Word: jamestowne
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Relations between white and red men were the most variable factor in Jamestown's early history. The western Chesapeake was ruled by Wahunsonacock, chief of the Powhatan. He was an expansionist, no less than the English, having brought 30 local tribes under his sway, an empire of 15,000 people. In December 1607, Smith described his royal state: "He sat covered with a great robe, made of raccoon skins, and all the tails hanging by," flanked by "two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red." The settlers hoped to make...
...over the next dozen years settlers and backers alike realized the colony could not be run as an overseas mining company or an armed camp. Success would depend on large numbers of people and the steady production of exportable goods. That meant the incentives for living in Jamestown had to be modified...
...Dissenters over and opened negotiations with others. One boatload of Pilgrims, blown north, landed in Plymouth, Mass., in 1620. Religious pluralism in British North America would suffer many backtracks and false starts (Virginia would develop its own Anglican establishment as time passed), but the first step was taken in Jamestown...
...Jamestown also was the first place to find a cash cow and an economic system for exploiting it. The Powhatan smoked a crude indigenous species of tobacco. But in 1612, John Rolfe imported seeds of Nicotiana tabacum, the Spanish-American weed that was already a craze in England. By 1620 the colony had shipped almost 50,000 lbs. home. Fifty years later, Virginia and Maryland would ship 15 million lbs. Tobacco and foodstuffs were grown on privately owned farms. Beginning in 1618, old settlers were offered 100 acres of land, and newcomers who paid their way were given 50 acres...
...need to keep these newly successful tobacco growers in line led to Jamestown's most far-reaching innovation, representative government. In 1618 the Virginia Co. created a general assembly to advise the Governor--including "burgesses," or representatives, elected by property owners--on the theory that "every man will more willingly obey laws to which he has yielded his consent." The general assembly first met for five days in the summer of 1619. It discussed Indian relations, church attendance, gambling, drunkenness and the price of tobacco. It sounds like the Iowa caucuses: war and peace, social issues, bread and butter. From...