Possum Bones

“An Opossum hath a head like a Swine, and a tail like a Rat, and is of the bigness of a Cat. Under her belly she hath a bag, wherein she lodgeth, carrieth, and suckleth her young.”

This description by John Smith tells us how the English colonists, who had never encountered a marsupial like possums (Didelphis virginiana) before, used comparisons to more familiar animals to describe the new creatures they encountered. Indeed, possums, with the most teeth of any North American land mammal and their unique survival abilities, would have been a very strange creature for the colonists to interact with.

Over 100 years before the English would ever step foot in Virginia, Spanish explorers brought a female possum back to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the late 1400s. It is said they were astonished by the use of the possum’s pouch to protect and feed its young. When the English did arrive in North America, it would be Smith who coined the common name “opossum” from the Algonquian word apasum, meaning “white animal.” Today, the term “opossum” is typically used for technical and scientific writing, whereas “possum” is the common term.

At Jamestown, possum remains are found in association with several Starving Time contexts, where they became a food source out of desperation like so many other species in the area. Something that is not described by John Smith is the practice of “playing possum,” or a possum’s ability to play dead when they are threatened. This behavior is involuntary, and is similar to how humans may involuntarily faint when under extreme stress. Possums will usually regain consciousness within minutes or hours. Do you think any of the colonists ever witnessed these creatures “playing possum?”