Dear Mr. Dixon,
  Your comments were not outdated, and I apologize to you if
my ''proposal' inadvertently left a different impression. I join you in
thinking that Jim Horn's book did a good job of portraying Virginia's Native
Americans as full participants in Jamestown story - as your comment
indicates and as other up-to-date scholarship about European-Native
American interaction in Virginia and other colonies confirms.  We've both
_read_ his book (and maybe Kelso's as well) : my modest proposal was simply
meant to suggest that if VA-HIST was going to witness a debate about
Jamestown, participants might wish to base their comments on a similar
familiarity with all that has been learned about Jamestown in recent years.
For those who may not want to read a book, the APVA's new archearium at
Jamestown Island stands as remarkable testimony to the ways that 15 years of
archaeological excavations by Kelso and his team have transformed our
knowledge of the early decades of the first settlement.

   As to the 400th anniversary weekend events . . . I enjoyed a few things :
watching visitors discover the Jamestowne Rediscovery project of Bill Kelso
and his team . . . the splendid closing fireworks that
eclipsed the embarrassingly horrible pageant that preceded them . . . the
organizers' remarkably effective job transporting attendees to and
from satellite parking areas . . . . and someday I'll be able to tell
my grandchildren that I saw Queen Elizabeth II in person.  However, having
forecast my skepticism about the viability of big anniversary events (in a
2004 address to the Association of State and Local History published as "A
Noble Bargain and its Centenaries," *History News* (Winter 2005), 7-9), in
general I think the 400th anniversary events confirmed my hunches.  But
that's a tangent we needn't explore here.

  We differ on some things, sir.  But you "do your homework," I respect your
informed opinions, and I did not inadvertently to suggest otherwise.

Warmest personal regards,
Jon --
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com <http://www.jonkukla.com/>
 On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 3:25 PM, [log in to unmask] <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Jon

"Outdated notions"? Your suggestion is so "modest" I fail to grasp it.
Perhaps it is just me. Does Horn change "outdated notions"? I read him as
detailing the English struggle to establish a viable community in a new and
hostile land. It was a land already occupied by a native people who waged a
bloody resistance until forced away by the increasing influx of more
settlers. Horn has very little to say about the Africans since his account
ends before they had a significant presence. We know that it was another 40
before statutes began to address slave issues. However, the message that
promulgated by the 400th Reunion was that three cultures "came together" to
start America.

Richard E. Dixon
> [Original Message]
> From: Jon Kukla <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 10/28/2008 5:35:23 PM
> Subject: [VA-HIST] A modest suggestion about Jamestown

> > > Before the fisticuffs erupt over outdated notions of what happened at
> > Jamestown, would it be too much to hope that potential combatants
> > might actually inform themselves about the remarkable story uncovered
> > there over the past decade ?  Two good places to start would be
> >
> > Kelso, William M.    Jamestown, the buried truth /    Charlottesville :
> > University of Virginia Press, 2006.
> >
> > Horn, James     A land as God made it :   Jamestown and the birth of

> America /    New York : Basic Books, c2005.
> > -- > Jon Kukla
> > www.JonKukla.com <http://www.jonkukla.com/>
>

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