The story of the founding of Virginia is extremely dark and violent. The colonization of Virginia was a craze for power and a lack of human respect. The colonies thought that they had divine right to the land, and therefore divine right to murder and steal from the natives. The land that is now Virginia was originally Tsenacomoco. The history of Virginia is filled with bloodshed, which is something I was not previously aware of. I was not taught much about Virginian history in school or about Native American history as a whole. I was surprised to learn that the driving force of greed among the colonizers was masked as religious values. Although the settlers had no regard for non-English life, they saw nothing wrong with what they were doing.
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The first two chapters recount how violent the European colonizers were when taking land in the Americas. They stripped the Natives of their land, resources, lives and humanity because they viewed them as savages and the Pope seamed them enemies of Christianity. They did not care about what they were doing and saw nothing wrong with it, as it was just a race against the other European powers. Although not every explorer did this, the majority did as they only sought personal gain. Reading this has built on what I have already been taught in school. I took a religion elective my Senior year called Native American Spirituality which introduced me to this information. Reading it here has given me more specific dates and accounts of the atrocities that were endured. It doesn’t seem real and is concerning how blinded they were whilst doing these acts.
There were two specific details that I vividly remember having a visceral reaction to. The first was during the part about the Starving Time, where a man salted his wife and then ate her. And I remember thinking at the time, That’s the detail that’s going to stick with me. The second was after the author started to explore the colonists’ relationship with the native people. The systematic murder of a helpless prisoner and an entire family shocked me. And the primary source was so cavalier about it, so nonchalant. They pushed children into the water and then shot at them until they were dead. I’m not going to forget the specific phrasing of that action anytime soon, if ever. After I finished the first two chapters, I reflected on the details that had stood out to me, and I had to think for a while before I remembered the guy who ate his wife. The queasiness that I felt reading that was nothing compared to the absolute horror I felt reading about the casual murders of several innocent children.
I thought it was so interesting that the author mentioned Richmond being built on contradictions – a heretical religion, and even the idea of “discovering” a land that was already inhabited. Richmond was built to satisfy the dreams of greedy men living across an ocean, but that came at the price of innocent blood – a price the builders were all too happy to pay. There was a complete lack of empathy and emotion that was shocking to me. I can’t help but wonder how in the world English colonists were able to look at other human beings and commit such atrocities towards them without feeling any sort of remorse for their actions.
Reading the first two chapters of Richmond’s Unhealed History certainly has been eye opening. In Arkansas, on school wifi or devices anything related to Native American’s in ANYWAY is blocked. I have had to learn to educate myself about our history through other routes, but I certainly was not aware of the extent to how gruesome and disgusting colonists were. It is so interesting how colonizers used religion to justify genocide, slavery, killing, etc. I was just reading about how colonizers and South America said they had the right to go to war because it’s what God wants.
It is so interesting how to this day people abuse religion for power, or justify discriminating against others because it is in the bible, or is what God would have wanted…
Even though it is so disturbing, I am excited to keep learning about Richmond’s unhealed history, and learning more accurate depictions of colonization and how this country and city came to be.
The founding story of Virginia actually goes back even further to before Jamestown was established. The story starts a little bit further in Europe with a tale revolving around gaining support to establish a colony, starting with the stories of Roanoke and Jamestown. It has to do with the competition between the countries and other players competing for a slice of the New World, and it also is significantly intertwined with the “native people.” The original inhabitants, their interactions with the foreigners and how they banded together to fight the “invaders.” The book depicts a story that starts even before the story of Richmond actually began, with the interactions of the Powhatan and their allies eventually being pushed out.
The founding of Virginia in “Richmond’s Unhealed History” offered a lot more factual information than the education I was given in elementary school. European exploration was so much more horrifying now that I’ve received a lot more background information. Although I knew that religion was a large motivating factor in European exploration, reading the vivid details of how these Europeans used their religion to justify the genocide of Indigenous people really turned my stomach. Furthermore, reading the ugly language they used to call Indigenous people was also sickening because it was the truth without any filters. Even the direct quotes from primary sources brought such rich detail, so much so that I had no trouble imagining that someone actually wrote or said something back then. The maps helped in that aspect too, by allowing me to visualize where these events unfolded. What surprised me the most, however, was the atrocious amount of greed these Europeans possessed. They believed that their religion gave them permission to take over other lands and slaughter the natives in order to have economic gains. When the natives retaliated with violence, they hit back even harder and had the nerve to wonder why they did so. I feel like my prior education about Virginia’s founding was very glossed over, so this gave me a chance to learn about what really happened without any censoring.
The story of the founding of Virginia is gruesome and shocking. It’s a story of the British settlers dehumanizing the Native Americans and treating them as savages and not real people. They had no respect for the indigenous tribes and continuously attempted to expand their settlements, disregarding Native American ownership of land. It also shows the shocking atrocities committed against the native tribes and how British settlers mercilessly attacked and murdered them. They had no sense of remorse for their actions, only focusing on the expansion of their settlements and doing whatever was necessary to complete this task. Although it was not all of the settlers who treated the Native Americans in this way, it was enough for the negative actions of the settlers to outweigh any good.
For me personally, I have learned about conflicts between the British settlers and the Native Americans in the past but I did not fully grasp how violent these conflicts were. Some of the stories told in these first chapters did not seem real. I specifically recall the one story of the British settlers executing two Native American children by throwing them overboard into the water and shooting them. They also had other torturous methods such as burning people or chaining them to a tree and leaving them there until they starved to death. It’s shocking to think how anyone could commit such acts.
The first two chapters of Richmond’s Unhealed History made me realize a lot about the city’s roots, and how that history has prevailed up to now. Despite the positive change the city has made to rebrand, it’s important that we always understand how the city was founded. Which then bears the question: What is the story?
I thought this novel has done a great job of being transparent and informative while simultaneously making this an engaging topic to learn and understand. There are records of Spain and other European countries discovering this “new world,” and descriptions of the people they colonized. In Virginia specifically, however, the main focus is the British and their ways of colonizing the indigenous people of Virginia. Despite efforts to get along, there was too much strife and violence, from both sides, to make any progress. There seemed to be a lot of back-and-forth between Indigenous Chiefs and British Governors, making it impossible to establish a civil relationship between the two groups. Additionally, both groups were unable to survive in large numbers, as it is noted that many died due to starvation and disease. This story has been told many times and is arguably one of the most well-known in American history. In hindsight, it is very sad knowing how this story ends because not that many people needed to die for there to just be some peace. But as we look at Richmond now, whiteness and Christianity prevail, and only street names and regions are remnants of the Indigenous tribes that first established this city.
I made a lot of realizations after finishing the first two chapters of Richmond’s unhealed history. It still is prominently, white, Christian, and patriarchic, and that originates from the history of the town. The colonial history cannot be erased and determines to a big extent, the nature of the area. The fact that this land was taken from the indigenous communities and the current white-dominant civilization is built on that land is shocking. Our university, the houses, and the whole town have as foundations the blood of native communities that were genocide and still are not even heard in the modern world. I found it almost offensive in the book how it was mentioned that both colonial powers and indigenous peoples harmed each other and how they were responsible for the death of both sides. That equates the forceful and violent takeover of their home to the only defending mechanism that indigenous peoples had and that is at the minimum disrespectful. Overall painful and uncomfortable continuing to read the book but rewarding!
The story of the founding of Virginia is a truly painful one to think about. The story, as detailed by the first two chapters of Benjamin Campbell’s Richmond’s Unhealed History, is fraught with colonial greed, abject racism, and atrocities committed against indigenous people. Although Spanish settlers had explored the area in prior years, the first true settlement in Virginia came by way of a British expedition. And from the start, conflicts with Native Americans began to become a major part of life for the settlers. Peaceful relations between the English and chief Powhatan soon fell apart as the English settlers who founded Jamestown were attacked by the native people. A lack of respect for the rights of the indigenous people doomed the settlers to hostile raids and attacks throughout the early years of the Virginia colony.
The relationship between the English and the Native Americans didn’t improve with the multiple changes of governor that the colony underwent. In fact, it seemed they got even worse, with a horrifically matter-of-fact account by George Percy detailing the atrocities he committed against the Paspahegh tribe under the command of Lord De La Warr being particularly chilling. Of course, not all the settlers or Native Americans held hatred toward the other, but the terrifying actions of those who did overshadow those settlers that tried to treat the indigenous people with respect, and the indigenous people that attempted the same.
As a result of English settlement, Native American numbers dropped from close to twenty thousand to two or three thousand in around fifty years. The English-Powhatan war, and even the relations between the two groups prior, is a brutal example of the horrific treatment of Native Americans by early English settlers and it is the most painful, yet also most important thing to consider when trying to understand the foundation of Virginia.