Powhatan Indian Village was set up with different sized homes, complete with beds, fire pits, and feathers, arrows, and animal pelts of all kinds hanging on the walls. There were places for the kids to grind corn like an Indian would have, and they were free to try out the beds, touch the pelts, handle the (unsharpened) arrows, and explore every nook and cranny.
Inside the village there were deerskins stretched out for the kids to scrape with oyster shells, and along the walkway nearby, they had an example of a hunter's camp set up, along with a garden area.
The fort was just as hands-on as the Indian village had been. There were armor and helmets to try on, character actors to talk to, cannons to check out, a musket-firing demonstration, a storehouse, church, homes, and gardens to explore, and an armory full of swords, spears, pistols and muskets. We spent most of our time at the armory, where the man in charge was very patient with the kids' questions and requests, and was very knowledgeable about 17th century soldiery. He even had the entire first two paragraphs of the "Instructions of the Marchall for the better enabling of a privat soldier" memorized, in 1611 Old English!
That concludes the summary of our trip to Jamestown; where we went, what we saw, and what we did. In other words, just the facts. Coming soon will be two separate pictorial blog posts entitled:
