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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,

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Speaker 1: welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so

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Speaker 1: much for tuning in. I often say welcome back to

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Speaker 1: the show, but in this case, not to quote Fox News.

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Speaker 1: Now more than ever it applies. My name is Ben,

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Speaker 1: and this is part two of a series. My name

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Speaker 1: is known. We are joining part two of the Jamestown

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Speaker 1: cannibal epidemic, already in progress. The new arrivals were not

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Speaker 1: particularly helpful. The cruise of the ship's thought, why should

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Speaker 1: we feed you? We just have enough food for ourselves, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean we talked about earlier in the episode. I

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Speaker 1: mean this literally would have been a liability. It was,

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Speaker 1: you know, I don't understand what they were thinking. I

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Speaker 1: guess they weren't. It was just an another active desperation UM.

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Speaker 1: But no, they their their supplies were already depleted. They

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Speaker 1: were going through the worst drought in eight hundred years,

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Speaker 1: and the crops that they had been able to grow

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Speaker 1: um were barely in it to few people that were

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Speaker 1: already there, let alone an additional three hundred mouths. So

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Speaker 1: folks were hungry, angry, and life was just getting worse

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Speaker 1: and worse every day UM than we had, of course

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Speaker 1: the starving time that would have arrived. So when you

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Speaker 1: look at the fragments of Jane Skull, this is a

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Speaker 1: conjecture from a mental Flaws article. Early Jamestown colonists were cannibals. Apparently.

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Speaker 1: UM researchers found a night was called a nitrogen profile

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Speaker 1: UM and enriched nitrogen profile that showed that it was

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Speaker 1: It was basically they were able to kind of track

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Speaker 1: her history of nourishment and it showed that she was

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Speaker 1: at one point well perished and had a very protein

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Speaker 1: rich diet UM, which would have indicated that she came

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Speaker 1: from a higher class UH and likely came over with

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Speaker 1: a large group UM in search of a new life

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Speaker 1: in this new world, not realizing I guess what they

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Speaker 1: were going into. The communication must have been incredibly, incredibly difficult,

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Speaker 1: if not impossible. They wouldn't have known what conditions they

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Speaker 1: were going into, right, Yeah, they would have had UM,

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Speaker 1: they would they would have had some sense that the

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Speaker 1: colony was in trouble, but maybe not a sense of

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Speaker 1: the degree of trouble that they had found themselves in.

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Speaker 1: So Jane most likely went through an intense trauma because

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Speaker 1: she had been living an okay life, and now you

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Speaker 1: know she and her parents or her relatives, her caretakers

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Speaker 1: who were probably there were having to fight the existing

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Speaker 1: colonists to preserve what food they had and then also

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Speaker 1: eating their livestock. This, unfortunately jibes with the contemporaneous accounts

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Speaker 1: that describe corpses being dug up or people who had

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Speaker 1: just died being butchered. And what's interesting is they found

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Speaker 1: this one body, and this is pretty disturbing stuff. Now

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Speaker 1: that we see there is one body as clear proof

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Speaker 1: of posthumous cannibalism, we know that there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: sand to these other reports of multiple acts of cannibalism,

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Speaker 1: which means that the next question is where are the

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Speaker 1: rest of those corpses right now? The plan is to

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Speaker 1: display james remains as well as a reconstruction of what

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Speaker 1: she looked like during her life in Jamestown, and archaeologists

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Speaker 1: are planning to continue to investigate the last days of

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Speaker 1: her life. I found it's interesting. I found this BBC

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Speaker 1: article that has, you know, proof Jamestown settlers turned to cannibalism,

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Speaker 1: and they note something that is just an additional disturbing

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Speaker 1: twist here. Whomever butchered this child's body was We know

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Speaker 1: they weren't skilled, so they weren't a butcher by trade.

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Speaker 1: But we also know this person who committed this act

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Speaker 1: was likely a woman based on the statistics the majority

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Speaker 1: of the fort's inhabitants were women. Really. Yeah, so it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just some you know, creepy grave robbing dude on

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Speaker 1: the edge of town. So we can't we can't end there, right,

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Speaker 1: that's a terrible note to end on what happened to

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Speaker 1: the colonists who survived after this starving time? Yeah, there

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Speaker 1: was another another expedition that set out, the Sea Venture,

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Speaker 1: which arrived from Bermuda in May of sixteen. That's the

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Speaker 1: ship that that's the largest ship, the one that had

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Speaker 1: supplies that wrecked us. Right, that's right, finally got there

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Speaker 1: and at that point they found only sixty colonists were

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Speaker 1: still alive. Um. After this six month period of of starvation,

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Speaker 1: Thomas Gates, who was then the president of Jamestown, realized

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Speaker 1: that there would be way more starvation um within just

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Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. Uh, So he decided that it

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Speaker 1: was time to just you know, jump, just abandon the

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Speaker 1: colony and sail back for England, and so they packed

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Speaker 1: up their stuff. They headed down the river, the James River,

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Speaker 1: and they said, we're gonna return to England. Until that

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Speaker 1: was Lord Date la Noir think about it, there's a

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Speaker 1: state named after him. Came to stop them. He had

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Speaker 1: a relief fleet, he had a hundred and fifty new settlers,

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Speaker 1: and he led the colonists back to the four work

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Speaker 1: and they laid the foundations to make this work. So

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Speaker 1: they did a take two and they succeeded. Now, of course,

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Speaker 1: as you know on ridiculous history, we don't want to

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Speaker 1: end on these down or depressing notes. Let's look into

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Speaker 1: a little a little bit more. We've been talking a

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Speaker 1: lot about dr Owsley. Why is he the authority here?

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Speaker 1: Oddly enough, if you look at his resume and his experience,

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Speaker 1: he is uniquely suited to be an expert in this

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Speaker 1: particular investigation. He's one of the country's most well known

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Speaker 1: physical anthropologists, and he studied not just this skeleton, but

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Speaker 1: multiple cannibalized skeletons from ancient history. He works with the

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Speaker 1: FBI as a forensic investigator, like a dexter, but without

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Speaker 1: all the you know, without all the murder. And he's

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Speaker 1: examined the bodies of victims of Jeffrey Dahmer. He thinks,

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Speaker 1: over the course of his career, this guy has examined

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Speaker 1: more than ten thousand bodies from people involved in nine

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Speaker 1: eleven to kidnap journalists murdered in Guatemala, and most of

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Speaker 1: his work, he's quick to add, is uh, involves ancient corpses,

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Speaker 1: not newer victims. So he's he's he's the right guy

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Speaker 1: to go to for this kind of information. But he focuses,

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Speaker 1: you know, primarily on this this sort of physical anthropology,

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Speaker 1: let's call it long range forensics, if we're thinking of

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Speaker 1: time as distance. He is, not, however, an expert on

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Speaker 1: everything about Jamestown. So in the interest of not ending

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Speaker 1: on a dark tale of cannibalism, we we thought maybe

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Speaker 1: we could laundry list some other things you might not

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Speaker 1: know about James Hown Jamestown silver linings. Uh, they're they're

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Speaker 1: actually worth something that you wouldn't think about. It turns

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Speaker 1: out the the colony did kind of have a bit

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Speaker 1: of a turnaround. UM John Rolf who became the new

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Speaker 1: president UM resettled it essentially after it was abandoned. UM

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Speaker 1: discovered uses for tobacco seeds that he had received from

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Speaker 1: trading with Trinidad, and that became a pretty valuable cash

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Speaker 1: crop for them. Yeah, and it also had a really strange,

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Speaker 1: uh social dynamic because Jamestown was saved in part by

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Speaker 1: what we would call today mail order brides. Back in Mary,

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Speaker 1: Old England, a lot of people had heard these horror

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Speaker 1: stories about conditions at the colony, so they weren't, you know,

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Speaker 1: they weren't super happy to throw their comfortable European life

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Speaker 1: away and join these people at Jamestown. And the colony

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Speaker 1: knew that a gender imbalance is unsustainable over the long term.

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Speaker 1: So this guy named Edwin Sandys, who was a Virginia

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Speaker 1: Company treasurer, convinced his ward members that they should advertise

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Speaker 1: for women to immigrate to Jamestown and Mary colonists. And

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Speaker 1: they offered these incentives. They said, look, we'll pay for

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Speaker 1: you to travel there. We will give you land, will

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Speaker 1: give you clothing, will give you furniture, you can choose

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Speaker 1: your husband. We'll just have like, we'll have a bevy

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Speaker 1: guys show up and you know what, you just picked

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Speaker 1: one you like. And then this tactic had some success,

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Speaker 1: and that is why in theory. If we look at

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Speaker 1: it this way, the first quote unquote mail order brides

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Speaker 1: in North America were these people who traveled to Jamestown.

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Speaker 1: That's weird. Yeah, And and it was a place for

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Speaker 1: another first, which was the establishment of the House of Burgesses,

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Speaker 1: which was America's first democratically elected legislative body. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: really set the precedent for democracy as as we know it. UM.

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Speaker 1: After that, every new English colony UM would us ablished

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Speaker 1: its own legislative body. And of course, you know it

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Speaker 1: wasn't always easy, but UM the ideas that you know

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Speaker 1: went on to permeate the foundation of the United States.

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Speaker 1: Things like elections and laws and balance of power and

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Speaker 1: all of that, UM were very much established there at Jamestown.

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Speaker 1: And as we said, it did ultimately improve under John Rolfe. UM.

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Speaker 1: It actually gave King James quite a bit of success

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Speaker 1: when he established the Virginia Company there and gave it

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Speaker 1: a monopoly on tobacco being shipped back to England. There

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Speaker 1: was even a lottery that some of this money was

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Speaker 1: used to give additional funds for some of this UM

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Speaker 1: Jamestown commerce. And that's according to the website Historic Jamestown UM.

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Speaker 1: It would continue to thrive um wonderfully for over a

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Speaker 1: hundred close to a hundred years, and was the capital

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Speaker 1: of the Virginia Colony. Um. It was eventually abandoned and

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Speaker 1: the capitol was moved to Williamsburg in sixte nine, but

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Speaker 1: it was taken back over by a preservationist group in

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Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, and today is a National Historic park.

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Speaker 1: You can take tours. There's a museum there. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: of course they're ongoing archaeological digs that keep uncovering new

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Speaker 1: m relics and evidence of these very difficult times there

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Speaker 1: and what was a very fascinating part of of American history,

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Speaker 1: and that is available again on the Live Science article

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Speaker 1: we mentioned the top which is James Town Facts in History.

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Speaker 1: I want to add something for everybody who thought we

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Speaker 1: were gonna skip this. It's its own episode. Perhaps what

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Speaker 1: is the true story of Pocahontas and John Smith? We

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Speaker 1: mentioned John Smith a couple of times, we didn't mention Pocahontas,

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Speaker 1: of got give her her due, the daughter of Chief Powaton.

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Speaker 1: The story of how she saved John Smith's life likely

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Speaker 1: didn't happen, or at least it didn't happen the way

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Speaker 1: a lot of people think of it, and it definitely

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Speaker 1: was not the way that Disney wants you to think

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Speaker 1: of it. So first things first, Pocahontas was about ten

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Speaker 1: years old at the time seven, and she frequently visited Jamestown.

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Speaker 1: She would deliver messages from her father, the chief. She

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Speaker 1: would bring food and furs to trade for hatchets and

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Speaker 1: manufactured goods. Like we mentioned earlier, her name was actually

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Speaker 1: Mattauka m A t o a k a, and Pocahontas

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Speaker 1: was a nickname that meant little wanton, like w A

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Speaker 1: n t o na. That's sort of a dig. And yeah, see,

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Speaker 1: so it's it's way. It's it's much less cool than

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Speaker 1: that song. Pay with all the colors of the wind.

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Speaker 1: Here's what we think really happened, So Smith writes, We

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Speaker 1: know that Smith writes at some point in December seven,

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Speaker 1: so winter is beginning. He's captured. He's brought to the

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Speaker 1: chief and the community. He's welcomed. They give him a feast.

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Speaker 1: Then he was grabbed and stretched out on two large

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Speaker 1: flat stones. The community stood over him. They had clubs

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Speaker 1: like they were gonna beat him to death if they

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Speaker 1: were ordered to and then Pocahuntas Mattaaluka rushes in and

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Speaker 1: she grabs Smith by the head and lays her own

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Speaker 1: head on him as if to save him from death.

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Speaker 1: This is Smith's firsthand account. And then she pulls him

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Speaker 1: to his feet. The chief Palatan says, okay, now we're friends,

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Speaker 1: and you are my son or a subordinate chief. That's

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Speaker 1: the thing that translations weird. So this becomes a legend.

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Speaker 1: He loves this story. He tells it urn over, and

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Speaker 1: like a lot of those kind of autobiographical adventure stories,

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Speaker 1: it gets a little bigger and more grand. Right. So

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Speaker 1: he only told this story after Matalka converts to Christianity,

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Speaker 1: and he never mentioned it in his earlier accounts of

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Speaker 1: his adventures in Virginia. So is it true. We don't

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Speaker 1: really know. And if it is true, then it may

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Speaker 1: have just been uh ceremony and adoption ceremony that was

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Speaker 1: traditional in the community, and Pocahonas, instead of being like

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Speaker 1: the hero my life for yours kind of person, may

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Speaker 1: have just been a kid playing a part in the

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Speaker 1: ritual that happened with other outsiders, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: So you have to take a little of the romance

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Speaker 1: out there. But the truth is better even when it's ugly. UM.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever been to the Jamestown historical sites? Have not?

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Speaker 1: It's pretty cool? I bet it is. I'd like to go.

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Speaker 1: I want to plant one final point that is a

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Speaker 1: little in the depressing. I know we promised on too

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Speaker 1: and with something too depressing, but UM, just to to

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Speaker 1: establish it's really quick, we've mentioned the Virginia Company, just

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Speaker 1: to really make that super clear. That was a two

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Speaker 1: joint stock companies that were started under James the first

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Speaker 1: and the goal was to settle the colonies UM there

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Speaker 1: in UH on the coast of the what is now

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Speaker 1: the United States. UH. And it was founded in sixteen

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Speaker 1: o four and ended operating in sixteen twenty four. UM.

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Speaker 1: So part of that was to grow cash crops and

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Speaker 1: to UH create um a source of revenue stream to

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Speaker 1: funnel back to the mother the motherlands. I guess, um,

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Speaker 1: but this is really interesting. The Virginia Company UM insisted

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Speaker 1: that the dead be buried in unmarked graves so that

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Speaker 1: the folks arriving wouldn't notice that there were so many

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Speaker 1: deaths and the population and dwindled significantly. I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: what I do with my interns. Well, I mean, of course,

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Speaker 1: but you know, you just didn't want you don't want

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Speaker 1: to discourage anybody, you know, you don't. It's all about morale,

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Speaker 1: it's future facing. Is That's the thing that blows me

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Speaker 1: away about the lack of communication. I would argue, you're right,

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Speaker 1: been there, there would have been some channels for communication

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Speaker 1: for those colonists coming on that second round. But I

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Speaker 1: think it was probably by design that they weren't told

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Speaker 1: how horrible things were, right because that no one would

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Speaker 1: come yeah. Yeah, they would try to say, you know,

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Speaker 1: they would want to control the narrative and say, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, we had a couple of bumps in the road.

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Speaker 1: We gotta break some eggs to make it, to make

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Speaker 1: the American omelet. But a lot of that stuff is

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Speaker 1: just you know, uh scuttle butt. Uh what's the word

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Speaker 1: that uh former Justice Anton and Scalia used, argyl bargel. Yes,

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Speaker 1: argyl bargel. I don't know about that one. I would

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Speaker 1: never use that myself, but it's definitely fun to say, um, yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: it's it's an interesting thing, um kind of controlling the

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Speaker 1: narrative situation, And ultimately it was a success. H They

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Speaker 1: you know, they did establish a decent stronghold there, and

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Speaker 1: you know, have those cash crops in the form of tobacco.

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Speaker 1: And you know, just last year the researchers at Jamestown

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Speaker 1: found a headless body inside a church. So the mystery continues.

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Speaker 1: They're hoping to match DNA from different corpses that they're

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Speaker 1: finding different human remains. So if you are listening, uh,

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Speaker 1: your DNA may come up. You may have, uh, you

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Speaker 1: may have a past story of which you are unaware

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Speaker 1: that may be rediscovered very soon. So I think we

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Speaker 1: managed to make this not entirely uh depressing, harrowing journey. Nol.

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Speaker 1: What do you say, I think that's probably smart. Ben. Oh,

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Speaker 1: we did say. We were talking about this off Mike. Uh,

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Speaker 1: why did England start so late in the game. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's funny exactly because that was the thing that occurred

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Speaker 1: to me, just you know, uh, in the moment where

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Speaker 1: it's like, okay, so England got a really late start

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Speaker 1: to colonize the United States, and yet we know that

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Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War was literally the colonists taking back the

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Speaker 1: entire country from England. So something happened in the interim

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Speaker 1: between King James the First and King George, it would

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Speaker 1: have been correct. Yeah. It goes back to a thing

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Speaker 1: called the Treaty of Paris in seventeen sixty three. It

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Speaker 1: ended the war called the French and Indian War, the

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Speaker 1: Seven Years War between Great Britain and France. In the treaty,

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Speaker 1: France gives up all of its territories in mainland North America,

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Speaker 1: and this means that there's no military threat to the

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Speaker 1: British colonies there, at least from European forces. And this

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Speaker 1: is part of a larger kind of war with more allies.

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Speaker 1: They were also fighting in India. They captured colonies in

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Speaker 1: the Caribbean, and they sliced up They sliced up the land,

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Speaker 1: of course, you know, spoil or alert. They didn't really

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Speaker 1: ask the people who lived on the land what they

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Speaker 1: thought or who should own it, you know what I mean.

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Speaker 1: What's that old saying when elephants make war, only the

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Speaker 1: grass suffers. That is exactly what they say. They also say, um,

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Speaker 1: how do you eat an elephant one piece at a time.

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Speaker 1: I never quite understood what that was meant to imply.

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Speaker 1: I guess it's just, you know, take small bites. It's

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Speaker 1: like a culinary version maybe of the journey of a

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Speaker 1: thousand miles begins with a single step. That is another one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I think a lot of these

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Speaker 1: aphorisms are kind of useless at the end of the day,

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Speaker 1: at the end of the day, at the end of

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Speaker 1: I'm a Monster, they did get me. Well, I think

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Speaker 1: that is the best place for us to drop off

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Speaker 1: at this point. But this has been a really fascinating,

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Speaker 1: if not slightly grizzly conversation and an interesting look inside

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Speaker 1: the formation of this uh these United States. You can

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Speaker 1: join the conversation, post your response to every episode we

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Speaker 1: do two of them a week over on our Facebook

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Speaker 1: group Ridiculous Historians UM. You can write us an email

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Speaker 1: where We're ridiculous at my heart radio dot com. You

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Speaker 1: can hit up me and Ben individually. We are, in fact,

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Speaker 1: you know, perfectly sentient, individualist to human beings. I am

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Speaker 1: on Instagram exclusively at how Now Noel Brown, and I

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Speaker 1: can be found at Twitter at Ben Bolan hs W.

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Speaker 1: You can also see some of my strange and completely

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Speaker 1: non sketchy adventures around the globe on Instagram where I

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Speaker 1: am at Ben Bowland. Thanks as always to our super

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Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram. Thanks of course to Alex Williams who

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Speaker 1: created the breakout single that is known as our Intro Music,

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Speaker 1: and of course thank you Gabe Lousier. Also, Christopher Haciota

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Speaker 1: is here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, that rascally quizzler quiz quit,

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Speaker 1: little old little quizzles. What is it, young quizzle young quizzles?

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Speaker 1: The quizzler exactly makes mouths happy and ridiculous historians cringe. E.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to you, Ben, I think that's it right, But yeah,

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Speaker 1: thanks to Owsley and all of the other hardworking anthropologists

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Speaker 1: researching this story of our past, it does indeed tell

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Speaker 1: us what could be this story of our future. Uh,

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Speaker 1: we're close to the end of the year. Is this

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Speaker 1: our end of the year episode? No, not yet, not yet, Okay,

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Speaker 1: a little further down the road. Indeed, let's see you

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Speaker 1: next time, folks,