Monday, June 13, 2011

Back in Time



“History is the memory of time, the life of the dead and the happiness of the living.”
        ---Captain John Smith


Sometimes our trails may take us backwards, back to a time before we know. Before the land was tamed and then destroyed by progress, by development, by careless disregard of our Mother Earth.
This week our trail took us to Colonial Virginia. When I visited in 1975, I was more struck by the emotion of Jamestown than by the reproduction in Williamsburg, although there is much to see and be moved by in the Colonial town. But having recently learned that I descend from pre-Revolutionary Irish settlers along the James River, I was most looking forward to my revisit of Jamestown this trip.


Jamestown owes its existence to two very real and well-documented people, Captain John Smith and the Indian Princess Pocahontas. Whether Pocahontas begged her father to spare the life of Captain Smith depends on whose version of history you read. Captain Smith’s own memoirs recount the story that we’ve heard since elementary school. The Indians who lived on the Virginia land say that she did no such thing.


Regardless, her mingling with the English men who settled on Indian land promoted unity between the two peoples (sometimes) and helped the little settlement survive. That she was held captive for a time is denied by neither side. That she married the Englishman John Rolfe is fact. It’s probably American spirit and nature to romanticize the legend and make it into a happily-ever-after story.
As the last time I visited, I feel that I tread on sacred ground when I walk along the James. It’s a short path, meandering from the waterfront to encircle the ruins that have been found there. In effort to preserve the actual foundations, modern brickwork has been laid atop them to mark the boundaries of buildings.  So one does not actually see small homes where English settlers scratched out a living. But the suggestion of the buildings is enough (for me, at least) to imagine all that I do not see.


No matter what happened here – and we will never know for sure – it is certain that Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement. And as such Jamestown is the birthplace of our nation. The spot from which all English civilization grew.


It’s a pretty and pleasant path, despite the summer heat that drenched us yesterday. We still enjoyed the quiet, the small breeze, the gentle lapping of the James against the shore.
Very nearby is the spot where the ruins of a 1608 Glasshouse have been found which would have served the settlement, producing all manner of glass items. The path leading to the ruins is very short but really nice with a canopy of trees providing welcome relief from the heat and sun. Again, it’s quiet and peaceful.


It was not a long nor strenuous trail we hiked this week. But sometimes it really is the destination and not the journey. Discover history. Visit Jamestown. It is for certain that Pocahontas lived there. When you walk along the James, you walk in her footsteps.   

No comments:

Post a Comment