A Native American Timeline-- Part 2: Ponce de Leon, De Soto and Jamestown

**  FEBRUARY 1521

Ponce de Leon departs on another voyage to Florida from San Juan to start a colony.    Months after landing, he is attacked  by local Native Americans and killed.

**  MAY 1539

Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernando de Soto lands in Florida to conquer the region.  He explores the South under the guidance of Indians who had been captured along the way.

**  OCTOBER 1540

De Soto and  the Spaniards plan to rendezvous with ships in Alabama where they are attacked.  Hundreds  of Indians are killed.

**  C. 1595

Pocahontas is born, daughter of Chief Powhatan.

**  1607

Pocahontas' brother kidnaps Captain John Smith from the Jamestown colony.    Smith later writes that after being threatened by Chief Powhatan, he was saved by Pocahontas.  This is debated by historians.

**  1613

Pocahontas is captured by Captain Samuel Argall in the first Anglo-Powhatan War.  While captive, she learns to speak English, converts to Christianity and is given the name "Rebecca."

**  1622

The Powhatan Confederacy nearly wipes out the Jamestown Colony.

--Cooter

Family of First Enslaved Africans in America Marks 400 Years-- Part 2

The men and women who came from what is now Angola in Africa arrived on two ships and were traded for food and supplies from the English colonists in Virginia.  The landing is considered a pivotal moment in American history, setting the stage for a system of race-based slavery that continues to haunt the nation.

Many of the first Africans in America are known only by their first names.  That included Anthony and Isabella, who became servants for a Captain William Tucker.

They had a son named William Tucker who many believe was the first documented African child born in English-occupied North America.

"We're still here," Wanda Tucker shouted in her family's shaded cemetery, which included many worn gravestones, as well as white crosses where ground penetrating radar had recently found unmarked graves.

The Africans were just 12 years after the founding of Jamestown, England's first permanent colony, and weeks after the first English-style legislature was convened there.

May 24-- Part 1: "What Hath God Wrought!" in 1844

Kind of a special date to me  as I was born this day in 1951.

From the May 24, 2018, Chicago Tribune "On May 24..."

1607--  100 English settlers landed at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in what was to become the United States.

1686--  Physicist Daniel Fahrenheit, who developed the temperature scale that bears his name (and we use here in the U.S.) was born in modern-day Gdansk, Poland.

1819--  Queen Victoria was born in London.

1830--  "Mary Had a Little :Lamb" by Sarah Joseph Hale published.

1844--  Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the message, "What hath God wrought!" from Washington to Baltimore as he opened America's first telegraph line.

More.  --Cooter24

Jamestown Church Where Pocahontas Married Is Found

From the Oct. 23, 2011, Daily Press (Va) "Jamestown dig reveals footprint of 1608 church" by Mark St. John Erickson.

Student archaeologists in the summer of 2010 first discovered a site that had been scoured by slaves for a Confederate earthwork near the 20th century statue of Captain John Smith.

They found large post holes at the site of a 1608 church where Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married.  Further digging in 2011 revealed the entire footprint of an enormous building by early Jamestown standards, the 24 by 64 foot church.

Finding the Old Stuff.  --Cooter

And We Though We Had a Drought

The US southeast was hit by quite a drought in the last two years, but that was nothing compared to what the first English colonists found in the New World for Roanoke (Lost Colony) and Jamestown.

According to University of Arkansas dendrochronolgist David Stahle, the 117 members of what has since become known as the "Lost Colony" in North Carolina who disappeared in 1587, leaving nothing but the word "Croatoan" carved in a tree. An examination of tree rings from that time show that the region was suffering its driest year in 800 years.

Twenty years later, the first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, almost didn't make it because of the misfortune to arrive during a drought that lasted from 1606 to 1612. Only 38 of the original 104 colonists survived.

From National Geographic March 1999.

How Dry I Am. How Dry They Were. --Old Coot