October 15, 2006

America's first multicultural village?

Discoveries let Jamestown museum give equal play to Colonists, Indians, AfricansEvidence at the fort site made it clear that Jamestown was a trading community tied into the worldwide economy, he said.

This idea clashes with earlier notions. Around the time of the last Jamestown anniversary--in 1957, when this museum was created--the settlement was envisioned as a rural English village transplanted to the New World, Davidson said.

"What we're now seeing is Jamestown as an example of a new thing--a trading post/commercial center that is analogous to the kinds of establishments being set up in Asia and Africa by the Dutch and Spanish and Portuguese."

3 comments:

writerfella said...

Writerfella here --
All well and good, but what writerfella would like to see is a Roanoke Colony Museum, with the mystery of the vanished colonists featured prominently. It would serve to show just how tenuous were the early attempts at colonization in the New World. I would want the T-shirt concession, for sure. The best-seller likely would be the ones with a crooked tree and the abstruse word 'Croatoan' carved into its trunk...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'

Rob said...

Didn't space aliens take the Roanoke colonists to another planet? Maybe the planet Croatoan? ;-)

Not a Sioux said...

Nah. They could not spell very well. They moved to Croatia.