A LAND AS GOOD MADE IT Jamestown & the Birth of America

A LAND AS GOOD MADE IT Jamestown & the Birth of America

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Start time	06/20/2008
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Horn, who heads the library at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, offers a history that will put Plymouth in its place. Not only was Jamestown settled before Plymouth, in 1607, but, says Horn, it was the seedbed of many themes, both glorious (representative government) and tragic (imperialism), that run through American history. In this detailed narrative of Jamestown's first 18 years, Horn focuses primarily on the relationship between the English settlers and the Native Americans. (He gives disappointingly scant attention to the first Africans' arrival in 1619.) Jamestown was the first English colony in North America to succeed; that success was "disastrous" for the Indians. The town leader John Smith figures prominently in Horn's tale. Smith's own written recollection of his captivity by Indians is the source for the well-known story that a young Pocahontas saved his life; Horn dismisses Smith's account as implausibly exaggerated. In Horn's view, a pivotal point in Indian-Anglo relations was the Powhatan uprising of 1622. Any hope that the English might partner with the Indians against Spain and treat them with kindness or justice was killed—thereafter, the settlers were determined to exclude the Indians from their new commonwealth. 12 b&w illus., 6 maps. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. A meticulous history of Jamestown, covering its start in 1607 to the final, failed Indian effort to destroy it in 1622, Horn's cautious work tends to be averse to drawing conclusions. Readers seeking inspiration or indignation, as the case may be, from this origin story of America are apt to be stymied by Horn's pursuit of objectivity. He adheres to an event-by-event reconstruction built from contemporary sources (such as John Smith's accounts), which is certainly a justifiable approach. Only faintly present, however, are the abstract motivations of the colonizing project, such as religion. Horn mentions this but is focused, as Smith was, on the immediate, not the millenarian. This often meant obtaining food from the local paramount chief, Wahunsonacock, and Horn's conceptions about the chief's strategies for ridding his lands of the intruding English strengthen this presentation. Popular myths about Pocahontas, the chief's daughter, saving Smith's life fall before Horn's analysis, as does Smith's stature as the colony's dominant leader. Possessing Jamestown's inherent drama, this is a solid rendition of the saga. Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved