Latest / Ridiculous History / The Starving Time: When Jamestown Colonists Turned Cannibal, Part 1

Transcript

The Starving Time: When Jamestown Colonists Turned Cannibal, Part 1 · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Holy Moly,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Holy smokes. Here we are. It's ridiculous history. Technically it's
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: winter here in Atlanta, and I gotta say the winter
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: is not hitting us that hard yet, right Hi, I'm ben?
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Is it the winter of our discontent? It may well be?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Is that Shakespeare Abraham Lincoln who said that? Uh? Shakespeare?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I think Richard the Third as spoken by I know here?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Now here we go, we'll ge Let's get another fun pronunciation,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Gloucester or is it Glouoster g l o U c
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: E s t r gloud star glass? I believe there
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: you go? Correct us if we're wrong, I'm null. By
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the way, And as you said, Ben, this is ridiculous history.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: And today we're talking about cannibals. Right well, no bearing
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the lead here, no, I I guess we're just jumping
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: straight to it. But before we do, there's our super producer,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram in spirit. Casey had to Casey had to
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: make a run, but he'll be back. We understand this
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: is La Bouche related business, so we won't ask too
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: many questions before we get to cannibalism. Let's start with
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: let's ease into cannibalism through a little bit of US
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: history or what used to be called the New World.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: So we know, we know that a lot of children
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: growing up in public school were taught this sort of
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: sanitized version of colonialism, right like the indigenous people, these
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: European colonists getting together having some Kumbaya moments, and that
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: was very much not the case. You know, some some turkeys, cornycopia,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. They were politely asked to, you know,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: get a move on. Now that that's not how how
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: it went down at all, um. But I'll tell you
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: another sort of sanitizing uh is the idea that European
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: settlers had it easy exactly. So this is the thing.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: People moving from Europe, from whichever country they were coming from,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to the New World as they would call it, North
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and South America found themselves very much in an alien environment.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: They were unfamiliar with the ecosystem, they were unfamiliar with
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the flora and the fauna, and many times early settlers
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: were starving. We're talking about resorting to eating um, not rats, dogs,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: family pets, even boiling shoe leather to subsist on that,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: which is a thing you can do you can't that
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: would really do that? Would would that actually provides you
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: some nourishment. I mean, there's a reason you don't see
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: it as a special at your local restaurant. But yeah,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: in a pinch, in a pinch, interested in a very
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: difficult pinch. Today's story is about Jamestown, Jamestown, Virginia. Now,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: of course Jamestown was not the first successful permanent settlement,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: uh in what would become the United States. That prize
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: goes to St. Augustine in Florida, which was founded by
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the Spanish in fifteen sixty five. Have you ever been there?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool, it's pretty it's got some history to it. Anyway,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that's a that's a story for another day. Right. Uh So,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: let's get the lay of the land. What brought England?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: How did they become the driving force in Jamestown's establishment? Right, So,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the seventeenth century, UM, England was
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: not doing such a hot job when it came to
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: colonizing America. Spain obviously at first to the party in
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that respect, was kind of the main player controlling vast
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: swaths of this new world. UM, in addition to South America,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Central America, Mexico even and and parts of the Caribbean
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: that had a settlement in Florida. There the Spanish, um,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: we're beginning to also considing kind of what is now
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: considered the Americans southwest, and the French, who are even
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: starting to explore Canada. So with the British, you know,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: being noticeably behind, they decided they really needed to to
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: get behind the eight ball here, so they decided to
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: establish a permanent English colony in North America in the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: form of Jamestown, which would have been founded in May
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of sixteen oh seven UM just over one hundred settlers.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Um came on three different chips, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: and the Discovery, and they settled on a y, very
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: very narrow, little finger of land in the James River Peninsula.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: They built themselves the kind of infrastructure you would think
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: would be necessities for a small kind of upstart colony,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and things like store houses, forts, sort of fortifying themselves
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: so they could protect themselves from any attacks, and of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: course a church and some small houses. And everything was terrible,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: It really really was terrible. Everything was terrible. The settlers
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: were in a constant state of emaciation. Near starvation. Also, again,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I cannot over emphasize how alien this land was to them.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: There were diseases with which they were unfamiliar. You can
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: read reports about this on Live science dot com and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: also on History dot com. Look of the what what
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: do we say? A hundred and four people arrived aboard
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: three ships, you know in god Speed Discovery the Susan Constant,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: which is like the coolest name of those one d
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: and four nine months later, only thirty eight people were alive.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: And there's some research that says a lot of the
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: problems and the fatalities can be attributed to contaminated drinking water.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: There was human waste in the drink of what even
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: today sanitation kills millions of people each year. There's a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: lack of there's a crazy conspiracy theory. I mean it's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's a little more than the theory at this point,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: um though, hasn't been hundreds improven that you know, we
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: mentioned all of these different countries vying for superiority in
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the New World, Spain being first and foremost, controlling so
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: much of the land. There's a theory that secret agents
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: of Spain actually poisoned the well at Jamestown with arsenic,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and there were very high but varying levels of arsenic
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: found in trace amounts in the groundwater near that form.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And that's that's fascinating. You know, you have to wonder
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: about the ruthlessness imprescience that would take on this Spanish side.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But even if the Spanish Empire had no hand in this,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: played no part in it. The timing for the colonists
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: was also terrible, the worst possible timing. They arrived in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the middle of one of the worst droughts in hundreds
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of years. So even if they were used to hard
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: agricultural work, the hard work of farming and plowing and harvesting,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: they would have had a tough time. Notice I said,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: even if they were, they were very unfamiliar with this.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: They were dependent upon supplies from other boats arriving from Europe,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: as well as any trade they could conduct with the
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: people who were already living there, the first nations, the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: indigenous people of the land. And they did not spoiler. Uh,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: they did not do a great job of keeping those
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: diplomatic channels open. By the winter of sixteen o nine,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: which was just like what two years later. Uh, they
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: had already kind of irreparably damaged their relations with members
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: of the local indigenous community, and there were still being
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: haunted by drought. Uh. They were still, as you said,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: just drinking our snic in the water along with human waste,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and the ship that was supposed to feed them was
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: lost in the Atlantic, real perfect storm. So the from
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: sixteen o nine to sixteen ten as a period referred
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to in the history on some of the records as
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the starving time. The leadership of the colony was in
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: absolute disarray, and the Powatan Indians, because of that poorly
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: cultivated relationship, killed two of every three colonists at at
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the fourt there. So it was just a salute hell
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: on Earth. The trade relations they had with the tribes
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of the Virginia Indians was also not very good, so
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: they really had no recourse at all without any outside assistance. Yeah,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: for the first two years sixteen or seven to sixteen
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: o nine, Captain John Smith was able to trade European
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: manufactured goods for corn. This would have been the leader
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: of the colony, but he also was a real pill
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and the tribal communities did not care for this. So
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the Virginia Company knew that people were running short of food.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: They sent a fleet of nine ships to the colony
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: in July sixteen o nine. They bought enough supplies to
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: last through the winter. They also brought new colonists, which
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I guess is sort of replacing the population because so
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: many people had died or were died a hurricane came.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: That's not a quote from Hamilton's that's the real thing.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: The fleet got damaged the c venture which we mentioned
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: or alluded to earlier. The largest ship was shipwrecked on Bermuda,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: and it was carrying a bulk of supplies and also
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of three prominent leaders. By mid August, some
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: of these nine ships arrived at Jamestown, and although they
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: lost a ton of supplies, guess what, they didn't lose
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: three d colonists. So now there are three hundred more
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: mouths two feet just adding insults and injury there. So
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: at this point our boy Captain John Um really did himself,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: did a number on himself when a mysterious gunpowder explosion
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: injured him quite significantly, and he had to return to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: England in October um and he never would return. George
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Percy became the new president of the Jamestown council and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: really just stepped into an absolute mess. As as as
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: we know, Um, there was just this the food supply
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: was completely depleted. There were these very cantanker's relationship with
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the native people. The chief of the Powhatan had actually
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: um instructed his warriors to attack any livestock or members
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: of the colony who were spotted outside of the fort um.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: So it was just an absolute untenable situation. They had
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: targets on their backs. Um disease was running rampant um.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: The numbers were dwindling, and now, as you mentioned Ben,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: now that their numbers were increased way beyond what their
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: supplies could sustain. So it was really really just getting
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: absolutely dire and they were forced to do some serious
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: rationing of the supplies they did have, right, and we
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: have both statements from Percy at the time as well
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: as statements in retrospect at the time. He said, look,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: if we give everybody just half a can of meal
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: a day, then maybe we can make it halfway through winter.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And he said, to satisfy our cruel hunger, we have
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: to You know, colonists have gone in the woods looking
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: for serpents, snakes, wild unknown roots. But these people are
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: cut off and slain by this by what he called
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the salvages. Add to this disease, right, because starvation weakens
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: your immune system, so people start falling prey to typhoid,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to dysentery. Colonists each shoe leather. They kill the horses
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: that were brought from England during the summer, and Percy
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: would later describe this in the following way, having fed
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: upon now horses and dalla beast as long as they lasted,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: we are glad to make shift with vermin as, dogs, cats,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: rats and mice as to eat boot shoes or any
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: other leather. So what this is showing us is a unsustainable,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: untenable situation, as you mentioned earlier, Noll, it's also showing
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: us an escalation and increasing desperation. And at this point
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: we want to say, for our more sensitive listeners, we
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: are including some graphic material here because of course, eventually,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: just like the starvation in the DPRK in the nineties,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: eventually the people ran out of dogs and cats and
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: mice and leather and they had one thing left. Because
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: let's not forget, I mean, this was just an absolute
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: frozen wasteland at this point I mean, these creatures would
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: have had just as hard a time surviving, especially when
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: they became, you know, the food source for these starving colonists.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: So yeah, what is left ben? I mean, you know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: they only have a finite amount of things that they
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: can turn to, and things are just getting desperate, and
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: they're so very isolated, and they make that choice that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: we read about in fiction, you know, um, that the
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: idea that you're so desperate that you turn to your
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: fellow man and woman um to sustain you. And you
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: have to start making those choices as to who gets
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: to live and who has to die, and and for
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the benefit of those who are maybe more healthy and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: stronger who could carry on. Yeah, we have we have
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: one recording from Captain Smith that we'll just read the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: following two. You one amongst the rest did kill his wife,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: powdered her, and had eaten part of her before it
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: was known, for which he was executed as he well deserved.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: That's a relief that part was us And he continues,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: he says, now, whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonadoed,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: which was their word for barbecue, I know not, but
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of such a dish as powdered wife I had never
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: heard of. That's from mental floss. And that sounds almost fictitious,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't it. It really does. I mean, that is one
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of the most maccab things I've ever heard, especially when you,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you know, connected up with the fact that that was
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: actually a genuine account. And the thing is, we we
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: have had these accounts of cannibalism in James Town for
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: a long time, but only recently did we really get
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the grizzly you know, proof um that a lot of
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: this stuff did take place. And when we'll get to that,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: but here's another account from George Percy. Um. He wrote
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: this in nine after this type of behavior had begun,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: And it's a little and in the Old English I
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: guess type style, um, well, not Old English, I don't know,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: just kind of a dated dialect, but I'm gonna do
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: my best to read it. Um. And now famine beginning
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to look ghastly and pale in every face, that nothing
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: was spared to maintain life, and to do those things
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: that seem incredible, as to dig up dead corpses out
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: of graves and to eat them. And some have licked
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: up the blood which hath fallen from their weak fellows.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Oh bleak, it's heavy. The thing is, we don't just
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: have Percy and Smith writing about this. There are multiple
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: other accounts that you can find today that refer to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: cannibalism at Jamestown during this time. Now, when we talk
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: about cannibalism, if anyone's interested in the grizzly story of this,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: we recommend the cannibalism episode of Stuff they Don't Want
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: You to Know, which UH analyzes the reports of cannibalism,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: analyzes the types of cannibalism without going too far into
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the grizzly morbid weeds here want to establish that this
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: is a type of cannibalism known as survival cannibalism. It's
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: not ritualized. It's not a ceremonial thing to commune with
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: ancestors or to reinforce any spiritual belief. This is, as
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Percy said, a matter of survival. But for a long time,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: as I believe you alluded to earlier, noal we had
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: no solid proof. We just had multiple accounts of people
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: saying that someone else did it, you know what I mean.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: We didn't have anybody writing something along the lines of
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: a first person experience with cannibalism, just that you know,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: this person killed their wife. These other people are victimizing
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: the weak. In earlier excavations at the Jamestown site, which
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: has been extensively analyzed, there were bodies of dogs and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: horses and cats that they could determine were consumed during
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: this went or the starving times sixteen o nine to
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: sixteen ten. But it wasn't until August of two thousand
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: and twelve that archaeologists working for the Preservation Virginia Jamestown
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Rediscovery Project found some fragments. They found skeleton fragments belonging
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: to a girl who was around probably around the age
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: of fourteen when she died. She was buried in a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: trash filled cellar inside the Jamestown Fort. And you know,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: like you said earlier, the Jamestown Fort is on the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: on Jamestown Island. It's pretty small. It's twenty two and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: a half acres. After they were examining these bones, a
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: physical anthropologists working for the Smithsonian named Douglas Owsley noticed something.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: He said, you know, the girls remains, her skull, her jaw,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: leg bone. They bore some disturbing marks. They had marks
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of um marks of a man made cutting instrument like butchery,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: essentially like hacking from the outside that would have been
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: so violent. Um, picturing the scene and scraping off of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the meat, which would have left additional you know, traumas
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: too to the bones. Yeah. So according to Ousley, we
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: can glean a bit about the situation and context from
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: reading the remains here. Osley says that the chops to
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the forehead were tentative and incomplete, which to him indicates
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: that there was some hesitance there. But then the body
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: was turned over and there were multiple strikes to the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: back of the head, and then there was a wound
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: made to the left temple, which was most likely the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: point of these blows was to was to open the
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: skull and retrieve the brain for consumption. Yeah. Um, And
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: this is something that's still a topic of pretty hot
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: debate among historians. Osley told the Smithsonian Uh that given
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: that these bones were found in a trash pit um
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: all cut and chopped up, he says, to quote him,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: it's clear that this body was dismembered for consumption. So
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: while everything isn't known about what would have gone into
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: this process, it's a lot of kind of post mortem
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: reverse engineering detective work. Um, we don't know who the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: girl was exactly. They're calling her Jane Um. Also not
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: sure whether she was murdered. Again, my my thought is
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: maybe some of these folks might have been sickly and
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: dying and they just got that blow to the back
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of the head to take them out, or possibly she
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: could have died of natural causes. Whether there this is
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: an individual acting alone who would have done this butchery,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: or whether it was something that was a little more organized,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: that's not clear either, right, because it goes back to uh,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: social dynamics when we're talking about survival cannibalism. You know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: this debate continues. We know, however, that the attacks on
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: the skull were almost certainly meant just to be a
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: way of accessing the brain or the flesh for consumption.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily murder just for murder's sake, because at
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the time, brain matter from other animals was considered a delicacy,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and that's why the settlers may have gone straight forward
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: this poor child's head. And one thing that is hopefully
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: reassuring maybe a bit of a cold comfort, is that
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: we know with a good degree of certitude that the
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: child was dead before they started conducting cannibalism, because there
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: were no indications of a struggle, you know what I mean,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: no wounds uh to her body that would show she
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: was defending herself. They also, however, know that whoever was
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: doing this, uh, this was probably their first rodeo, they
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: did not appear to be experienced in any kind of
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: butchering or dressing of an animal. Uh. And like you said, no,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it's it's clear that this body was destroyed for one thing.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: But we don't know very much about this victim. We
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: know that we're calling this person Jane, but we don't
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: know very much about Jane. We can hypothesize a bit.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: We're theorized when we ask ourselves what series of terrible
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: events could have led to this grizzly fate. So, as
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: we said, in sixteen o nine, there was a second
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: fleet of ships leaving Plymouth. They had reinforcements. Seven of
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the nine ships survived the hurricane landed Jamestown in mid August.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: They had those three under colonists. They had lost their
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: biggest supply ships. They believe that this child had arrived
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: on one of those seven surviving ships. And it looks
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: like we should pause here. You know that's right, folks,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: this is a two parter. Yeah. I mean, look, you know,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: say what you will about two parts and that they're
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: an afterthought. That's not entirely true. It might be a
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: little bit true, but you know what, it helps us sects.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: We do two a week and it's the holiday time,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and it said, well, you know, I can't speak for
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: anyone but myself. It doesn't to me. It feels more
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: like an opportunity for us to go longer because we
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: get to this point where we want to tell the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: whole story. We want to give you more facts, more context,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: want to dive in. But sometimes it's too much for
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: one episode, you know. So I so we hope that
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: you enjoy part one. Please tune in to part two.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Please please please tune into part two. We promise that
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: we have a nice ending at the end. I know,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I know this one is really getting a little dark,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: but it does. There is there is a bit of
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: a silver lining coming up for you. Um. You can
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: join the conversation about this part and subsequent parts in
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: any other part or episode that we do on Ridiculous
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: History and our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, where you can
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: post memes. Real good group of folks there to engage with.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: We pop on there pretty regularly and even young Quizzles himself,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, the quister uh is a bit of a
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: lurker there, and he might even insult you if you
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: if you want him to, or if you don't. You know,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: he's a hot take Strickland, as we called. You can
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: also find your roll as individuals on Instagram. I'm also
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: on Twitter Instagram Appen Bullen on Twitter at ben bullin
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: hs W. You can find me exclusively on Instagram at
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: how Now Nolan Brown. Big thanks to Alex Williams who
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: composed our theme, Gabe Louisier, our fabulous research associate, Christopher
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Hasciots Here in spirit, Jonathan Strickland, that devious quister um
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: also here in spirit sort of in the form of
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: like a weird, funky miasma that is sort of fills
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: up the corners of the podcast shipping containing I mean Jonathan, yeah,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, the Quister of course. Big thanks too,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: super producer Casey Begram, Thanks to Eve's Jeff Code, and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: thanks to all of the fantastic, hard working researchers who
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: are helping us learn more about what actually happened in
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: this wide old world before we arrived. I'll see you
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: next time. For more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.