Jamestown Settlement, Jamestown, Virginia, USA

Jamestown Settlement is the State of Virginia's living history museum and offers a recreation/reenactment of the 17th century life and events.

It includes a Powhatan Indian village recreation.

Inside view of one of the imagined living huts.

The structures were covered with woven marsh grasses.

A costumed re-enactor weaving a basket in the sunshine on a cold winter's day.

This is the style of the three ships that sailed from England in 1607. Following the prevailing ocean currents, they sailed from London via the Canary Islands, the Caribbean Islands, and then to Virginia. The Susan Constant was the largest of the three and carried 54 passengers and 17 crew. It was 116 feet long - for perspective that's about one and a half tennis courts long! The passengers were mostly kept below deck to stay out of the way of the working crew. Imagine that - stuck below deck in a VERY SMALL space in close quarters on a heaving, rolling ocean for four months. And today we complain about being uncomfortable on an airplane for a few hours - get a grip.

The colonists constructed the James Fort to protect themselves from raids by the Spanish or local native population. They used the typical thatch construction still in use in parts of England today.

And the pecking, squawking, scrabbling chickens were underfoot as well.

I always like to romanticize the "discovery" of the New World but, it was more accurately about making money. The colonies were principally economic ventures - to bring back goods to make money for the London companies who sponsored (paid for) the trip. Even the "passengers" were simply employees of the company.   It turned out tobacco was the mother lode of the New World for the Virginia colonies - not gold, gems, or other riches. Ironic that four hundred years later tobacco has become the evil weed in this country.
  Go figure.