Very interesting, thanks for posting this. I mostly agree. History  
had to be broadened and made more equitable [I shake my head at some  
of the things we were taught in Richmond Public Schools] , but it  
seems that in many ways it has gone too far. I can willingly  
acknowledge my many failing to my fellow humans, the times I've been  
stupid and careless, those I have hurt, but please, can I celebrate  
my birthday without carrying around a total guilt package? I am more  
than the compendium of my sins. As are we all. Hair shirts are never  
productive garments to wear 24/7.

Nancy

-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

--Daniel Boone



On Mar 2, 2007, at 4:32 PM, Jurretta J. Heckscher wrote:

> From another listserv. . . .
>
>
>
> EDWARD ROTHSTEIN  |  Exhibition Review  The New York Times, Mar. 2,  
> 2007
>
> Captain Smith, the Tides Are Shifting on the James
>
>
> JAMESTOWN, Va. - At the banks of the James River here, not far from  
> where an
> archaeological dig has found pottery shards and remains of settlers  
> from 400
> years ago, a proud Capt.  John Smith faces the waters and the  
> setting sun. A
> wooden stockade extends near the shoreline - the water has moved  
> inland over
> the centuries - showing where his frail fort once stood. But Smith  
> stands
> heroically tall, his bronze cape seeming to ripple in the brisk winter
> winds. Even the inscription proclaims his importance: "Governor of  
> Virginia,
> 1608."
>
>
>
> Governor? Virginia? At the time Jamestown consisted of a paltry  
> isolated
> settlement of several dozen souls, with disease, starvation and  
> battles with
> local Indian tribes regularly claiming almost as many lives as    
> Virginia
> Company could send in delayed relief ships from England, the funds  
> raised
> from wary investors. But the Smith statue does give an accurate  
> sense of the
> scale of the leadership, strategic thinking, ruthlessness and  
> courage Smith
> demonstrated during the brief period (not even two years) he led  
> that first
>   English  colony in the Americas - qualities reflected in his own  
> memoirs
> and other accounts (many of which are about to be republished by  
> the Library
> of America). Nearby, offering further testimony to Jamestown's  
> grandeur, a
> giant obelisk stands, erected, like   the statue, a century ago, as  
> part of
> the tercentennial celebrations of the founding.
>
>
>
> But now, two months before the 400th anniversary festivities  
> begin , the
> monumental hardly matters anymore, and neither, it seems, does John  
> Smith.
> Other kinds of commemoration have been prepared. It isn't that  
> Jamestown is
> being treated as less important: it is still regarded as the place  
> where the
> DNA of a  nation was first laid out, where, in 1607, England  
> established an
> early beachhead against the expanding empires of Spain and Portugal  
> and so
> determined the main language we  speak and many of the ideas we share.
>
>
>
> But a different understanding is made explicit here in the two  
> historical
> museums and outdoor facilities devoted to the Jamestown theme.  
> Jamestown
> Settlement, run by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation (a state  
> agency), was
> established in 1957   just before the 350th anniversary so the nearby
> historical site would not be disrupted with the Settlement's outdoor
> "living-history" demonstrations, costumed guides, period crafts and
> reproductions of the Jamestown fort, an Indian village and the  
> three ships
> that brought the first group of 104 men and boys to these shores. In
> October, Jamestown Settlement added a major 30,000-square-foot  
> exhibition
> hall  to its  new visitors' center, telling  an unusually detailed  
> history
> of the area through the 17th century.
>
>
>
> Meanwhile the original site, now called Historic Jamestowne, is  
> part of the
> Colonial National Historical Park and jointly run by the National Park
> Service and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia  
> Antiquities. It
> incorporates the monuments of past tributes  -  the statue, the  
> obelisk, a
> memorial church  -  but has just added a modest historical  
> exhibition in its
> visitors' center, and, last spring, opened a 7,500-square-foot  
> museum  -
> the Archaearium  -  devoted to the Jamestown artifacts unearthed by  
> the
> on-site excavations, ranging from cooking utensils and weapons to  
> bones and
> coins.
>
>
>
> These exhibitions are ambitious and often informative, particularly  
> the
> Settlement's, and provide much of the detail needed to begin to  
> understand
> Jamestown. Yet a price is paid for the latest in museumware and  
> historical
> thinking:   One isn't quite sure what is being celebrated or why,  
> or whether
> in fact a celebration is even occurring.
>
>
>
> The exhibition created by the Park Service, for example, repeats  
> the classic
> tribute: "Jamestown's notable legacies include the introduction of
> representative government, English culture and heritage, and  
> Protestant
> religion,"    all of which had an impact on the evolution of  
> Virginia and
> the other colonies. But those legacies also include conflicts with  
> Indians
> and the introduction of "race-based slavery."  These   matters, once
> considered secondary,   have become central.  Now Jamestown is seen  
> as the
> precursor  to  "a multicultural society grappling with a legacy of  
> slavery
> and racism."
>
> Another panel emphasizes the point:
>
>
>
> "Past Jamestown anniversaries were referred to as 'celebrations.'  
> Because
> many facets of Jamestown's history are not cause for celebration,  
> like human
> bondage and the displacement of Virginia Indians, the Jamestown 400th
> Anniversary is referred to as the Jamestown 2007 Commemoration."  
> Throughout
> this introductory exhibition Jamestown is not the beleaguered  
> settlement
> cheered on against all odds, but is a hothouse laboratory for  
> conflict,
> oppression and perhaps accommodation.
>
>
>
> A similar, though slightly less polemical, vision suffuses the major
> Settlement exhibition, with its artifacts, textual panels, statues and
> dioramas. (Thomas E. Davidson was the curator and Gallagher &  
> Associates the
> designers. ) When the institution was founded 50 years ago,  
> accompanying
> exhibitions were about Virginia's British heritage and great  
> achievements by
> Virginians. Now the theme is: "Three Cultures, One Century: America's
> Story." Jamestown becomes archetypal not because it laid the  
> foundations for
> British influence on American political culture, eventually enshrining
> notions of rights and representation, but because it established a  
> pattern
> of conflict with Indians and enslavement of Africans  -  something  
> that is
> here homogenized into a more vague multicultural interaction.
>
>
>
> The first major galleries are devoted to the three cultures. They  
> include
> descriptions of local Indian tribes (largely based on Smith's  
> writings)
> accompanying a life-size diorama of a forest hunt; a depiction of West
> Central African ways of life with a diorama  showing a man smoking  
> outside a
>  hut,  a world from which the first blacks in Virginia had been  
> wrested; and
> a depiction of an Elizabethan-era London street. The Indians, we  
> read, were
> "in harmony with the land that sustained them" and formed an  
> "advanced,
> complex society of families and tribes." English society  -  the  
> society
> that gave us the King James Bible and Shakespeare along with  
> stirrings of
> democratic argument  -  is described as offering "limited  
> opportunity" in
> which a "small elite" were landowners; in London, we are told,  
> "life was
> difficult," with social dislocation, low wages, unemployment, etc.
>
>
>
> True enough about England, except for the lack of perspective and  
> the whiffs
> of implied equivalence between vastly different universes. Less  
> true with
> its idea of an "advanced complex society" of Powhatans: all human  
> societies,
> even agrarian ones, are complex in their methods of organization;  
> in this
> case there is little information to suggest much more among these  
> 30 warring
> tribes bound by a strong ruler's conquest. The overall impact of this
> three-culture mélange is only to diminish a visitor's sense of  
> English culture.
>
>
>
> But finally the depiction of the three cultures begins to seem  
> irrelevant,
> because it is never really shown that "it is from the interaction  
> of these
> different cultural traditions that 17th century Virginia society  
> was born."
>
> In what way, for example, apart from name places and types of food,  
> was
> Powhatan culture a major influence on Virginia society? The  
> continued state
> of conflict with the Indians was a major influence, in which  
> negotiations,
> accommodations and episodes of trade were punctuated with battle. That
> conflict was not a simple matter. It was a confrontation between  
> alien and
> opposing cultures possessing unequal powers,  a conflict that has
> accompanied most cultures' migratory histories, from ancient times  
> to our own.
>
>
>
> As for the influence of West Central African culture, with its  
> described
> political hierarchies, and its own internal history of enslavement  
> through
> conquest (referred to in the exhibition's text), it is also  
> difficult to see
> just how Angolan or Kongo culture shaped  early-17th-century  
> Virginia. Even
> in later years the cultures created by American slaves are not  
> replications
> of African cultures but distant echoes of it,  something hinted at  
> in one of
> the exhibition's later galleries.
>
>
>
> During the entire formative period of Jamestown  -  from 1607  
> through 1619,
> when the nature of the settlement was established and its economy  
> finally
> began to find a footing with the growing of tobacco  -  there were no
> Africans in Virginia at all. The first black chattel servants were  
> brought
> to Jamestown during that latter year almost by accident, just as
> representative democracy was also being established. These unfortunate
> 20-some prisoners were looted during a piratical English attack on a
> Portuguese slave ship. Systematic slavery doesn't appear to begin in
> Virginia for decades.
>
>
>
> So the idea of mutual interaction is not too convincing. Still,  
> there is
> much to learn in the exhibition's unfolding: it touches on the  
> European
> drive for colonial power, on sea navigation, the establishment of  
> Jamestown,
> the story of Pocahontas, conflicts with Indians, the discovery of  
> tobacco as
> a major source of income leading to the development of Virginia's  
> gentlemen
> farmers (and the drive toward the importation of slaves), the  
> evolution of
> Virginia's legislature. But John Smith's extraordinary interactions  
> with the
> Powhatan chief  -  matching him as a wary warrior and negotiator   
> -  are not
> explored. The dominant statues in the exhibition galleries are of the
> Powhatan rulers, Wahunsonacock and Opechancanough, along with the  
> African
> Ndongo ruler, Queen Njinga, who fought against the Portuguese and  
> from whose
> lands the first blacks brought to America were pulled.
>
>
>
> So what exactly is being celebrated here? A closing gallery makes some
> suggestions: "Principles of Law and Justice," "Exploration and  
> Discovery,"
> "Representative Government." But also "Displacement of Indigenous  
> People"
> and "Servitude and Injustice." What a change from the Tercentennial  
> when
> Jamestown was the symbol of America's birth and President Theodore
> Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington spoke. On the 350th
> anniversary Queen Elizabeth II made her first royal trip to the United
> States,  and she is expected to come this time as well. But what  
> will she
> find? Not the triumph of British influence, but the triumph of  
> ambiguity,
> discomfort and vague multiculturalism.
>
>
>
> Of course much has changed in 50 years; much had to. Those 1957  
> celebrations
> themselves provided evidence of the sins of the past: the Virginia  
> Chamber
> of Commerce withdrew some invitations to festivities after it found  
> out they
> were sent to distinguished Virginians who happened to be black.   
> Clearly too
> it is impossible to understand Jamestown without understanding the  
> fate of
> Indian tribes. And, despite its flaws, the Settlement's exhibition  
> does much
> to spur a greater understanding of Jamestown.
>
>
>
> But the impulse to commemorate rather than celebrate is a sign of how
> rigidly the Jamestown affair and its aftermath are now being  
> seen.   And
> unfortunately an  extraordinary culture  unable to celebrate itself  
> and its
> past,  with all  its  imperfections and failings,   is not  likely  
> to have a
> clear vision of the present and future.
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the  
> instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html