The History of the Americans

We’re back after our week off! In this episode we touch on our vacation driving the Natchez Trace, and then proceed briskly to the career of Samuel Argall – Pocahontas’s kidnapper – in the service of...

This episode is a “Sidebar,” which is our term for an episode that is off the timeline of the History of the Americans. This episode centers on a concurring opinion delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch ...

It is late winter, 1616.  When last we left our lovers, John and Rebecca Rolfe were in receipt of a request from the Virginia Company to come to London.  They had a young son, Thomas, barely a year ol...

This episode is about the kidnapping and ransom of Pocahontas in 1613, the romancing of her by John Rolfe, her conversion to Christianity, and their marriage in 1614, which settled the First Anglo-Pow...

This episode is a close look at the First Anglo-Powhatan War, which began shortly after John Smith left Jamestown forever in October 1609, and ended as a formal matter with the marriage of Pocahontas ...

After the experience of 15 months, 66 substantive episodes, and more than 180,000 aggregate downloads/listens, I thought it would be useful to reintroduce the podcast. I labored over the original int...

Again we digress into the question of privateering and letters of marque, and then take on the stories of the two “sons” whom Christopher Newport and the paramount chief Powhatan exchanged as hostages...

In this episode we look at the gruesome “starving time” in Jamestown and the resurgent Powhatan war during the seven months after John Smith’s departure in October 1609. The mortality rate at the colo...

The episode begins with current events, sorting out the correct reading of the “letters of marque and reprisals” clause of the US Constitution, which actually has nothing to do with Jamestown but touc...

Here come the Dutch! In the busy summer of 1609, English captain Henry Hudson, sailing the Half Moon for the Dutch East India Company, explores the Hudson River from New York Bay to the north of Alba...