NATIONAL PARK SERVICE THAT THE PAST SHALL LIVE... the history program of the National Park Service

THESE are only three of a score or more areas in the National Park System illustrating prehistory and the Indian cultures. But it is time to leave prehistory now and move forward to the next era of America's development. We come now to the time of the first white man on this continent—the time when the great powers of Europe were reaching out to establish footholds in this wild, primitive land, and by so doing to extend the greatness of their empires.

Twenty-three historical areas in the National Park System commemorate significant highlights of this long and bloody struggle for conquest and power. There are early Spanish forts in Florida and Puerto Rico, and old Spanish missions in New Mexico and Arizona. Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, commemorates the first English attempt to settle the New World, and not far away is Jamestown, where English settlement succeeded.

The settlement of Jamestown has been described as one of the great events in the history of the world. Here was born the great English-speaking nation beyond the seas, and here was the cradle of our Republican institutions and liberties.

Today the Jamestown National Historic Site and the Jamestown portion of Colonial National Historical Park commemorate the story of the hard struggle to make this beachhead in America secure.

Let us pause there next in our journey through this nation's past. Let us stand for a moment on the shores of Virginia's James River and imagine the beginning . . .

It is May 13, 1607. Three small English ships approach Jamestown Island—the Susan Constant of 100 tons commanded by Captain Christopher Newport and carrying 71 persons; the Godspeed of 40 tons commanded by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold and carrying 52 persons; and the Discovery, a pinnace of 20 tons under Captain John Ratcliffe, carrying 21 persons. During the day (as George Percy, one of the party on board, relates) they maneuvered the ships so close to the shore that they were "moored to the Trees in six fathom (of) water." The next day, May 14, he continues, "we landed all our men, which were set to work about the fortification, others some to watch and ward as it was convenient."

Thus, the first permanent English settlement in America was begun, about 20 years after the ill-fated attempts to establish a colony on Roanoke Island and 13 years before the Pilgrims made their historic landing at Plymouth, in New England.

Little remains now of the town that sprang from this beginning. But here again the archeologists have brought back for us enough of the flavor of the place and time so that we can reconstruct the rest. As we move about over the historic site we pass more than a hundred building-remains that have been excavated. Some are only the footings of a frame structure, some are brick foundations in full outline, and others are well-preserved cellars. Only bits and pieces of what once was, to be sure, but enough so that we can vividly imagine the homes these foundations once supported, and the manner in which 17th-century Jamestown men and their families lived. We can even see and touch their clay tobacco pipes, their glass wine bottles, pottery vessels, spoons, forks, shears, pins, thimbles, axes, hoes, buckles, combs, rings, and other objects of their daily lives recovered from the ruins. With these evidences it is not too difficult to people the vanished streets with such celebrated figures of the past as Captain John Smith. We can almost seem to see the Indian princess Pocahontas being led through the town a prisoner, and share vicariously in her later triumph when she was entertained at the English court. She walked this ground, and so have we. The link is unforgettable—with the Indian maiden, with the starvation and hardships of the colony, with the personal triumphs of its people, small and large, with the meeting in 1619 of the first legislative assembly in the New World—with all that Jamestown signifies and represents.

Early exploration is another stirring story of the colonial period. This story, too, is told and kept alive in the historical units of the National Park System. The De Soto National Memorial in Florida commemorates the De Soto expedition of 1539-43 in the Southeast. The Coronado expedition of approximately the same time into the Southwest is commemorated by the Coronado National Memorial in Arizona. Juan Cabrillo, exploring the Pacific Coast by sea for Spain discovered San Diego Bay in California in 1542, an event memorialized at Cabrillo National Monument. All of these are fragments of the colonial portion of our history. Other sites bring to mind the piracy, the privateering, the open warfare in the struggle for colonial supremacy, and the emerging growth and strength of the English colonies. But it is time to move ahead again in time to the next great era—to the days of the early patriots who purchased our liberty with their blood in the Revolutionary War.