#54 Jamestown and the Powhatans Part 1
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2022
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In late December, 1606, in London’s River Thames, three small ships were anchored awaiting a voyage across the Atlantic. Those three ships were the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, and they would take 105 men and boys to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay to establish the Virginia Company’s southern colony. They would plunge into a complex geopolitical morass that would very nearly destroy the venture. This episode looks at the context for the expedition that would become Jamestown, including especially the rise of the powerful Powhatan confederacy that would be waiting there when the English arrived, and prepared by a long-ago confrontation with the Spanish to confront the newcomers .
Selected resources for this episode
Carl Bridenbaugh, Jamestown, 1544-1699
Charlotte M. Gradie, “Spanish Jesuits in Virginia: The Mission That Failed”
James Horn, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America
James Horn, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America
David Price, Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 54. |
| 0:11.4 | I am your host, Jack Heneman. |
| 0:13.7 | And I'm recording this episode on January 6, 2022, in an only modestly secure undisclosed location in New Orleans. |
| 0:23.7 | Actually, it's the closet off the bedroom, which does a passable job of blocking out the |
| 0:28.9 | train whistles, riverboat claxons, birdies, jet engines, and the dude next door who plays music |
| 0:35.4 | loudly and proudly. |
| 0:43.1 | Crucial support for the writing of this episode was provided by the Cuban Creation cigar bar on Toulouse Street in the French Quarter, which I quite recommend if you like that sort of thing. |
| 0:49.8 | If you are new to the podcast, which with today's episode begins its second year, |
| 0:55.8 | we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States |
| 0:59.9 | from the beginning without presentism. |
| 1:03.3 | The best way to support what we are doing here is to tell your friends, |
| 1:07.2 | either the old-fashioned way or on your social propaganda website of choice. |
| 1:14.7 | Well, we're truly on our way to Jamestown, which I've been telegraphing since roughly June. |
| 1:21.0 | As I've mentioned before, I had originally assumed that the podcast series would begin with |
| 1:25.8 | Jamestown. So the first books I read when I |
| 1:29.1 | decided to do this in October 2020 were two of the recent more accessible volumes on the colony. |
| 1:36.1 | Then, even when I thought to begin the series before Columbus, I wrote out a rough schedule |
| 1:41.8 | that took me forward to Jamestown by some point last June or July. |
| 1:46.5 | Following my muse, though, was treacherous. |
| 1:49.6 | I kept finding other things I wanted to talk about along the way. |
| 1:53.4 | Got a little enamored of Francis, Drake, and the next thing you know, we've done 53 episodes of the history of the Americans |
| 2:00.0 | before the Susan |
... |
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