While standing on the verge of American history, Captain John Smith, born in Willoughby, England in 1580 to a successful farmer, has been known to be a very controversial figure within our Colonial history. Spending only a few years in Jamestown, one of the first of many permanent English settlements, as one of the seven selected council members by the Virginia Company in 1606, Smith became one of its first Colonial hero’s.
However for over three and a half centuries his reputation has struggled, his work was criticized for its authenticity and truthfulness.
Was John Smith an over exaggerating liar? Or was his own dramatic story of life in Jamestown the actual truthful events?
The soldier turned writer, bold enough to refer himself in the third person as the main character in his story, the very name John Smith has been said to cause historians blood pressure to boil. After Smith’s gunpowder explosion in 1609, he was forced to return to England, where reports of Smith falling out of favor with the directors of the Virginia Company based on his unpopular leadership acts, John Smith never again returned to Virginia. In spite of this falling out, Smith wrote a series of publications including, ”The Generall Historie of Virginia” about the …show more content…
History literature usually portrays accountable and even non-accountable personal experiences, events or memories by someone’s first hand observations. Meaning as the intended audience, we are supposed to take the literature as factual and believe that the events truly did occur. Is there any truth to John Smith's story in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England and The Summer Isles, or did John Smith decorate himself into Americas first colonial