“The Savages of Virginia Our Project”

Abstract

This chapter investigates how debates about “the Indians” or the Powhatans informed Jacobean political thought. By calling it “our project,” Gray rendered “the savages” a collective concern, one that implicated Londoners as well as colonists. Through an examination of several sources and events from 1619, contrasted against the criticisms and bitter accusations of mismanagement following the 1622 massacre and the dissolution of the Virginia Company several years later, this study suggests that the English experience in Jamestown played a vital role in shaping nascent concepts of imperium in the early seventeenth century and that English interactions with indigenous tribes played a crucial part in metropolitan articulations of civil society. Ultimately, this chapter demonstrates that the earliest attempts at colonization was not just a case of the English acting on America but also that America and its peoples informed English discourses of state and society from its inception, far earlier than is generally assumed.