Jamestown: Celebrating 400 years of massacre, slavery and economic disparity.

We attended the 400th anniversary of Jamestown last weekend. Thousands of people walked through its tents and booths, the reconstructed fort and villages, watched the re-enactors and had a good time despite the rain that began late Saturday afternoon.

But when we arrived in the museum, we were treated to a “politically correct” history of Jamestown and the development of the colonies that grew up in the area.

The treatment of the Indians who occupied the area was neutral. No judgment was made about their lifestyle, how they were governed, how they established their “kingdom” and what they did to their neighbors. According to the history you find at Jamestown, Powhatan and his band of noble red men were one with nature and each other. In other words, they were not human.

The settlers, on the other hand, were greedy, grasping despoilers of this virgin land. They virtually wiped the native population out, made them dependent on their trade goods and – in general – raped this virgin land. We are also reminded that they introduced slavery, many times. And finally, they introduced wealth disparity.

At the end of the exhibits, we are rather ashamed that we live in this land and wish that Powhatan could be resurrected so that we could give him his lands back.

Note the emphasis given on the Jamestown web site to what was wrong, wrong, wrong with the European settlement of the New World. Of the 10 subjects covered, four are clearly designed to show us what was wrong with the settlement.

Civics Lessons
Birth of American Democracy: Discourse, Debate and Compromise
Survivor Jamestown: Arrival in Virginia
Pluralism: Influence on Democracy
Great Irony: Denying and Extending Freedom

Interdisciplinary Resources and Lessons
Powhatan Living
Jamestown Economy
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Religion in Jamestown
Indentured Servitude: A Colonial Market for Labor
Slave Narratives: Hardships of Daily Life

And view this “teaching resource” and it’s heavy, heavy emphasis on slavery and indentured service.

Yet, if you visit Jamestown and see the three small ships, one only 66 feet long – the size of a good sized cabin cruiser – forget the propaganda put up at huge cost by the academics who will use even this anniversary to inject poison into our children’s minds. Realize the heroism of those brave men who literally risked their lives crossing the Atlantic in these cockleshells. These men risked everything to come here. They were tough, for the weak would not have come. They were determined to create a new world. And they did, for which we can be eternally grateful.