Jamestown Colony, First permanent English settlement in North America. It was founded in May 1607 on a peninsula in the James River of Virginia. Named after King James I, Jamestown began cultivating tobacco and established the continent’s first representative government (1619); the colony, its leader John Smith, and the Native American Pocahontas—who, according to lore, saved Smith’s life—have been the subject of numerous novels, dramas, and films, many of them highly fanciful. When nearby Williamsburg replaced it as the capital of colonial Virginia in 1699, it fell into decline. By the mid-19th century, erosion had transformed the peninsula into Jamestown Island. In 1936 the site was incorporated into the Colonial National Historical Park.
