Revisiting History April 25-26 Part I Jamestown VA

We left Nancy and Camden that afternoon and headed into Virginia.  The rural route was pretty and we drove through some small towns on some small roads with our BIG rig with no problem. Then we drove through Norfolk at rush hour but managed with the GPS and 2 maps to find our way to the campground without too much delay other than one where roadwork forced us onto a really busy and SLOW route.  Our campground was in Williamsburg and we'd planned to see Colonial Williamsburg along with Jamestown and Yorktown.  However, this was the first campground we didn't really love because our site backed up to a relatively busy main road and was bordered on the other side by Amtrak tracks.  Now I know how often Amtrak runs that route and it runs quite a bit at night.  The first night I woke up each time it rumbled through but was able to sleep through the next two.

The lack of sleep meant that I did not want to get going too early-even if Phoenix had woken me at 5am to go out-and it took awhile to get in gear.  We reviewed our options and after looking at the prices of a day at Colonial Williamsburg we opted to skip it.  Don and I have both been to a number of historical recreated places and CW seemed on the commercial side, not to mention expensive.  We are more interested in history and not buying reproductions. I'm not sure if that is really fair but with limited time and knowing we wanted to see the other 2 plus we had to do food shopping we left the final decision to later.  So, first we went to Jamestown Settlement. It's a living history museum that has based much of what it has recreated on the finding at the site of the original Jamestown Settlement administrated by the NPS.

The three ships the came to Jamestown: Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery

We were impressed first of all with the timeline museum that leads through the building out to the back where the tour begins.  It does not focus only on the settlers but begins with pre-Columbian artifacts, has extensive exhibits on the Paspahegh Indians that lived in the area, and powerful exhibit about the first ship of enslaved Angolans who arrived in 1619, as well as a street scene from 1607 England which gives an idea of what life was like for the settlers before they came.  

The first is a visit to a recreated Powhatan village.  The guide is a historical interpreter dressed in the clothes a Powhatan of 1607 would have worn except that this day, our guide admitted, was colder than he'd thought and he had not worn his leggings and was cold.  After seeing the reed covered houses, demonstrations of how food was preserved, deer skins were tanned and a dug out canoe as well as a ceremonial circle of carved wooden heads and hearing about Pocahontas...

 Clamshells were used as tools to scrape the wood after it was burned and hollow out the canoes...

 which were not used only for work but also racing

 There is no conclusive evidence to show what these circles actually were 

but it's believed they were for some kind of ceremony

We moved on to the recreated fort and began to hear things that were putting our memories from school on end. Specifically: Jamestown is the first permanent English colony in what would become the US and the system of government -representative- established in Jamestown would become the basis for the one we have today.  But wait...wasn't it Plymouth?  As another historical interpreter at the NPS site would say "There was a war in the 1860s and the winners liked the Plymouth/Mayflower story better." I will not go into all the details here but it is interesting hearing the story of Jamestown and realizing that it is one we really don't hear very often.  (Oh, and for anyone who only knows the Disney version of Pocahontas, it's well worth finding out the real version,too.) 

After the fort we went down to see the reproductions of the 3 ships that brought the colonists. The Susan Constant and Godspeed carried most of the passengers while the Discovery brought the supplies.

Susan Constant stern

Susan Constant bow

Godspeed with Discovery behind her

and then to lunch at the cafe which was really quite good.