Lead archaeologist William Kelso (below) stands near the
newly-discovered brick foundation of a workshop within the
confines of James Fort, in which early 17th-century British
colonists battled starvation, hostile Indians, and disease at the
Jamestown settlement. The colony sits on an island in the James
River in tidewater Virginia (right), a location that the colonists
chose for its strategic defensive position against attacks by local
Powhatan Indians and waterborne European marauders. Kelso
directs an ambitious archaeological program that has unearthed more than a million artifacts since 1994.
t
ea
By WilliamM. Kelso
42
AMERICAl" HERITAGE
F
ORGET
MUCH
OF WHAT YOU
know about the Jamestown
colony. For the past 200 years,
many archaeologists and historians believed that the James River had
largely eroded any traces of the original
settlement over the intervening four centuries. Our excavations, ongoing since
1994, have proved otherwise: we have uncovered more than 250 feet of two palisade
wall lines, the east bulwark line, three cellars, a building+-all part of the original triangular fort. In addition, we have
unearthed more than a million artifacts,
most dating to the first years of the English settlement in 1607-1610. The soil has
yielded a new understanding of the early
years of Jamestown: a fresh picture not
only of its settlers, their abilities, lives,
and accomplishments, but of the interdependence between the English settlers
and the Virginia Indians.
No one disputes the simple facts: on
May 14, 1607, after a difficult voyage of
more than five months, a band of adventurers lured by the promise of a better life
landed on the banks of the James River
and established the first enduring English
settlement in the New World. By the time
the Pilgrims reached Plymouth in 1620,
much of the James River basin from the
mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to within
twenty miles of the site of modern Richmond pad been settled by the English
under the sponsorship of the Virginia
Company. A group of men elected from
the scattered settlements of Virginia met
on Jamestown Island, the first expression
of English representative government in
North America.
But this dramatic and important story
until recently has had few reliable details.
,
WINTER 2008 43
The written records pertammg
to
Jamestown are scarce, ambiguous, and
sometimes conflicting: maps of questionable accuracy; a few letters and official reports; published records written by
interested parties (most famous among
themJohn Smith, whose writings included
the dubious tale of his own dramatic rescue by the Indian maiden Pocahontas.)
From the accounts, we can tell the colony's
early history was troubled, beginning with
an alleged mutiny during the crossing
from England (blamed on John Smith)
and continuing through many struggles
for power and incidents of civil unrest.
The colony faced other trials and hardships as well, including a major battle with
the local Indians within weeks of arrival,
an unfamiliar semitropical climate, lack of
fresh water, meager and spoiled food,
drought, and accidents.
The documentary evidence of
the precariousness of life in
early Jamestown and of
the gap between the
founders' intentions
and the colony's
achievements has led
to a story of Jamestown over
the generations that emphasized its
shortcomings. Historian Edmund S.
Morgan summarized conventional wisdom when he wrote in 1975 that "The ad44
AMERICAl'l HERITAGE
venturers who ventured capital lost it.
Most of the settlers who ventured their
lives lost them. And so did most of the Indians who came near them. Measured by
any of the objectives announced for it, the
colony failed." This story, which continues
to be told, has been held responsible for
the diminished importance of Jamestown
itself in American popular consciousness.
In this interpretation,
the colony
failed because of poor planning by the
sponsoring Virginia Company, the incompetence or laziness of the colonistsqualities supposedly explained by the
upper-class origin of half of the original
settlers-and mistaken cultural assumptions about the Indians.
To call Jamestown a complete failure,
let alone a disaster, is to oversimplify. Even
the scanty documents, with their record of
the colony's important firsts, its periods of
thriving, and the energy and intelligence
unceasingly invested in it, hint at a more
complex story.
J
amestown first caught my attention
four decades ago when I came across
an aerial photo of Jamestown Island in a
magazine as an undergraduate student in
Ohio. The mesmerizing color image
showed a network of open archaeological
trenches laying bare the foundations of
the buried town. This gridwork was part
Postholes (above), pockets of dark soil
formed by rotted logs that once stood vertically, were evidence of a palisade wall.
Within a few days of their first landing
in 1607, the settlers were attacked by
200 Indian warriors. They constructed
James Fort in a remarkable nineteen
days, cutting down some 610 trees with
hand tools and erecting a triangular
enclosure (toP) under the constant threat
of incoming arrows.
"You're too late," said the park
ranger when I first asked about James Fort.
"It's out there," he said,
pointing to the river, "and lost for good. 11
of an effort by the National Park Service
to uncover the remains of Jamestown for
a 1957 exhibition celebrating the 350th
anniversary of its founding. Looking at the
strict order of archaeological trenches
crisscrossing the expanse of hallowed
ground, I imagined digging one day with
my own hands in Jamestown soil.
After I arrived at the College of
William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, as a graduate student in early American history, I sought out the ruins at
nearby Jamestown. I was especially curious about the 1607 fort that must surely
have been uncovered in the extensive excavations of the 1950sJames Fort first defined the limits of colonial Jamestown. At
the excavation site, owned by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), I saw the moss-covered
brick church reconstructed in the 1930s,
statues of Pocahontas and Captain John
Smith, and a curious windowed exhibit in
the side of the nearby earthen Civil War
fort. The glass protected some exposed
layers of dirt in the bank of the fort, revealing the actual soil layers that made up
the bank: the Civil War zone, complete
with lead bullets; beneath it the dark band
of colonial trash; and the deepest deposit,
a lighter soil containing arrow points and
prehistoric Indian pottery.
When I asked a park ranger about the
old fort site, he pointed to a lone cypress
tree growing way off shore and said, "Un-
fortunately, you're too late. It's out there-and lost for good." My disappointment
was mixed with confusion.
"But what about here?" I asked, looking again at the layer of dirt under glass
labeled "colonial."
He replied with a shrug of his shoulders that I took as a "could be."
James Fort was never far from my
thoughts in the ensuing years as I became
an archaeologist specializing in the British
Colonial America period. Most of my
work focused on rescuing historically rich
farm sites along the banks of the James
River, which were being rediscovered by
real estate developers and resettled by retirees. The more I dug, the more I became
convinced that the "colonial level" under
that glass exhibit at the Civil War fort
might indicate the presence of the 1607
James Fort.
When the APVA decided to investigate its property on Jamestown Island archaeologically in preparation for the 400th
anniversary of Jamestown in 2007, I enthusiastically volunteered for the job.
There was not much of a line. Most archaeologists discounted any chance of
finding something significant, certainly not
the fort, which the ational Park Service
had concluded in the 1950s had "been
washed into the James River."
Before digging, we had to narrow the
boundaries of the site. At 22.5 acres, the
APVA property onJamestown Island is no
A n engraving from john Smith's
account of jamestown showed him
capturing the "King of Pamaunhee"
while other battles with Indians
appeared in the background.
One of many young lives cut short
by violence: the skeleton of a boy in
his early teens (below) shows severe
damage to a shoulder and an arrow
lodged in his left leg.
~
WINTER 2008
45
Dozens of Native American villages
surround Jamestown, the only English
settlement in Virginia on a 1630 map
based on John Smith's 1612 A Map of
Virginia (below). Pocahontas (above),
thefavorite daughter of King Powhatan,
who ruled over most of tidewater
Virginia, married settlerJohn Rolfe in
1613, helping to initiate nine years of
peace with the Indians. She died on a
visit to England. Had she survived, her
diplomatic skills rnay have prevented later
devastating wars between the Indians and
English colonists.
46
AMERICAN HERITAGE
small shroud, amounting to 9,900 ten-foot
squares if broken up into grids. Clearly we
needed to make an educated guess as to
where the fort might lie.
We did know the location of the seventeenth-century Jamestown church. A
part of the tower still existed, the sole
above-ground remnant of the original
town. If the fort site was submerged off
shore to the west, then the church, located
according to contemporary sources as in
"the midst" of the fort, would also have
been gone. In that case, the present foundations and tower would be evidence of a
relocation in the seventeenth-century
campaign, which seemed unlikely because
churches and the human burials around
them are rarely ever moved.
So thirty years to the day after I had
first set foot onJamestown Island, I found
myself putting shovel to ground one hundred feet from the glassed-in cross-section
that had been the original object of my
curiosity. Few words exist that describe the
elation of turning up fragments of early
seventeenth-century ceramics, which happened almost immediately. That initial season we uncovered the dark soil trace of a
wall line, the first sign of Jan1es Fort. Thirteen years of work since have turned up
more evidence than anyone had expected-
most important, the site of James Fort itself, so long thought unrecoverable.
nMay of 1607, Virginia looked like an
Eden to the English "gentlemen, artisans and laborers" seeking a place to settle in the name of King James I. Little
wonder that these pioneers saw a paradise:
they had left the gray, chilly English winter
and spent most of the next four and
one-half months crossing the Atlantic,
cramped aboard three ships that were
mere lifeboats by today's standards. The
gentle, seductive breezes and lush first
growth of Spring gave no hint of the coming deadly heat of the summer. The
wildest dreams of a Utopian New World
seemed to be reality: the ideal place to
plant a permanent colony of English people, to find gold and a route to the rich Orient, to convert the natives to Christianity,
and a place to reap profit for their investors,
the Virginia Company of London.
On May 13, the group decided to settle a point of land that was actually an island at very high tide. Although it was a
mere thirty-five miles from the open
ocean, from which the Spanish could
launch an attack, the island still qualified
as a naturally defensible place, with a narrow neck of land to guard against assault
I
••
,,
The author's display of butchered bones (above) tells a grim story of the "starving
time" during the winter of 1609-1610, when only 65 of215 settlers survived.
"Having fed upon horses and other beasts as long as they lasted, we were glad to
made shift with vermin, as dogs, cats, rats and mice, " wrote leader George Percy.
Treegrowth rings (right), narrowed by lack of rain, reveal that drought also
plagued the colony, which probably lead to crop loss.
from the mainland Indians and its naturally hidden location in a sharp bend in
the river. The Virginia Company had instructed them not to upset the Virginia Indians, especially by settling on land they
already occupied. Jamestown Island was
vacant, although they had occupied it in
the not-too-distant past. By 1607 their
cleared land must have evolved into a fairsized grove of straight, tall, second-growth
hardwood trees, ideal for building timber
palisades and blockhouses. These advantages apparently far outweighed the acres
of low-lying marshland the colonists were
warned to avoid and the lack of fresh
water on the island. John Smith deemed
Jamestown Island "a very fit place for the
erecting of a great cittie."
So on May 14, 1607, after a voyage of
more than five months, the colonists who
had survived-104 of them, all menflied ashore. The men fell immediately to
work, clearing the land, building shelters,
preparing gardens, fishing, and fortifYing
themselves despite Company instructions
not to upset the Indians by doing so. Like
Smith, Percy tells of throwing up a brush
fort and establishing a military guard "to
watch and ward."
At first two Paspahegh Indian messengers arrived at the emerging settlement
with news that their werowance, or chief,
would be coming with a gift deer. Four
days later, Percy reports, the werowance
"came ... to ow' quarter" as advertised, but
instead of the deer he brought along "one
hundred salvages armed," a message that
the English soldiers were essentially outnumbered and surrounded. The leader
also "made signs that he would give us as
much land as we would desire," meaning
the 1,600-acreJamestown Island. But the
deal seemed to go sour when one of the
Indians grabbed a soldier's hatchet,
prompting a scuffie in which a native was
struck on the arm. The chief and his warriors left angry.
On May 27, some 200 warriors
launched "a very furious assault to our
fort. .. They cam,e up allmost into the fort,
shott through the tentes." The battle "endured ~ott about an hower," hurting "11
men (whereof one dyed) and killed a Boy.
... We killed divers of them ... how many
hurt we know not." Four of the councilors
were wounded including Bartholomew
Gosnold. Cannon shots from the ship finally "caused the Indians to retire."
The assault turned out to be a wakeup call and Wingfield ordered that the set-
~
WlLYI'ER 2008
47
E[)!NJN
S. GROSVENOR
William Kelso and Mary Anna
Richardson (right) exeauate a
double cellar of a fort building
in the ongoing 14-year dig,
which is visible to visitors and
has unearthed more than a
million artifacts.
a~
8
Swept-hilt
ca
Q~
B
Frog skeletons
throughout upper
layers
c:=J
c=::::::J)
Beads
00
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Tobacco pipe c:::;C>
~
fragments
~
,: Straight pins
'f
f~
i~
Bricks from well shaft were left intact
,
'/
;IOWthiSPoint
.
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o
Deer bones
c~
~
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mechamsm
Watertable
:!i--~ ~pade
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n
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FlagOn.
Bill
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Treasures from a trash bin of history: a drawing
recreates the cross section of a brick-lined 1619 well
(left), which divulged a wealth ~f discarded items.
The bottommost layers contained heavy objects that
perhaps served as counterweights for the water
bucket and fell in by mistake. Later, when the water
turned bad, the colonists used the well as a rubbish
pit. Another well (above), discovered inside the fort,
may be the one that Captain John Smith built in 1608
or 1609 and described in his jou mal.
© RICHMOND
Rope
48
A\\fER1CAl'l
HERITAGE
TlMES'OISPATCH,
USED
W,11-1 PERMISSION.
dement be immediately enclosed with palLater, Captain John Smith claimed
isades, logs set side by side vertically in the
that sixty-seven were dead by September.
ground. Building the fort was no easy task
When the popular Smith took over as the
for such a small number of men, certainly
colony's leader in September+-President
Wingfield having been impeached for alnot the work of lazy men ill-used to physicallabor. Using only hand tools, they cut
legedly hoarding food-he oversaw tl1e
building of some thatched houses. In the
trees into logs probably weighing 800
pounds apiece and dug at least 900 feet of
fall of 1607, a number of emissaries from
trenches to seat them. Almost daily the James River Indian tribes expressed
workmen had to dodge Indian arrows shot
intentions of peace, and every four or
from the surrounding woods and marsh
five days Pocahontas (the great chief
grasses. One worker, Eustace Clovill, paid
Powhatan's daughter, who had befriended
a dear price for "straggling without the
Smith] and her attendants brought the
fort." The snipers shot six arrows into him,
men provisions. Despite these friendly accausing his death in less than a week.
tions, concern for security probably
Recently in our excavations in the
caused the new houses to be built inside
tile
fort.
north corner of the fort, we came across
an artifact-rich area, perhaps a well or celIn January 1608, after two supply
lar, containing broad
ships and 100 fresh
swords, tasset lames
men
arrived from
Jamestown's soil yields
(armor protecting
England, fire seria new picture of the
the thigh), a breast
ously damaged or
settlers' struggles and
plate, and other
destroyed the fort.
armor. This cache
On top of that dissucesses in the earliest
may well indicate
aster, the winter of
years of America
that the colonists
1608
was
one
soon realized that
of "extreme frost."
the heavy metal protection of their home
That winter saw a rash of deaths in which,
country proved too hot and ill-effective
Smith reports, "more than half of us
against Indian arrows. We have also found
died." Despite these hardships, Smith reevidence that the colonists began developports a "rebuilding [of] James Towne,"
which included repairing the partially
ing lighter, more flexible jacks of plate,
with overlapping plates of armor, much
burned palisades, completely rebuilding
better protection against arrows, and quite
the church, and reroofing the storehouse.
similar to the "Dragon Skin" developed by
By summer Smith carried on with his voythe military today.
ages of discovery on Virginia's waterways
In the days that followed, colony
away from Jamestown, with the presumption that the fort had been brought back
leader George Percy chronicled the
in order.
deaths of twenty-five colonists, including councilor Bartholomew Gosnold:
Yet whenever Smith returned to
"Our men were destroyed with cruel
Jamestown from his Company-ordered
diseases as swellings, fluxs, burning
explorations, once in July and again in
fevers, and by wars, and some departed
September 1608, he wrote that he found
suddenly, but for the most part they died
the town in decay and tile people "all sick,
the rest some lame, some bruised-all unof mere famine." V'Vefound a cluster of
able to do anything but complain ... many
22 graves inside the fort, probably these
very same men.
dead, the harvest rotting and nothing
Outside the west wall, we found a sindone." Smith restored discipline in the disorganized and disheartened militia: "the
gle grave, contemporaneous with the
building of the fort. Atop the coffm lay a
whole company every Saturday exercised
spearlike Captain's leading staff, signifying
in the plain by the west bulwark prepared
a ceremonial burial. I believe this is the
for that purpose ... where sometimes more
resting spot of 36-year-old Gosnold, the
than an hundred savages would stand in
amazement to behold how a file would
founding energy behind the colony and
designer of the fort.
batter a tree."
Likely among the audience watching
the troops perform were the first two immigrant women, Mistress Forest and her
maid Anne Burras, who would soon
marry John Laydon, one of the few hearty
survivors of the original 105 settlers. Eight
Numerous pieces of armor have been
found throughout the Fort, including a
breastplate and iron helmet, known as
a cabasset.
At the bottom of the brick well, excavators found a pewter flagon inscribed
with the monogram "R E" under a
large "P" -could Jamestown settlers
Richard and Elizabeth Pierce have
dropped their mug while getting water?
wrr-JTER 2008
49
Chief Powhatan holds court with a tobacco pipe in hand in a detail from john
Smith's A Map of Virginia. Clay pipes (below) probably were the first commercial
products made by European colonists in America. Tobacco saved the jamestown
settlement in 1613 when john Rolfe imported good quality Caribbean seeds;
the subsequent sale of tobacco in London brought desperately needed cash.
Germans had arrived with the supply
ships, brought to make pitch, tar, glass,
mills, and soap ashes, and when the ships
sailed back to England in late 1608, they
carried a cargo of clapboard, pitch and
even glass made inJamestown.
In 1608-9 the "five-square, James
towne" seemed to prosper under Captain
John Smith's strict leadership. That spring,
he instituted a "must work or no food" policy to ensure there would be a harvest. The
men "made a well in the fort of excellent
sweet water which was wanting, built
twenty houses, recovered the church ... and
built a blockhouse in the neck of our isle."
The settlers caught giant sturgeon fish and
harvested various wild roots and fruits. Ac50
AIvlERICAt''l HERITAGE
cording to Smith, "[w]e lived very well."
But not for long. The same summer,
seven of a nine-ship supply flotilla made it
in from England intending to revitalize the
colony. Those ships apparently also
brought individuals who set out to murder
Smith and "to supplant us rather than
supply us." Over two hundred men took
the new supplies away from Jamestown,
going to live elsewhere. When Smith sailed
to the Falls settlement in search of supplies
in the late autumn, he returned with a lifethreatening wound to his thigh caused
when, as he put it, someone "accidentally"
fired his powder bag. He soon decided to
return to England, "seeing there was neither chirurgian nor chirurgery in the fort
to cure his hurt." George Percy was
named president.
The 1609-10 winter that followed became known as the "starving time." A
flotilla of supply ships under the newly appointed lieutenant governor Sir Thomas
Gates failed to arrive, most shipwrecked in
Bermuda. The colonists' livestock was
quickly eaten, including the horses; and
some of their weapons were traded away
for Indian corn. Vvediscovered a pair of
stirrups, probably discarded once the
horses were eaten.
During that brutal winter, Indians besieged the fort. The siege proved so effective that "it is true that the Indians killed as
fast without, if our men stirred but beyond
their bounds of their blockhouse, as
famine and pestilence did within." The Indians withheld even their occasional food
deliveries. One explanation for the trouble
may be the arrival in Jamestown of
twenty women and children on the Blessing in the fall of 1609; perhaps the siege
was the result of these newcomers' presence. It certainly must have sent a strong
signal that what might have been perceived as a small, perhaps temporary allmale trading post was growing into
something quite different: a permanent
settlement of families. Extermination of
the invaders may have appeared to be the
only course of action. Only sixty of the
215 left atJamestown survived.
By spring, the Deliverance and the
Patience, replacements for the governor's
wrecked flagship, the Sea Venture, arrived
from Bermuda to find "the palisades torn
down, the ports open, the gates from off
the[i]r hinges ...and empty houses [some]
rent up and burnt [for firewood] .... [T] he
Indians killed ... our men [if they] stirred
beyond the bounds of their blockhouse."
The supplies brought in from Bermuda
soon disappeared, and the expectation of
resupply from the Indians proved to be
wishful thinking. The situation declined so
badly that Gates ordered an evacuation of
the town. With thirty days' supply, the survivors sailed downriver.
According to one account, Gates
planned to "stay some ten days at Cape
Comfort ... to wait the arrival of a supply
ship." More official accounts say that the
party was in a headlong nonstop retreat
back to England. In any event, not far
downriver the evacuees met an advance
party from the incoming supply fleet of
the new governor, Lord De La Warre. The
group returned to Jamestown and prepared for the arrival of the new governor.
The Virginia Company's goals-to
find a route to the Orient, convert the
ew World natives to Christianity, find
gold, and export raw and manufactured
goods-were
at best only slightly ful-
A smile frozen in time: this Bartmann, or 'bearded man', jug (right), which bears a
fanciful Italian coat of arms, was found at jamestown. Such stoneware vessels were
imported into England from Germany in the 1600s in great quantities. No bigger
than a nickel, a cruxifix of hard coal (below) perhaps gave some comfort to a
beleagured colonist during difficult times.
filled. The hoped-for precious minerals
and short, all-water route to the riches
of the Orient were never found; the native population was far from willing to
embrace the Church of England; and
initial manufacturing projects did not
prove lucrative.
But the introduction of Caribbean tobacco byJohn Rolfe in 1613 did at last establish a cash crop that helped ensure the
survival of the Virginia colony, although
the success of hinterland plantations depleted the jamestown population.
A census around 1624 showed a
total of 1,232 colonists living in Virginia
(at least 120 families) in twenty-nine settlements scattered along the James
River from Hampton Roads to the Falls
near present-day Richmond. Of these,
a total of 121 men, women, and children lived atJamestown. Most of these
1,232 were the lucky survivors of a
massive surprise attack by the Powhatan
Indians that had killed 347 colonists two
years earlier. Jamestown itself had been
spared by an early warning, but the
massacre was the final death blow to
the Virginia Company. The Company
was dissolved and the colony taken over
directly by the Crown.
Although it cannot be
disputed that the
Virginia
Company failed in
Virginia politically as well as
financially, the 1,232
colonists of 1624 did
not call it quits.
They did not go
home, nor were
they "lost" like
their English
predecessors
of the ill-fated Fort
Raleigh Colony. For these survivors,Virginia lived on. Strangely, in defeat
the Virginia Company had suceeded.
Jamestown endured.
A n archaeologist must often practice
J-\.more than one kind of patience. One
September day in 1994 my digging was
interrupted by a pair of British tourists.
"Have you found anything?"
He spoke so earnestly that I felt
compelled to give a serious answer. "Absolutely See this
black stain in the clay?
Well, that's what's left
of
a
1607
fort
wall ... maybe
from
James Fort."
After a moment,
the man's companion said, "You mean
that's it? America,
the last of the
world's superpowers,
began as .. just dirt?"
I thought about it for
a moment.
"Yes, I guess it was
just dirt."
"Shouldn't there have
been a ruined castle or some
marble columns or. .. something real?" she contined.
"No, I just dirt and plenty of
hope," I answered.
"Oh, brilliant!" they said in unison.
"Brilliant indeed."
The archaeologist exploring the beginnings of the United States discovers no
medieval castles, classical templates, or
Egyptian pyramids. 'Just dirt" held out
hopes for the landless immigrant, offering
a way to break into an otherwise closed
society based on the inheritance of
family estates.
'Just dirt" holds out hope to the archaeologist as well. Marks in the soil of
Jamestown Island are the traces of a native
people and English immigrants, evidence
that has survived the ground-disturbing activities of succeeding generations and the
eroding efforts of the adjacent river. So we
dig, in the faith that these traces bear America's richest heritage.
The discovery process at
Jamestown is far from over. Approximately one-half of the interior of the fort
site remains to be excavated, in-depth
analysis of the field data and artifacts has
only begun, and the expanded fort area on
APVA property has only been tested. And,
despite almost three decades of excavation, about 80 percent of the forty-acre
townsite that lies on the National Park
Service property-west of the fort remains
basically unexplored.
Who knows what more exciting
discoveries
will be coaxed
from
the dirt of Jamestown over the next several decades?
Adapted
with
permission
from
jamestown: The Buried Truth (University
of Virginia Press 2006)
WINTER 2008 51