The soldier and adventurer Captain John Smith became president of the Jamestown Colony’s governing council in 1608. He led the colony through its first year by improving defenses, cultivating land, and maintaining relations with Native Americans, whose agricultural knowledge and food stores were vital to the colonists’ survival. Between 1623 and 1624, during a period of weakening trust in the Virginia Company, Smith rushed to publish this major work supporting the Jamestown settlement. This copy bears the arms of King James I of England (r. 1603–1625). Rare Book Division.
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The first permanent English settlement in North America was Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607. William Strachey sailed to Jamestown in 1609 and became the Virginia Company’s secretary to the colony. This manuscript is a contemporary scribal copy of Strachey’s eyewitness account of the colony, with his handwritten corrections and signature. It was extra-illustrated with 27 hand-colored engravings made in 1590 by Theodor de Bry (1528–1598). Depicted here is the Algonquian village Secotan. The continent’s Native American population may have numbered in the tens of millions before European settlement. In 1612, Strachey presented the manuscript to Henry Percy (1564–1632), 9th earl of Northumberland, known as the “Wizard Earl” for his interest in science. Gift of Cyrus H. McCormick, Class of 1879. General Manuscripts Bound, no. 1416, Manuscripts Division.