The Marooned Story: Jamestown and America's Origin Years

The familiar American origin tale unfolds with an exodus, as hardworking Pilgrims escape religious persecution. Thriving in the wilds of New England, they establish their famed “shining city on a hill.” In contrast, the Jamestown colony serves as an earlier, cautionary story. Marooned settlers there, driven by gold fever, faced starvation until rescued by English supplies and the strict rule of martial law.

Both narratives are false. In 'Marooned,' Joseph Kelly offers a fresh perspective on Jamestown's history, presenting a uniquely American interpretation of its early settlers.

In a compelling tale of shipwrecks and mutiny within America's earliest settlements, Kelly argues that the colonists at Jamestown were both literally and metaphorically marooned, detached from civilization, and thrust into the wilderness. The rigid British caste system held little sway on this frontier: survival depended on mastering the skills of labor, combat, and integration with the local native communities. Long before the Mayflower Compact and the influential thinkers Hobbes and Locke, they pioneered the concept of government by the people. A century and a half ahead of Jefferson, these early settlers grasped the fundamental truth that all individuals are inherently equal.

The epic origin of America was not an exodus and a fledgling theocracy. It’s a story of shipwrecked castaways of all lessons marooned within the wilderness fending for themselves in any method they could-a story that illuminates who we’re as a nation at present.