few remnants survived the flames, including two brass tubes that today sit in a museum at Harvard University.
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Much later, historians decide that the skeleton in armor was most likely Native American,
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one who had traded with Europeans, thus the brass breastplate and belt.
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But the void of definitive evidence leaves fertile soil for legends to grow.
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America's ancient beginning is mysterious, provokes wonder.
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But the origin of liberty in America, well, that's easier to trace, but no less astonishing.
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In exploring that story, there is one constant,
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described so well by George Bancroft, known as the father of American history.
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That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as any truth of physical science.
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Nothing is by chance, though men, in their ignorance of causes, may think so.
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Adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
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Episode 1, From Columbus to Jamestown, America's Messy Origins.
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context it's essential in history but it's sometimes conveniently ignored by historians
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with an agenda so we need to rewind a little bit before jamestown before plymouth rock before
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there's even the faintest idea of a united states there was one man three small ships
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and a bet that the whole world had been looking at the map all wrong.
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In a biography titled The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus,
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Columbus's son, Ferdinand, described his father, quote,
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The Admiral was a well-built man of more than average stature,
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the face long, the cheeks somewhat high, his body neither fat nor lean.
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He had an aquiline nose and light-colored eyes.
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His complexion too was light and tending to bright red.
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In his youth, his hair was blonde, but when he reached the age of 30, it all turned white.
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In eating and drinking, and in adornment of his person, he was very moderate and modest.
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He was affable in conversation with strangers and very pleasant to the members of his household,
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He was so strict in matters of religion, that for fasting and saying prayers,
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he might have been taken for a member of a religious order.
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Christopher Columbus is not out to prove the earth is round.
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He isn't worried about the ships that might sail over the edge of the world.
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By 1480, educated Europeans already know the globe is spherical.
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What Columbus wants is a shortcut, a western sea route to Asia,
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bypassing the Muslim-controlled choke points on land.
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For Columbus, the quest is much more than gold or spices.
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bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathens, end quote.
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like a 15th century startup founder in search of seed money.
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You see, the experts say his math is bad. He's underestimating how far it is to Asia.
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Here's how Columbus later himself describes his motivation in spite of all of the rejection.
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inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because he comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination
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from the Holy Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus desired to perform a very obvious miracle in the voyage
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to the Indies, to comfort me and the whole people of God. I spent seven years in the Royal Court,
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discussing the matter with many persons of great reputation and wisdom in all the arts.
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And in the end, they concluded that it was all foolishness, so they gave it up.
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No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour,
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if it is just and if the intention is purely for his holy service.
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Finally, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain say yes.
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It couldn't have hurt that Columbus tells the Catholic monarchs
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that he wants to find gold to help pay for the new crusade
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August 3rd, 1492, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria,
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three ships, 90 men, and one uniquely motivated admiral
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Columbus pleads with the men, give me just three more days.
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Well, on October 11, they start to see hopeful signs,
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sticks, and bits of vegetation in the churning water.
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Finally, around 2 AM on October 12, the lookout spots land.
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Instead, it's Watling Island in the Bahamas.
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Well, it doesn't take long for the explorers to encounter members of the Irawak tribe.
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Columbus famously refers to the natives in these islands as Indians.
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In his log that day, Columbus warns his men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.
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In order to win the friendship and affection of their people,
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and because I was convinced that their conversion to our holy faith would be better promoted through love than through force.
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I presented some of them with red caps and some strings of glass beads which they placed around their necks
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and with other trifles of insignificant worth that delighted them
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and by which we have got a wonderful hold on their affections.
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They afterwards came to the boats of the vessels swimming, bringing us parrots,
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cotton thread in balls and spears, and many other things which they bartered for others we gave them,
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as glass beads and little bells. I saw some scars on their bodies, and to my signs asking them what
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these meant, they answered in the same manner, that people from neighboring islands wanted to
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capture them, and they had defended themselves. And I did believe, and do believe, that they came
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from the mainland to take them prisoners. Within weeks, Columbus and his men encounter
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the Caribs, the tribe of cannibals terrorizing the more peaceful tribes of the island.
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They find human bones scraped clean and in one hut, the neck of a man boiling in a pot.
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Captive women tell Columbus's men that they've been captured and raped for the purpose of
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bearing children who will then be eaten by the Caribs.
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On Christmas Eve, 1492, the Santa Maria runs into the coral reef on the northern coast of present-day Haiti.
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The crew spends their Christmas day salvaging the ship's cargo.
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Columbus then returns to Spain aboard the Niña,
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leaving behind 39 men who couldn't fit on the return trip since the Santa Maria had been lost.
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When Columbus returns on his second voyage a year later,
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he finds the 39 men who are left behind all dead, killed by the cannibal tribe.
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Columbus establishes a colony of Spaniards in modern-day Cuba and leaves his two brothers to
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govern. Needless to say, it doesn't go well. The people revolt and the brothers can't maintain
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order and King Ferdinand appoints a new governor who arrests Columbus and his brothers and ships
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them back to spain in chains the king and queen free columbus and he's cleared of any wrongdoing
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but his explorer dream is now tarnished amazingly he mounts a fourth voyage in 1502
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he gets shipwrecked and stranded in jamaica for an entire year the adventures take a toll on his
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health columbus returns to spain in 1504 less than two years later he's dead at the age of 55
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all. For centuries after his voyage, Columbus was almost universally celebrated. Around the world,
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over 600 monuments were built in his honor. Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia,
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meaning Columbus. But in the late 20th century, the tide turned. Historians like Marxist Howard
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Zinn in his book A People's History of the United States reoriented Columbus as the starting point
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for centuries of oppression. Suddenly, Columbus was portrayed as a genocidal villain because of
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his alleged criminal treatment of native people groups. U.S. cities began to replace Columbus Day
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Columbus attempted to treat the native tribes well
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and ordered the men under his command to do the same.
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At the same time, he also took slaves from tribes
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he encountered back to the king and queen of Spain.
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Most of these slaves were from the cannibalistic Carib tribe
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Several others volunteered to travel back to Spain with him,
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including an important chieftain and his family.
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Another took Columbus's last name and traveled with him as an interpreter.
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The Columbus story is complicated, like honest history usually is.
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Slavery existed in the Americas long before Columbus arrived.
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Between 20 and 40 percent of natives in the tropical New World were enslaved by other natives.
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Well, epidemics swept through native populations even before direct European contact.
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At the same time, natives were ravaged by diseases that arrived with European explorers,
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though the true numbers are impossible to pin down.
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exploration and colonization meant displacement it meant war it meant death for countless
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indigenous people and europeans the clash of the old and new worlds was a volatile flashpoint in
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history that produced both beauty and pain this clash was neither entirely tragic nor entirely
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triumphant, but it was entirely human. Now here's what's not up for debate about Columbus.
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He put the new world on Europe's radar, but it was a quirk of history that the new continents
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would not be named after him. While Columbus was on his third voyage, another Italian explorer
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named Amerigo Vespucci made a separate expedition that sailed all along South America's eastern
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coastline. Vesbucci confirmed this was not Asia, but an entirely different continent.
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And his documentation of this fact led to a German cartographer naming the new land mass
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America on a world map produced in 1507. Columbus opened the floodgates to the new world.
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And yet, the flood didn't happen right away. You see, it would be over a century before
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England made its first permanent foothold in North America. The question is, why did
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it take so long? Well, because Europe itself was about to be ripped apart, not by warships
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it's now april 1521 the city of worms germany charles v the holy roman emperor has summoned
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a monk to stand trial before the imperial diet the monk's crime and not murder not theft but words
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books written by the monk are stacked up on the table in front of him they are the evidence the
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sentence well if he's found guilty it could mean burning him at the stake the emperor wants just
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one thing from this monk recant take it all back this isn't just a gag order this is the complete
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erasure of everything the monk has said, preached, and written his entire challenge to the authority
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of the Roman Catholic Church. This monk's name? Martin Luther. He knows his life hangs in the
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balance, but he has no idea that the future of Western civilization depends on what happens next.
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When Columbus returned to Spain from his fourth voyage in 1504, Martin Luther was a 21-year-old
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Catholic monk in Germany. In an introduction to the collection of his writings, this is how
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Luther described his younger self. Keep in mind that I was once upon a time a monk and a crazy
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papist before I entered the struggle. I was so drunk, sloshed, you might say, with the Pope's
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dogmas. With all my heart, I would have attacked everyone who would to attract even an iota of
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their obedience to the Pope. Indeed, I would have supported anyone who attacked them.
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I was like Saul, just like so many in our time.
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A decade later, as a professor and pastor at the University of Wittenberg,
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Luther wrestled with the Church's teachings. He came to believe, from Scripture itself,
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that salvation comes by God's grace alone, through faith in Christ alone.
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But the church had a revenue stream to worry about.
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Basically, an indulgence was the promise of reduced time in purgatory
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Luther's conviction from studying Scripture was that this was not just bad theology.
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Luther did what scholars were supposed to do when they had an issue to debate.
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He wrote to his archbishop, enclosing a list of 95 theses on indulgences, along with an essay.
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but instead of disappearing into the archbishop's inbox or in a stack of other complaints,
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and began to spread across Europe like a slow-moving fire.
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Luther striding up to the Wittenberg castle church door,
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hammer in hand, nailing his 95 pieces into the wood in open defiance.
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I mean, he might have, but the story came from a friend years later, after Luther's death.
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In reality, posting notices on the church doors was almost as rebellious as pinning a flyer on a bulletin board.
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Still, the idea he explored in those first pages were explosive,
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and they pulled Luther into a confrontation with the most powerful religious institutions in the West.
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Back to 1521, four years after Luther's infamous 95 Thesis,
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Luther stands now in front of the Holy Roman Emperor,
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Luther looks at the stack of books in front of him.
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Because your sublime majesty and your lordship seek a straight answer,
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I need to be convinced by the testimony of the scriptures
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or by obvious reason because I do not trust the pope or councils in themselves.
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We know they have all too frequently made mistakes and contradicted themselves.
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I cannot and I will not retract anything since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.
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Luther's plea for God's intervention was answered.
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He was later condemned and a bounty was offered for his capture, dead or alive,
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and the brush fire started by his 95 thesis billowed into a wildfire
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Across Europe, leaders and nations faced a choice,
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remain Catholic or join the new Protestant cause.
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everything, not just theology, but politics, literacy, and personal freedom. Protestant
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teaching urged a return to scripture, emphasizing that every believer has direct access to God's
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word. This meant reading became a spiritual duty, and it meant questioning earthly authorities who
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contradicted the word. But it also meant that when colonists eventually sailed for the new world,
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they brought with them a very different vision of the relationship between church and state.
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That couldn't have happened without the Reformation.
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One Congregationalist pastor, Leonard Wolseley Bacon, would later write, quote,
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By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of ages has been kept from premature disclosure.
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If the discovery of America had been achieved four centuries or even a single century earlier,
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the Christianity to be transplanted to the Western world would have been that of the Church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence.
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When North America was finally settled in earnest, it would be through the people that were shaped by Reformation,
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resistant to tyranny, convinced of their God-given rights, and ready to build something new.
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the crowded room smells of smoke not the gentle aroma of hearth fire but thick pungent wood smoke
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that coats the back of your throat john smith kneels in the dirt rough iron-like hands suddenly
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he force his head down onto two flat stones. Veins pop in his neck as he strains against
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the vice grip of his captors. Around him, a semicircle of warriors, muscles taut, painted
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faces glistening with sweat. He glimpses the clubs in their hand. One signal from the man
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sitting above Smith, wrapped in a robe of raccoon skins, and the Englishman's skull
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She kneels beside Smith and lays her head over his.
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Smith is stunned to feel her cheek pressed against his.
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After all, this girl is Pocahontas, Chief Pohotten's favorite daughter.
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And her action that day preserved a lot more than John Smith's life.
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Almost two years before John Smith nearly had his brain smashed in
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The Virginia Company was finalizing plans in London for a new colony
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The charter for this venture invoked the providence of Almighty God
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Propagating of the Christian religion to such people
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As yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance, end quote
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And while many of those first colonists were devout Christians, make no mistake, this was primarily a business mission.
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The Virginia Company was a 17th century version of what we would call a startup,
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with investors and high-pressure expectations of a very profitable return on their major investment.
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The company would own the land and appoint the governor, and the colonists were all considered employees.
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three ships once again set sail this time from britain with 104 men on board no women
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this was the first of many blunders after a four-month voyage they landed at cape henry
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in present-day virginia beach in april 1607 on the beach they planted a wooden cross
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and the reverend robert hunt led them in prayer of gratitude committing their venture to god's
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plan, purpose. From there, the 26-year-old captain, John Smith, piloted the ships 50 miles up the
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James River, where they settled on a swampy, mosquito-ridden peninsula to their base camp.
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They called it Jamestown, in honor of King James I. The location was good for defense,
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but terrible for health. By May, under the leadership of the brash, often abrasive,
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Captain John Smith, they had built a triangular fort with bulwarks at each corner, each armed
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with a few small cannons. And trouble started almost immediately. The first major problem?
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The wrong skill set. Most of the 104 men were gentlemen or tradesmen eager to find gold. They
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weren't farmers or laborers ready to clear fields or plant crops. The gold diggers thought they'd
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hit pay dirt fast and returned to England as wealthy men. Instead, food ran short. The daily
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ration became half a pint of wheat and half a pint of worm-infested barley. Mosquitoes brought
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malaria. The river water was brackish and made them all sick. By September, 46 men were dead
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out of the original 104 who had arrived at Jamestown. John Smith wrote, quote,
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God, being angry with us, plagued us with such famine and sickness that the living were scarce able to bury the dead.
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The Pohotten people brought them corn and bread, and the occasional wild game.
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Smith, unimpressed with his fellow settlers, wrote,
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Most of our chiefest men were either sick or discontented,
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the rest being in such despair as they would rather starve and rot with idleness than be
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persuaded to do anything for their own relief. With most of the leaders laid out sick or already
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dead, Smith essentially put himself in charge. He didn't mind bossing people around. He imposed
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order, military discipline, along with his famous biblical edict, he who will not work will not eat.
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They built a small village of huts with thatched roofs.
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he was taken prisoner by a hunting party led by Chief Pohotten's brother.
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He was fed so well that he feared that they were fattening him up to eat him.
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Then one day, he was finally brought to Chief Pohadden.
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he sat, covered with a great robe made of raccoon skins,
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On either hand did sit a young wench of sixteen or eighteen years,
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and along on each side the house, two rows of men,
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with all their heads and shoulders painted red.
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Many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds,
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and a great chain of white beads about their necks.
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Remember Smith's head, forced on the flat stones,
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the clubs, the last-second intervention by Pocahontas?
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Well, today, many historians think this wasn't an execution at all,
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but a ritual adoption, meant to symbolically bind Smith to Pohotten as an ally.
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it was a turning point in the relationship between the colonists and the Indians that lived all around them,
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and a major turning point for the survival of what would become the United States of America.
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According to Smith, two days after Pocahontas' intervention,
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he was taken to a large house in the woods and sat on a mat in front of a fire.
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Suddenly, with blood-curdling cries, Powhatan appeared.
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200 men behind him, all of them with their faces and bodies painted black.
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Smith wrote that Powhatan looked more like a devil than a man.
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Smith was told that he and Powhatan were now friends
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and that he would be allowed to return to Jamestown.
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Pocahontas even visited Jamestown, bringing food and performing card wheels to entertain the men.
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Pohotten tired of the constant English demands for food.
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He moved his home base further inland and stopped allowing Pocahontas to visit Jamestown.
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The Virginia Company was stubbornly determined to wring a profit out of this investment somehow.
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it sent more people to Jamestown, this time indentured servants willing to work for seven
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years in exchange for passage. In 1609, a fleet of nine ships embarked with 600 settlers.
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One of the ships sank. Another one ran aground in Bermuda, where it was stuck for months.
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Meanwhile, John Smith suffered severe burns in a gunpowder explosion accident
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Without his disciplined leadership, the colony really began to unravel.
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According to both written accounts and archaeological evidence, they even ate each other.
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Excavations have found human bones with knife marks mixed with the remains of animals in trash pits.
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When a relief ship finally arrived May 1610, the captain was appalled by what he found.
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He said Jamestown looked like the ruins of some ancient fortification.
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Survivors were hollow-eyed, ravaged by famine, disease, and ongoing skirmishes with the local tribes.
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In June, the survivors decided to abandon the colony and return to England.
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They sailed down the James River towards Chesapeake Bay and met another incoming resupply ship.
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There were forced labor gangs, floggings, even hangings for those who broke the rules.
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Contracts often extended to nine years, far longer than in England.
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Children, if their parents died in debt, were bound into labor until the debt was paid.
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Jamestown's socialist model of a communal storehouse of food only enhanced the misery.
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No matter what an individual's work effort, he knew the communal food effort would keep him from starving.
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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.
00:36:47.640
You just take a few pictures, put it online, wait for somebody to show up, sign a few papers, you're done.
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That's maybe the way it looks, but anyone who's actually been through it knows that's not happening.
00:36:58.360
Under the surface, there's a lot of decisions that don't look like much in the moment, but they add up fast.
00:37:04.260
That's why I started Real Estate Agents I Trust, because it's not one small transaction.
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You want somebody who knows the market, who knows how to negotiate, who's been vetted to get results,
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You're working with somebody who knows how to make sure it does.
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That's what my company is going to give you when you contact us.
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We're going to give you the name of that person.
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We'll show you how to buy or sell a home, even in this really tough market.
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I don't charge you for the names, but I ask you just to do your own homework and check
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jamestown's salvation comes not in the form of gold but in the form of a leaf
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This is the year 1612, and John Rolfe is taking a gamble.
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Smoking is fashionable now among the upper classes, and the demand is growing fast.
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But the local Virginia strain is bitter and harsh and unappealing to the English taste.
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So John Rolfe obtained seeds of a sweeter variety from the Caribbean.
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Well, do you remember the Virginia company ship that ran aground in Bermuda in 1609
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he plants the new strain of tobacco seeds in Virginia soil,
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it always seems like one step forward and three steps back.
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to kidnap Pocahontas. Working with a rival tribe, he tricked her into boarding a ship where she was
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captured. Captain Argyll held her for ransom in an effort to get her father, Chief Pohotan, to
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return English prisoners and stolen weapons. Her captivity dragged on for months, so long in fact
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that she learned to speak English, accepted Christianity, and was baptized and given the name
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Rebecca. She also met and possibly fell in love with a tobacco innovator, John Rolfe.
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In 1614, they got married in Jamestown's only church, the first Protestant church building
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in America. The marriage sealed another truce between Powhatan and the English.
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Historians debate whether John Rolfe married Pocahontas for love or as a convenient alliance,
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But regardless, Chief Powhatan consented to the Union, and for a few years, the peace held.
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Rolf and Pocahontas had a son named Thomas, and in 1616, the Virginia Company saw an opportunity.
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They brought the Rolfs to England as a kind of a living advertisement for the civilizing power of colonization.
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Pocahontas became a celebrity, a big one, dining with aristocrats, even meeting King James and Queen Anne.
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While the couple was still in England, John Smith came to visit.
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He found a very different Pocahontas, dressed in a stiff, stuffy British dress.
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When Pocahontas first saw him, she couldn't speak.
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She turned away from him, overcome with emotion.
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When she regained her composure, she unloaded on him for how he treated her father and her people,
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reminding him that Pohotten had welcomed him as a son.
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She said the Jamestown columnist reported that Smith had died after his gunpowder accident in 1609,
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but her father suspected that it wasn't true because the English had a habit of lying.
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The playful one was not really so playful anymore.
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In March 1617, the Rolfe's were preparing to sail back to Virginia,
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and Pocahontas fell suddenly ill, possibly pneumonia.
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Her tribe's oral tradition about her life tells a much, much darker story.
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According to the Bohaten version, while Pocahontas was held captive at Jamestown,
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she was raped and became pregnant with her son, Thomas.
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This tradition also held that before the Rolves were set to return to Virginia,
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they were invited to dinner aboard Captain Argyle's ship,
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the man who arranged her kidnapping four years earlier.
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After that dinner, Pocahontas felt sick and started convulsing.
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The tribesmen who accompanied her on the trip to England
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claimed that she had been murdered, possibly poisoned,
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during the final dinner on Captain Argyle's ship.
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Thanks to John Rolfe's tobacco, Jamestown was no longer just scraping by.
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The Virginia Company started granting 100-acre plots
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to those willing to cross the Atlantic and farm.
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It was a major change, allowing individual settlers to own land,
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By 1617, a decade after the first landing at Cape Henry,
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the colony shipped 20,000 pounds of tobacco to England.
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Within 12 years, they exported over 1.5 million pounds.
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This was a new gold, and it fueled a land rush.
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As the colony expanded, labor became its central challenge.
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To keep up, the Virginia Company imported more workers and indentured servants from England.
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They also enlisted London's so-called superfluous street children over the age of 12 to go to work in Virginia.
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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.
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In July, Governor George Yeardley called the first legislative assembly in America,
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Burgess, or representatives, from 11 areas, they met in a Jamestown church,
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fixing tobacco prices, reducing punishment for crimes like idleness, gambling, and drunkenness,
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and recommending fair treatment of the Indians.
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Just days after this first assembly, another ship sailed into James River.
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These individuals were traded for provisions.
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The central lie of the New York Times 1619 project framed this event as America's true founding, grounded in exploitation and black oppression.
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The notion is ludicrous, of course, and a bleak origin story.
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Europeans in Virginia in the 1600s were hardly the inventors of slavery.
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The legal status of those 20 Africans was murky.
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Most historians believe they were initially treated as indentured servants,
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with the terms of service and the possibility of freedom like their white counterparts.
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Documents from the 1600s confirm that some black laborers were held by so-called owners for life,
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while others gained their freedom after working for a set number of years.
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In those early years, some Africans owned land after gaining their freedom.
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But over the decades, the overwhelming need for laborers
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gradually shifted Virginia's culture towards permanent race-based slavery.
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In 1640, a runaway black indentured servant named John Punch
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He ran away with two white indentured servants,
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but after getting caught, the white servant's punishment was extended servitude.
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For a time, it wasn't considered proper for a Christian
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to enslave a fellow Christian, but that eventually dissolved.
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By 1670, blacks and Indians could no longer own white indentured servants.
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By 1705, lifelong slavery was codified in Virginia law.
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His brother took over the leadership for the vast confederacy of tribes.
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For the first few years, he played the role as a friend,
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lulling the English into a false sense of security.
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Then, in March 1622, his people launched a coordinated assault
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about a third of the total English population in Virginia.
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In London, the attack on the colony shook the Virginia Company and its investors.
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The king appointed a committee to examine the company amid accusations of mismanagement.
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In 1624, the king revoked the company's charter,
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and Virginia became a royal colony under the direct control of the crown.
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From a swampy fort with 104 men, half of them dead within a few months,
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Jamestown became a tobacco powerhouse, a political experiment,
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and the site of both cooperation and bloody conflict with the people who lived there long before.
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It was the place where early forms of representative government and African slavery sprouted.
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Jamestown was a garden of liberty and inequality.
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While the messy Jamestown experiment limped forward,
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a new expedition was being readied on the southern coast of England
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forged by a small group of men and women known as the Pilgrims.
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Coming up on The American Story, The Beginnings.
1.00
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In a split second, John Howland is plunged into a nightmare.
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A massive rogue wave smashes over the ship's railing, sweeping John overboard into the frigid abyss.
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In an era when most people can't swim, and the ship can't just throw it in reverse, this is a
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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.
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Instinctively, desperately, he snags it and clamps on with both fists. The rope trailing behind the
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ship is one of the halyards used to raise and lower the sail. It's his only hope. He clings
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for dear life, dragging through the pounding surf like a ragdoll, the saltwater scraping down his
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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.