But if you visit the excavation site and take a look at the fiberglass cast of J.R.'s skeleton, you can't help but be moved by the plight of a young man dying so far from home and then lying in hard Virginia clay for four centuries before a trowel discovered the stain of his unmarked grave. J.R., by the way, means Jamestown Rediscovery and is the prefix given to every artifact and feature found on the site, which includes graves and the dead people in them. We don't know who shot J.R. At this writing, we aren't even sure who J.R. is.
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.
Be careful out there!
Fourteen
Governor Crimm had been studying the latest Trooper Truth printout for an entire hour, and was fascinated, appalled, and disgusted by it. He repeatedly moved his magnifying glass over every word as Major Trader briefed him on matters of state and offered him a homemade chocolate-covered cherry.
"General Assembly will start up before we know it," Trader was saying. "And we're simply not prepared."
"You always say that," the governor replied as he absently ate the candy. "Who did shoot J.R., anyway? Has anybody pressed the archaeologists about this? And if not, why not? How do you think it makes us look if we can't solve a crime that was committed four hundred years ago and was certainly witnessed? I want you to call Jamestown and demand that the J.R. case be solved immediately, and we'll issue a big press release and show the citizens of Virginia that I will not tolerate crime."
"Juvenile crime," Trader added a helpful spin.
"Yes, yes," the governor agreed.
'And I think we can safely suggest he was shot by a pirate-or it might be in our best interest to claim as much, at any rate," Trader added. "We could say it was any pirate-doesn't matter, don't you see? All pirates were bad then and are bad now, so it doesn't make any difference whatsoever if we propose that J.R. wandered outside the fort to get a bucket of water from the river, and all of a sudden he spied a Spanish ship flying a Jolly Roger flag, and next thing he was shot."
"I thought we were avoiding drawing attention to our pirate problems."
"Highway pirates are another matter," Trader replied as he gloated over his secret pirate activities that would soon enough make him rich from booty.
Crimm stopped the magnifying glass on the word cannibal. "Imagine some settler salting down his dead wife and eating her," he said in revulsion as he envisioned himself dying of starvation, only to discover his voluptuous wife had passed away.
He thought of her nude, fleshy body and wondered how anybody could eat his wife without at least cooking her first, but he supposed if he cooked Maude, the other settlers would see the smoke and smell the odor of roasting human flesh and would hang him from a tree. Oh, what a hideous scenario, and the governor's submarine lurched and banged into something, sending a painful jolt through his hollow organs.
"That was a capital crime back then," Trader observed as if he were reading Crimm's mind. "The tour guides at Jamestown will tell you that anyone caught eating his wife or anybody else was immediately dragged off and hanged. Then they'd bury him very quickly and in a secret location so another settler didn't salt and eat him, too."
"I'm wondering if cannibalism is still a capital crime, because if it isn't, it ought to be." Crimm's submarine lurched more violently.
"It depends on the circumstances," Trader replied as he imagined his plump, nagging wife and wondered if he could ever be famished enough to consider, even for a moment, eating her, assuming she died unexpectedly and nobody else noticed that she had vanished. "For example, according to state code, there would have to be another serious crime involved," Trader explained. "If the man murdered her first and perhaps included a rape or robbery and then ate her-now that would be a capital offense and he would get lethal injection, unless you blocked the execution or granted clemency."