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Looks like there’s a show on PBS tonight that would interest many of us:
Thanks PappyDick for the heads up about the show. I liked it. Very informative; especially the archaeology. It was interesting to note the surname of one of the persons interviewed… a Chickahominy woman named Wynn. The Wynn surname is found among the Coharie also. I also noted the surname of Richardson as one of the female (Chickahominy ?) chiefs. The surname Richardson is also quite prevalent among the Haliwa-Saponi.
Thanks, PappyDick. I’d forgotten when this was on. Thanks to your post I was able to watch this very informative program.
I thought it was quite interesting. And found it very interesting that there were sometimes women chiefs, and that indeed, there is a current woman chief.
I also found it interesting that in just a very quick blip it showed a woman who had what looked like her face was tattooed. The blip was only about a second or so. Can’t remember right now if it was a character in the show or a picture. Think it was a picture. Anyway. It is of special interest to me because one of our female relatives had face tattoos back in the 1800’s. 🙂
I taped it, but I hope someone didn’t tape over it. I’ll have to watch it again when I can take more time to really look at it.
I really liked the achaeology…how they took Smith’s writings and tied it into their findings. For an hour long program, it was well done.
Did anybody notice the throw-away line that there were an “estimated” (didn’t say by whom) fifty Indian women living with the (all male) Jamestown colonists? Of whom I think there were just 104 — some being boys, and many being soon dead. Sounds like almost every straight adult English male left was cohabiting, the first year. Plecker would just hate that.
The fifty may have been over a longer period, in which case there were more than 104 colonists — but, still.
PappyDick wrote: Did anybody notice the throw-away line that there were an “estimated” (didn’t say by whom) fifty Indian women living with the (all male) Jamestown colonists? Of whom I think there were just 104 — some being boys, and many being soon dead. Sounds like almost every straight adult English male left was cohabiting, the first year. Plecker would just hate that.
The fifty may have been over a longer period, in which case there were more than 104 colonists — but, still.
…Imagine how many mixed bloods came from those relationships…:)
Yes, and there was a letter of complaint sent to the King asking to send English women because of the high rate of intermarriage/cohabiting.
PappyDick wrote: Did anybody notice the throw-away line that there were an “estimated” (didn’t say by whom) fifty Indian women living with the (all male) Jamestown colonists?
Oh yeah, that comment jumped out. Makes one wonder how many of the next 2 or 3 Jamestown inhabitants DIDN’T have Indian blood.
I was thinking about the FFVs. First Families of Virginia. That’s an organization, persons nominally of English colonial descent — but, don’t capitalize it, and just look at the words: if the first English colonists to Virginia were all guys, and their womenfolk were all Indians, then the first “families” were all mixed race.
(This of course still falls back on the debatable notion that the arrival of Europeans is the dawn of time.)
I remember reading that quote somewhere on the internet and didn’t have the sense enough to write it down, now I can’t find it. I also recall something being said about some English women living in a nearby Indian village and being treated well. Did the documetary say what year this quote was atributed to, since English women came some years after the men.
I’m also wondering if the mixed race children married back within colonial society, if these kids were batized and raised christain, they would have had only English names in the records. The pattern of early colonial settlers having kids with (not necessarily legaly marrying) indians was followed through out the west, many descendents of early settlers in the northwest and British columbia trace to native blood, the big difference between here and Jamestown is that many more of the records survive to proove it.
One of my ancestors born in VA in the 1830’s told all her kids and grandkids that her Indian people met the first boats, maybe she wasn’t exagerating.
spilleddi wrote: I’m also wondering if the mixed race children married back within colonial society, if these kids were batized and raised christain, they would have had only English names in the records.
This, of course, is what makes genealogy in early Virginia and the Carolinas such a challenge.
DAJ42 wrote: This, of course, is what makes genealogy in early Virginia and the Carolinas such a challenge.
What would make the genealogical search even more interesting if not impossible is if the Jamestown male joined the tribal unit, taking another name. Moreover, say this cohabitation did not end in marriage…the various possibilities are numerous.
Shirley
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