Jamestown's 400th: Some Family Reflections, 1

It is, of course, the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. The Queen has been to Virginia, and all that. Many of the best-known authorities on the colonial period, Indians, the Chesapeake, and so on have weighed in with new books, and I've been acquiring them. Sarah even did her first ever book report on a kids' book about Pocahontas. Jamestown's big this year, especially here in Virginia.

But I have some personal reasons for being interested in all the hoopla. Like many people whose roots lie in the upper south, I've always been puzzled by why the Pilgrims, those weird puritanical latecomers, got all the glory. They didn't get here till 1620. They didn't even celebrate Christmas: how American is that? The Jamestown colonists were looking for gold, fighting each other, shooting Indians and importing slaves before the Mayflower ever got here. Now that's America. (Kidding, kidding, don't yell, please.) Of course the dominance of New England historians, of Harvard and Yale, especially after the Civil War, had a lot to do with it, and Longfellow and his ilk were writing things like "The Courtship of Miles Standish," and Thanksgiving was taking hold, and so Plymouth trumped Jamestown, at least for a while. The South was too busy getting reconstructed to remind everybody how late the Pilgrims got here and how lame they were at a party.

But for all that, and regardless of what your take is on John Smith and Pocahontas and all, I had ancestors who were in the same area not too many years later, and who also had links to the local Indians. I feel that Jamestown is closer to the record of my own family tree (some of Tam's folks were in Massachusetts early, so she may have more affinities there). And the Indian stuff is tantalizing: literally so, clues here, intermarriages there, but no reason (so far) to think I've got native ancestry myself.

Last weekend we went over to the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, to see the "John Smith Shallop," a living history recreation that's sailing/rowing its way around Chesapeake Bay for the summer months, to commemorate the 1608 voyage of John Smith to explore the Bay, the Potomac, the Patuxent, and the Rappahannock. (Why are they commemorating a 1608 voyage in 2007? Well, of course, because Jamestown is the big draw and no one will pay any attention by next year. We'll doubtless see the shallop again: it's coming to DC for the Smithsonian folklife festival, to Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and other places close by. If you're interested in the shallop, go here. For Jamestown celebrations generally, check in here.

We also visited recently the new museum that has opened at the Jamestown Settlement, the state-run reconstruction of Jamestown that has the replica ships, Indian village, and fort, and what is now a superb new interpretive museum. Last year we saw the new archaeological museum at the original site of Jamestown, run by the National Park Service and the Association for Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, now known as Historic Jamestowne. This is the original site of the settlement and where in recent years the original fort, long thought to have been under the present river, has been found and excavated. Both of these sites, which are nearly adjacent, are essential for understanding the place. I recommend if you haven't been there, go to both. They're next door to Williamsburg, but in my book, much more interesting (and less expensive).

Anyway, my personal interest in the subject stems in part from the fact that my Collins ancestors can be traced back to early Tidewater Virginia. By 1665, they were owning land south of the James, roughly across the river and a bit down from Jamestown. While the immigrant is uncertain, the name Collins (my middle name) is found as early as the earliest years of the colony, as I've noted here. But I suspect my own ancestor is one of two men who came over in 1635, probably as an indentured servant, as I argue here. In any event, they were here early. Not as early as Jamestown, probably, but early.

I've long had an interest in the surviving remnants of the Virginia Indians. There are eight recognized tribes today (recognized by the state, not by the feds.) Two, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey, live on small reservations that were created in the 17th century. (A good links list on Virginia Indians is here.) I've never been entirely sure why the Virginia Indians fascinate me, though I have known for some time that I have Cherokee cousins on my Dunn/Kell side. (My 3rd great-grandmother's brother married a Cherokee woman; his sons included two men who became judges and members of the Cherokee senate. They were generally more prominent than their Anglo cousins.) More recently I've learned that there may be multiple connections to the Indians of the tidewater: my Vinson relatives were intermarried more than once with the Bass family, who descend from the Nansemond tribe, who in turn were living alongside my Collinses and Vinsons in the late 1600s. After the Collinses and Vinsons moved to North Carolina they had many intermarriages with Richardsons about 12 miles down the road from an area which is today the center of the Haliwa-Saponi. The most common name among the Haliwa-Saponi is Richardson. Bass is also common. But the connections are, so far, all inferential.

So I suspect I've got some early Indian links in the tidewater. My fourth great grandparents, James Collins and Tempy Vinson, left a list of their 16 children's births,which is followed by a list of three Richardson children's births,not otherwise explained, and then by a list of slaves' births.

We're trying to make sure Sarah understands that Pocahontas and Powhatan have kinfolk around today. A few weeks ago we went to the Powwow of the Upper Mattaponi, one of the state-recognized Powhatan tribes. (For years I've pronounced it "Matta-PO-ny" (wouldn't you?) but at the Powwow I learned it's Matta-po-NYE.) When Sarah was much younger we took her to the Eastern Band Cherokee reservation in NC and she kept asking "but where are the Indians?" Despite our efforts she's still expecting Tonto, I guess. Now I think she's catching on. She liked the Powwow. (I didn't have the guts to buy the Tshirt that said "Immigration problems began in 1492" or the one that showed General Custer surrounded and said "First Successful Neighborhood Watch Program," but I wanted to.) I hope to get her to the Pamunkey and Mattaponi reservations soon. They're tiny, but they are, like the people themselves, still stubbornly there. (They aren't federally recognized reservations since they date from a treaty signed in the 1670s [LATER UPDATE: Treaty of Middle Plantation, 1677] I think, so their treaty is with Virginia. But they send a deer to the governor every year.)

I expect I'll be pursuing some of these issues, but I hope I've shed some light on why the whole Jamestown anniversary is of interest to us, over and beyond its interest to, say, the Queen, who dropped in as well. One's own connection to history personalizes it, makes it less abstract. We're trying to convey that to Sarah.

I'll try to offer reactions/reviews to some of the new Jamestown books as time goes on, and come back to some of these related topics.

This post, unlike our family posts, is open to comments from anyone.

Michael