Before and After Jamestown - (Native Peoples, Cultures, and Places of the Southeastern Uni) by Helen C Rountree & E Randolph Turner (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Certificate of Commendation, American Association for State
and Local History, 2003

Addressed to specialists and nonspecialists alike, Before
and After Jamestown introduces the Powhatans--the Native Americans of Virginia's
coastal plains, who played an integral part in the life of the Williamsburg and
Jamestown settlements--in scenes that span 1,100 years, from just before their
earliest contact with Europeans to the present day. Synthesizing a wealth of
documentary and archaeological data, the authors have produced a book at once
thoroughly grounded in scholarship and accessible to the general reader. They
have also extended the historical account through the native people's long-term
adaptation to European immigrants and into the immediate present and their
continuing efforts to gain greater recognition.

Illustrated with more than 100 photographs, maps, and
drawings, the book also includes an entire chapter, from the Powhatan
perspective, on the original English fort at Jamestown. The authors provide
suggestions for additional reading for both children and adults as well as a
list of relevant sites to visit in Virginia.

Review Quotes

"It is not surprising that there is much we did not know about the early history of the tribe. It is astonishing that this volume contains so much we did not know about the fate of the tribe after English colonization."--Virginia Quarterly Review

"An important synthesis of archaeological, anthropological, and historical material."--Journal of Southern History

"Surveys a thousand years of Powhatan history, literally from the ground up. . . . The result is as detailed and complete a picture of a people and their culture as one is likely to encounter."--Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

About the Author

Helen C. Rountree is professor emerita at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. E. Randolph Turner III is director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Portsmouth Regional Office.