Overview

After a few failed expeditions across the Atlantic, English colonists established the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The representative legislature instituted there in 1624 was the first of its kind in America. Captain John Smith (1580?-1631), an early leader of the colony who had returned to England in 1609, published the first major English account of the New World in 1624. As the first successful English colony in the Americas, Jamestown helped establish Virginia as a major player in the history of the United States.

Background

Although Europeans had for centuries regarded themselves as having discovered the Americas, the continents were not empty of human inhabitants when the first sailing ships arrived from across the Atlantic. Virginia's coastal regions were populated by the Powhatan Confederacy, a part of the Algonquin language group. Other parts of Virginia...