Showing posts with label Pocahontas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pocahontas. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2013

Pocahontas - Super History



We are starting off the story of Pocahontas with the above video from Nova.  It explores in more detail the real story behind the legend.  We also have 2 e-books that are new editions in our collection of digital publishing.  One is more along the lines of a childrens story and the other covers more detail and geared more towards adults.  It's an overall well rounded view of the Princess.



To read this in an easier manner, please click on the icon at the bottom right hand side of the container to open the document to full screen view.  You are free to download a free copy from our SlideShare site by signing into SlideShare with your Facebook account or LinkedIn account or by signing up for a free account.



You can also pick up a free copy of this e-book as well.  We had another video scheduled to go along with all of these books, however, the video was taken down off of YouTube for copyright violations.  Animated Classic Hero's has an interesting albeit historically questionable version of Pocahontas we were going to show.  The owners of those videos had YouTube pull down all copies of their videos due to said copyright violations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_Hero_Classics  Here is more information on the video we are not able to show.  We guess money is more important than education?  DVD sales must come first.  We saw the film, it isn't worth buying anyway.


Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, June 21, 2013

Virginia to preserve Pocahontas home


by Dan Vergano, USA TODAY

Pocahontas, Capt. John Smith and Chief Powhatan get their due Friday in a dedication ceremony that preserves the village site that made them famous.
Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and Native American tribal officials will dedicate the Werowocomoco (WER-ruh-wo-KOM-uh-ko) site near Gloucester, Va., in a day-long event. Now an archaeological site, the village appears to have held a longhouse, judging from postholes, where Smith famously encountered Powhatan after the founding of Jamestown in 1607.

"One of the most significant archaeological sites in North America, it is where settlers and Native Americans first encountered each other," says archaeologist Martin Gallivan of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
A renowned part of colonial-era folklore (and a Disney movie), the rescue of Capt. John Smith by Pocahontas would have occurred at the site, if it really happened, which historians largely doubt. First recounted in a 1624 book, the story goes that after capturing Smith and bringing him to their chief's longhouse, Powhatan's tribesmen were ready to "beate out his braines," when Pocahontas took his head in her own arms to stop his execution. Smith didn't write about the rescue in his earliest accounts of the colony, but he did provide a description of the location of Chief Powhatan's village and longhouse in later accounts that match Werowocomoco. Already on the National Register of Historic Places, the village was the capital of Powhatan's kingship over Virginia's Tidewater region and will be precluded from residential or business development.

"It's a tip of the hat to the first 15,000 years of the American story," says Charles Mann, author of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. "Powhatan and the empire he put together were major players in 16th- and 17th-century East Coast history - important in their own right and not just because they were unlucky enough to be descended upon by the English."
In Smith's accounts of his capture by Powhatan's tribe, he describes a chief's longhouse that in its floor layout matches the 72-foot-long-by-20-foot-wide floor plan seen at the site. A longhouse was typically built with trees bent over in a semicircle with woven mats fixed across the top and sides. Some historians say Smith mistook a tribal induction ceremony as a near-brush with beheading in his account of his capture in 1607.

Gallivan and his team have uncovered more than a dozen copper scraps at the longhouse site, ones that chemically match European trade items used by Jamestown's colonists and also found at that site, which was about 16 miles away from Werowocomoco. Werowocomoco was located on a shallow bay on the York River, while Jamestown was on swampy ground on the James River. "Only chiefs controlled copper at the time. Its red color was ritually significant in their mythology," says Gallivan, who will speak at the dedication ceremony.
In 2001, landowners Lynn and George Ripley had collected artifacts on their farm, which led to excavation of the site. "They have been very generous and put up with us ripping up their front yard for 10 years," Gallivan says. The archaeological work was conducted with the input of six Native American tribes related to the Algonquin group descended from Powhatan's tribe.

After 1609, which was a very hard year - "the Starving Time" for Jamestown - fewer and fewer Native Americans appear to have lived at Werowocomoco. Powhatan relocated to villages farther west, for example. The ultimate goal would be to see the site become a national park, Gallivan says. "Jamestown and Williamsburg only tell one part of the story from the colonial era, we could tell another side at Werowocomoco."

http://www.freep.com/usatoday/article/2442547  Link back to original story site.





Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Pocahontas, John Smith, Rescue Site In Spotlight, Gloucester, VA

Written by
Steve Szkotak
Associated Press
English: Plate 10 of an illustration based on ...
English: Plate 10 of an illustration based on the work of John White, however, this is used by John Smith and Strachey at Jamestown to document Virginia Indian communities. #3 is described as a tomahawk. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)



GLOUCESTER, VA. — A farm field overlooking the York River in Tidewater Virginia is believed to be where Pocahontas interceded with her powerful father Powhatan to rescue English Capt. John Smith from death.

That’s a fanciful footnote for many Virginia Indians, historians and archaeologists, who say the real story is that this land was the center of a complex, sprawling empire ruled by Powhatan long before the first permanent English settlement in America was founded in 1607.

It was called Werowocomoco, which roughly translates to a “place of chiefs.”

“This is like our Washington,” said Kevin Brown, chief of the Pamunkey tribe. “History didn’t begin in 1607, and there are a lot of people who overlook that.”

On loan to archaeologists for more than a decade, these 57 privately owned acres will be preserved forever under an agreement years in the making and to be officially announced Friday.

The deal is important for Native Americans because they believe their story has been overshadowed for centuries by the narrative of Smith and his fellow Europeans. In a departure from past digs involving native sites, archaeologists sought the counsel of Indian leaders before and during the exploration, honoring their wishes that burial grounds not be disturbed and helping interpret what was discovered.

For Ashley Atkins, a College of William & Mary doctoral candidate who has worked at the site since 2005, “recovering things out of the ground” was secondary to working with her fellow Pamunkey.

“Unfortunately, native people in the past have had no involvement at all in the way that their history has been investigated, uncovered and presented to the public,” said Atkins, who is 28. “Most people would think, ‘They wouldn’t be involved in uncovering your own history?’ But the reality is that has not been the common practice.”

Jeff Brown, a Pamunkey and Kevin Brown’s brother, worked at the site for years. He recalled Indians visiting the sweeping expanse overlooking the York River and being overcome.



“It gets emotional,” he said. “And when you’re digging you can really feel it.”

Martin Gallivan, a William & Mary anthropologist, said the involvement of native people “enhanced the project immensely.”

Only a fraction of Werewocomoco has been explored, perhaps just 2 percent.

After decades of research, archaeologists used the writings of Smith and others, ancient maps and detective work to conclude with near-certainty that this was Powhatan’s seat of power about 15 miles from Jamestown.

Powhatan’s chiefdom covered 30 political divisions and a population of 15,000 to 20,000 people while Jamestown settlers struggled to survive. Excavations have yielded the outline of the largest longhouse ever found in Virginia and a system of ditches that may have separated sacred and secular areas.

Randolph Turner, a retired state archaeologist whose hunt for Werewocomoco dates to the 1970s, said Powhatan’s empire was “one of the most complex political entities in all of eastern North America.”

The leader “had the power of life and death” and expanded his empire through warfare or the threat of warfare.

“He’s one of the most interesting political and military figures that I’ve ever read about,” Turner said. “And we’re just getting hints in the historical records of all he accomplished in his lifetime.”

The discovery of Werewocomoco can be credited to a purebred dog belonging to the land’s owners, Lynn and Robert Ripley.

Lynn Ripley used to walk around their land with her Chesapeake Bay Retriever, an American Kennel Club competitor named Mobjack Rhett Master Hunter.

She would remove debris that could cut her dog’s paws, and found arrowheads, spear tips, pipe stems and pottery shards.

“I just seemed to have an eye for it,” she said. “That’s how it all began, so our dog wouldn’t cut his feet. It’s like we were meant to be there and I was meant to find these things.”

The clincher was the discovery of copper, which was valued by the Indians as gold is today.

“I am absolutely convinced this is Werewocomoco,” Turner said. “It makes no sense for it to be anywhere else.”

That conclusion is supported by the U.S. Park Service, William & Mary, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Monday, May 6, 2013

Gloucester, VA - Free Tools For Local Businesses No 3

Gloucester, VA Historic Circle Jail - By Chuck...
Gloucester, VA Historic Circle Jail - By Chuck Thompson of TTC Media (Photo credit: Battleofthehook)
In our continuing efforts to assist local businesses we are putting up the source files for our newest campaign, Gloucester, Virginia, American History Begins Here.  The source files are all licensed under a Creative Commons license and are as follows.

Creative Commons License
Gloucester, Virginia, Where American History Really Begins by Chuck Thompson of TTC Media is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://www.GloucesterCounty-VA.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.GloucesterCounty-VA.com.

You can make derivative works under this license in the following manner.  You may not change the text in any area that is already set up.  What you may do is add in your own picture and or image along with text advertising your business in the space already provided on the document.  You may not take out any pictures already in the source file document.  You are allowed to change any of the fonts on the document as this is an area that can not be controlled in formatting the source file and not everyone has the same set of fonts available to work with.

  You may not remove the attribution or attribution source link at the bottom of the page of the source file.

  We are offering two source files for you to choose from.  One is a Microsoft Office doc. file so that you can edit and add your information using Microsoft Office and the other one is an Open Office odf. document that you can use Open Office writer to edit and add in your information.  Open Office will open either document and it will look the same.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5NJpRCvjyV8ZXJtSllYOV8yQzA/edit?usp=sharing  Microsoft Word Doc. file.  Preview does not show correctly but source file tested in Word shows fine.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5NJpRCvjyV8RjFKN3k3dUZSeGM/edit?usp=sharing  Open Office, AOO, Star Office and other open source office and word processing programs where odt.'s can be used.  No preview available when looking at download link.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5NJpRCvjyV8Ym1NVFRJU29mZFk/edit?usp=sharing  This is the source link for the free download to put on your site.  If you do not want an ugly link on your site, you can hide the link like this, CLICK HERE  to download the free Pocahontas - John Smith e-book.  We are hosting the download for you so you do not have to.  You can download a copy if you want and host it yourselves, that's up to you.  We are just trying to make everything as easy for you as possible.  The e-book is also being licensed to you.

Creative Commons License
The Pocahontas - John Smith Story, By Pocahontas Wight Edmunds by Chuck Thompson of TTC Media is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://www.GloucesterCounty-VA.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.GloucesterCounty-VA.com.

  The original source file came from the public domain, however, we made a number of edits and added a number of files and changes to the document that fall under our own copyrights.  You are welcome to search for a copy of the original book on your own and use that instead if you would like.  We do not allow any form of derivatives on the e-book under the above license.



This is an idea of what your finished ad will look like.



This is what the e-book looks like.

Once you are done, you can create a PDF of the document and post it on your web site to help you advertise your business and capture attention.  You can also post the PDF online and or send it out in emails or post in certain forums online.  You can also create a Jpeg image of the document to share it.  Printing with your own printer should be at a cost of roughly 15 to 20 cents per page.  100 pages costs around $15.00 to $20.00.  Take it to one of the local printers and see if they can maybe give you a better deal.  It just depends on how many you want to distribute.

   What are the potential benefits here?

1.) You are advertising your business and also your own web site.  (Provided you have one.  If you do not have a site, you can direct your customers to us to get the free download.  We have tried to think of everything in advance).
2.) You are encouraging repeat business.
3.) You are promoting history and education.
4.) You are promoting the area and community.
5.) You are promoting and being friendly to tourism.
6.) You are giving your customer something of value that does not cost you anything other than cheap printing costs and a bit of your time.

Another great idea to help you is to attach a coupon to the ad to encourage further repeat business.  This also allows you to trace how effective your campaign is or isn't.  The rest is up to you.  Send us an electronic copy of your newly created ad and we will promote it here on this site for you as well.


For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.
Have a news story? Submit it above.
Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.
Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.
We cover what no one else will.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Gloucester, VA - Where American History Really Begins



Did the history books get it wrong?  In the above file, we are arguing that if Pocahontas had not saved Captain John Smith from his death sentence, then it is a reasonable assumption to believe that Jamestown would have faced a similar fate to that of the Roanoke Island settlement.  Just another colony that vanished with little or no information as to what really happened and that this is what our present history books might read like today.

  With that argument presented, we further argue that American history really begins in Gloucester, Virginia then.  Can we really win that argument?  No, not really and would not expect to.  The piece is designed as an advertising piece for local businesses to take advantage of and help bring history and education to everyone.  With it, local businesses can advertise themselves by becoming ad sponsors and inserting their information into a space provided specifically for them on the ad.  There is no cost to local businesses to become ad sponsors other than downloading the ad file, inserting their information into the space provided and then printing costs.  One last step the businesses need to take is to post a link on their web sites for a free e-book download that is being hosted by us.

  So when someone visits the ad sponsors store, they can pick up one of these ads and if the purpose of the ad works, the shopper will later visit the ad sponsors web site to download the free e-book and seeing more reasons to come back and shop at the ad sponsors business again and maybe even recommend the shop or business to others.  Plus it puts a positive spin on the county and reasons for exploring the area.  So it's great for tourism.  The business gets to give away something of value and it does not cost the business anything to give this e-book away.

  We are developing an entire series of these that any business is free to take advantage of.  Each new ad will have a different free offer when the ad calls for one.  If a local business does not care for one ad but likes another one, then they are free to choose what they think will best help them.  There is no competition on these ads.  It does not matter if 30 other businesses are using this ad piece, it still does the same job for each one.  Businesses can also mix and match the ads as they become available, giving out different ones in a mix.

  Look for Free Tools For Local Businesses No 3 for the source files that is coming next and will be available on May 6th, 2013.


https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5NJpRCvjyV8Ym1NVFRJU29mZFk/edit?usp=sharing  Here is the link for the free e-book, "The Pocahontas - John Smith Story."  We will be putting this up on anther page here as well very soon.



For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.
Have a news story? Submit it above.
Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.
Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.
We cover what no one else will.


Enhanced by Zemanta

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Gloucester, VA Pocahontas And John Smith Story Part Of Gloucester's Rich History




The story of Pocahontas is a very large part of Gloucester, VA's rich history.  When we did research in the past about Gloucester's history, we were very disappointed with the vast majority of information and disinformation found throughout the Internet.  So we have been working hard at compiling better information and research and offering it to everyone for free.  More extensive than other works we have found elsewhere, we have acquired distribution rights on these works.

  We are continuing this research and compilation of Gloucester's rich and extensive history and will continue to post and host it.  We have some other books on Pocahontas as well that we will eventually get up on here.  You can download a copy of this book either through Slideshare or right below.  If you have any questions on how to download the e-book from this site, we have a page link above that contains instructions on how to download any of our files.


For all the latest news, please click on the Home button towards the top of this site.
Have a news story? Submit it above.
Some of Gloucester's most incredible history is found on this site in detail.
Gloucester, VA Links and News – A GVLN Website.
We cover what no one else will.


CLICK HERE for your download from our hosting area.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Pocahontas, Moving Closer To The Truth?


When one starts digging through all the information out there, one begins to build a new picture of what really happened in earlier times. This video was also well researched and kicks the movie done about Jamestown, Pocahontas and Captain John Smith. But again, digging must continue until we are able to establish the best possible picture based on the best possible evidence. Links will be coming soon so that everyone can follow and build their own conclusions.