Re-enactors re-create life in Jamestown

Jamestown (Map, News) - There were no Native Americans at the Powhatan Village on the first day at the 400th Anniversary of America. The one real Indian, a young bear-sized Mattaponi with a Mohawk haircut, was out to lunch in midday Friday. About a dozen white men and women were posing as Indians, dressed in long leather outfits and re-creating life as it would have been in 1607 when three ships carrying English settlers landed on the shores of what is now the James River.

On Friday, the men and women cooked game hen over an open pit fire, made arrowheads and weaved mats. The sturdy huts where they were supposed to live were too hot to stay in and they were congregating on the outside.

Jesse Running Bear, a Tuscarora descendant from North Carolina, stopped by to see his friends who put the village together. His ancestors had hunted, shared food and survived with the Powhatan Chiefdom, a collection of the 30 tribes that lived in the area between what is now D.C. and the northern border of North Carolina. He has been working with the Virginia tribes and working on a movie to tell the story of a massacre of his people.

Running Bear had mixed emotions about the anniversary. He's glad that his people have survived to preserve their culture, but he's saddened that what has grown in it's place has been gripped by the materialism.

"The spirit of America has to change," Running Bear said.

Four hundred years ago, there were some 20,000 Powhatans. Before the English came, the Spanish had landed and built a fort. They fought with the Indians and were later massacred but not before spreading disease that killed thousands of the Indians.

The relationship between the English and the Powhatans was tenuous, said Frank Martin, one of the Indian portrayers and considered the most knowledgeable.

After 1608, after John Smith was burned by gunpowder and sent back to England, relations deteriorated. The period has been called "the starving times," but it wasn't because of the cold winters, but lack of rain and a siege by the Indians lay. Anybody who left the fort was killed, Martin said.

As more settlers immigrated to the New World, the Indians were pushed back. By 1677, the Powhatans were forced onto a reservation about 30 miles from Jamestown. Some assimilated into European society.

"I think it's a misconception that the English wiped out the Indians," Martin said. "After 400 years, there are descedents and they're doing the best they can to hang on to they culture they have."

ssmccabe@dcexaminer.com

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