1607’S HALLOWED STATUS

For Americans of a certain age (those of us schooled when Western Civilization still held sway), the year 1607 is a date of near-hallowed status, falling between the alpha 1066 and the omega 1776. The year of the founding of Jamestown by a band of English gentlemen adventurers known as the Virginia Company still maintains a strong hold on our imagination these 400 years later. And in this quadricentennial year of the colony’s founding, commemorations abound over the airwaves and in the public squares.

Delmarvans and other Americans who prefer their commemoratives in book form will satisfy their Jamestown fixation for years to come by investing $49.95 in Empires in the Forest: Jamestown and the Beginning of America by writer Avery Chenoweth and photographer Robert Llewellyn. The 10 x 12 hardcover book published by University of Virginia Press and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities lays out a vivid panorama as we turn the pages in our lap, answering many questions about the colony, and stimulating still others.

Chenoweth is primarily a writer of fiction and he brings that lyrical perspective to the history he tells. The pre-historic or Paleo-Indian people came first, of course, and by the coming of the Europeans they had formed a comfortable community of 50-60 tribes in the Chesapeake region. Powhatan was the paramount chief of this pre-European empire, with authority to take tribute from the tribes he ruled and distribute it as he chose, with the advice and consent of his shamans.

The drama played out amongst Powhatan, his daughter Pocahontas, Captain John Smith and the other men of his company cannot help but stir the blood of the reader, especially when illustrated by the dreamy pageantry of Llewellyn’s color photos.

Empires in the Forest gives credence to the idea of a romantic attraction between Smith and Pocahontas, a legend that has been debunked by other recent researchers on the theme. Chenoweth has it that Pocahontas performed a ceremonial and seductive dance before Smith, but he was obliged to deny her invitation because of an old war wound, or perhaps even post-traumatic stress disorder.

This account has it that Smith was directly responsible for the way Pocahontas was received as royalty on her visit to England and considers them both examples of the Renaissance development of “self as a vaunted entity.” An admittedly apocryphal visit of the princess and the captain to a performance of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” suggests a parallel between these two larger-than-life humans and the archetypes personified in the play: “O brave new world, that has such people in it.”

Llewellyn’s aerial view of the Potomac’s chaotic courses and his rendering of the Native Americans’ dignified ferocity recall the past as well as the story does. If you buy only one book this year, let it be this one.

By Marah Coleman

Delmarva Quarterly