History Lessons

While on our vacation we were able to take in a lot of history. A lot. Which was really cool because I actually enjoy history. Well up until a certain year. Not sure which one, but it's before 1900. And a lot of what I like is not covered on the History Channel. Don't they know that there's like a billion years of time before some dude offed the Archduke and then some other guy with some really bad facial hair wanted to take over the world? Must it all be about World War whatever?

Anyway, we were able to see and experience the very beginning of this great land of ours. Starting with the colony of Jamestown, where English settlers came over to the colony of Virginia named for Madonna. Oh wait, she sang Like a Virgin, she wasn't actually a virgin.

No, it was named for Queen Elizabeth who really also wasn't a virgin. I mean we all know she got it on with Joseph Fiennes. I mean Sir Robert Dudley. And do you really think Clive Owen, I mean Walter Raleigh, got all that money because he was a good explorer. I think not...

So the English settlers came over on three boats, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Crap, that was Columbus, he was Spanish in 1492. Okay I don't know the English boat names, but there were 3 of them and they were tiny and they came and settled in 1607. And none of their 75 passengers were as cute as these:

And none of their crew worked as hard as this:





And their GPS system kinda sucked. Which is probably why it took 5 months to get there.



And so did their digital clocks.




When they finally arrived, they got to work clearing the land,



which this picture is totally unrealistic. Not for the fact that Abby would never been weeding a garden. But because no women came over to the colony until the next year. And then it was only 2 of them. Which is why Captain John Smith fell in love with Pocahontas, because the pickings were slim. Oh wait, that was a Disney movie...She did really save his life though. But she wasn't nearly as pretty as that cartoon made her out to be.

Well eventually, they got some women. It took a while for the cable company to hook up the Internet so the men could handpick their mail-order brides. Ok, not really. They kinda just took what came off the boat and were happy about it because then they didn't have to do this anymore:



Meanwhile relations with their neighbors, the Indians, I'm sorry, Native Americans, were slowly going downhill. See in between all their free time of making clay pots:




and grinding corn:




and tanning animal hides:



they decided to get rid of the white man by trying to starve them. And they got rid of a lot of them. The ones that did survive...well you don't want to know what they had to eat to do so. I'm just gonna tell you it was way worse than pork and beans.

But Jamestown eventually got it together and started to defend the fort:

and made all happy and nice with the Indians again and the English lived happily ever after. ( At least until America got a mind of it's own) Especially when John Rolfe, who really did marry Pocahontas, discovered how to harvest this wonderful product called tobacco and made oodles of money.

And that my friends is the beginning. To the best of my knowledge. Just pulled out of my mommy-scattered brain. Seriously, I can't even remember if I brushed my teeth this morning or what I wore yesterday.

Which is why the girls are so thankful for Google when it comes to history projects!