On December 20, 1606, three small ships—the Susan Constant , the Godspeed , and the Discovery —slipped into the gray winter current of the Thames River. On board were 145 men, a mix of settlers and seamen, grim-faced as they left the shores of England for a faraway continent few of them could imagine. These members of the Virginia Company carried with them a double commission: to establish an English foothold in America and to spread the Christian faith among the peoples they expected to encounter.

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The charter of King James I obliged the Virginia Company to seek natural resources—in particular the gold, silver, and copper they believed to be lying underneath the new land—but its language was suffused with divine mission concerning the human beings living there.…