Chapter 2 review after the fact
Long Tran. HST200 Chapter 2 Review: The chapter mainly discuss about the time when the English first came to Virginia and established their settlements. But at the beginning of the chapter, the author mentioned about how historical documents could be controversial because they were based on eye witness and first hand knowledge. Therefore, such example of Captain John Smith were given. Captain John Smith was a well known Virginian for his book: “A Generall Historie of Virginia”. In the book, his life was included by many adventurous and romantic events, such as the love affairs with a Hungarian woman named Charatza Tragabigzanda and an Indian named Pocahontas. But, many historians challenged the credibility of John Smith, not because he was lied but he described everything based on his eyewitness without a proper understanding of different cultures. In order to make it clear, the author gave an example of a baseball game as it was witnessed and described by John Smith, it turned out to be very funny and looked like a battle, mainly because an 17th century can not understand a baseball game. Therefore, many historians believed that the love of Pocahontas that saved John Smith from the execution, was in fact, just an adaption ritual. From the story of John Smith, the author examined the first efforts of colonization by the English in Virgina. From Smith’s point of view, this land was very fruitful and befitted for human’s lives, but in fact, the first years in Virgina was dreadful. The harsh weather, the aggressive Indians, the hot and humid summer killed many settlers. Ten years after the first landing, only 400 settlers out of 2000 alived. To fix the situation, Sir Edwin Sandys was elected the treasurer of Virgina Company and he made various effort to save the failing colony. He used land to attract both new investors and settlers to Virgina, he also discarded the martial law and gathered the