Archaeology Unearths the Stories

"It's spring now," said Andy, as he took off his sweatshirt at noon. All morning we had walked Yorktown Battlefield without jackets, but the sun warmed enough for removal of yet another layer. By 1:00 p.m. we noticed bugs. Little black flies flew in tight swarms around our heads at the Surrender Field and the Moore House. Andy was right. Spring has arrived in Virginia. Another day or two in the high 60's and the grass would green.

Yorktown provided a fascinating glimpse into the past. A 16-minute film Siege of Yorktown gave us an overview, and a half hour in the museum showed us some specifics of what was really the final battle of the Revolutionary War. Pitched in one display in controlled temperature environment were General George Washington's oval-shaped dining tent with china and silver service and his rectangular sleeping tent with privacy flaps.

Before the ranger-guided program, we drove along the British portion of the seven-mile self-guided Battlefield Tour. Here, in May of 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis still had hopes of subjugating the South after battles in the North and in North Carolina had reached stalemate. He moved his forces to Virginia, believing that if he could control Virginia, the valuable tobacco and cotton states to the south would readily fall in line and return to British allegiance. In June, after receiving orders from New York from his superior Sir Henry Clinton to establish a naval base around Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis chose the port of Yorktown.

By August he had moved his army and fortified the town and Gloucester Point across the wide York River. Later, during our ranger-guided walk, Ranger Robbie explained that Cornwallis chose the site with advice from his engineers, because the York River, 85-90 feet deep in one channel, offered a deep-water port; two creeks on the York side gave him natural defense; the land on the river offered higher ground for defense; Chesapeake Bay meant easy access to supplies and reinforcements via the Atlantic Ocean; and Gloucester on the opposite shore offered support and potential retreat. He set aside boats for that possibility.
Andy and I stopped at the outer defensive earthworks, a line of dirt mounds built by the British connecting the two creeks on the north and south, and the second line of defensive earthworks, some scattered mounds closer to the main fortress area.

During our 10:00 a.m. tour, Ranger Robbie pointed out strategic advantages of the site, but Cornwallis never counted on the large French fleet that sailed up from the West Indies and blockaded the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, cutting off his supplies and potential escape by sea.

At the same time General George Washington moved his forces from near New York City and a French army under the Comte de Rochambeau from Rhode Island toward Virginia to attack Cornwallis by land. About 17,000 strong, they gathered at Williamsburg, moved toward the garrison of 8,300 British on September 28, finished digging siege lines on October 6 and commenced bombardment by October 9.

Ranger Robbie walked us to Redoubts 9 and 10. The Colonists stormed Redoubt 10 in less than 30 minutes, less time than it took the French professional soldiers to conquer Redoubt 9, but both were crucial to complete a second siege line to bring Allied artillery to within point blank range. "It was those big siege guns that made the difference in the battle," she said. That morning October 17, after nine days of round-the-clock bombardment, Cornwallis requested a cease fire to parley surrender terms. He had tried to escape across the York River, but a storm had scattered or destroyed all but four of the boats he had harbored. He had no escape.

Ranger Robbie pointed to the 32-pound artillery cannon. "That made all the difference. The English only had 12-pound guns," she said. Then she pointed across the field. "That break between the creeks was the weakest point for the English, but they had extensive earthworks to defend themselves. It's an amazing story and it changed the course of world history."

We drove the rest of the Battlefield Tour road with pullouts for different encampment sites and ended at the Moore House where four representatives hammered out surrender terms on October 18, 1781: British commissioners Lt. Col. Thomas Dudas and Maj. Alexander Ross and Allied officers Lt. Col. John Laurens for the Americans and Second Col. Viscomte de Noailles, brother-in-law of Marquis de Lafayette for the French. A young volunteer with a French accent told us the parley actually lasted 14 hours and Cornwallis did not get his way.

"Revenge?" I asked Ranger Robbie.

"No, I don't think so. It was Washington's statement to Cornwallis that we were equals in the eyes of the world." But the pamphlet suggested otherwise.
Andy and I read more about it at the Surrender Field, an agreed upon neutral site where all surviving British soldiers relinquished their weapons. Later, they were marched to prison camps in Fort Frederick, Maryland, and Winchester, Virginia. That afternoon of October 19, the defeated British marched a mile from Yorktown through shoulder-to-shoulder columns on both sides of the road: American soldiers and citizens on one side and French soldiers on the other, a horrendous humiliation for the professional British who considered themselves the best army in the world. Cornwallis had requested the honors of war. Washington had answered, "The same honors will be granted to the surrendering army as granted to the garrison of Charlestown." The Articles of Capitulation demanded, "march out... with shouldered arms, colors cased, and drums beating a British or German march." That meant no regiment flags and no proud military music. For Cornwallis, it was humiliation. He stayed in his tent "ill" and sent a substitute, his British pride obliterated.

Shirtless bathers lined the beach pullouts along the James River, as we followed detour signs and paused at one-lane road construction stops on Colonial Parkway on the way to Jamestown.

"They are college kids," said Andy, as if that explained their appearance.

"They are sun bathers," I answered, "on the Virginia coast in February." And some still lolled on the sand at 6:00 p.m. when we headed back to town. No doubt about it, spring has sprung.
Our country's history began in Jamestown more than 400 years ago. Only 23 miles away at Yorktown, that first 174 years of hope, discovery, settlement, struggle, suffering, war, growth and development ended. How ironic that so much happened in so little space!

Scientists and historians long believed that the remains of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, had washed into the James River years ago. Only in the past few years did archaeologists discover the 1607 James Fort site buried at the river's edge. Three cultures--British, American Indian and African--joined in the frontier colony and have been unearthed and displayed in the Archaearium of artifact discoveries.

Volunteers manned the fort site and told how depressions in the ground had been clues to the existence of collapsed buildings. "Unearthing will continue in April," said one volunteer, "when the ground dries. Otherwise it's kept covered."

Andy and I had learned in school that John Smith ordered, "No work, No food." But the Archaearium explained that many of those who came to Jamestown were second and third English sons. They inherited nothing under the laws of primogeniture so had skills of the middle class. And for some gentlemen, their job was protection of the colony. Maybe history has warped the story somewhat.

A cross marked the site of the first Anglican service and iron crosses marked burial sites of those who had died here in 1607. Life was not easy on a wilderness frontier. We read fascinating stories of discovery in the Archaearium, including information about exhumed bodies that revealed rampant disease and malnutrition.

The bones of one young man, 18-20 years old when he died as evidenced by his wisdom teeth, showed he was shot in the leg at close range. The musket ball with a misshapen cut in it had created a dirty wound. And dissension plagued the early colony of 104 men and boys. Had it been murder during a military muster or could it have been a hunting accident? Death was common in that first year. But colonists kept coming and women shipped across the Atlantic to pacify the men. Each display made me want to discover more. I should have been an archaeologist.

We walked along the river to the ruins of the town. As Jamestown grew, it expanded well beyond the fort site and survived for a couple hundred years. Only a few ruins remained. Most have been covered--buried under dirt for preservation.

Finally we drove around Pitch and Tar Swamp, all lowland tidal marsh where Passmore Creek penetrates the land from the James River. "It's brackish water," explained one volunteer to a visitor. "That means it is somewhat salty, but not like the ocean."

Then I remembered what I had read about the wells in early Jamestown. Those dug too deep hit salt water; those dug too shallow hit sewage; only a few dug just right found fresh water. This beautiful land showed the deadly hazards of settlement. The early colonists chose the site for friendly Indians so they could barter for food and spend their time looking for gems. It had easy accessibility to the ocean, and they had been told by the sponsoring company to choose a defensible position upriver that the Spanish wouldn't notice. Hence, this place called Jamestown on a river that had only one deep channel far out toward the opposite bank. But even I would know better than to settle in a marsh.