Session 2: Jamestown, 1619: an assembly and the first enslaved Africans

Read one step, do it, then move on.

Step 1

Recap check

On whose land were the colonies founded?
What does the Ferris painting leave out?
What does colony come from?

Answer key

On the homelands of Native nations such as the Powhatan, the Wampanoag, the Lenape.
Epidemics, the land question, the Wampanoag point of view.
From the Latin colonia.

Step 2

Objectives

Date and explain the first representative assembly in English America
Understand that slavery arrived in Virginia the same summer

Step 3

Documents

Key document

Jamestown was founded in 1607 on the land of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom. On 30 July 1619, twenty-two burgesses elected by the settlers met with Governor Yeardley and his council in the church at Jamestown: it was the first representative legislative assembly in English America. In late August 1619, “20 and odd” Africans arrived at Point Comfort aboard the English ship White Lion. They had been taken from the Portuguese slave ship San Juan Bautista.

Read the source: National Park Service, the first legislative assembly · National Park Service, African Americans at Jamestown

"The burgesses initiated and passed more legislation regulating relations with the Indians and the personal affairs of the colonists"
National Park Service, Historic Jamestowne

Step 4

Task 1

Build a timeline: 1607, July 1619, August 1619.

Step 5

Task 2

Read the key document: who could be elected? who was left out?

Step 6

Task 3

Pair discussion: why do historians stress that these two events took place the same summer?

Step 7

Gap-fill worksheet

Word bank: burgesses assembly enslaved 1607 Powhatan

Jamestown was founded in .
It stood on the land of the .
Twenty-two met in July 1619.
It was the first representative in English America.
In August 1619, Africans arrived in Virginia.

Answer key

1607
Powhatan
burgesses
assembly
enslaved

Step 8

Homework

Write a short news report, dated September 1619, presenting both events of the summer in a neutral tone (80 words).

Answer key

Model answer: a headline, a dateline (Jamestown, September 1619), the meeting of the burgesses on 30 July, the arrival of the White Lion in late August, no personal opinion, facts in the past simple.