Sunday, November 3, 2024

Jamestown Rediscovery to Commemorate Native American Heritage Month at Historic Jamestowne

Jamestown Rediscovery will commemorate Native American Heritage Month at Historic Jamestowne. (WYDaily/Nancy Sheppard)

JAMESTOWN — Jamestown Rediscovery will commemorate Native American Heritage Month at Historic Jamestowne with special programming and walking tours. 

On Saturday, Nov. 13, guests can experience a variety of programs, interactive activities and specialized walking tours, including “The Powhatan & the English Walking Tour”, which will be offered at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

The tour will focus on the interactions, trade, and clashes between English Colonists and the Powhatan Paramount Chiefdom based on archaeological evidence. 

Additional offerings that day include “The World of Pocahontas, Unearthed” exhibit from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., which draws from thousands of archaeological artifacts found at James Fort that have shed light on the lives of the Chesapeake’s Indian peoples.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., guests can join Daniel ‘Firehawk’ Abbott of the Nanticoke people from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to learn about the culture and lifeways of the Tidewater Algonquians, as well as their interactions with the settlers at Jamestown.

Also from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., “A tractable trade” gives visitors the chance to meet Anas Todkill, one of the settlers that explored the Chesapeake Bay with Captain John Smith, and learn how the English traded with the Virginia Indians for food and information.

Guests can join blacksmith Shel Browder from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for demonstrations and a discussion of blacksmithing at the site of the original James Fort forge.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., “pales, posts and railes…” will feature Carpenter Danny Whitten demonstrating the tools and methods used by the first colonists to build fort walls and buildings.

“Hope of a plentiful harvest” will take place at noon and 3:15 p.m. George Thorpe, gentleman and “Superintendent” of a new school for the education of the original inhabitants of Virginia, will talk about the colony’s most recent events, as well as his perspectives on this New World since arriving in 1620.

The commemorative event is sponsored by “The Two Friends of History Fund for Indian Initiatives and Educational Programs,” a special fund for onsite and online educational programs to tell the narrative of First Peoples.

For more information on this or any other program, go to the Historic Jamestowne website.

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