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Lynne Ripper (left) of Stafford, along with Mary and Gary Jackson of Sumerduck, get a closer look at the Godspeed from a pontoon boat during Discovery Days.
LEFT: Unity Culture Group members Niiamoo D-Odoo (left) of Stafford and Sarah Botchway
Mike Steen of The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation shows how to use a pike, a Colonial weapon, during Discovery Days.
FAR LEFT: Robert Green, chief of the Patawomeck Indians, works on a dugout canoe as Fredericksburg Mayor Tom Tomzak watches.
ABOVE: Patawomeck re-enactors demonstrate how cornmeal was made during Colonial times. |
IGHT-YEAR-OLD Zack Debey was so eager to play Colonial soldier yesterday that he went through the drill twice at Discovery Days at Aquia Landing in Stafford County.
First he practiced the marching orders of the day: "Turn your bodies to the right hand" and "Face your bodies to the left hand."
"That's the primary thing a soldier has to learn, is how to stand," said Edward Wilson, a costumed historical interpreter from Jamestown Settlement. "As long as you can stand in formation, you can win."
Then he asked Zack, who lives in Stafford, the question he'd been waiting for.
"Are you ready to be a soldier?"
At Zack's eager nod, Wilson gave him an armored vest typical of the ones the early Jamestown settlers used. Made for an adult, it came to Zack's knees, but he still grinned happily.
"Hmm, something's missing," Wilson said.
"A helmet!" shouted several people in the crowd. So Wilson plunked a peaked metal helmet on Zack's head.
"That was cool!" said Zack, before darting off to another activity.
Discovery Days, which continues today, is a family-friendly event. It was designed to help promote anniversary celebrations for Jamestown, which turns 400 next year, and highlight Stafford's ties to the first successful English settlement in the New World.
It also helped show off the history and beauty of Aquia Landing, a county park at the confluence of Aquia Creek and the Potomac River.
The primary draw, however, was the new, $2 million replica of the Godspeed, which sailed 160 miles from Jamestown Settlement to anchor in the creek for the event. This is its first appearance since completing a tour of six major East Coast ports to kick off the anniversary events.
Eric Speth, the Godspeed's captain, and Robert "Two Eagles" Green, chief of the Patawomeck Indians of Virginia, helped open Discovery Days with a ceremonial exchange of gifts.
Green, wearing a turkey-feather mantle made for his role in "The New World," a movie about John Smith and Pocahontas, welcomed Speth in Algonquian and gave him a basket of fresh corn. In exchange, the captain gave Green a copper cup, iron hooks, two sundials and a gold ring, all valuable trade items of the time.
"It was a very moving exchange and allowed me to think back on when the colonists traded with them for their very survival," Speth said.
The Patawomecks traded corn and meat with Capt. Samuel Argall at Pocahontas' request in 1612, a period known as the "starving time." Pocahontas' mother is thought to have been a Patawomeck.
"The colonists came here after Powhatan refused to give them any food," said Green. "If not for the Patawomecks, Jamestown might have been a second Roanoke colony and we'd all be speaking Spanish."
Roanoke, an early settlement in what is now North Carolina, disappeared.
Aquia Creek is too shallow for the Godspeed to sail close to shore, so people started lining up at 10 a.m. to take a $5 ride around the ship aboard one of River Shore Outfitters' two pontoon boats.
The wait for the 20-minute trip stretched to an hour and half by early afternoon, after one of the boats stopped working. But that didn't seem to faze the people who waited patiently in line for their turn.
"We've had everyone from tiny babies to a 92-year-old man buy tickets for this," said Joyce Fox, administrative assistant in Stafford's Department of Economic Development. "Only one person has complained about the wait."
The throngs of people attending the event had plenty else to do.
Over in the History Village, they could find out about life in Jamestown, and do such hands-on activities as help finish two large dugout canoes, grind corn and make yard darts out of feathers, reeds and corncobs in the Patawomeck section.
"This lets people know that we're still here," said Kathy Harding, a member of the Patawomeck tribe. "We don't live in longhouses anymore, but we're still here."
A number of historic-preservation groups also were on hand with displays. The U.S. National Slavery Museum, for example, brought in the Unity Cultural Group, whose members are originally from Ghana, to sing and dance, and it showed pictures of what the museum will look like when it's built. It will be located near Interstate 95 in the Celebrate Virginia development in Fredericksburg.
The Stafford County Historical Society was selling Christmas ornaments featuring the Godspeed and displaying photographs of Aquia Landing during the Civil War.
"There were over 135,000 Union troops in Stafford during the war," said Jane Conner, who's working on her third book about Stafford County history. "That's greater than our present-day population. This was a landing depot for the men and their supplies."
Discovery Days also had its share of vendors, selling everything from Virginia Barbeque sandwiches to Potomac Cellars' commemorative bottles of Jamestown Pocahontas Reserve wine to Kool Ties West's "body coolers," chilly absorbent neckerchiefs that got snapped up to help beat the heat.
"I had no idea there was so much in Stafford," said Jenette Masterson after taking a ride around the Godspeed. "I've lived here actively for seven years, and I didn't even know about this park. I'll come back in the fall when it is not so hot."
Discovery Days continues today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Aquia Landing, 2846 Brooke Road.
To reach CATHY JETT:
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
