The History of the Americans

This is an encore presentation of our special Columbus Day episode, which originally dropped on October 12, 2021. It remains one of the most popular episodes of the History of the Americans. Last year I released it on the actual day, rather than on the Monday holiday, but this year I’ll go with the flow. One of the reasons is that all the popular and social media discourse on Columbus happen...

We are back in Virginia. Opechancanough’s attack of March 22, 1622, the day the sky fell, has knocked the English back on their heels, but not out of Virginia. In this episode, the English react, both with domestic controversy and military force. The Virginia Company invents corporate “damage control.” King James I gives the Company all the obsolete weapons in his armory. Within...

This episode snips off some loose ends. We examine Squanto’s ambiguous and controversial legacy, and look at a few interesting Pilgrim stories through the summer of 1623 that did not fit well into the timeline narrative of the last few episodes, including Indian gambling, a miracle of prayer during extreme weather, and the decision by the leaders of the colony to end collective farming and a...

By fall 1622, the new settlers sent by Thomas Weston – except those who were sick and remained in the care of the Pilgrims — left to settle in Wessagussett, twenty-two miles to the north of Plymouth at the site of today’s Weymouth.  It was in fact a great location for a settlement with one important qualification:  It was decidedly in the territory of the Massachusetts tribe, and by no means...

After some English killed one of Opechancanough’s most celebrated warriors, Nemattanew, in the belief that he had killed an English trader, the great chief Opechancanough reassured Sir George Yeardley, the governor of the English in Virginia, that “the Sky should sooner fall than Peace be broken.” This was part of Opechancanough’s extraordinarily disciplined eight year campaign to lull...

Opechancanough, successor to paramount chief Powhatan, deserves to be remembered as one of the great indigenous leaders in American history, on the same rank as Massasoit, King Philip, Pontiac, Logan the Orator, Joseph Brant, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. His biography, the important prerequisite to his war on the English in 1622, is nothing less than astonishing. Twitter:  @TheHis...

It is the fall of 1621. After the show of force at Nemasket, the cementing of relations with Massasoit, and the three day feast we now regard as “the first Thanksgiving,” the Pilgrims confront enemies within. The Pilgrims did not yet know it, but for the next year and a half they would battle perfidy, betrayal, and enemies within who would threaten them existentially.  The perfidy...

In the spring of 1621, the Pilgrims have met Samoset and Tisquantum, and were learning from Squanto to feed themselves. This they would be able to do within one growing season, something the settlers at Jamestown took many years to accomplish. They had also signed a peace treaty with the grand sachem of the Wampanoag, Massasoit. Now they are learning that Massasoit was weaker than he postured, and...

“Welcome, Englishmen!” The Pilgrims had had been building houses and establishing defenses for Plymouth for three months before Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore representing the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, marched boldly into town. Until that moment, they had seen a few Indians watching them, but had made no contact. Now, Massasoit had to decide whether to seek a treaty with the Englishmen,...

It is November 11, 1620. The Mayflower has anchored in the harbor at today’s Provincetown, Massachusetts. The passengers and crew of the Mayflower had been stuffed into the small ship for at least ten weeks, and for those who didn’t go ashore in England longer than that. They were eager to get off the ship, explore the region, and find a permanent place to settle. That would prove to b...

Who were the Pilgrims, and how was it that they settled in the Netherlands, only to sail on the Mayflower for the lower Hudson River? And having done that, what was it like on board, and how was it they ended up in New England? All will be revealed, including the story of John Howland, who narrowly escaped death on the crossing and who is today ancestor to more than two million Americans, roughly...

This episode starts at the end of the story of the Pilgrims at Plymouth by looking at the famous “Mayflower Compact,” and how Americans have spoken and written about it for more than 200 years. Was it a “document that ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution as a seminal American text,” or merely an expediency for heading off the possibi...

This year’s Independence Day “Sidebar” episode is about 18 year-old Daniel Webster’s first public speech, on the 4 th of July, 1800, in front of an audience of good citizens in Hanover, New Hampshire.  The speech is interesting for a number of reasons, including that it shows how early in our history the 4 th of July became the national holiday for ordinary Americans, and also that it...

This episode examines the arrival of the first Africans – Angolans, specifically – in English North America on a privateer called the White Lion . We look at the much-debated status of the new arrivals, the circumstances of their arrival, their origins in Angola under unbelievably brutal conditions, their treatment in American history over the last 145 years, and their significance in...

The year 1619 is a famous one in the history of Virginia. There were two big moments — the introduction of the “Great Charter,” which brought representative government to the future United States for the first time, and the first importation of enslaved Africans in English North America. This episode, Part 1, looks at the innovation of the Great Charter, the invention of the &#82...

This episode looks at the kidnapping of Squanto – Tisquantum – in 1614, along with 26 other Wampanoags, in the context of the extraordinarily robust trade between northern Europeans and the tribes along the northeastern Atlantic Coast of North America. Tisquantum would become one of the most important “cosmopolitan” Indians of the era, and in a horrifying twist of fate woul...

It is 1614. John Smith of Jamestown fame is now looking for a new gig, and he sets his gimlet eye on the northeast coast of North America. He travels the coast in a small boat, and by 1616 has produced a tract called “A Description of New England” with an accompanying map. He gives New England its name, and makes the case for the English settlement of the region. He would not get his g...

On May 30, 1931, the Saturday after Memorial Day, the beleaguered President Herbert Hoover addressed a crowd of 20,000 people under sweltering heat at Valley Forge. This episode looks at that speech in the context of Hoover’s life and times. Contemporary listeners will see much that is familiar in Hoover’s speech — politicians are in many ways similar across generations — a...

We are on the road to Plymouth. There are several strands that weave together in 1620, when the Pilgrims on the Mayflower land at an abandoned Indian village known as Patuxet, at a site John Smith had named Plymouth. One of those strands is the rise of dissident Protestantism in England, and the idea that it might best be dealt with by transplanting early Separatists to the New World. The first su...

Samuel de Champlain returns to New France in 1615, and leads an alliance of Huron and Algonquin tribes into western New York State to attack Onondaga, the heavily fortified heart of Iroquois territory on the site of today’s Syracuse. Along the way Champlain goes fishing on Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, and we learn that he was not the first European to do. The battle itself is dramatic. The F...

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 the Virginia Company and himself. Most importantly, we look at the hilariously devious ruse that Argall deployed in 1613 to “displant” the French colony on Mt. Dese...

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 in a case handed down by the United States Supreme Court only a few days ago, on April 21, 2022. The case, United S tates vs. Vaello Madero , addresses a pretty unexciting question to most of us &#8212...

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 old, so this must not have been an easy decision to make. This episode is about that trip to London in 1616 and 1617. The young family sailed in April 1616 on Samuel Argall’s frigate Treasurer...

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-Powhatan War.  We look at the two protagonists, their different personalities, their motives, and the extent of their emotional attachment. My primary source for this episode is a very interesting b...

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 and John Rolfe. The war was extremely bloody, if casualties are measured as a percentage of original population, and is noteworthy as the first true war between English settlers and the Indians of Nor...