2007 marks the 400th anniversary of the creation of the Virginia Colony, the first permanent English colony in North America. Pocahontas, who played an important role in its early years, was the daughter of Wahunsunacock, Chief of the Powhatan's. He was an important leader of the Algonquian Indians (the Powhatans) who lived in the Virginia region. Her real name was Matoaka. Pocahontas was a nickname meaning "playful" or "mischievous one." She is most famous for reportedly saving the life of English Captain John Smith. Throughout her short life however, (she died at the age of 22), she was important in other ways as well. Pocahontas tried to promote peace between the Powhatan's and the English colonists. She even converted to Christianity and married John Rolfe, a Jamestown colonist and tobacco grower, a union which helped bring the two groups together. Her untimely death in England hurt the chance for continued peace in Virginia between the Algonquians and the colonists.

Pocahontas, through her son, Thomas Rolfe, has many descendants who still live in Virginia. Hollywood changed her story and it became the source of much romantic myth-making including the 1995 Disney movie Pocahontas, and the 2005 Terrence Malick film, The New World.

Queen Elizabeth's successor, James I, granted a charter to the Virginia Company of London in 1606, to colonize Virginia. The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery formed the fleet of three ships which carried over one hundred all-male settlers to Virginia, arriving in May of 1607. Thirty-six miles inland from the Chesapeake Bay, it became the first permanent English colony in North America following a failed effort at Roanoke twenty years earlier. But before permanency was assured, the colonists suffered extreme trials, hardships and tribulations that resulted in more than two-thirds of the first group dying in the first year. Wahunsunacock, Chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, insured a period of relative peace with the British until the new colonists began taking Native land for their own farming.

In 1619, the first Negro slaves arrived as indentured servants, having being traded by a Dutch captain for food. This was the establishment of slavery in North America although race based slavery did not begin for another 80 years.

Jamestown remained the capital of the Virginia Colony until 1699, when the new capital town was renamed Williamsburg, in honor of the then British king, William III. After its gradual loss of prominence it reverted to large farms until the civil war when it briefly regained prominence.

Medium : 1 photomechanical print (postcard) : halftone, color

Created/Published : The Jamestown Amusement & Vending Co., Norfolk, Va., 1907

Creator : Richard Rummels, artist

Housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

Availability: Usually ships in 1 week

Product #: cph3f06370