When 104 men and boys sailed across the Atlantic 400 years ago to become the first permanent English settlers in the New World, little did they know that their odyssey would give birth to history's biggest superpower.
The small group of high-born, but ill-prepared colonists who set up camp along the James River on May 14, 1607 on a swampy, mosquito-infested swath of land in Jamestown, were seeking gold and a water route to the Orient.
Instead they found famine, disease, drought and hostile natives whose fate would forever be altered by the Jamestown settlement, the 400th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year.
"The settlement of Jamestown is a tremendous legacy," Jeanne Zeidler, executive director of "Jamestown 2007," the committee organizing the celebrations, told AFP. "This is the true story of America.
"Jamestown is the story of some very good people and some people who weren't always so good and ... people who learned to live together and sometimes fought each other."
The Jamestown colony, located in the eastern state of Virginia and generally upstaged in the nation's memory by the Mayflower pilgrims who arrived to Plymouth, Massachusetts, 13 years later, also laid the groundwork for America's principles of representative democracy and free enterprise.
The highlight of the quadricentennial celebrations will be a visit by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on May 3 and 4, followed by three days of festivities on May 11-13 that will include stage productions, a ceremonial sailing by replicas of the three ships that transported the settlers and a concert by a 1,607-member choir and an orchestra of 400 musicians.
The queen, who will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, also attended the 350th anniversary events in 1957 which marked her first visit to the United States as a monarch.
US President George W. Bush is also due to attend the ceremonies which have been 10 years in the planning.
But amid all the pomp and circumstance surrounding a date that marks the birth of a nation, some, especially Native Americans and blacks, are questioning whether there is much to celebrate.
For Native Americans, 1607 marks the beginning of their downfall and for African-Americans, Jamestown symbolizes the beginning of slavery in America with the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619.
"1607 marks the beginning of the English taking our land away from us," said Chief Bill Miles, who heads the Pamunkey Indian tribe in Virginia, which existed when the Jamestown settlers arrived and whose members have refused to take part in the 400th anniversary festivities.
"We are certainly proud to be Americans ... but we don't feel like it's something to celebrate or commemorate the fact that the settlers basically took our land away from us," Miles told AFP.
Of the estimated 15,000 American Indians who lived in the area near the English settlement in 1607, all but about 1,500 died within a century, most from disease or in battle with the settlers.
"When I ride though these roads here I see that only one or two percent of the people are Indians and there are all these other people," said Chief Ken Adams, who head the Upper Mattaponi tribe. "Four hundred years ago there was only us."
No Native American from the time of the English colonists is better known than Pocahontas, whose dealings with the settlers has formed the basis of many legends and a factually incorrect Walt Disney movie.
In a bid to avoid controversy and show consideration, organizers of the anniversary have toned down their wording to describe the event as a "commemoration" instead of a "celebration" and are going out of their way to include blacks and Indians in the festivities.
"We now tell the story of Jamestown as the place where the people of three cultures came together, not only the English," said Mike Litterst, spokesman for the Colonial National Historical Park.
"Certainly those three cultures didn't join hands and come together to join a society.
"But it is the contribution of all three that helped Jamestown survive and ultimately created the character of today's America."
