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Experts have provided the grisly goods to back up 17th-century accounts of cannibalism during the Jamestown colony's "starving time" — including a skull that shows signs of being chopped at and pried apart. "Our team has discovered partial human remains before, but the location of the discovery, visible damage to the skull and marks on the bones immediately made us realize this finding was unusual," Bill Kelso, chief archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project in Virginia, said in a news release issued Wednesday. Specimens from the Jamestown site were laid out during a Washington news conference. Written accounts described acts of cannibalism during the winter of 1609-1610, when sickness, starvation and attacks from native tribes in the area put the two-year-old Virginia settlement to its sternest test. Scores of the colonists who crowded inside James Fort died that winter. One of the accounts described a husband who killed his pregnant wife and salted her flesh for storage and consumption. (The husband was executed for the crime.) There was no reason to doubt the accounts, but in the course of their decades-long excavation, archaeologists were on the lookout for remains that might tell more of the story behind Jamestown's hardships. They found the evidence in the form of a partial human skull and other bones lying in a 17th-century trash deposit. Kelso enlisted the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History to sort out the clues. Colonial Williamsburg and Preservation Virginia helped provide historical context. 'Jane of Jamestown' Based on an analysis of the bones — including the skull and its teeth, as well as the size of a tibia and bone growth in a knee joint — experts determined that the remains came from a 14-year-old female, nicknamed "Jane." The isotopic distribution of elements in the bones suggested that she consumed a European diet of wheat and meat.
cosmiclog.nbcnews.com...
Originally posted by kimish
reply to post by polarwarrior
The Natives weren't always treated as savages like most are taught.
Virginia Indians had already established settlements long before the English settlers arrived, and there were an estimated 14,000 natives in the region, politically known as Tsenacommacah, who spoke an Algonquian language. They were the Powhatan Confederacy, ruled by their paramount chief known as Wahunsenacawh, or "Chief Powhatan". Wahunsenacawh initially sought to resettle the English colonists from Jamestown, considered part of Paspahegh territory, to another location known as Capahosick, where they would make metal tools for him as members of his Confederacy, but this never transpired.
The first explorers had been greeted by the natives with lavish feasts and supplies of maize, but as the English, lacking the inclination to grow their own food, became hungry and began to strong-arm more and more supplies from nearby villages, relations quickly deteriorated and eventually led to conflict. The resulting Anglo-Powhatan War lasted until Samuel Argall captured Wahunsenacawh's daughter Matoaka, better known by her nickname Pocahontas, after which the chief accepted a treaty of peace.
And as far as genocide from the immigrants, purely accidental.
The Natives weren't always treated as savages like most are taught.
I highly doubt that the people came to America with no knowledge about anything and started killing off "Indians"
Amerindians were constantly at war with other tribes
The English new comers sent to Roanoke Island in 1584 by Sir Walter Raleigh are a case in point.what these newcomer did was self-destruct over a love of possession.When a silver cup allegedly disappeared. the Roanke men roared out of their tiny enclave,muskets and torches in hand,to destroyed their Indian neighbors,village and crops.This blazing display of European possession-mania cut the colony off from their source of help. When the Spanish armada severed the settlement's connection to British ports it withered and died. Roanoke Island became famous as "The Lost Colony"
1607 Captain John Smith was sent out by a London Join Stock company seeking profits from colonization Smith sailed with an overload of failed aristocrats and settled on lands own by the Algonqin confederacy. Trouble began when the newcomers refused to plant,build or exert themselves,Iron revolver in hand,Captain Smith ordered his lazy gentlemen to work or starve"Time and again the English were rescued from starvation through the generosity of the Algonqin Confederacy,,which provided corn and bread.The foreigners responded by refusing to share their European agricultural tools with the Indians and violence broke out.
Originally posted by kimish
But it makes one think though it wasn't just one side that did the ugly things in the beginning.
Originally posted by kimish
reply to post by Spider879
So basically it boils down to trust issues. But then we must ask, what brought about these trust issues? IF there were no trust issues then would tools have been shared? What if tools were stolen so the settlers didn't feel the need to share?
Let us also remember the great language barrier here. Trying to explain to someone how to plant, grow and harvest crops in a totally alien language is quite a feat to accomplish. :/