Los Catolicos Lo Hicieron [The Catholics Did It]
"Who played poker with Pocahontas,
when John Smith went away? --Al Jolson, 1919
The other night, while trying to absorb Spanish verb declensions, I also gave some attention to a program entitled "Secrets of the Dead." I thought this might be a sequel to Charlie Chan's "Dead Men Tell No Tales," with Chattanooga instead of Birmingham Brown wondering in the spooky darkness, "Is you in heah, Mista Ghost?" But no such luck.
It was in fact about all the deaths that weighed down the launch of the Jamestown Colony during 1607-1610 when 440 of 500 settlers succumbed to what was then called the "bloody blow-outs" or something like that.
Various theories were considered: starvation due to mass incompetence or drought, the mass incompetence theory being upheld by the fact that local waters teem with harvestable marine life. The settlers drank from the James which they also used as a toilet, but the contemporary Thames was much worse.
The climactic theory was put forth by a Virginia doctor who is descended from the Jamestown settlers, probably all of them. He said that the symptoms of the dying were all consistent with arsenic poisoning (except in cases where bullets were present). JT settlers were known to have arsenic, called "ratsbane;" they used it liberally on the Indians. The doctor figures that some Catholic did it.
Yes, a Catholic sympathizer with Spain acting to prevent England from gaining a foothold in America and establishing democracy and the breeding of embryos for stem cell research and all that great stuff.
I, myself, think it's more plausible that the arsenic was dumped in the rat stew by another type, a type that has, since 1607, increased and multiplied throughout Virginia, throughout the South and indeed everywhere in America where there are no major art galleries.
This type is no less than the common American inbred, redneck, crazy-ass mother--. I would bet that the perp had a foot-long beard growing from his chin. Yes, he thought all those settlers were spying on him and sending bulky reports about his movements back to King James. The Indians had killed some guys, he had been told, but he knew better: those guys were really taken away in black ships....
opyright © 2001, 2003 by Neal J. Conway. All rights reserved.