But through science, J.R. has managed to tell us a thing or two. Results from radio-carbon dating confirm that he died in 1607, possibly just months after the first settlers arrived at Jamestown, so we can assume he was one of the 108 English men and boys who sailed from the Isle of Dogs and got stalled in the Thames. Anthropology pinpoints that he was a five-foot-five robust male with a rounded chin and small jaw, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, had no signs of arthritis and relatively good teeth, indicating his diet did not include sugar. Tests for lead, strontium, and oxygen isotopes show that he grew up in the United Kingdom, possibly in southwest London or Wales.
J.R. was fatally wounded in the leg with a sixty-caliber musket ball and twenty-some shot, which back in those days would be considered a combat load. Forensic testing shows the matchlock rifle that killed him was fired from too far away for the injury to have been self-inflicted. He bled to death quickly and was buried without a shroud in a hexagonal-shaped coffin with his feet turned to the east, according to proper Christian tradition.
If J.R. was, in fact, shot by another settler, and I have a feeling he was, then that leads to theories about motive, which can easily be inferred from historical documentation. A stroll through centuries-old writings and a subsequent commingling of words with excavated artifacts and bones could lead to the following possibilities for why J.R. might have been murdered.
Perhaps he was involved in political intrigue or domestic difficulties, or didn’t work and play well with others, or was a thief, or took more than his share of food. Maybe he engaged in cannibalism, like a later settler who was executed after being caught salting down his dead wife. Or perhaps J.R. squabbled with a Natural who somehow got hold of a firearm and figured out how to use it. Or more likely, J.R. got into an altercation with another armed settler who decided the best place to shoot him was in the leg because maybe J.R. was wearing a helmet and upper-body armor at the time. Maybe the settler shot him after discovering that J.R. was spying for the Spanish or was a pirate.
I suspect J.R. was a spy or a pirate or both. Whatever the truth really is, J.R.’s death was not a pleasant one, because quite likely, he was conscious long enough to know he was dying. I envision him lying inside the fort and slipping into shock as he watched himself bleed to death from a severed artery behind his knee, and I can imagine the uproar inside the fort as settlers scurried about with rags and river water and whatever medicinal aids they could muster. Perhaps they were trying to comfort J.R. or perhaps everyone was fighting and shouting and questioning the shooter.
Who knows? But if you imagine this tragic drama, my faithful readers, then certainly you must be asking the same glaring question that I am: Why is there no mention of J.R.’s death in John Smith’s writings? Why, to date, is there no reference found in any record of a young first settler being shot to death, either by accident or on purpose?
It just goes to show that history is nothing more than what certain people decide that future generations ought to know. I suppose when John Smith was writing his accounts and telling tales for the benefit of King James and people back home, Smith was savvy and shrewd enough to figure that financial backers and prospective settlers might be a bit turned off to hear that people in Jamestown were mutinous, murderous, mad from drinking bad water, constantly under siege by the Naturals, and forced by starvation to eat snakes, turtles, and at least one eagle, based on the trash the settlers left behind.
The beginning of America wasn’t exciting, fun, honorable, or even patriotic, but could certainly serve as a model for a reality television show that would make Survivor seem like Fantasy Island. And sadly, nothing has changed much. Just look at the recent, sadistic murder of Trish Thrash! We don’t know who killed her, either, but I ask you, my community-minded readers, to please e-mail me if you happen to have known Trish or knew anything about her life, including her hobbies, interests, what she read, if she used the Internet, and if she might have mentioned anything or anyone new in her life of late.