Original subtitles

(cow mowing, metal clanking and air whooshing)

(water sprinkling)

(compelling flute music)

- [Narrator] When Captain John Smith and other Englishmen

arrived on the coast of America.

He noticed a picturesque place

where he decided to unload his 108 passengers.

There he established the first permanent

British settlement in America.

They chose Jamestown Island.

(man singing)

Early in the morning of May 14th, 1607,

they took into their possession the promised land, America.

(compelling flute music)

- We might never have learned

about the existence of Poles in Jamestown

if it hadn't been for very well known walkie priest,

Father Waclaw Kruszka on his very monumental work

on the history of the Poles,

came across a book on glassblowing.

He discovered that Poles were mentioned

as blowing glass in Jamestown.

And that became the start of the investigation of,

"Oh, the Pole were in Jamestown that early.

What were they doing there?

How did they get there?

What else are they doing there?

What contributions did they make?"

(compelling flute music)

- Discovery of the new world,

North and South America and the Caribbean

beginning with Columbus

opened up this whole area for investment.

It brought tremendous amount of wealth to Europe.

- The Spanish had colonized South America

and Spain almost overnight,

and historical terms had gone

from being a second or third rate power in Europe

to being the superpower of Europe of the day.

- The Spanish did have expeditions

into the Carolinas during this period

to search for their own sources of wealth,

but also to be on the lookout for any Englishman.

- The French, the English, the Dutch, other countries,

all wanted to try and establish colonies

in North America to share this wealth.

(compelling flute music)

- [Narrator] Poles were to be aware of the judgment of God,

as well as their own conscience,

plundering around the world had to be unthinkable.

(compelling flute music)

In England, a rowdy traveler, Sir Walter Raleigh,

organized expeditions in search of the golden fleece.

- They hoped to find wealth; gold, silver, perhaps.

Perhaps a route to Asia.

The geography of North America was very poorly understood

in Europe at that time.

So there was some hope

that they could find a quick route to China,

to India still.

- They thought that the orient was not that far away.

Well, they didn't realize

that the whole North American continent was there,

so this was a mistake.

- [Narrator] In 1584 a flotilla or seven ships

with 108 men reached the Roanoke Island.

Unfortunately, the settlement established by them collapsed.

Two years later,

there was another attempt, also unsuccessful.

(compelling flute music)

- Those people disappeared

and we never found out later on whatever happened to them.

(compelling flute music)

- The Roanoke colony had failed,

and this had perhaps would have discouraged

a settlement further South,

perhaps the Spanish threat had been part of that.

- [Narrator] The company organized the third expedition

whose purpose was to gain a foothold in North America.

(compelling flute music)

On the 14th of May, 1607,

104 Englishman reached the River James in Virginia.

Here on the Island they established

what is today a historical settlement, Jamestown.

- [John] Jamestown was really the first significant

British outpost in the new world.

It was the first one that lasted.

- The impetus for establishing colonies

was clearly very economic

from the standpoint of the English government

and the people who invested

in the Virginia Company of London.

- They were always trying to cater

to the well wishes of the King.

Of course, Jamestown is named after King James of England.

The James River is named after the King of England,

King of England and Scotland, James the First.

- And even the founding of Jamestown

coming as a dead amid global of conflicts

between the English and the Spanish on one hand,

later the English and the French,

and then the English allied against the French

and Spanish together.

- The British were competing with Spain

and they were seeking a wealth, obviously.

There was a measure of competition

and the colony was ultimately established

by a group of investors.

- The colony of Jamestown

and eventually the English colonies in North America

was an important aspect of this global war

fought between largely England against the French.

And Spanish allied against England

for control of a worldwide empire

and the economic riches that that would result in.

- [Narrator] Since then, the Poles learned to be content

wi%th what they had.

Not coveting anything others possessed.

Always, they sat far away

from the world's bowl of treasures.

(compelling flute music)

- The position of Jamestown is quite interesting

because the Spanish by this time

were shipping large amounts of gold and silver across,

and it was very lucrative to raid those ships.

So it was quite possible that the English

also wanted to get in on the Spanish wealth.

- [Donald Pienkos] The Jamestown colony

was really may beginning experiment,

and it was an experiment in a land

that was relatively hostile.

(compelling flute music fades)

- Jamestown colony, of course,

was situated right in the near the lands

that were held by very large Indian nation,

and their chief was Powhatan.

And something like eight or 9,000 Indians

lived in that area.

- The climate was hot and humid.

The waterways and the swamps in the area

around Jamestown where they settled

had a lot of mosquitoes and diseases.

There was not a ready support source of food there.

- It was very difficult for the original settlers,

however, to establish the county.

There were a number of them

who did not really have any skills.

- First year at Jamestown was extremely difficult.

The Jamestown settlement itself was positioned

partly to defend itself against the potential Spanish raid.

It was not necessarily placed in a good location

for either agriculture or fishing.

There was additional problem in that there was a conflict

with the local native community,

the Powhatan Confederacy.

(compelling flute music)

- And the interesting story, I think, about the Indians

is that they really, under their chief,

did not try to destroy the colony.

- The belief is that this chief thought

that these colonists would die off

from the poisoned water

and the lack of food and the bad temperature.

- This was a very risky venture,

something that people were really quite literally

risking their lives to do.

And anyone who came to this infant colony

was literally taking their life in their hands

and venturing into something

which was largely unknown at that time.

- One of the main threats to the Jamestown colony

was the Spanish showing up

and burning the place to the ground.

- [Narrator] Englishmen perceived Spaniards

as the primary threat.

There was not a single moment in the history of Jamestown

when they weren't afraid of an attack by the Spanish Armada.

(compelling flute music)

- So they went and employed all the weapons

in their arsenal to see what was going on.

Both intelligence, they certainly would have tried to find out

as much as possible about the colony,

and what the colonists were doing there,

but also perhaps militarily.

The leader, John Smith, was very a capable leader,

who many of the individuals who originally came

were not necessarily people who were adept

at surviving off the land.

They had assumed they would find

perhaps some advanced Indian civilization

much as the Spanish had found.

- [Narrator] Englishman, as well as Spaniards,

expected easy trophies, mainly gold and silver.

Unfortunately, native Americans from North America

didn't have any gold.

- [John] When they arrived, they found none of this

and it was a great difficulty.

- The English were really not very well prepared.

Some of them were like noblemen, gentlemen, as they say,

who were spending most of their time drinking and playing.

- Most of them were soldiers or adventures

and not necessarily farmers or fishermen.

- They didn't really work very hard.

They didn't know how to dig a well.

They weren't prepared to do any work.

So, this was a pretty big of a disaster.

- The first year of the Jamestown colony,

quite a few of the settlers died,

and in the second year as well,

from famine and from disease.

We're told that within the first 18 months or so,

over half of the entire initial

contingent of colonists had died.

Smith had participated in travels

throughout Eastern Europe,

He had met Poles,

and was familiar with certainly Polish artisans

and the economies of the area.

- As a very young fellow, maybe a teenager,

he went off to fight.

He was a soldier.

He's hired on to be a mercenary in the army of Austria.

He fought very well against the Turks,

against the Ottoman Turks.

He was actually captured and slaved.

He escaped and he got back to England through Poland.

- [Narrator] Poles knew very well

what Turkish captivity meant.

Therefore, they helped him return to England.

- And so likely at that time

that he encountered some Polish officers,

they were also serving with the Austrians.

- And that's where he met many different Polish people.

And he realized that he had many skills.

- [Narrator] Surprisingly, England and Poland at that time

were closely connected with as many as 30,000

English, Scottish, and Irish living and working in Poland

and about 1000 poles living in London.

- There was also a large contingent of Polish merchants

who did business with England,

and they actually lived in London,

many of them along a place called Poland Street.

So the English were well aware

of what was available in Poland.

- Poland in 1608 was quite a different country.

It was a vast country.

It included not only present-day Poland,

but it also included much of the Ukraine,

much of Belarus of the Baltic States.

It was a vast country of about 400,000 square miles.

And in fact, the King of Poland at that time

was looking to become even Tsar of Russia.

That's how powerful and how significant Poland was

at that time.

- In 1570s, Queen Elizabeth the First

had granted a monopoly to the British Eastland Company

to establish a trading post in ELblag.

And this was initially the main British outpost in Poland,

where they traded for grain and also forests products.

Later on, the dimes became a very significant factor.

So, these trade ties had been a very long standing

between Poland and Britain.

- [Narrator] When it seemed that Jamestown

would share the face of the previous colonies,

a wise decision of Captain John Smith,

his appeal to the King,

consent was issued to bring foreigners to the colony.

Suddenly, we heard surprising news

that some of us would be asked to go to foreign

and distant lands uninhabited but rich.

(compelling flute music)

On October 1st, 1608,

five Polish settlers arrived in Jamestown,

aboard the Mary and Margaret.

There were two Polish nobleman,

Michal Lowicki and Jan Bogdan,

as well as artisans,

Zbigniew Stefanski,

Stanislaw Sadowski,

and Jan Mata.

(compelling flute music)

Zbigniew Stefanski wrote about this historic moment.

"After a long journey and extreme suffering, we saw birds,

and soon after we saw the land.

(compelling music)

I fell on my knees

offering prayers to almighty God."

"Michal Lowicki of noble birth was named the leader

of our group's expedition to Virginia.

Jur Mata, who was also called Jan,

was to take charge of making of soap.

Stanislaw Sadowski having experience as a house builder

was to be in charge of lumber production.

Jan Bogdan, he accomplished everything with ease,

finding solutions to every kind of problem.

Both of us were Christ's age,

an age when a person is most apt

to undertake the greatest risks,

and furthermore is the most suited for world travel."

- By the time the second ship came,

this was in October of 1608,

with first Poles that came to America,

Jamestown colony was practically on its last legs.

- [Narrator] The hungry and desperate settlers

looted all they could;

pigs, dogs, and horses,

even rats and water snakes.

Also, leather shoes became food.

- The Poles were brought over to create products

that the British needed,

but also to create potentially products

that the Indians would want,

that then could be traded for food.

And of course, there was the possibility

of creating some local industry.

- [Narrator] Despite its good strategic location,

Jamestown was not an ideal spot for a colony

with its swamping mosquito infested terrain.

Clear water was scarce.

The settlers suffered from infections, fever, and dysentery

caused by drinking water from the river.

Polish settler, Zbigniew Stefanski,

recorded this impression of Jamestown.

"Seldom had one seen such lack of resourcefulness

as we found in Virginia.

Not even a spoonful of drinking water

was to be found in the Fort.

The people here marveled when we dug a well

and presented it to them."

- The Poles helped to build,

dig a well that finally got the colony

some good water; drinking water.

(compelling flute music and water running)

- Pitch was very important.

It was essentially the universal glue of the time.

All the ships, all the boats, the houses,

everything that was made would have required this.

This was essential.

- [Narrator] After their arrival,

the Poles built a glass furnace,

which became the first American factory.

- The main problem that the British had

is that they had nothing to the Indians wanted.

- [Narrator] Zbigniew Stefanski wrote,

"Under my personal supervision,

several furnaces were built for the production of glass,

for which practically naked Virginian female scavengers

brought us grain and fish in their baskets,

picking up every chip of glass from the ground

to decorate their strange attire."

- To the Indians,

a lot of this was that the purposes of political alliance,

and the English would have realized this early on

by giving the Indians things that they wanted;

glass, for example, or metal products.

The English are in a sense securing

a form of alliance with the Indians.

So beyond the economic value of any of these goods,

there was a very important security aspect.

- [Narrator] Glass products

became the first American products exported to Europe.

- We have to realize that there's a great distance

between England and Jamestown,

and to ship supplies over was very costly.

It was much cheaper to get supplies in the local Indians,

which meant, of course,

that either they had to militarily defeat the Indians,

which they couldn't do in the early years,

or they had to have things that they could trade.

This was one of the major reasons for importing

foreign crafts and Poles, of course.

- [Narrator] In 1608, Captain John Smith became president

and his leadership kept the colony from dissolving.

He enforced strict discipline.

"Those who would not work should not eat," he declared.

"We plowed the fields eagerly

and sowed the grain that was not eaten by the rats.

Yet everyone in the colony had to look after his food

as best he could in order to stay alive."

Captain John Smith,

the president of the Jamestown colony,

deeply respected the Poles,

not only for their excellent craftsmanship,

but also for their bravery

and he regarded them as indispensable

to the survival of their new colony.

- England at the time

had the largest Merchant Marine in the world,

the largest Navy.

They needed a potash and soap ash and hemp and rosin

in the process of making ships and making them waterproof.

They needed the tall pines or ship masts.

So all of these commodities that John Smith talked about,

importing the Poles and Dutchmen to make,

were things that were designed eventually

once they took hold to make a profit

for the shareholders back in England.

So, one of the options they had was to make bricks of glass

that they could then send back to England

to be molded into different shapes.

- The colony continued to ship things back

to England to show

that in fact there was something worth while

that was being done in Jamestown.

The second group of colonists under John Smith

were very important because they saved the colony.

(metals clanking)

- If the British were gonna get anywhere,

there were certain products they needed,

and wood products would be one of them.

Any of the ships that would come across the Atlantic

would need to be repaired at Jamestown.

Otherwise, they wouldn't get home

with any fishing boats that they might've had.

Certainly, things like pitch or any of the products.

I mentioned potash,

any of their houses would have used pitch.

All these things were essential.

(laborers talking indistinctly)

(pulley rolling)

(water sprinkling)

- These people really did have skills.

They had skills in glass making.

They had the skills in building things.

They knew how to put together a building.

They were carpenters.

- Smith was very favorable toward the Poles.

He saw them as a very valuable asset to the community

and he treated them in this way.

- [Narrator] "Soon, the Dutch who we brought with us

became a menace to the Virginia settlement.

Their perversity reached such a degree

that they were persuading the savages to attack Smith.

(hinges screeching)

- [John] He thought of Poles as one of his major assets,

unlike some of the Germans

who later on left the Jamestown colony

and joined up with the local Indians.

- Three of the Dutchmen or Germans,

as some people call them,

were sent by Smith to the Indian camp

to help help them erect houses and so forth.

And that some of them apparently conspired

with the Indians against the English.

- Smith had a much lower opinion of the Germans

vis-a-vis the Poles.

He considered the Poles very trustworthy

and certainly was desirous of having

as many there was he could get.

- To stop disorder caused by unruly thieves and the Indians,

the Poles built a stronger blockhouse

on the neck of the aisle.

"Before long, new ships arrived,

bringing more of our countrymen.

Our work now moved at a faster pace.

Their arrival made possible for us to rest a little more.

Sadowski, Mata, Stoica, and Zrenica

initiated a ball game played with a bat."

- Smith was near a stream

and was attacked by a local Indian warrior

from the Powhatan tribe.

Smith was in great danger.

He was apparently losing the fight

and there was a number of Poles

happened upon the scene or happened to be nearby.

- [Narrator] "We heard Smith's desperate cry,

'Polonians, Polonians.'

Realizing that our captain was in great danger,

Bogdan and I picked up our daggers,

and we ran as fast as we could toward the river.

But from some distance we could see

that there was only one attacker, a huge man,

the tribal chief himself.

Smith ordered us to kill him, but we refused.

We don't agree with killing a disarmed prisoner of war,

especially when he has tears in his eyes

and he's begging for mercy."

It was highly probable that Smith's adventure in Virginia

could have ended there upon the River James.

- And this is interesting because, you know,

a lot of the stories about Jamestown

deal with how Pocahontas, this little Indian girl,

saved John Smith's life.

But according to the records

that these various historians have presented,

one of the Indian at least was stopped

from killing John Smith by these two Poles.

- Smith was writing his memoirs many years later

as a much older man,

and he included this story about Pocahontas,

allegedly saving him, falling in love with him in a sense.

This is a theme in Smith's life.

Earlier in his memoirs,

he relates a very similar story.

And when he's caught in Turkey,

allegedly about to be done in,

but this beautiful Turkish maiden

throws herself on Smith and saves him.

Again, this reflects the Pocahontas story very closely.

We know that he embellished this.

We know that Pocahontas was much too young.

She was perhaps 12 years old at the time.

She never had any romantic interest with Smith,

but she married, of course, another individual, John Rolfe.

Very important consequences came from that marriage,

but it was something that Smith embellished in his memoirs.

He was writing for a popular audience.

- Edward Arber noted in 1884,

"If Smith had died earlier than he did,

the James river settlement must have succumbed."

- Initially, the Indians were obviously somewhat curious

about who these Europeans were there.

Early on, the conflicts began to emerge.

(compelling flute music)

Chief Powhatan at first expected settlers

to die from starvation.

However, if this didn't happen,

he was ready to slaughter them.

(compelling flute music)

- Once the relationship with the local natives,

the Indians, deteriorated,

it was difficult for them to go very far

beyond the boundaries of the settlement.

And we know that Matthew was killed

in a subsequent Indian attack.

(bell ringing, gunshots firing and people screaming)

(compelling flute music)

- The Poles are there at the birth

of this new world economy that's being created.

This new political and social-cultural exchange

that's going on in the Atlantic.

The Poles are really there present at the birth.

The midwives, if you wanna say,

of this new age that's becoming.

- [Narrator] "Whatever happened,

it led to the exchange of angry words amongst our captains

resulting in serious quarrels.

No one foresaw anything as vile,

I suppose, perpetrated next by Smith's enemies.

Someone set fire to the gunpowder in Smith's boat."

Captain Smith's tough,

but effective rule suddenly came to an end.

In October, 1609,

Smith was injured by gun powder explosion

and sailed back to England.

Zbigniew Stefanski wrote,

"We, Poles, immediately called a meeting

and agreed that it is also time for us to return.

We left Virginia with Smith."

Last summer we found only misery.

Now, we are leaving with nearly 500 souls.

Among them, about a hundred soldiers.

There were rifles, swords, halberds,

enough of everything for self-defense, 60 buildings.

(compelling flute music)

- There's certainly example evidence

that Poles remained in the Virginia colony

after Smith's departure.

We see them referred to now and again in the court records

and in the records of the Virginia Company of London.

(compelling flute music)

- [Narrator] After his departure,

only 60 Of the original settlers survived

the 1609 starving time winter.

- One of the problems the English colonists,

well, all of the colonists ran into it was food.

They went through a particularly difficult winter

during which over half of the colonists perished.

After the starving time

and the deaths of so many of the colonists,

the English were questioning whether

they should even continue the Jamestown experiment or not.

- [Narrator] "Bogdan and I decided to go to the Netherlands,

where at the time we served as helpers

in the shipbuilding yards.

I must note that Bogdan and I were very fortunate.

Soon we were married.

Our wives, Berta and Anna,

were decent, industrious, efficient.

Made us feel that they were selected for us by God himself.

- When John Smith went back to England,

both he and the directors of the Virginia Company

were interested in recruiting more Poles

to come to Jamestown because the initial ones

had proved apparently very effective.

- [Narrator] "Because of the high praises

Smith was spreading around about us,

we were being persuaded to return to Virginia immediately.

In fact, we were coerced into it."

- But the British sent more supplies over.

They sent more ships over.

And, obviously, the sending of the Poles

and the other foreigners

to remedy some of the lack of skills.

- [Narrator] "When our wives heard the accounts

of our overseas adventures,

both of them expressed the desire to travel to Virginia.

Lord Delaware greeted us sincerely,

an expressed joy that our wives

would join us in this adventure."

(compelling flute music)

- Lord Delaware, who was one of the stockholders,

arrived with additional colonists and supplies,

and pumped new life both figuratively and literally.

(compelling flute music)

(residents speaking indistinctly)

- [Narrator] The chief medical officer

in the colony was Laurence Bohun,

whose ancestors came from Bauer stock.

- As more colonists began to settle,

they expanded beyond the original land.

They had fights with the Indians.

We were able to take over property

that they used for farming.

And one of the big crops that they developed was tobacco.

- [John] Tobacco had been known

to the native Americans for quite some time.

It wasn't smoke as a recreation, it was ceremonial.

- So you have farms being established

and the Indians eventually being forced off.

- [John] Ultimately, John Rolf's introduction of tobacco

that made the difference.

English discover this.

- Which was then introduced into Europe,

and it became an important crop.

- [John] The sugar being the most

lucrative Indigo for dyeing clothes,

a lot of these sin products have sugar,

which is also made into rum

and other alcoholic beverages, chocolate.

All of these products in the new world

became immensely popular,

and there's many Europeans back in London

and Krakow and Paris

who have the money to afford these,

and they become very popular.

- Poles kept arriving in the following years.

Among them were members of the Polish gentry,

who besides being of the intellectual class,

were well acquainted with the methods of production

needed at the time in Jamestown.

- Initially, the status was,

they were simply a apparently hired craftsmen

and it's not clear that they were accorded

the same rights as the Englishmen.

They were not given the same political rights.

We have to remember that many of these Poles

came from the Commonwealth

in which a significant political rights were being granted.

That Poland was a country where Catholics

and Protestants coexisted peacefully,

as well as many other religious groups,

which was not the case in England,

not the case in Spain or France.

The arrival of these craftsmen

and their ability to cross borders very easily

says something very important

about the tolerance and freedom

that occurred in Poland at the time.

- In 1619, colonists organized elections

to a body of the legislators called the House of Burgesses.

Now, this election was interesting

because the local leaders there,

the English decided not to allow the Poles

to be able to vote for their representatives.

- [Narrator] "The Englishmen,

well known for their untruthfulness,

gave us false assurances

and enacted deceitful ordinances,

which deliberately humiliated the Poles.

- The Poles had stopped work in protest

against a violation of their rights,

that they were not being given the rights

that they felt that they deserve.

And we have to remember that whole out of this time

enjoyed a level of personal freedom.

The Poles would have certainly felt this very keenly.

- Apparently, what happened was the Poles protested

an English law which allowed only citizens

of Great Britain to vote and hold office.

- Our contributions were not being recognized.

They were not being given the same rights as the Englishmen.

- [Narrator] The Polish workers

staged the first strike in America,

not for high wages or better working conditions,

but for civil rights and inclusion in the political process.

Zbigniew Stefanski wrote,

"In order to give the Englishmen more time

to consider what they were doing,

We, Poles, stopped all our work

until our complaints would be reviewed in London.

- The Poles were so angry

that they were being cheated of the chance to participate.

That they organized a work stoppage.

You might call it a strike.

Not for money,

not for better working conditions,

but for respect as true citizens of this colony.

- [John] Poles arrive in the new world with a sense

that they have some innate dignity.

This is perhaps a bit of a surprise to the English

that these craftsmen who are just engaging in some trades

would actually want political rights.

- The court book of the Virginia Company

on July 3, 1619 noted,

"In the dispute with the Polonians residing in Virginia,

we declare that they will have the same voting rights

as other settlers in the colony."

- And in one day,

the leaders of the English colony gave in

and said, "You're right."

And they allowed them to become citizens

of the colony to vote.

- These early Poles were not laborers,

they were artisans.

Producing soap ash, potash, glass, other commodities,

was the work of skilled crafts people.

And they were skills that were passed on in a craft system,

much as a master would pass his knowledge

onto an apprentice.

The Poles are granted their rights,

but they recognize that the polls have very valuable skills

and that these skills need to be passed on

to the young men of the colony.

(compelling flute music)

- Their idea of relationships with the natives

is to try to sign treaties with them to purchase land.

As the population begins to expand,

they want more and more land.

Eventually, the Indians get the impression

that they're not going to be satisfied

until they have all the land, hostilities, breakout.

(bell rings and protesters screams)

- [Narrator] It happened on the morning

of the 22nd of March, 1622.

The attack came right before dawn.

About 500 native Americans assaulted Jamestown.

It didn't touch the glass works,

but as soon as the battle screen sounded,

we immediately ran to the Fort.

(protesters chanting)

And Jamestown was on fire.

Natives were killing everyone without exceptions

as if they were taking revenge for all those years

when they had suffered poverty

and the ignorance from Whites.

(drum rolls playing)

- And over 300 of the colonists were killed by the Indians.

So, by that time,

the Indians had become very much against

and fearful of this constant immigration of these newcomers.

(drum rolls and gunshots firing)

- English settlers eventually beat the attack off

and were successful in sustaining the colony.

- It's a very important moment and it...

While it's very distant from our world,

if we'd gone back in time and live there,

it would have been very difficult, very alien to us.

And yet it, it helps to lay the basis

for the world we live in today.

- [Narrator] "In the year of our Lord, 1622,

my wife Berta became homesick for Haarlem.

Her desire to go back to the Netherlands

became so overwhelming

that we boarded the first outgoing ship

and left Virginia forever."

Zbigniew Stefanski who after 13 years left Virginia wrote,

"Bogdan and Anna remained in Virginia.

Also, other Poles did not find any reason

to seek livelihood elsewhere.

Bogdan already owned a tobacco plantation,

others established profitable enterprises.

A desire to become rich got into their blood.

And for that reason, they decided to remain.

- Poles were not just simply coming there for a ride.

They were not just coming there to have a good time

or try to make a lot of money.

They were there to really contribute their skills

and their talents,

and they really did make a contribution

to the survival of this colony.

- Even in that little nascent hundred people

in the English colonies,

and within the first year from 1607 to 1608,

you see the arrival of not only

of just the English colonists,

but Poles, Dutchman, later Germans.

Some have argued they were Italians by the 1620s.

You see people coming from other nations to Jamestown,

most of them brought specifically by the English

for these skills they could contribute

to making Jamestown a success.

And, you know, what do we have today?

We have 300 and some odd million people

from all over the world doing exactly the same thing.

- Had the colony failed as the first colony failed,

that's quite possible that the settlement

of the Western hemisphere might've been quite different.

- [Narrator] Pilgrims from Plymouth managed to create a myth

about being the pioneers and builders of America.

They get all the credits,

even though they landed on Plymouth Rock

some 15 years after Captain Smith

and his companions had landed in Jamestown.

- If Jamestown had failed,

would they have even come to North America?

Yeah. Perhaps not.

If the English had both the Roanoke failure

and the Jamestown failure,

would the pilgrims have ever been given a charter?

The pilgrims were given a charter to settle in Virginia.

That was their destination, it wasn't Massachusetts.

And they were apparently blown off course or miscalculated

and ended up in Massachusetts.

- Plymouth settlers and the Massachusetts based settlers

were much better equipped to survive in the new world

because they were farmers.

- If Virginia had failed,

perhaps the pilgrims never would have gotten permission

to sail to North America

because there wouldn't have been a Virginia

for them to go to.

- Had Jamestown failed,

it's possible that the French and the Spanish

would have split up North America between the two of them

and the English might never have had colonies

in North America.

- Of course, it also brought many other,

not such good things.

Of course, we have the expansion of slavery

and very brutal conditions that the Indians,

the native peoples of the Americas had to endure.

(compelling flute music)

- To see the Jamestown and the way the early colonists

interacted with the Indians and develop their economy,

I had lasting effects up into the 20th

and now the 21st century.

- This was the start of, in a sense, a global economy.

This is the beginning of the English world economy,

beginning of English dominance of the Atlantic trade.

The arrival of these Poles

indicates how well integrated Poland was

into the European world economic system at the time.

(compelling flute music)

Jamestown, ironically, that the Poles help out with,

symbolizes the British moving away

from that trade with Eastern Europe.

And in beginning of more Atlantic center trade,

it symbolizes a change for Poland as well.

But it is the beginning of really a new era

in world history.

(compelling flute music)

- The story of Jamestown has been told by various writers

and nowhere do we see any mention by American scholars

of the Poles at Jamestown?

- This was a natural choice for Smith.

It was not something that,

"Oh, it's very strange that I'm bringing in Poles."

It was a natural choice.

No one seems to question this.

So it shows how important Poland was.

- We see the gradual movement of the Indian frontier

backed first to the Appalachian mountains

and then to the Mississippi river,

and then out to the Great Plains with a whole series

of treaties between the United States and the Indians.

- Virginia's main product becomes tobacco.

And this requires, of course, a great deal of labor.

And initially, bringing over large numbers

of relatively poor Englishmen or Scots or Irish

as the case may be.

And then later on, it was beginning of,

of course, the very sad case of importing African slaves

into Virginia to work in the tobacco plantations.

- So we have the beginning of slavery.

They're not such a happy thing to think about,

but part of the history of also of this expansion

of this increasingly global international economy.

(sad music)

(bomb blasting and gunshots)

They settled, not only in America, but in Canada.

They settled all throughout Western Europe

and many times made tremendous contributions.

No mention is made any longer

about Kazimierz Pulaski, Casimir Polaski,

a Polish patriot in Poland who lost everything in Poland,

fighting for Poland's freedom, and then who came to America.

- [Narrator] "I expected the Poles

who have the reputation worldwide of being brave warriors

will be a great help to my poor homeland.

In our country, any form of tyranny is met with our disgust.

So if anywhere on the globe

someone is struggling for freedom,

it is as if it were our own struggle.

- Offered his services to the American independence cause,

organized the American cavalry,

and gave his life to the United States

at the battle of Savannah.

(gun shots firing and soldiers screaming)

- Glorious death awaited him who loved honor

even more than life itself.

The Polish nation extended its helping hand overseas

to light the flame of freedom.

- The same is true of Kosciuszko.

Tadeusz Kosciuszko, another great hero,

an engineer by training,

who helped to build the fortifications

and really was responsible for the fortifications

that the West point on the Hudson river

and contributed to his talents on a number

of American military victories.

- And American troop caught the English camp unawares

with a nighttime attack near Utah Springs.

The surprised Englishmen were not able to defend themselves.

They begged for mercy to spare their lives.

Kosciuszko forbade the killing of those Englishmen

who surrendered on the pain of death.

In this way, he saved the lives

of several dozen English soldiers.

This act was rewarded by George Washington,

who, as a token of his appreciation and respect,

gave him his wing.

- A person who was respected enough

that he was made a Brigadier General at the end of the war

by George Washington, and who when he died,

left his American estate to the care of Thomas Jefferson,

for the purpose of buying the freedom of slaves

and educating them.

- The slaves that the English brought in

to work the fields in Virginia,

later become the source of differences

between the Northern and Southern colonies

under British rule at which leads to all kinds of conflicts.

- Slavery became the reason for the divergencies

between the Northern and Southern states

leading to conflicts.

The result was the civil war with over 600,000 killed,

the repercussions of which we still feel today.

(gunshots firing)

Jozef Karge was appointed Brigadier General

in recognition of his bravery and valuable service.

General Karge was convinced that the cause

for which he fought was just,

and he thanked God that the hydra of vial slavery

had been finally crushed.

Wlodzimierz Krzyzanowski was a vocal opponents of slavery,

and he created the Polish legion.

The American Congress awarded him the rank of General.

(gunshots firing and soldiers screaming)

On the occasion of the repeated burial

of the remains of Wlodzimierz Krzyzanowski,

the general of the civil war in the Arlington graveyard,

president Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared,

"It is high privilege to bear witness to the debt

which this country owes to men of Polish blood."

- In 1876,

President Ford appeared at the national meeting

of the Polish American Congress.

And there he praised the Poles of Jamestown.

- [Narrator] Then ingeniousness

that the Polish immigrants presented,

fill all Americans of Polish descent with pride.

These are the very qualities

that made America a great country.

- The Polish national Alliance was celebrating

its one anniversary as an organization.

President Jimmy Carter was the main speaker.

"The spirit of the Jamestown Polonians

is very much alive here in this room and across the ocean.

The events of recent weeks in Poland

have inspired the world."

At that time, we have the birth

of the solidarity labor trade union,

which had just been created in Gdansk.

- [Narrator] "The world of bounds with knowledge

accessible to everybody.

Acquiring such knowledge as could be useful

in one service for the good of God and country,

we could share this knowledge with his countrymen,

gaining for Poland greater recognition

and still higher respect of the great nations of the world."

- They contributed.

Even American presidents said they contributed;

Ford, Eisenhower, and Carter,

and no mention by scholars.

This kind of erasing of the Polish contribution

should not be accepted.

- [Narrator] Poles struck for equal rights,

giving birth to the multi-ethnic American ideology,

later so well expressed by the United States,

created by the United peoples of America in 1776,

a new nation.

- We should work together to foster

and trade greater knowledge and appreciation of the truth.

Of the truth, not exaggerating, simply the truth.

- [Narrator] An example had to be said for the entire globe

to demonstrate the people of all races, nationalities,

and faiths can live in one country together in peace.

(soft suspenseful music)

- To think of what would have happened had Jamestown failed,

opens up a lot of interesting possibilities,

including us sitting here talking

in either French or Spanish today.

- And the bigger story is the need

to begin to give more attention to the contributions

that Poles have made to the United States

and really even to the world.

(soft suspenseful music continues)