A HISTORY LESSON

STORY OF JAMESTOWN'S FOUNDING IS EXPLORED

The year 2007,  the 400^th Anniversary of Jamestown’s founding, promises to be a banner year for books on the first permanent English settlement in North America. It seems likely that these books will be divided between those that celebrate the founding of Jamestown as a triumph of human endeavor and those that lament it as the first act in a brutal drama that ended with the wiping out of North America’s Indians.

 “Empires in the Forest” attempts to strike a balance between these two views. It is a coffee-table book, written by Avery Chenoweth and illustrated handsomely by Robert Llewellyn with photographs re-enacting the signal events of the Jamestown founding.

 “Empires” tells the legendary stories of Capt. John Smith, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough, John Rolfe and the other key figures of the founding in an accessible, lively manner within the context of living history. What results is an exciting, readable work that mixes fact, informed speculation, amateur psychoanalysis and heartfelt love of country.

 As its title implies, this book is a story of empires. The first discussed is the Powhatan nation, which covered much of present-day Virginia and subjugated several tribes of Indians who paid sometimes-grudging tribute to the paramount chief, a man known to history as Powhatan. He was the peace chief of the nation, while his kinsman Opechancanough served as war chief. Together they oversaw a confederation that stood united against various warlike tribes forever probing the Powhatans’ northern and western borders, seeking land and dominance.

 A second empire is that of the English, who maneuvered deftly against the Spanish for a colonial foothold in North America.

 The pre-eminent figures in the struggle for dominance in Virginia, Smith and Powhatan are presented by Chenoweth as men somewhat similar in temperament and mindset. Like Powhatan, Smith was an earthy crafty individual who survived by his wits and preferred to get what he wanted – such as food and information supplied by the Indians – by bluff rather than bloodshed.

 For his part, Powhatan saw Smith and the English settlers as potentially useful allies in securing Eastern Virginia against the inroads of the marauding tribes that periodically threatened the paramount chief’s empire. Powhatan learned too late that the English came not to share but to take.

 Chenoweth provides interesting background on the natural history of Tidewater and the story of the Powhatan confederacy, including their early encounters with a small band of Spanish Jesuits. This seldom-discussed aspect of Virginia history concerns an ill-fated group of missionaries who settled in Tidewater for a short time – several years before the English arrived – and were slaughtered to the last man by the Powhatans.

 Elsewhere, the author discusses Smith and Pocahontas and affirms the often scoffed – at story of Smith’s rescue by the young girl as a distinct possibility, certainly nothing to be dismissed out of hand.

 As well-known, Pocahontas married not Smith but the English planter Rolfe. She converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca and traveled with her new husband to England.

 There are portions of Chenoweth’s narrative where the terminology of the present is introduced a bit jarringly into the historic past, such as the author’s speculation that Smith, a seasoned soldier of fortune, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. And to some readers whose Virginia history was taught to them long ago, it may be irksome to behold passages in which Chenoweth refers to Smith as a “terrorist.” (The scorched-earth policies occasionally practiced by the Powhatans against their native enemies receive no similar words of condemnation.)

 There are a few such instances in this otherwise admirable eloquent book where the author judges the past according to the sensitivities and standards of the present. And Chenoweth’s final chapter, “Forever and Ever Your Countryman,” an epilogue permeated by much wisdom, should be read and pondered by every Virginian.

James E. Person Jr. is the author of biographies of Russell Kirk and Earl Hammer.

 The Virginia Pilot