[WT Sharpe]

.....For that matter, our culture and our textbooks underplay or omit Jamestown and the sixteenth-century Spanish settlements in favor of Plymouth rock as the archetypal birthplace of the United States. Virginia, according to T. H. Breen, "ill-served later historians in search of the mythic origins of American culture." Historians could hardly tout Virginia as moral in intent; in the words of the first history of Virginia written by a Virginian: "The chief Design of all Parties concern'd was to fetch away the Treasure from thence, aiming more at sudden Gain, than to form any regular Colony." The Virginians' relations with the Indians were particularly unsavory: in contrast to Squanto, a volunteer, the British in Virginia took Indian prisoners and forced them to teach colonists how to farm. In 1623 the British indulged in the first use of chemical warfare in the colonies when negotiating a treaty with tribes near the Potomac River, headed by Chiskiack. The British offered a toast "symbolizing eternal friendship," whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison. Besides, the early Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth, even cannibalism. They spent their early days digging random holes in the ground, haplessly looking for gold instead of planting crops. Soon they were starving and digging up putrid Indian corpses to eat or renting themselves out to Indian families as servants—hardly the heroic founders that a great nation requires.
..........— James W. Loewen. Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995). Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States of America, was founded in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.