in 1606 108 englishmen set sail for the unknown they dream of gold and other easy riches in a paradise across the atlantic instead they come face to face with a new world as alien as another planet in four months more than half are dead people died like flies and the paradise can kind of turn to a nightmare this is the real story of the place where america was born hostile indians mysterious diseases spanish spies hunger so extreme some even turn to cannibalism what really happened at jamestown what secrets are locked in these bones how did a fragile outpost of englishmen survive to plant the seed for a nation and change the face of the world for centuries the bodies lay forgotten in a swampy stretch of land near the virginia coastline [Music] some buried helter skelter crammed into graves obviously in haste historians long believed that much of this site had washed away into the james river taking its secrets with it but now the ghosts of jamestown are emerging and they're rewriting the first chapters of american history the jamestown story is not something that is all that comfortable to a lot of people because there was a lot of death bones that tell of murder starvation disease and a mysterious hero who may be the founding father americans have never known this is all that remains of jamestown the place where america was born but for archaeologists like bill kelso it's a priceless window into a time and place obscured by legends it's hard to sort through what i think is the fog of the story of jamestown we know the story is richer than i think it's ever been considered before [Applause] the early 17th century the new world is mostly an unexplored wilderness and europe is drunk on dreams of gold the reigning superpower is spain whose conquests in mexico and south america have reaped astonishing riches [Music] the spanish had been hauling gold back from the new world for over a century and uh the crown there was just filthy rich much of coastal south america is firmly under spanish control but many believe there's more gold waiting up north in the uncharted realm of the new world england wants a piece of the action and english investors take a daring gamble they form a corporation called the virginia company its goal find gold and a safe passage to the orient through the vast wilderness known as virginia december 1606 three ships set sail from london it's a treasure hunt that will go horribly wrong and almost immediately there's trouble winless seas turn a three-month journey into four [Music] crammed into the tiny ships are 108 men plus crew tempers flare the men are deeply divided half are gentlemen who don't do hard labor they look down on the commoners the only ones with practical experience it's a recipe for disaster there was a lot of bickering a lot of political rivalry it seems that uh big egos naturally are flocked to this type of activity the commoner who really gets the gentleman's blood boiling is john smith a soldier with attitude a few weeks into sailing he's in shackles [Music] accused of mutiny he starts a journal that will become history's primary source for the jamestown story he writes that the gentlemen are not nearly as prepared as he is for the hardships ahead john smith is a little bit of a character that's hard to understand for me he always comes out the hero in his own movie despite their differences the men have similar expectations of what they'll find in the new world their greatest fear is the spanish fleet it doesn't faze them the two earlier attempts to plant a colony in virginia have failed and that the last one mysteriously disappeared a lost colony their heads are filled with dangerous illusions they're convinced they'll find treasure to enrich themselves and their investors [Music] the noble savages will feed them in exchange for trinkets [Music] and if the savages get out of hand their muskets and cannon will scare them off [Music] they have complete faith in the superiority of their technology and their culture but what they don't know will kill them spain isn't the only empire in the neighborhood at least 13 000 native americans live near the target landing site most are united under a great chief called powhatan he's just heard a disturbing prophecy that a nation will rise from the chesapeake bay and overcome his empire he's already massacred a rival tribe to defy the prophecy and now a strange tribe of white men is about to invade his realm for the men nearing the virginia coast the nightmare is about to begin jamestown virginia is one of the richest archaeological sites in the united states it's been owned and preserved since 1893 by apva preservation virginia which administers the archaeology almost a million objects have been unearthed here in the past dozen years to beverly straub the site's curator these relics reveal the real story of what happened at jamestown i think we have to look at what we've been finding as almost like another hidden book that has been hidden away for almost 400 years our little colony has now come back to life through the material record during jamestown's darkest days 155 of 215 settlers would die a death rate of 70 [Music] the details of the disaster are only now coming to light [Applause] april 1607 the colonists land in the new world in springtime the wilderness is in full bloom [Music] we could find nothing but fair meadows and tall trees writes one colonist it's a relief from the cramped quarters of the ships at first they're sure they've found paradise they settle on a deserted stretch of land along the james river in virginia it's a strategic decision far enough upriver to protect against prowling spanish ships along the coast but their fear of the spaniards is blinding them to another enemy that surrounds them on every side as spring turns the summer the heat sets in the virginia company expects them to find gold quickly but their pans keep coming up empty and it's tedious backbreaking work in the searing sun the humidity is even worse to englishmen in wool clothes and body armor [Music] their paradise has become an unhealthy swamp with no fresh water buzzing with strange insects but that isn't the worst of it they've expected the indians to welcome their arrival they've left most of their guns and packing cases to present a friendly image they're counting on the natives to supply them with food they're in for a rude awakening [Music] suddenly one of their most basic beliefs is shaken to the core the colonists are proud of their advanced weaponry their steel armor weighs only 24 pounds much lighter than full body armor their helmets have sharp ridges to repel blows their swords are designed with hilts to protect the hand [Music] their match lock muskets carry a lit fuse to fire instantly [Applause] they're armed to fight the enemy they expected spaniards but the indians are unlike any enemy they've ever seen their bodies are painted to intimidate they practice guerrilla warfare blending into the wilderness their bows and arrows are light portable and extremely accurate in the hands of an experienced archer an arrow is deadly at 40 yards and an indian can fire up to 10 arrows in the 30 seconds it takes to reload a musket in the new world the indians hold the upper hand in their first month at jamestown indian arrows pick off several men the death toll will continue to mount and suddenly paradise has taken on an evil cast [Music] the wilderness has eyes danger lurks behind every tree the air is heavy with the threat of death every step away from cam could be their last [Applause] when bill kelso unearthed his first skeleton at jamestown he might have expected to find an arrowhead [Music] what he found instead was much more puzzling and it reveals in chilling detail just how dangerous the colony had become the skeleton was tagged with the initials of the project name jamestown rediscovery or jr102c [Music] and as we got down towards the foot a musket ball appears embedded in his leg it was also obvious that the leg was completely turned 180 degrees around and so it would literally it was blown off and that had to be the cause of death because it would would have severed his artery and i would have died within minutes how could a colonists have fallen to musket fire [Music] their greatest threat the indians didn't have guns but it's possible they could have stolen one to attack their enemy but what about the spaniards the men were still wary of a spanish surprise attack could a spaniard have made his way to jamestown more likely an argument between colonists turned deadly or is it possible that j.r shot himself kelso looks to the skeleton for clues one thing that was so unusual about this is not only there is the main musket ball but there was 21 other small shot that spread over a five inch pattern so that's a lot of forensic information ballistics tests reveal that to create a similar shot pattern a musket would have had to be 15 feet away from jr [Music] so he couldn't have shot himself so somebody shot jr it could have happened this way a moonlit night two men in the woods maybe someone got lost or heard the cry of an animal or the snapping of a twig in a world where every sound was new and strange anything could happen it's a likely possibility but then the bones themselves suggested a new scenario one that speaks to just how desperate the colony situation had become as archaeology tends to do you find something it raises a question and then you have a whole different perspective it was clear that the bullet actually entered from the right side of his leg and came completely through with the indians on the warpath the colonists would have begun a frenzy of drilling many are gentlemen not soldiers they've come to the ultimate frontier but they're not used to firing muskets these guns have a feature that makes them especially dangerous a lit fuse dangles precariously from each gun it's not supposed to touch the gunpowder until the trigger is pulled but all it would take is a tiny spark and a rookie soldier in a moment of carelessness [Music] and give fire the lead ball ripped into the side of jr's right knee fracturing the bone small shots scattered for five inches in his leg as the ball lodged on the inside of the knee most likely it severed an artery and jr bled to death in minutes but it just points out to me yet another danger at jamestown i mean these guys had they were walking around like like walking bombs because they had these powder things across them and and the guns were very unreliable and they're always there's always a match going in the mechanism to fire them particular burial symbolizes a lot about the risks of going to jamestown [Music] and for the colonists that first fatal summer the risks are multiplied they're thousands of miles from home utterly alone on the edge of a strange new world by land they're completely surrounded by indians who can attack at any moment by sea the spaniards loom over the horizon they've only been here three weeks but already their lives are at stake they need defense sturdy walls they have to build a fort as fast as humanly possible for bill kelso and his team of archaeologists it's taken a decade of digging but what they've found brings the scary time back to life here it is the different colors in the earth indicate the rotting wood what you see there is a mold of the actual posts which would be 10 12 15 feet high the post holes of the very first walls the colonists struggled to erect the effort was almost superhuman the port was built in only 19 days it was amazing how much they got done so i figured there's over 600 trees had to be cut down they had to be pulled in here they had to dig a trench over a thousand feet long to put the logs in four hundred years later its imprint is still discernible in the earth the actual outlines of james fort itself it stretched for almost an acre along the riverbank a triangle anchored by a sturdy bulwark at each corner the walls rose twice the height of a man strong and impregnable they were built to intimidate and inform the indians that the english were here to stay the structure itself was designed around the guns to give maximum line of sight and each bulwark were four or five artillery pieces some facing the sea to guard against spanish attack others trained on the wilderness the cannon was their ultimate weapon its booming sound and flashing fire framed the indians the design is simple but james fort represents the best strategic thinking for their desperate circumstances inside their new refuge the colonists must have felt safe for the moment but their heroic effort came at a terrible cost because in the wake of the feverish construction colonists begin to die obviously there was over exertion this guy's very near these dark clothing you know overdressed armor and the humidity is unbearable they couldn't stand they were sick they were dying from just over a hundred men their number drops to less than 50. 50 englishmen in a sea of thirteen thousand indians the fate of jamestown colony hangs by a thread and the final stroke might not come from an enemy but from a source no one suspects isolated at the edge of a vast new world the jamestown colonists face despair they've only been here five months [Music] and their food supply is almost gone daily rations are half a pint of barley boiled in water and half a pint of wheat both teeming with worms as one colonist writes never were englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this newly discovered virginia was it spoiled food that killed so many colonists their writings only list the symptoms swellings burning fevers some might have starved to death or fallen into diseases like dysentery and typhoid i don't think you can just say that one thing or another brought this chaos at times at jamestown or put them on the edge of survival every way you could think of dying they found it science has uncovered one way of dying that no colonists could have predicted a major source of their misery was something they turned to for relief the only water nearby was the james river it turns out that the worst drought in over 700 years gripped virginia when the colonists landed as the summer wore on the james would have grown increasingly brackish from the salt water of the bay historians now believe that the isolated colonists like castaways on a raft suffered from salt water poisoning it's a condition that could explain how jamestown became hell on earth too much salt enters a colonist's blood its natural balance is thrown off the colonist's brain signals his body to drink more water if the salt concentration reaches a dangerous level his body is forced to steal the water from its own cells it sucks its organs dry robbing its own life force the colonists brain starts the misfire short circuit dehydration sets in excessive thirst gives way to hallucinations and paranoia it could be a long slow painful death but there's more as i understand saltwater poisoning can eventually drive a person insane and can actually they can resort to violence whatever the cause the men's minds are under assault their bodies weak and threats are everywhere the colony is on the brink of failure [Applause] but another skeleton dating from this time suggests that the men's will to survive was still intact clues indicate this was someone very important maybe the most important one of all because his death inspired the colonists to take a terrifying risk the skeleton was unearthed just outside the fort's outline in the remains of a casket [Music] on top the remnants of a captain staff a sign of respect and leadership but it's the spot where the skeleton was found that offers the most intriguing clue the thing that puzzled us once we found the burial here and then the wall that is it was clear we were outside the fort so why would you bury the most important person outside when the instructions were to never show the virginia indians any sign of weakness like sickness and death the colonists were surrounded by hostile indians they've been burying the dead inside the fort so why risk their lives to bury this captain outside the walls knowing they were being watched the colonists may have seized this moment to show the indians their courage and their firepower well maybe it was a show force not weakness to the indians that's the only thing they would fire all the guns off and that must it must have been pretty quite a sight and uh for for anyone watching you know from the other side but who is this mysterious captain who inspired them to take such a deadly risk and give fire and what can his skeleton reveal about the colony's first tumultuous years [Music] [Applause] [Music] the bones are extremely well preserved that gives modern forensics a chance at solving the mystery doug ausley is a forensic anthropologist at the smithsonian institution a skull to most people looks just like a skull but you can read these bones and it is an opportunity this man has been forgotten and yet we sense that he's very important in terms of american history for owsley analyzing a 400 year old skeleton is no different from police work we can when we begin to examine a skeleton we can first identify the person's age and their sex and we can determine information about their ancestry if we look at for instance the development of the brow ridges here these are very prominent brow bridges across here and a slope to the forehead he's clearly a male from the lengths of the long bones we can estimate the stature of this individual and he's about five feet three inches in height when we look at the development of the muscle attachment areas the muscles are not well defined what that tells me is that we're probably dealing with a gentleman here when we look at the types of changes that we see in the cranial vault the degree of tooth wear the types of spinal changes that are related to arthritic changes and all of this collectively suggests that this is someone that's at least in their 30s and and not much more than their 30s a european gentleman in his mid-30s small in stature and buried with a captain's staff there's another clue in his teeth [Music] which show a series of tiny chips in the enamel the few individuals that i've seen this in often are associated with a maritime history a lot of times sailors who are known for their work with needles and holding them in their mouth will show this fine type of chipping a seafaring man and a captain could it be captain john smith not possible he was buried in england many years after his american adventures so who is this mysterious leader and how will the colony cope with his loss the time is ripe for another captain to emerge what he does next will decide whether the men live or die the jamestown colony is in crisis just six months in it's surrounded by hostile indians only 50 men are still alive and they're starving they huddle in the fort afraid to venture out [Music] captain john smith knows there's only one way to avoid starvation they must trade with the very enemy that's been tormenting them the time has come for an all or nothing gamble smith seems to have had a great deal of talent as a commander of man as an inspirer of men as someone who could keep morale under the most arduous conditions [Music] it's a daring risk but smith believes careful diplomacy will save his life he studies the natives customs and language to improve his bargaining skills he counts on the magic of musket fire to conceal the colony's weakness a handful of englishmen stand against the 13 000 indians in powhatan's empire [Music] the indians could wipe them out with a single stroke but smith's gamble pays off the natives are captivated by the strange glittering objects the englishmen have to trade [Music] even the great chief powhatan is susceptible it must have been at a moment like this when smith met the chief's daughter pocahontas [Music] john smith would later write that she saved his life legends also linked the two romantically but many historians believe smith exaggerated the life-saving tale and they point out that pocahontas was a little girl of 10 or 12 too young for smith but pocahontas did help the colony survive [Music] she was curious about the english and willing to use her influence with her father [Music] smith manages to buy enough food to keep the colony alive for now but back in jamestown food isn't the only problem the gentleman still refused to work and fear of the other enemy spain remains high one colonist is branded a spy the guilt of the accused spy has never been proven but the case suggests how deep the colonist paranoia has grown their number has dwindled to less than 50. yet they execute an able-bodied man for spying [Music] [Applause] were there really spies in jamestown [Music] archaeologists have found devotional metals crucifixes even tiny scalloped shells the symbol of spain's patron saint beverly straub says this evidence supports the colonists claims and we do know that there were spies we know that from letters that have surfaced that were written from jamestown with intelligence on the colony the spanish all the time were planning to wipe out this colony but they never for some reason the king never gave him the green light but it's possible spanish spies used more devious ways to undermine the colony one theory suggests the mysterious illnesses that killed so many colonists were caused by sabotage that a spanish agent laced the common kettle with arsenic i think everybody loves a conspiracy tale to think that a lot of the problems that the colonists had with based on the fact that there were spanish spies amongst them working for another government is interesting and probably real kind of 21st century but i i don't see real hard evidence that that was going on for the colonists if it wasn't one threat it was another spanish spies were the least of their problems next to disease and starvation yet artifacts unearthed at the fort reveal the men's continuing fight to survive this is just an unbelievable discovery we can see that we're dealing with a portion of the skull that fits right here to doug owsley this scrap of skull is a window into a very specific man's life and death he's a european from the traces of lead in his bones the result of eating and drinking from lead glazed vessels his age is at least 30 but no more than 44. that clue comes from the suture marks on his skull and he was the victim of a violent act and as we look at this we have the beginning definition of whatever struck the side of this man's head one thing for certain is that it's not a bladed weapon instead this is going to be some sort of stone axe the man was probably struck by a tomahawk which caused swelling in his brain but the attack didn't kill him immediately other marks on the skull show that his countrymen actually tried to save him by performing the first known surgery in colonial north america here in this radiating fracture he's got the patient down he's drilling in the back of his skull this has to be an inexperienced surgeon that's completing this task [Applause] in an ancient procedure called trefonation the surgeon bores a hole into the patient's skull a round saw bit with jagged teeth bites into the bone the man's brain is millimeters away the saw grinds into the skull removing a circular section and relieving pressure on the brain but this surgeon cuts into the skull not once but three times 17th century medicine in many ways was a lot of times scarier than the disease itself you've got three attempts here at a trephination where he's surgically boring into the skull he stops there's no need to continue most likely most assuredly what happened is his patient died the surgeon then performed what could well be another first in the colonies an autopsy the sharp straight edges could only have been made by a saw this colonist died but the surgery and the effort to understand how he died show how important every life has become to the survival of the colony [Music] especially now when they're about to lose the one man who has kept them alive so far john smith has taken over the leadership of the colony but his position is in jeopardy for two years the colony is hung by a thread it might be dead already if not for several shiploads of new recruits but most colonists haven't given up on finding gold to smith the treasure hunt is a bust two years in the new world and no gold he urges the virginia company to send more practical settlers carpenters fishermen blacksmiths but his outspoken nature earns him powerful enemies the conflict finally resolves itself in an incident that even today is shrouded in mystery smith is on one of his travels when he stretches out for a doze a spark or cinder suddenly lights near his powder bag smith's leg is nearly blown off was it an accident or did someone actually try to murder captain john smith it appears to me that probably somebody helped fire john smith's powder flask actually there's a story that they tried to shoot him once he got back in camp there's a lot of jealousy there the man was succeeding you know and the rest were not he certainly was a marked man john smith returned to england in the fall of 1609 but his injury may have saved his life [Music] another thing that convinces me that john smith was so important to the colony was that the minute he leaves almost at least within a month or two colin is in big trouble and this is right before the time that they call the starving time of all the threats that faced the colony in its early years the period known as the starving time and the colony's third year was the most devastating and yet they had to face it without the two men most critical to the colony so far the mysterious leader who earned an elaborate burial and captain john smith yet history shows that this colony will survive that from this tiny beleaguered outpost the english language will spread and come to dominate the continent and the nation will rise how did it happen what was the secret of jamestown survival it's the winter of 1610 two and a half years into the life of the colony with john smith gone the indians seized the opportunity to wage war on the colonists they're trapped inside the fort to go outside meant certain death by the hands of virginia indians to stay inside uh pestilence and famine they were really bad straights new recruits have swelled their number to 215 including a few women but food is scarcer than ever severe drought grips virginia archaeologists have found evidence that the starving were driven to eat everything the colonists talk about having to eat their horses cut them up into dainty squares and we've got very graphic examples of horses being butchered you can see the cut marks here along the bone and of course hooves and teeth from from their horses they tell us they had to eat their cats and they had to eat their dogs and poisonous snakes and we have found bones of poisonous snakes lots of them in fact [Applause] the hunger is so extreme that according to some accounts the colonists even resort to cannibalism [Music] digging up corpses when everything else was gone nothing was spared to maintain life writes one colonist the graves reveal even more bodies buried helter skelter sometimes two to a grave hands crossed legs tied some obviously thrown in hastily without a coffin in all archaeologists have found the remains of 72 people in an unmarked burial ground it appears that even as people were starving to death a new threat invaded the colony there is a time when people are laid to rest pretty quickly some of them in their clothing which was never done well traditionally by the english probably there was a contagious disease going on so they're dying of a of illness not famine the colonists writings mention a supply ship that reached them the previous fall on board the scourge that had haunted europe for centuries the bubonic plague this time the threats facing jamestown are almost too much to bear seven out of ten die during the starving time when a supply ship finally arrives in may 1610 it finds only 60 survivors but again new recruits arrived to keep the colony alive and now after a three-year nightmare the worst is over from this point of maximum peril the jamestown colony begins to grow the treasure hunt that began with dreams of gold has stumbled onto something even more valuable a permanent foothold in a new world it's a dream that started with one man the mysterious leader who led them to jamestown and changed the history of the world now his mystery may actually be solved the evidence is circumstantial but compelling time of death the early months of jamestown colony [Music] age mid-30s bones of a gentleman teeth of a sailor buried with great formality and the staff of a captain the evidence points to one man his name bartholomew gosnell [Music] in 1606 bartholomew gosnold was 35 years old he was a gentleman but also a pirate who made money raiding spanish treasure ships and though he led the colonists to jamestown he's known to history more as a footnote the man who discovered cape cod and named martha's vineyard after his daughter bartholomew gosnold deserves credit for changing world history without him in the jamestown colony there might not be a united states of america it was gosnald who formed the virginia company and planned the voyage in his family home otley hall gosnold who persuaded his friend captain john smith to join the expedition and held the hostile factions together it's really uh tragic that he died so early on in the in the settlement otherwise a lot of a lot of the problems would have been averted i think and he lived bartholomew gosnell the founding father americans have never known [Music] and today this skeleton speaks of the risk he shouldered in following his dream to america [Music] they've just captured my imagination is telling us a story of so much information that's simply not recorded in the history books and it's where we came from these are the first people that are becoming americans and in terms of the the nation that we know today there was no single reason the jamestown colony survived the skills of leaders like bartholomew gosnell and john smith were essential there certainly was a commitment to carrying on under all kinds of situations in adverse conditions and there were bound to be a number of of heroes that were able to confront all these dangers and all this famine and disease and things that happened and still pull through another hero was pocahontas who kept her father chief powhatan from wiping out the colony there were many scenarios that might have led to a very different world if the indians had refused john smith's trinkets in exchange for corn the colony would have starved to death if spain had attacked jamestown to expand its empire spanish not english might be the dominant language in north america and if a supply ship had not arrived in the spring after the starving time the survivors would have perished john smith may not have found a route to the orient but he did explore and map chesapeake bay and throughout his travels he recognized the treasures all around him the virgin land the timber the potential of this new world the american dream is born on the banks of the james river and it's a chance for a better life the colony did eventually find treasure in the new world but it wasn't gold it was a commodity the indians knew well tobacco after all the suffering and starvation the crop that saved jamestown was one they couldn't even eat [Music] it was this cash crop that would take europe by storm and justify more immigration and from one fort on the shores of virginia a nation would rise [Music] [Music] you