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The Glenn Beck Program
From Columbus to Jamestown: America's Messy Origins | The American Story | Ep 1
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Glenn Beck
Hello America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you right now. Would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast? Give us five stars and leave a comment. Because every single review helps us break through Big Tech's algorithm to to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement. And you're part of it.
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Narrator
A big part of it.
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Glenn Beck
So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up. Help us push this podcast to the top rate Review Share Together we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us.
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Narrator
Now, let's get to work. It started with a shovel. May 1831, Fall River, Massachusetts. A woman digs into the side of a sandy embankment. The earth collapses just enough to reveal bones. They're not scattered like an accident. They're arranged. Intentional. She clears more sand. And there he is. A human skeleton, partially wrapped in bark cloth, seated upright, legs doubled back so the thighs are parallel to the chest, almost as if posed across his sternum is a triangular brass breastplate. Around his waist, a belt not made of leather or rope, but multiple brass tubes, each the length of a man's hand, arranged close together like something you'd find in armory or costume chest. Beside him are several arrowheads made of copper or brass. In 1831, America doesn't have CSI. There's no chain of custody, no forensic pathologist on call. So. So they do what you do in a 19th century New England mill town. They put the skeleton on display in a glass case at the local library. For 12 years, the skeleton draws gawkers and scholars, and one very famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow stares at the relics and imagines Vikings. He writes a poem, the Skeleton in armor, about a 10th century Scandinavian explorer who sailed far from home, only to die here on this sandy hill in America. Other visitors spin wilder theories about the skeleton. He was a Phoenician trader, an Egyptian sailor, a traveler from Asia who crossed the Pacific long before Columbus. One historian in the late 1800s insists this is the body of Thorval, the brother of Viking explorer Leif Erikson, brought down by a poisoned arrow around the year 1000. It was all mostly speculation, of course, but it was speculation fueled by two other curiosities located not far from Fall, the carved petroglyphs of Dighton Rock and the stone Newport Tower. The petroglyphs inscribed on a 40 ton boulder have never been translated. Were the images Native American, Viking, or something else entirely? Newport Tower is a round stone tower, likely the remains of a windmill built in the 1600s. But there are plenty of other theories about origins. Viking, Chinese, Portuguese, even the knights Templar. Then, July 2, 1843, the great fire of Fall river destroys most of downtown, including the skeleton in armor. Only a few remnants survived the flames, including two brass tubes that today sit in a museum at Harvard University. Much later, historians decide that the skeleton in armor was most likely Native American, one who had traded with Europeans, thus the brass breastplate and belt. But the void of definitive evidence leaves fertile soil for legends to grow. The truth of the skeleton in armor we may never know. America's ancient beginning is mysterious. It provokes wonder. But the origin of liberty in America, well, that's easier to trace but no less astonishing. In exploring that story, there is one constant described so well by George Bancroft, known as the father of American history. In a speech to Congress in 1866,
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Glenn Beck
he said that God rules in the
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Narrator
affairs of men is as certain as any truth of physical science. Nothing is by chance, though men in their ignorance of causes, may think so. This is the American story the Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 1 From Columbus to Jamestown America's messy origins, Context. It's essential in history, but it's sometimes conveniently ignored by historians with an agenda. So we need to rewind a little bit. Before Jamestown, before Plymouth Rock, before there's even the faintest idea of a United States, there was one man, three small ships and a bet that the whole world had been looking at the map all wrong. In a biography titled the Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus, Columbus's son Ferdinand described his father.
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Ferdinand Columbus
The Admiral was a well built man of of more than average stature. The face long, the cheeks somewhat high, his body neither fat nor lean. He had an aquiline nose and light colored eyes. His complexion too was light and tending to bright red. In his youth his hair was blond, but when he reached the age of 30, it all turned white. In eating and drinking and in adornment of his person, he was very moderate and modest. He was affable in conversation with strangers and very pleasant to the members of his household, though with a certain gravity. He was so strict in matters of religion that for fasting and saying prayers he might have been Taken for a member of a religious order,
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Narrator
Christopher Columbus is not out to prove the earth is round. He isn't worried about the ships that might sail over the edge of the world. That's a myth. By 1480, educated Europeans already know the globe is spherical. What Columbus wants is a shortcut, a western sea route to Asia, bypassing the Muslim controlled choke points on land. For Columbus, the quest is much more than gold or spices. In his journal he says he wants
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to quote, bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathens.
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He spends nearly a decade pitching his plan like a 15th century startup founder in search of seed money.
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Glenn Beck
Portugal?
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Narrator
Hard pass. England? No, thank you. France? Dream on. You see, the experts say his math is bad. He's underestimating how far it is to Asia. Here's how Columbus later himself describes his motivation. In spite of all of the rejection,
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it was the Lord who put into my mind. I could feel his hand upon me the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because he comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus desired to perform a very obvious miracle in the voyage to the Indies to comfort me and the whole people of God. I spent seven years in the royal court discussing the matter with many persons of great reputation and wisdom in all the arts. And in the end they concluded that it was all foolishness. So they gave it up. No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Savior if it is just and if the intention is purely for his holy service.
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Finally, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain say yes. It couldn't have hurt that. Columbus tells the Catholic monarchs that he wants to find gold to help pay for the new crusade to take back the Holy Land from the Muslims. August 3, 1492. The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Three ships, 90 men and one uniquely motivated admiral at the wheel. With a course set for Japan, the crossing isn't easy. Ten weeks in, they've gone further than anyone thought they could without hitting land. The crews are edgy and on the verge of mutiny. Columbus pleads with the men, give me just three more days. Well, on October 11th, they start to see hopeful signs. Sticks and bits of vegetation in the churning water. Finally, around 2am on Oct. 12, the lookout spots land. Columbus thinks they've arrived in Asia. Instead, it's Watling island in the Bahamas. Well, it doesn't take long for the explorers to encounter members of the Irawak tribe. Columbus famously refers to the natives in these islands as Indians. In his log that day, Columbus warns his men to to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange.
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In order to win the friendship and affection of their people, and because I was convinced that their conversion to our holy faith would be better promoted through love than through force, I presented some of them with red caps and some strings of glass beads which they placed around their necks, and with other trifles of insignificant worth that delighted them and by which we have got a wonderful hold on their affections. They afterwards came to the boats of the vessels, swimming, bringing us parrots, cotton thread in balls and spears, and many other things which they bartered for others. We gave them as glass beads and little bells. I saw some scars on their bodies and to my signs asking them what these meant, they answered in the same manner that people from neighboring islands wanted to capture them and they had defended themselves. And I did believe and do believe that they came from the mainland to take them prisoners.
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Narrator
Within weeks, Columbus and his men encounter the Caribs, the tribe of cannibals terrorizing the more peaceful tribes of the island. They find human bones scraped clean and in one hut, the neck of a man boiling in a pot. Captive women tell Columbus men that they've been captured and raped for the purpose of bearing children, who will then be eaten by the Caribs. On Christmas Eve 1492, the Santa Maria runs into the coral reef on the northern coast of present day Haiti. The crew spends their Christmas Day salvaging the ship's cargo. Columbus then returns to Spain aboard the nina, leaving behind 39 men who couldn't fit on the return trip since the Santa Maria had been lost. When Columbus returns on his second voyage a year later, he finds the 39 men who were left behind, all dead, killed by the cannibal tribe. Columbus establishes a colony of Spaniards in modern day Cuba and leaves his two brothers to govern. Needless to say, it doesn't go well. The people revolt and the brothers can't maintain order. And King Ferdinand appoints a new governor who arrests Columbus and his brothers and ships them back to Spain in chains. The king and queen free Columbus and he's cleared of any wrongdoing. But his explorer dream is now tarnished. Amazingly, he mounts a fourth voyage in 1502. He gets shipwrecked and stranded in Jamaica for an entire year. The adventures take a toll on his health. Columbus returns to Spain in 1504. Less than two years later, he's dead at the age of 55.
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Glenn Beck
Right now, there are a lot of voices in our culture, and most of them are really loud, pushing in one direction. But truth doesn't always shout. Too often it gets lost in the noise. And that matters, because when a woman is facing an unplanned pregnancy, she often is being rushed, pushed to make a decision quickly, before she has a chance to pause and breathe and hear something different. That's why Preborn exists. At Preborn Network clinics, she's welcomed with compassion and given free ultrasound. And in that moment when she sees her baby, sometimes for the very first time, something changes because the fear starts
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Narrator
to give way to clarity.
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Glenn Beck
And in addition to that, she hears something else the world isn't offering her.
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Narrator
The hope of the Gospel.
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Glenn Beck
This month, Preborn is setting a goal of 11,000 gospel conversations, trusting God to work through every single one of them. Just $28 will provide one ultrasound 140 sponsors five ultrasounds for five moms in crisis. Every dollar helps save babies and share
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Narrator
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Glenn Beck
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Narrator
more of what you value. Comfort Inn it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct@ChoiceHotels.com for centuries after his voyage, Columbus was almost universally celebrated around the world. Over 600 monuments were built in his honor Washington, D.C. the District of Columbia, meaning Columbus. But in the late 20th century, the tide turned. Historians like Marxist Howard Zinn, in his book of People's History of the United States, reoriented Columbus as the starting point for centuries of oppression. Suddenly, Columbus was portrayed as a genocidal villain because of his alleged criminal treatment of Native people groups. U.S. cities began to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples day, and in 2018, even Ohio's capital Columbus stop observing Columbus Day. Columbus attempted to treat the native tribes well and ordered the men under his command to do the same. At the same time, he also took slaves from tribes he encountered back to the king and queen of Spain. Most of these slaves were from the cannibalistic Carib tribe or others captured in warfare. Several others volunteered to travel back to Spain with him, including an important chieftain and his family. One became a member of the royal court. Another took Columbus's last name and traveled with him as an interpreter. The Columbus story is complicated, like honest history usually is. Slavery existed in the Americas long before Columbus arrived. Between 20 and 40% of natives in the tropical New World were enslaved by other natives. And what about the disease question? Well, epidemics swept through native populations even before direct European contact. The New World was not some Garden of Eden. At the same time, natives were ravaged by diseases that arrived with European explorers. Though the true numbers are impossible to pin down, exploration and colonization meant displacement. It meant war. It meant death. For countless indigenous people and Europeans, the clash of the Old and New Worlds was a volatile flashpoint in history that produced both beauty and pain. This clash was neither entirely tragic nor entirely triumphant, but it was entirely human. Now, here's what's not up for debate about Columbus. He put the New World on Europe's radar, but it was a quirk of history that the new continents would not be named after him. While Columbus was on his third voyage, another Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci made a separate expedition that sailed all along South America's eastern coastline. Vespucci confirmed this was not Asia, but an entirely different continent. And his documentation of this fact led to a German cartographer naming the new landmass America on a world map produced in 1507. Columbus opened the floodgates to the New World, and yet the flood didn't happen right away. You see, it would be over a century before England made its first permanent foothold in North America. The question is, why did it take so long? Well, because Europe itself was about to be ripped apart, not by warships or gold lust, but by revolutionary words. It's now April 1521. The City of Worms, Germany. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, has summoned a monk to stand trial before the Imperial Diet. The monk's crime, not murder, not theft, but words. Books written by the monk are stacked up on the table in front of him. They are the evidence, the sentence. Well, if he's found guilty, it could mean burning him at the stake. The Emperor wants just one thing from this recant. Take it all back. This isn't just a gag order. This is the complete erasure of everything the monk has said, preached and written. His entire challenge to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This monk's name, Martin Luther. He knows his life hangs in the balance, but he has no idea that the future of Western civilization depends on what happens next. When Columbus returned to Spain from his fourth voyage in 1504, Martin Luther was a 21 year old Catholic monk in Germany. In an introduction to the collection of his writings, this is how Luther described his younger self.
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Martin Luther
Keep in mind that I was once upon a time a monk and A crazy papist. Before I entered the struggle, I was so drunk, sloshed, you might say, with the Pope's dogmas, with all my heart, I would have attacked everyone who would retract even an iota of their obedience to the Pope. Indeed, I would have supported anyone who attacked them. I was like Saul, just like so many in our time.
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Narrator
A decade later, as a professor and pastor at the University of Wittenberg, Luther wrestled with the Church's teachings. He came to believe from Scripture itself that salvation comes by God's grace alone, through faith in Christ alone. But the Church had a revenue stream to worry about. That revenue stream was called indulgences. Basically, an indulgence was the promise of reduced time in purgatory in exchange for a donation. Luther's conviction from studying Scripture was that this was not just bad theology, this was a distortion of the Gospel itself. So on October 31, 1517, Luther did what scholars were supposed to do when they had an issue to debate. He wrote to his archbishop, enclosing A list of 95 theses on indulgences along with an essay. He sent it off. Well, the act was routine, almost boring. But instead of disappearing into the Archbishop's inbox or in a stack of other complaints, these theses are read, copied, printed, and began to spread across Europe like a slow moving fire. We like to imagine the moment as cinematic Luther striding up to the Wittenberg Castle church door, hammer in hand, nailing his 95 thesis into the wood in open defiance. But the truth? Luther never mentioned doing that. I mean, he might have, but the story came from a friend years later, after Luther's death. In reality, posting notices on the church doors was almost as rebellious as pinning a flyer on a bulletin board. Still, the idea he explored in those first pages were explosive, and they pulled Luther into a confrontation with the most powerful religious institutions in the West. Back to 1521, four years after Luther's infamous 95 thesis. Luther stands now in front of the Holy Roman Emperor, who asks him again, will you recant? Luther looks at the stack of books in front of him. It's his life's work.
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Martin Luther
And he says, because your sublime majesty and your lordship seek a straight answer, I will provide it. I need to be convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or by obvious reason, because I do not trust the Pope or councils in themselves. We know they have all too frequently made mistakes and contradicted themselves. I am bound by the scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. That's all I can do. God help me. Amen.
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Narrator
Luther's plea for God's intervention was answered. The authorities let him go. He was later condemned and a bounty was offered for his capture, dead or alive. But he was never captured. Instead, he continued to write and to teach. And the brush fire started by his 95 thesis began, billowed into a wildfire known as the Protestant Reformation. Across Europe, leaders and nations faced a choice. Remain Catholic or join the new Protestant cause. The Reformation changed everything. Not just theology, but politics, literacy and personal freedom. Protestant teaching urged a return to Scripture, emphasizing that every believer has direct access to God's Word. This meant reading became a spiritual duty. And it meant questioning earthly authorities who contradicted the Word. But it also meant that when colonists eventually sailed for the New World, they brought with them a very different vision of the relationship between church and state. That couldn't have happened without the Reformation. One Congregationalist pastor, Leonard Wolseley Bacon, would later write.
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By a prodigy of divine providence, the
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secret of ages has been kept from premature disclosure.
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If the discovery of America had been
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achieved four centuries or even a single century earlier, the Christianity to be transplanted
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to the Western world would have been
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that of the Church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence. When North America was finally settled in earnest, it was it would be through the people that were shaped by Reformation, resistant to tyranny, convinced of their God given rights and ready to build something new. Something that would begin on the edge of a swamp 50 miles up a river in Virginia.
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Glenn Beck
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Narrator
The crowded room smells of smoke. Not the gentle aroma of hearth fire, but thick, pungent wood smoke that coats the back of your throat. John Smith kneels in the dirt. Rough iron like hands suddenly force his head down onto two flat stones. Veins pop in his neck as he strains against the vice grip of his captors. Around him, a semicircle of warriors, muscles taut, painted faces glistening with sweat. He glimpses the clubs in their hand. One signal from the man sitting above Smith, wrapped in a robe of raccoon skins and the Englishman's skull would be pulverized. The English knew this man as Chief Powhatan. The warriors wait. The air is tense. They raise their clubs and then she appears out of nowhere. She's a girl, maybe 12 or 13. She rushes forward, her hair loose, eyes wide. She kneels beside Smith and lays her head over his. Smith is stunned to feel her cheek pressed against his. What does this mean? The warriors lower their clubs. The chief leans forward. No one saw this coming. Or maybe they did. After all, this girl is Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's favorite daughter. And her action that day preserved a lot more than John Smith's life. Almost two years before, John Smith nearly had his brain smashed in, the Virginia Company was finalizing plans in London for a new colony. The charter for this venture invoked the providence of Almighty God to assist the colonists in the propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance. Well, while the company invoked Christianity, and while many of those first colonists were devout Christians, make no mistake, this was primarily a business mission. The Virginia company was a 17th century version of what we would call a startup with investors and high pressure expectations of a very profitable return on their major investment. The company would own the land and appoint the governor and the colonists were all considered employees. Three ships once again set sail, this time From Britain with 104 men on board, no women. This was the first of many blunders. After a four month voyage, they landed at Cape Henry in present day Virginia beach in April 1607. On the beach they planted a wooden cross and the Reverend Robert Hunt led them in prayer of gratitude, committing their venture to God's plan and purpose. From there, the 26 year old Captain John Smith piloted the ships 50 miles up the James river river where they settled on a swampy mosquito ridden peninsula to their base camp. They called it Jamestown in honor of King James I. The location was good for defense but terrible for health. By May. Under the leadership of the brash, often abrasive captain John Smith, they had built a triangular fort with bulwarks at each corner, each armed with a few small cannons. And trouble started almost immediately. The first major problem? The wrong skill set. Most of the 104 men were gentlemen or tradesmen eager to find gold. There weren't farmers or laborers ready to clear fields or plant crops. The gold diggers thought they'd hit pay dirt fast and return to England as wealthy men. Instead, food ran short. The daily ration became half a pint of wheat and half a pint of worm infested barley. Mosquitoes brought malaria. The river water was brackish and made them all sick. By September, 46 men were dead. Out of the original 104 who had arrived at Jamestown, John Smith wrote, God
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being angry with us, plagued us with such famine and sickness that the living were scarce able to bury the dead.
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The only reason the rest survived, the Powhatan people brought them corn and bread and the occasional wild game. Smith, unimpressed with his fellow settlers, wrote,
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most of our chiefest men were either sick or discontented, the rest being in such despair as they would rather starve and rot with idleness than be persuaded to do anything for their own relief.
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With most of the leaders laid out sick or already dead, Smith essentially put himself in charge. He didn't mind bossing people around. He imposed orders, military discipline, along with his famous biblical edict, he who will
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not work will not eat.
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Under his rule, they started to recover. They built a small village of huts with thatch roofs. Morale stabilized, at least temporarily. But then, in 1608, Smith got captured. Out exploring the Chickahominy River. He was taken prisoner by a hunting party led by by Chief Powhatan's brother. Smith was held for weeks. He was fed so well that he feared that they were fattening him up to eat him. Then one day, he was finally brought to Chief Powhatan.
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Historical Figures (Quotes)
Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe made of raccoon skins and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years. And along on each side the house, two rows of men, and behind them as many women with all their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds, but everyone with something and a great chain of white beads about their necks.
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Narrator
Then came the execution scene. Remember Smith's head forced onto the flat stones, the clubs, the last second intervention by Pocahontas. Well, today, many historians think this wasn't an execution at all, but a ritual adoption meant to symbolically bind Smith to Powhatan as an ally. But Smith clearly did not see it that way. Regardless of what was actually going on, it was a turning point in the relationship between the colonists and the Indians that lived all around them, and a major turning point for the survival of what would become the United States of America. According to Smith, two days after Pocahontas intervention, he was taken to a large house in the woods and sat on a mat in front of a fire. Suddenly, with blood curdling cries, Powhatan appeared, 200 men behind him, all of them with their faces and bodies painted black. Smith wrote that Powhatan looked more like a devil than a man. Smith was told that he and Powhatan were now friends and that he would be allowed to return to Jamestown. Well, for a while there was peace. Pocahontas even visited Jamestown, bringing food and performing cartwheels to entertain the men. Her name in her language meant playful one. But eventually relations broke down again. Powhatan tired of the constant English demands for food. He moved his home base further inland and stopped allowing Pocahontas to visit Jamestown. The Virginia Company was stubbornly determined to wring a profit out of this investment. Somehow it sent more people to Jamestown, this time indentured servants willing to work for seven years in exchange for passage. In 1609, a fleet of nine ships embarked with 600 settlers. One of the ships sank. Another one ran aground in Bermuda, where it was stuck for months. Meanwhile, John Smith suffered severe in a gunpowder explosion accident and had to return to England to recover. Without his disciplined leadership, the colony really began to unravel. Winter 1609-1610. It is now known as the Starving Time. 500 colonists shrank to 60. Jamestown was a nightmare. They ate dogs and cats and rats. They ate leather. According to both written accounts and archaeological evidence, they even ate each other. Excavations have found human bones with knife marks mixed with the remains of animals in trash pits. When a relief ship finally arrived, May 1610, the captain was appalled by what he found. He said Jamestown looked like the ruins of some ancient fortification. Survivors were hollow eyed, ravaged by famine, disease and ongoing skirmishes with the local tribes. In June, the survivors decided to abandon the colony and return to England. They sailed down the James river towards Chesapeake Bay and met another incoming resupply ship. The colony was saved, but barely. But life in Jamestown was incredibly harsh. The new leadership cracked down. There were forced labor gangs, floggings even hangings, for those who broke the rules, Indentured servitude became entrenched. Contracts often extended to nine years, far longer than in England. Children, if their parents died in debt, were bound into labor until the debt was paid. Jamestown's socialist model of a communal storehouse of food only enhance the misery. No matter what an individual's work effort, he knew the communal food effort would keep him from starving. The dream of gold, well, that had long since evaporated. But something else quite valuable was about to take root in the soil of Virginia. For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read the American Story. The Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton. Available now@wallbuilders.com
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Glenn Beck
so selling your house is super easy, right?
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Narrator
Yeah.
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Glenn Beck
You just take a few pictures, put it online, wait for somebody to show up, sign a few papers, you're done? No, not at all.
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Narrator
Not at all.
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Glenn Beck
That's maybe the way it looks, but anyone who's actually been through it knows that's not happening. Okay. Under the surface, there's a lot of decisions that don't look like much in the moment, but they add up fast. That's why I started Real Estate Agents I Trust, because it's not one transaction. It's not something you want to figure out as you go. You want somebody who knows the market, who knows how to negotiate, who's been vetted to get results. So you're not just hoping it works out. You're working with somebody who knows how to make sure it does. That's what my company is going to give you when you contact us. We're going to give you the name of that person. Check out Real Estate Agents I Trust Dot com. We'll show you how to buy or sell a whole home. Even in this really tough market, the name says it all. It's a free service to you. I don't charge you for the names, but I ask you just to do your own homework and check them out. Or real estate agentsitrust.com realestate agents I trust.com.
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Narrator
Jamestown's salvation comes not in the form of gold, but in the form of a leaf. This is the year 1612, and John Rolfe is taking a gamble. Tobacco had already hit England. Smoking is fashionable now among the upper classes, and the demand is growing fast. But the local Virginia strain is bitter and harsh and unappealing to the English taste. So John Rolfe obtained seeds of a sweeter variety from the Caribbean. How well do you remember the Virginia Company Ship that ran aground in Bermuda in 1609 and didn't arrive at Jamestown until May 1610. Rolfe was on that ship. When he finally makes it to Jamestown, he plants the new strain of tobacco seeds in Virginia soil, and they flourish. It's a game changer, but with the Jamestown colonists, it always seems like one step forward and three steps back. In 1613, a new English captain, Samuel
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Glenn Beck
Argall, thought it would be a great
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Narrator
strategic move to kidnap Pocahontas. Working with a rival tribe, he tricked her into boarding a ship, where she was captured. Captain Argall held her for ransom in an effort to get her father, Chief Powhatan, to return English prisoners and stolen weapons. Her captivity dragged on for months, so long, in fact, that she learned to speak English, accepted Christianity, and was baptized and given the name Rebecca. She also met and possibly fell in love with the tobacco innovator John Rolfe. In 1614, they got married in Jamestown's only church, the first Protestant church building in America. The marriage sealed another truth between Powhatan and the English. Historians debate whether John Rolfe married Pocahontas for love or as a convenient alliance. But regardless, Chief Powhatan consented to the Union, and for a few years, the peace held. Rolfe and Pocahontas had a son named Thomas, and in 1616, the Virginia Company saw an opportunity. They brought the Rohlfs to England as a kind of a living advertisement for the civilizing power of colonization. Pocahontas became a celebrity, a big one, dining with aristocrats, even meeting King James and Queen Anne. While the couple was still in England, John Smith came to visit. He found a very different Pocahontas dressed in a stiff, stuffy British dress. When Pocahontas first saw him, she couldn't speak. She turned away from him, overcome with emotion. When she regained her composure, she unloaded on him for how he treated her father and her people, reminding him that Powhatan had welcomed him as a son, she said. The Jamestown columnist reported that Smith had died after his gunpowder accident in 1609, but her father suspected that it wasn't true because the English had a habit of lying. The playful one was not really so playful anymore. In March 1617, the Rolfs were preparing to sail back to Virginia, and Pocahontas fell suddenly ill, possibly pneumonia. She never saw Virginia again. The illness took her life. She was only 21 years old. Her tribe's oral tradition about her life tells a much, much darker story. According to the Powhatan version, while Pocahontas was held captive at Jamestown, she was raped and became pregnant with her son Thomas. This tradition also held that before the Rohlves were set to return to Virginia, they were invited to dinner aboard Captain Argyll's ship. The man who arranged her kidnapping four years earlier. After that dinner, Pocahontas felt sick and started convulsing. The tribesmen who accompanied her on the trip to England claimed that she had been murdered, possibly poisoned. During the final dinner on Captain Argyll's ship. Thanks to John Rolfe's tobacco, Jamestown was no longer just scraping by. He was actually profitable for the first time. The Virginia company started granting 100 acre plots to those willing to cross the Atlantic and farm. It was a major change, allowing individual settlers to own land and caused a boom in tobacco production. By 1617, a decade after the first landing at Cape Henry, the colony shipped 20,000 pounds of tobacco to England. The next year was more than twice that. Within 12 years, they exported over £1.5 million. This was a new gold and it fueled a land rush. As the colony expanded, labor became its central challenge. Morality rates were still brutal. To keep up, the Virginia Company imported more workers and indentured servants from England. They also enlisted London's so called superfluous street children over the age of 12 to go to work in Virginia. When some of these children resisted, the Virginia Company requested and received official permission from the City of London to force them to go anyway. Then came 1619. In July, Governor George Yeardley called the first legislative assembly in America. Virginia's House of Burgess. Burgess, or representatives from 11 areas. They met in a Jamestown church, fixing tobacco prices, reducing punishment for crimes like idleness, gambling and drunkenness, and recommending fair treatment of the Indians. Just days after this first assembly, another ship sailed into James River. It was a Dutch vessel carrying 20 Africans. These individuals were traded for provisions. The central lie of the New York Times 1619 Project framed this event as America's true founding, grounded in exploitation and black oppression. The notion is ludicrous, of course. An oblique origin story. Europeans in Virginia in the 1600s were hardly the inventors of slavery. The legal status of those 20 Africans was murky. Most historians believe they were initially treated as indentured servants with the terms of service and the possibility of freedom. Like their white counterparts, documents from the 1600s confirm that some black laborers were held by so called owners for life, while others gained their freedom after working for a set number of years. In those early years, some Africans owned land after gaining their freedom. But over the decades, the overwhelming need for laborers gradually shifted. Virginia's culture towards permanent race based slavery. In 1640, a runaway black indentured servant named John Punch became the first documented slave for life. He ran away with two white indentured servants. But after getting caught, the white servant's punishment was extended servitude while punches was lifelong slavery. For a time it wasn't considered proper for a Christian to enslave a fellow Christian. But that eventually dissolved. By 1670, blacks and Indians could no longer own white indentured servants. By 1691, interracial marriage was illegal. By 1705, lifelong slavery was codified in Virginia law. Chief Powhatan died in 1618. His brother took over the leadership for the vast confederacy of tribes. For the first few years, he played the role as a friend, lulling the English into a false sense of security. Then, in March 1622, his people launched a coordinated assault on 19 settlements along James River. 347 colonists were slaughtered, about a third of the total English population in Virginia. In London, the attack on the colony shook the Virginia Company and its investors. The king appointed a committee to examine the company amid accusations of mismanagement. In 1624, the king revoked the company's charter and Virginia became a royal colony under the direct control of the Crown. From a Swampy Fort with 104 men, half of them dead within a few months, Jamestown became a tobacco powerhouse, a political experiment, and the site of both cooperation and bloody conflict with the people who lived there long before. It was a place where early forms of representative government and African slave slavery sprouted. Jamestown was a garden of liberty and inequality. While the messy Jamestown experiment limped forward, a new expedition was being readied on the southern coast of England in a town called Plymouth. But this venture had a very different purpose, forged by a small group of men and women known as the Pilgrims. Coming up on the American the beginnings.
- [46:36]
Glenn Beck
In a split second, John Howland is plunged into a nightmare. A massive rogue wave smashes over the
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Narrator
ship's railing, sweeping John overboard into the frigid abyss. He's gone, vanished into the deep and no one even notices. At first, in an era when most people can't swim and the ship can't
- [46:58]
Glenn Beck
just throw it in reverse, this is a death sentence.
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Narrator
John thrashes in the freezing water.
- [47:04]
Glenn Beck
His lungs are burning with the ocean as the ship labors on without him. Then he glimpses a rope in the water, within reach. Instinctively desperate, he snags it and clamps on with both fists. The rope trailing behind the ship is one of the halyards used to raise and lower the sail.
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Narrator
It's his only hope.
- [47:25]
Glenn Beck
He clings for dear life, dragging through
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Narrator
the pounding surf like a rag doll, the saltwater scraping down his throat and burning his eyes.
- [47:34]
Glenn Beck
And finally, incredibly, crew members spot him bobbing in the water.
- [47:48]
Narrator
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