An American Love Story
Four centuries ago today Englishmen first planted their feet firmly in the American soil. While cause to celebrate, all anniversaries possess a certain failing in that the truly significant events were yet to follow. It is what happens after that gives the day meaning.
The preparations for the day have consumed years, yet it is what follows that will matter. Will Jamestown again be forgotten, cast into the outer darkness which has been its historical lot? Or will a nation awake to rediscover it roots, however ugly–or beautiful–they might prove? Certainly there was much to be ashamed of. Negro slavery originated at Jamestown. The treatment of natives by whites, and whites by natives, was often inhumane to the point of being inhuman. Greed, violence and madness reigned supreme. Had it not been for the innocent love of a native child for the European, odds are English would not be spoken here.
Pocahontas’ story has been written off, just as Jamestown has, by historians keen to prove something else, anything else, happened. The fact there is less evidence to believe Pocahontas didn’t throw herself upon John Smith than evidence it actually occurred hasn’t stopped historians from drawing inferences from the scantiness of the evidence. Of course historians also were certain the Jamestown Fort had long ago slid into the James River. Like the original colonists panning for fool’s gold, finding some means of discrediting Smith became an obsession. It is as if a love story was too much for academic history to bear, as if ugliness were the only proper study of history. No wonder history has become sterile. The Jamestown story in its four hundredth year has become as much about history as history itself. More artist than historian, my own research has led me to apprehend the fundamental beauty of the American as the true offspring of John Smith and Pocahontas. How appropriate that the 400th anniversary falls on Mother’s Day!
There will be much more discourse on John Smith and Pocahontas, Jamestown, history and its foibles, and much more in posts to come. And there will be more to come; for this is really just the beginning. The real story lay not on May 13, 1607, but in the years to follow. So after the last speech has been made and concert given, the last souvenir sold and tourist checked out, the last champagne glass put away and party favor swept from the floor of this Quadracentennial, The Jamestown Site will go on. Eventually the children of America must learn their true parentage.
