Introduction
The Jamestown narrative, an icon in American colonial history, is so familiar that school children master the outline by the third grade. The colony is founded by a joint stock company and saved from ruin by the heroic exploits of Captain John Smith, aided by Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan. She brings food to the starving colonists, converts to Christianity, and marries John Rolfe who plants tobacco. With the introduction of tobacco the colony enters a new phase of development. The region becomes a prosperous monoculture in less than a decade.

In the narrative opening chapter 1, Heyrman shifts the focus from a European perspective to Powhatan's. Our Web activities expand the dynamics of this point of view. Research links take the settlement experience beyond the Chesapeake to acquire information on the rice and sugar plantation economies of the Carolinas and the Caribbean, introduce the trans-Atlantic culture of the early slave trade, and note events in the Spanish borderlands.

Web Activities
1.  First view John Smith's Map of Virginia, 1612 by going to Virtual Jamestown: The Original Maps (click to enlarge). In what ways does this map differ from the above representation of early Jamestown (Nation of Nations Concise, 3e, 37)? How is Chief Powhatan portrayed in each? What topographical features and images does Smith stress on his map?

  Next, take an excursion through the following Jamestown sites. Keep in mind the evaluation criteria listed in the Overview:

• Virtual Jamestown, a Virginia Center for Digital History project. 
• Jamestown Fort: Rediscovered an exhibit jointly sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. 
• The Virginia Company was a joint stock corporation. What do the seals shown on this site tell you about the purpose of the venture? Where have you seen these seals before and for what purpose?
• In what way does the information on these sites either reinforce or challenge you to rethink traditional accounts?
• What does examining current evidence of the Jamestown settlement tell you about life in the Colonial South?

2.  Review the Pocahontas Myth as portrayed by the modern Powhatan Nation. How does this version contradict traditional accounts?

•  Read John Rolfe's letter to Governor Thomas Dale written after his marriage to Powhatan's daughter. How does Rolfe frame his argument to the governor in order to legitimize his marriage to Pocahontas?
• Images of Pocahontas have been repeatedly refashioned. Read Pocahontas: Icon at the Crossroads of Race and Gender in America. Next, view John Chapman's Baptism of Pocahontas at Jamestown, Virginia (1840), in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. What did Pocahontas represent to nineteenth century Americans? How has her image been reconstructed today? 

3. The demand for tobacco made the Chesapeake colonies prosperous mono-cultures in less than a decade. What were the consequences for Indian people, the Virginia Company, and indentured servants? Visit the New York Public library exhibit DRY DRUNK: The Culture of Tobacco in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. Go to the Great Debate. Why did James I want to ban tobacco? Was it in the crown's best interest to do so?

4.  Go to the Read Indentured Servitude in Colonial America. Note the relationship between cash crop tobacco and determination of a labor system.

5. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School has an extensive collection of documents in law, history and diplomacy online. Go to Colonial Charters, Grants and Related Documents (alphabetical order) and review some of the founding colonial charters in order to trace changes in colonization objectives over time. Scroll down to Letters Patent to Sir Humfrey Gylberte, June 11, 1578, read the first two paragraphs. Next go to the First Charter of Virginia; April 10, 1606, read the second and fourth paragraphs. Finally read sections of the Charter of Georgia, 1732. Skim through the documents noting any key difference in the purpose of each.

• Based on the rights and privileges granted, what does the Crown presume about the new lands? 
• What is the extent of the land claimed? 
• In addition to the monarchs issuing the Charters, what changes do you find in the directives issued? 
• What assumptions do successive monarch make about indigenous people in the documents? 

Additional Research Links

Rice and Sugar Plantation Economies of the Carolinas and the Caribbean 

• By the early eighteenth century plantation economies dominate the colonial south; tobacco in the Chesapeake, rice in the Carolinas, sugar in the Caribbean. Read "The Rise of the Georgetown Rice Culture" by Christopher C. Boyle
• Go to History of Sugar Consumption. What was its effect on the demography of colonial America?
• The growth of plantation economies created sugar factories in the French and English Caribbean colonies, and Portuguese Brazil. Consumer demand led Europeans to turn to African slave labor to grow sugar. To explore the relationship of sugar and slavery go to The Sugar and Slave Trades on the European Voyages tutorial.
• View Shipping Sugar from Antigua at the Greenwich, England, National Maritime Museum's exhibit of online maritime prints.
• For additional information on the significance of sugar and tobacco, as trade products visit the Trade Products in Early Modern History site created by the James Ford Bell Library and the History Department at the University of Minnesota. The site also provides information on the fur trade, spices, indigo and tea, among others.
• See Adam Smith's views on The Principle of the Mercantile System, 1776, from The Internet Modern History Sourcebook located at the History Department, Fordham University, New York,

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• See "Slavery Before the Trans-Atlantic Trade," reached by following links within Peopling North America: Population Movements & Migration (the University of Calgary site you visited in chapter 1), to "The African Migrations to the New World" in five parts, including Patterns of Migration and Settlement.
• Explore more on the relationship between Sugar and Slave Trades, scroll down to view information on the Middle Passage.
• The Resource Bank for The Terrible Transformation section of the PBS series Africans in America has many useful links to both primary and secondary materials including, Arrival of First Africans to Virginia Colony.
• A site The Human Market provides a brief look at the market on the Slave Coast.

Spanish Borderlands

• Read Harry J. Brown, Lehigh University, "Theodor de Bry's Grand Voyages to America" (1593) in order to see how de Bry's plan to promote Protestant colonization, and to denounce Catholic colonization, contributed to the Black Legend.
• To further understand the Black Legend, visit the Viewers & The Viewed section of the "Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas" exhibit sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Library. 
• The National Archives and Records Administration exhibit, American Originals II, features Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763). The section includes "Exploring the Southwest: Don Diego de Vargas." 
• The "Presidios Of Alta California" site created by Sasha Honig, Bakersfield College, examines the four Spanish presidios (military forts) strategically placed along the California coast. 
• A visit to the Spanish missions in Texas site suggests not only the difference in colonization along New Spain's northern frontier, but the function of presidio and mission. See San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, History, and the page San Antonio Missions: Spanish Influence in Texas. 
• Cabeza da Vaca is a project by the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Southwest Texas State University and The Witte Museum in San Antonio presenting the 1555 Relación of Cabeza de Vaca. 
• See also The Problem of Conquest: Revisited, A Revised Discussion by Charles W. Polzer, S.J., stressing the Spanish colonial political implications of the Relación.