The journals of Captain John Smith, founding father of the first permanent English settlement in North America : Jamestown

Captain John Smith (158 – 1631) was an English adventurer, soldier, explorer and author. Through the telling of his early life, we can trace the developments of a man who became a dominate force in the eventual success of Jamestown and the establishment of its legacy as the first permanent English settlement in North America.
 

Drawing from Smith's own personal journals, this concise biography paints a rich and detailed portrait of one of America's most intriguing founding fathers.

He had risen from humble origins through dint of will and personnality  and gone on to symbolize the kind of swagerring self-reliant character that would become  the American ideal.

A new egalitarianism in which everyone did his share of the heavy lifting was the only  realistic path for success in America.

The volume includes some of the earliest primary source accounts of life in colonial Virginia, including excerpts from Proceedings of the English Colony of Virginia (1612), Generall Historie of Virginia (1624), and The True Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith (1630).

Readers share eyewitness accounts of Smith's capture and imprisonment by the Indians, his explorations of the Chesapeake Bay region, and various other adventures and exploits in the New World. We get a firsthand look at Smith's pivotal role in the founding and governance of colonial Jamestown and his attempts to establish trade relationships with the Native Americans. 
 

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Over the centuries, John Smith’s reputation has risen and fallen with trends in historical  writing. His detractors consider him by turns bombastic, hyperbolic, a braggart, a liar, and an Indian killer.

More recent writing holds him  in high esteem as a brave pioneer, a natural-born leader, and one of America’s most important founders.