Title: The Story of Pocahontas
Author: Warner, Charles Dudley
Language: English
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THE STORY OF POCAHONTAS

By Charles Dudley Warner



The simple story of the life of Pocahontas is sufficiently romantic
without the embellishments which have been wrought on it either by the
vanity of Captain Smith or the natural pride of the descendants of this
dusky princess who have been ennobled by the smallest rivulet of her red
blood.

That she was a child of remarkable intelligence, and that she early
showed a tender regard for the whites and rendered them willing and
unwilling service, is the concurrent evidence of all contemporary
testimony. That as a child she was well-favored, sprightly, and
prepossessing above all her copper-colored companions, we can believe,
and that as a woman her manners were attractive. If the portrait taken
of her in London--the best engraving of which is by Simon de Passe--in
1616, when she is said to have been twenty-one years old, does her
justice, she had marked Indian features.

The first mention of her is in “The True Relation,” written by Captain
Smith in Virginia in 1608. In this narrative, as our readers have seen,
she is not referred to until after Smith’s return from the captivity
in which Powhatan used him “with all the kindness he could devise.” Her
name first appears, toward the close of the relation, in the following
sentence:

“Powhatan understanding we detained certain salvages, sent his daughter,
a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance,
and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of his people, but for
wit and spirit the only nonpareil of his country: this hee sent by his
most trusty messenger, called Rawhunt, as much exceeding in deformitie
of person, but of a subtill wit and crafty understanding, he with a long
circumstance told mee how well Powhatan loved and respected mee, and in
that I should not doubt any way of his kindness, he had sent his child,
which he most esteemed, to see mee, a Deere, and bread, besides for
a present: desiring mee that the Boy [Thomas Savage, the boy given by
Newport to Powhatan] might come again, which he loved exceedingly, his
little Daughter he had taught this lesson also: not taking notice at all
of the Indians that had been prisoners three daies, till that morning
that she saw their fathers and friends come quietly, and in good termes
to entreate their libertie.

“In the afternoon they [the friends of the prisoners] being gone, we
guarded them [the prisoners] as before to the church, and after prayer,
gave them to Pocahuntas the King’s Daughter, in regard of her father’s
kindness in sending her: after having well fed them, as all the time of
their imprisonment, we gave them their bows, arrowes, or what else
they had, and with much content, sent them packing: Pocahuntas, also we
requited with such trifles as contented her, to tel that we had used the
Paspaheyans very kindly in so releasing them.”

The next allusion to her is in the fourth chapter of the narratives
which are appended to the “Map of Virginia,” etc. This was sent home by
Smith, with a description of Virginia, in the late autumn of 1608. It
was published at Oxford in 1612, from two to three years after Smith’s
return to England. The appendix contains the narratives of several of
Smith’s companions in Virginia, edited by Dr. Symonds and overlooked
by Smith. In one of these is a brief reference to the above-quoted
incident.

This Oxford tract, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, contains no
reference to the saving of Smith’s life by Pocahontas from the clubs of
Powhatan.

The next published mention of Pocahontas, in point of time, is in
Chapter X. and the last of the appendix to the “Map of Virginia,” and is
Smith’s denial, already quoted, of his intention to marry Pocahontas.
In this passage he speaks of her as “at most not past 13 or 14 years of
age.” If she was thirteen or fourteen in 1609, when Smith left Virginia,
she must have been more than ten when he wrote his “True Relation,”
 composed in the winter of 1608, which in all probability was carried to
England by Captain Nelson, who left Jamestown June 2d.

The next contemporary authority to be consulted in regard to Pocahontas
is William Strachey, who, as we have seen, went with the expedition of
Gates and Somers, was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, and reached Jamestown
May 23 or 24, 1610, and was made Secretary and Recorder of the colony
under Lord Delaware. Of the origin and life of Strachey, who was a
person of importance in Virginia, little is known. The better impression
is that he was the William Strachey of Saffron Walden, who was married
in 1588 and was living in 1620, and that it was his grandson of the same
name who was subsequently connected with the Virginia colony. He was,
judged by his writings, a man of considerable education, a good deal of
a pedant, and shared the credulity and fondness for embellishment of the
writers of his time. His connection with Lord Delaware, and his part
in framing the code of laws in Virginia, which may be inferred from
the fact that he first published them, show that he was a trusted and
capable man.

William Strachey left behind him a manuscript entitled “The Historie of
Travaile into Virginia Britanica, &c., gathered and observed as well by
those who went first thither, as collected by William Strachey, gent.,
three years thither, employed as Secretaire of State.” How long he
remained in Virginia is uncertain, but it could not have been “three
years,” though he may have been continued Secretary for that period, for
he was in London in 1612, in which year he published there the laws of
Virginia which had been established by Sir Thomas Gates May 24, 1610,
approved by Lord Delaware June 10, 1610, and enlarged by Sir Thomas Dale
June 22, 1611.

The “Travaile” was first published by the Hakluyt Society in 1849. When
and where it was written, and whether it was all composed at one time,
are matters much in dispute. The first book, descriptive of Virginia and
its people, is complete; the second book, a narration of discoveries in
America, is unfinished. Only the first book concerns us. That Strachey
made notes in Virginia may be assumed, but the book was no doubt written
after his return to England.


[This code of laws, with its penalty of whipping and death for what are
held now to be venial offenses, gives it a high place among the Black
Codes. One clause will suffice:

“Every man and woman duly twice a day upon the first towling of the Bell
shall upon the working daies repaire unto the church, to hear divine
service upon pain of losing his or her allowance for the first omission,
for the second to be whipt, and for the third to be condemned to the
Gallies for six months. Likewise no man or woman shall dare to violate
the Sabbath by any gaming, publique or private, abroad or at home, but
duly sanctifie and observe the same, both himselfe and his familie, by
preparing themselves at home with private prayer, that they may be the
better fitted for the publique, according to the commandments of God,
and the orders of our church, as also every man and woman shall repaire
in the morning to the divine service, and sermons preached upon the
Sabbath day, and in the afternoon to divine service, and Catechism upon
paine for the first fault to lose their provision, and allowance for the
whole week following, for the second to lose the said allowance and also
to be whipt, and for the third to suffer death.”]


Was it written before or after the publication of Smith’s “Map and
Description” at Oxford in 1612? The question is important, because
Smith’s “Description” and Strachey’s “Travaile” are page after page
literally the same. One was taken from the other. Commonly at that time
manuscripts seem to have been passed around and much read before they
were published. Purchas acknowledges that he had unpublished manuscripts
of Smith when he compiled his narrative. Did Smith see Strachey’s
manuscript before he published his Oxford tract, or did Strachey enlarge
his own notes from Smith’s description? It has been usually assumed
that Strachey cribbed from Smith without acknowledgment. If it were a
question to be settled by the internal evidence of the two accounts,
I should incline to think that Smith condensed his description from
Strachey, but the dates incline the balance in Smith’s favor.

Strachey in his “Travaile” refers sometimes to Smith, and always with
respect. It will be noted that Smith’s “Map” was engraved and published
before the “Description” in the Oxford tract. Purchas had it, for he
says, in writing of Virginia for his “Pilgrimage” (which was published
in 1613):

“Concerning-the latter [Virginia], Capt. John Smith, partly by word
of mouth, partly by his mappe thereof in print, and more fully by a
Manuscript which he courteously communicated to mee, hath acquainted
me with that whereof himselfe with great perill and paine, had been
the discoverer.” Strachey in his “Travaile” alludes to it, and pays a
tribute to Smith in the following: “Their severall habitations are more
plainly described by the annexed mappe, set forth by Capt. Smith, of
whose paines taken herein I leave to the censure of the reader to judge.
Sure I am there will not return from thence in hast, any one who hath
been more industrious, or who hath had (Capt. Geo. Percie excepted)
greater experience amongst them, however misconstruction may traduce
here at home, where is not easily seen the mixed sufferances, both of
body and mynd, which is there daylie, and with no few hazards and hearty
griefes undergon.”

There are two copies of the Strachey manuscript. The one used by the
Hakluyt Society is dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, with the title of
“Lord High Chancellor,” and Bacon had not that title conferred on him
till after 1618. But the copy among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford
is dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley, with the title of “Purveyor to His
Majestie’s Navie Royall”; and as Sir Allen was made “Lieutenant of
the Tower” in 1616, it is believed that the manuscript must have been
written before that date, since the author would not have omitted the
more important of the two titles in his dedication.

Strachey’s prefatory letter to the Council, prefixed to his “Laws”
 (1612), is dated “From my lodging in the Black Friars. At your best
pleasures, either to return unto the colony, or pray for the success of
it heere.” In his letter he speaks of his experience in the Bermudas and
Virginia: “The full storie of both in due time [I] shall consecrate unto
your view.... Howbit since many impediments, as yet must detaine such
my observations in the shadow of darknesse, untill I shall be able to
deliver them perfect unto your judgments,” etc.

This is not, as has been assumed, a statement that the observations were
not written then, only that they were not “perfect”; in fact, they
were detained in the “shadow of darknesse” till the year 1849. Our
own inference is, from all the circumstances, that Strachey began his
manuscript in Virginia or shortly after his return, and added to it and
corrected it from time to time up to 1616.

We are now in a position to consider Strachey’s allusions to Pocahontas.
The first occurs in his description of the apparel of Indian women:

“The better sort of women cover themselves (for the most part) all over
with skin mantells, finely drest, shagged and fringed at the skyrt,
carved and coloured with some pretty work, or the proportion of beasts,
fowle, tortayses, or other such like imagry, as shall best please or
expresse the fancy of the wearer; their younger women goe not shadowed
amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve
returnes of the leafe old (for soe they accompt and bring about the
yeare, calling the fall of the leaf tagnitock); nor are thev much
ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pocahontas,
a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes
resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get
the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele,
falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would
followe and wheele so herself, naked as she was, all the fort over;
but being once twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern
apron (as do our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies,
and are very shamefac’t to be seene bare. We have seene some use
mantells made both of Turkey feathers, and other fowle, so prettily
wrought and woven with threeds, that nothing could be discerned but the
feathers, which were exceedingly warme and very handsome.”

Strachey did not see Pocahontas. She did not resort to the camp after
the departure of Smith in September, 1609, until she was kidnapped by
Governor Dale in April, 1613. He repeats what he heard of her. The
time mentioned by him of her resorting to the fort, “of the age then of
eleven or twelve yeares,” must have been the time referred to by Smith
when he might have married her, namely, in 1608-9, when he calls her
“not past 13 or 14 years of age.” The description of her as a “yong
girle” tumbling about the fort, “naked as she was,” would seem to
preclude the idea that she was married at that time.

The use of the word “wanton” is not necessarily disparaging, for
“wanton” in that age was frequently synonymous with “playful” and
“sportive”; but it is singular that she should be spoken of as “well
featured, but wanton.” Strachey, however, gives in another place what is
no doubt the real significance of the Indian name “Pocahontas.” He says:

“Both men, women, and children have their severall names; at first
according to the severall humor of their parents; and for the men
children, at first, when they are young, their mothers give them a name,
calling them by some affectionate title, or perhaps observing their
promising inclination give it accordingly; and so the great King
Powhatan called a young daughter of his, whom he loved well, Pocahontas,
which may signify a little wanton; howbeyt she was rightly called
Amonata at more ripe years.”

The Indian girls married very young. The polygamous Powhatan had a large
number of wives, but of all his women, his favorites were a dozen “for
the most part very young women,” the names of whom Strachey obtained
from one Kemps, an Indian a good deal about camp, whom Smith certifies
was a great villain. Strachey gives a list of the names of twelve of
them, at the head of which is Winganuske. This list was no doubt written
down by the author in Virginia, and it is followed by a sentence,
quoted below, giving also the number of Powhatan’s children. The
“great darling” in this list was Winganuske, a sister of Machumps,
who, according to Smith, murdered his comrade in the Bermudas. Strachey
writes:

“He [Powhatan] was reported by the said Kemps, as also by the Indian
Machumps, who was sometyme in England, and comes to and fro amongst us
as he dares, and as Powhatan gives him leave, for it is not otherwise
safe for him, no more than it was for one Amarice, who had his braynes
knockt out for selling but a baskett of corne, and lying in the English
fort two or three days without Powhatan’s leave; I say they often
reported unto us that Powhatan had then lyving twenty sonnes and ten
daughters, besyde a young one by Winganuske, Machumps his sister, and a
great darling of the King’s; and besides, younge Pocohunta, a daughter
of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymes past, nowe married to a
private Captaine, called Kocoum, some two years since.”

This passage is a great puzzle. Does Strachey intend to say that
Pocahontas was married to an Iniaan named Kocoum? She might have been
during the time after Smith’s departure in 1609, and her kidnapping
in 1613, when she was of marriageable age. We shall see hereafter that
Powhatan, in 1614, said he had sold another favorite daughter of his,
whom Sir Thomas Dale desired, and who was not twelve years of age, to
be wife to a great chief. The term “private Captain” might perhaps be
applied to an Indian chief. Smith, in his “General Historie,” says
the Indians have “but few occasions to use any officers more than one
commander, which commonly they call Werowance, or Caucorouse, which is
Captaine.” It is probably not possible, with the best intentions, to
twist Kocoum into Caucorouse, or to suppose that Strachey intended to
say that a private captain was called in Indian a Kocoum. Werowance
and Caucorouse are not synonymous terms. Werowance means “chief,” and
Caucorouse means “talker” or “orator,” and is the original of our word
“caucus.”

Either Strachey was uninformed, or Pocahontas was married to an
Indian--a not violent presumption considering her age and the fact
that war between Powhatan and the whites for some time had cut off
intercourse between them--or Strachey referred to her marriage with
Rolfe, whom he calls by mistake Kocoum. If this is to be accepted,
then this paragraph must have been written in England in 1616, and have
referred to the marriage to Rolfe it “some two years since,” in 1614.

That Pocahontas was a gentle-hearted and pleasing girl, and, through her
acquaintance with Smith, friendly to the whites, there is no doubt; that
she was not different in her habits and mode of life from other Indian
girls, before the time of her kidnapping, there is every reason to
suppose. It was the English who magnified the imperialism of her father,
and exaggerated her own station as Princess. She certainly put on no
airs of royalty when she was “cart-wheeling” about the fort. Nor
does this detract anything from the native dignity of the mature, and
converted, and partially civilized woman.

We should expect there would be the discrepancies which have been
noticed in the estimates of her age. Powhatan is not said to have kept
a private secretary to register births in his family. If Pocahontas gave
her age correctly, as it appears upon her London portrait in 1616,
aged twenty-one, she must have been eighteen years of age when she was
captured in 1613 This would make her about twelve at the time of Smith’s
captivity in 1607-8. There is certainly room for difference of opinion
as to whether so precocious a woman, as her intelligent apprehension of
affairs shows her to have been, should have remained unmarried till the
age of eighteen. In marrying at least as early as that she would have
followed the custom of her tribe. It is possible that her intercourse
with the whites had raised her above such an alliance as would be
offered her at the court of Werowocomoco.

We are without any record of the life of Pocahontas for some years.
The occasional mentions of her name in the “General Historie” are so
evidently interpolated at a late date, that they do not aid us. When
and where she took the name of Matoaka, which appears upon her London
portrait, we are not told, nor when she was called Amonata, as Strachey
says she was “at more ripe yeares.” How she was occupied from the
departure of Smith to her abduction, we can only guess. To follow her
authentic history we must take up the account of Captain Argall and of
Ralph Hamor, Jr., secretary of the colony under Governor Dale.

Captain Argall, who seems to have been as bold as he was unscrupulous
in the execution of any plan intrusted to him, arrived in Virginia
in September, 1612, and early in the spring of 1613 he was sent on an
expedition up the Patowomek to trade for corn and to effect a capture
that would bring Powhatan to terms. The Emperor, from being a friend,
had become the most implacable enemy of the English. Captain Argall
says: “I was told by certain Indians, my friends, that the great
Powhatan’s daughter Pokahuntis was with the great King Potowomek,
whither I presently repaired, resolved to possess myself of her by any
stratagem that I could use, for the ransoming of so many Englishmen as
were prisoners with Powhatan, as also to get such armes and tooles as
he and other Indians had got by murther and stealing some others of our
nation, with some quantity of corn for the colonies relief.”

By the aid of Japazeus, King of Pasptancy, an old acquaintance and
friend of Argall’s, and the connivance of the King of Potowomek,
Pocahontas was enticed on board Argall’s ship and secured. Word was sent
to Powhatan of the capture and the terms on which his daughter would be
released; namely, the return of the white men he held in slavery, the
tools and arms he had gotten and stolen, and a great quantity of corn.
Powhatan, “much grieved,” replied that if Argall would use his daughter
well, and bring the ship into his river and release her, he would accede
to all his demands. Therefore, on the 13th of April, Argall repaired to
Governor Gates at Jamestown, and delivered his prisoner, and a few days
after the King sent home some of the white captives, three pieces, one
broad-axe, a long whip-saw, and a canoe of corn. Pocahontas, however,
was kept at Jamestown.

Why Pocahontas had left Werowocomoco and gone to stay with Patowomek
we can only conjecture. It is possible that Powhatan suspected her
friendliness to the whites, and was weary of her importunity, and it may
be that she wanted to escape the sight of continual fighting, ambushes,
and murders. More likely she was only making a common friendly visit,
though Hamor says she went to trade at an Indian fair.

The story of her capture is enlarged and more minutely related by Ralph
Hamor, Jr., who was one of the colony shipwrecked on the Bermudas in
1609, and returned to England in 1614, where he published (London, 1615)
“A True Discourse of Virginia, and the Success of the Affairs there
till the 18th of June, 1614.” Hamor was the son of a merchant tailor in
London who was a member of the Virginia company. Hamor writes:

“It chanced Powhatan’s delight and darling, his daughter Pocahuntas
(whose fame has even been spread in England by the title of Nonparella
of Firginia) in her princely progresse if I may so terme it, tooke some
pleasure (in the absence of Captaine Argall) to be among her friends at
Pataomecke (as it seemeth by the relation I had), implored thither as
shopkeeper to a Fare, to exchange some of her father’s commodities for
theirs, where residing some three months or longer, it fortuned upon
occasion either of promise or profit, Captaine Argall to arrive there,
whom Pocahuntas, desirous to renew her familiaritie with the English,
and delighting to see them as unknown, fearefull perhaps to be
surprised, would gladly visit as she did, of whom no sooner had Captaine
Argall intelligence, but he delt with an old friend Iapazeus, how and
by what meanes he might procure her caption, assuring him that now or
never, was the time to pleasure him, if he intended indeede that love
which he had made profession of, that in ransome of hir he might redeeme
some of our English men and armes, now in the possession of her father,
promising to use her withall faire and gentle entreaty; Iapazeus well
assured that his brother, as he promised, would use her courteously,
promised his best endeavors and service to accomplish his desire, and
thus wrought it, making his wife an instrument (which sex have ever been
most powerful in beguiling inticements) to effect his plot which hee
had thus laid, he agreed that himself, his wife and Pocahuntas, would
accompanie his brother to the water side, whither come, his wife should
faine a great and longing desire to goe aboorde, and see the shippe,
which being there three or four times before she had never seene, and
should be earnest with her husband to permit her--he seemed angry with
her, making as he pretended so unnecessary request, especially being
without the company of women, which denial she taking unkindly,
must faine to weepe (as who knows not that women can command teares)
whereupon her husband seeming to pitty those counterfeit teares, gave
her leave to goe aboord, so that it would pleese Pocahuntas to accompany
her; now was the greatest labour to win her, guilty perhaps of her
father’s wrongs, though not knowne as she supposed, to goe with her, yet
by her earnest persuasions, she assented: so forthwith aboord they went,
the best cheere that could be made was seasonably provided, to supper
they went, merry on all hands, especially Iapazeus and his wife, who to
expres their joy would ere be treading upon Captaine Argall’s foot, as
who should say tis don, she is your own. Supper ended Pocahuntas was
lodged in the gunner’s roome, but Iapazeus and his wife desired to have
some conference with their brother, which was onely to acquaint him by
what stratagem they had betraied his prisoner as I have already
related: after which discourse to sleepe they went, Pocahuntas nothing
mistrusting this policy, who nevertheless being most possessed with
feere, and desire of returne, was first up, and hastened Iapazeus to be
gon. Capt. Argall having secretly well rewarded him, with a small Copper
kittle, and some other les valuable toies so highly by him esteemed,
that doubtlesse he would have betraied his own father for them,
permitted both him and his wife to returne, but told him that for divers
considerations, as for that his father had then eigh [8] of our Englishe
men, many swords, peeces, and other tooles, which he hid at severall
times by trecherous murdering our men, taken from them which though
of no use to him, he would not redeliver, he would reserve Pocahuntas,
whereat she began to be exceeding pensive, and discontented, yet
ignorant of the dealing of Japazeus who in outward appearance was no les
discontented that he should be the meanes of her captivity, much adoe
there was to pursuade her to be patient, which with extraordinary
curteous usage, by little and little was wrought in her, and so to
Jamestowne she was brought.”

Smith, who condenses this account in his “General Historie,” expresses
his contempt of this Indian treachery by saying: “The old Jew and his
wife began to howle and crie as fast as Pocahuntas.” It will be noted
that the account of the visit (apparently alone) of Pocahontas and her
capture is strong evidence that she was not at this time married to
“Kocoum” or anybody else.

Word was despatched to Powhatan of his daughter’s duress, with a
demand made for the restitution of goods; but although this savage is
represented as dearly loving Pocahontas, his “delight and darling,” it
was, according to Hamor, three months before they heard anything from
him. His anxiety about his daughter could not have been intense. He
retained a part of his plunder, and a message was sent to him that
Pocahontas would be kept till he restored all the arms.

This answer pleased Powhatan so little that they heard nothing from him
till the following March. Then Sir Thomas Dale and Captain Argall, with
several vessels and one hundred and fifty men, went up to Powhatan’s
chief seat, taking his daughter with them, offering the Indians a chance
to fight for her or to take her in peace on surrender of the stolen
goods. The Indians received this with bravado and flights of arrows,
reminding them of the fate of Captain Ratcliffe. The whites landed,
killed some Indians, burnt forty houses, pillaged the village, and went
on up the river and came to anchor in front of Matchcot, the Emperor’s
chief town. Here were assembled four hundred armed men, with bows and
arrows, who dared them to come ashore. Ashore they went, and a palaver
was held. The Indians wanted a day to consult their King, after which
they would fight, if nothing but blood would satisfy the whites.

Two of Powhatan’s sons who were present expressed a desire to see their
sister, who had been taken on shore. When they had sight of her, and
saw how well she was cared for, they greatly rejoiced and promised to
persuade their father to redeem her and conclude a lasting peace. The
two brothers were taken on board ship, and Master John Rolfe and Master
Sparkes were sent to negotiate with the King. Powhatan did not show
himself, but his brother Apachamo, his successor, promised to use his
best efforts to bring about a peace, and the expedition returned to
Jamestown.

“Long before this time,” Hamor relates, “a gentleman of approved
behaviour and honest carriage, Master John Rolfe, had been in love with
Pocahuntas and she with him, which thing at the instant that we were
in parlee with them, myselfe made known to Sir Thomas Dale, by a letter
from him [Rolfe] whereby he entreated his advice and furtherance to his
love, if so it seemed fit to him for the good of the Plantation, and
Pocahuntas herself acquainted her brethren therewith.” Governor Dale
approved this, and consequently was willing to retire without other
conditions. “The bruite of this pretended marriage [Hamor continues]
came soon to Powhatan’s knowledge, a thing acceptable to him, as
appeared by his sudden consent thereunto, who some ten daies after sent
an old uncle of hirs, named Opachisco, to give her as his deputy in the
church, and two of his sonnes to see the mariage solemnized which was
accordingly done about the fifth of April [1614], and ever since we have
had friendly commerce and trade, not only with Powhatan himself, but
also with his subjects round about us; so as now I see no reason why the
collonie should not thrive a pace.”

This marriage was justly celebrated as the means and beginning of a firm
peace which long continued, so that Pocahontas was again entitled to the
grateful remembrance of the Virginia settlers. Already, in 1612, a plan
had been mooted in Virginia of marrying the English with the natives,
and of obtaining the recognition of Powhatan and those allied to him as
members of a fifth kingdom, with certain privileges. Cunega, the Spanish
ambassador at London, on September 22, 1612, writes: “Although some
suppose the plantation to decrease, he is credibly informed that there
is a determination to marry some of the people that go over to Virginia;
forty or fifty are already so married, and English women intermingle and
are received kindly by the natives. A zealous minister hath been wounded
for reprehending it.”

Mr. John Rolfe was a man of industry, and apparently devoted to the
welfare of the colony. He probably brought with him in 1610 his wife,
who gave birth to his daughter Bermuda, born on the Somers Islands at
the time of the shipwreck. We find no notice of her death. Hamor gives
him the distinction of being the first in the colony to try, in 1612,
the planting and raising of tobacco. “No man [he adds] hath labored to
his power, by good example there and worthy encouragement into England
by his letters, than he hath done, witness his marriage with Powhatan’s
daughter, one of rude education, manners barbarous and cursed
generation, meerely for the good and honor of the plantation: and
least any man should conceive that some sinister respects allured him
hereunto, I have made bold, contrary to his knowledge, in the end of my
treatise to insert the true coppie of his letter written to Sir Thomas
Dale.”

The letter is a long, labored, and curious document, and comes nearer to
a theological treatise than any love-letter we have on record. It reeks
with unction. Why Rolfe did not speak to Dale, whom he saw every day,
instead of inflicting upon him this painful document, in which the
flutterings of a too susceptible widower’s heart are hidden under a
great resolve of self-sacrifice, is not plain.

The letter protests in a tedious preamble that the writer is moved
entirely by the Spirit of God, and continues:

“Let therefore this my well advised protestation, which here I make
between God and my own conscience, be a sufficient witness, at the
dreadful day of judgment (when the secrets of all men’s hearts shall be
opened) to condemne me herein, if my chiefest interest and purpose be
not to strive with all my power of body and mind, in the undertaking
of so weighty a matter, no way led (so far forth as man’s weakness may
permit) with the unbridled desire of carnall affection; but for the good
of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of
God, for my owne salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge
of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelieving creature, namely Pokahuntas.
To whom my heartie and best thoughts are, and have a long time bin so
entangled, and inthralled in so intricate a laborinth, that I was even
awearied to unwinde myself thereout.”

Master Rolfe goes on to describe the mighty war in his meditations on
this subject, in which he had set before his eyes the frailty of mankind
and his proneness to evil and wicked thoughts. He is aware of God’s
displeasure against the sons of Levi and Israel for marrying strange
wives, and this has caused him to look about warily and with good
circumspection “into the grounds and principall agitations which should
thus provoke me to be in love with one, whose education hath bin rude,
her manners barbarous, her generation accursed, and so discrepant in
all nurtriture from myselfe, that oftentimes with feare and trembling,
I have ended my private controversie with this: surely these are
wicked instigations, fetched by him who seeketh and delighteth in man’s
distruction; and so with fervent prayers to be ever preserved from such
diabolical assaults (as I looke those to be) I have taken some rest.”

The good man was desperately in love and wanted to marry the Indian, and
consequently he got no peace; and still being tormented with her image,
whether she was absent or present, he set out to produce an ingenious
reason (to show the world) for marrying her. He continues:

“Thus when I thought I had obtained my peace and quietnesse, beholde
another, but more gracious tentation hath made breaches into my holiest
and strongest meditations; with which I have been put to a new triall,
in a straighter manner than the former; for besides the weary passions
and sufferings which I have dailey, hourely, yea and in my sleepe
indured, even awaking me to astonishment, taxing me with remissnesse,
and carelessnesse, refusing and neglecting to perform the duteie of a
good Christian, pulling me by the eare, and crying: Why dost thou not
indeavor to make her a Christian? And these have happened to my greater
wonder, even when she hath been furthest seperated from me, which
in common reason (were it not an undoubted work of God) might breede
forgetfulnesse of a far more worthie creature.”

He accurately describes the symptoms and appears to understand the
remedy, but he is after a large-sized motive:

“Besides, I say the holy Spirit of God hath often demanded of me, why I
was created? If not for transitory pleasures and worldly vanities, but
to labour in the Lord’s vineyard, there to sow and plant, to nourish and
increase the fruites thereof, daily adding with the good husband in the
gospell, somewhat to the tallent, that in the ends the fruites may be
reaped, to the comfort of the labourer in this life, and his salvation
in the world to come.... Likewise, adding hereunto her great appearance
of love to me, her desire to be taught and instructed in the knowledge
of God, her capablenesse of understanding, her aptness and willingness
to receive anie good impression, and also the spirituall, besides her
owne incitements stirring me up hereunto.”

The “incitements” gave him courage, so that he exclaims: “Shall I be of
so untoward a disposition, as to refuse to lead the blind into the right
way? Shall I be so unnatural, as not to give bread to the hungrie, or
uncharitable, as not to cover the naked?”

It wasn’t to be thought of, such wickedness; and so Master Rolfe screwed
up his courage to marry the glorious Princess, from whom thousands
of people were afterwards so anxious to be descended. But he made the
sacrifice for the glory of the country, the benefit of the plantation,
and the conversion of the unregenerate, and other and lower motive
he vigorously repels: “Now, if the vulgar sort, who square all men’s
actions by the base rule of their own filthinesse, shall tax or taunt
mee in this my godly labour: let them know it is not hungry appetite, to
gorge myselfe with incontinency; sure (if I would and were so sensually
inclined) I might satisfy such desire, though not without a seared
conscience, yet with Christians more pleasing to the eie, and less
fearefull in the offense unlawfully committed. Nor am I in so desperate
an estate, that I regard not what becometh of me; nor am I out of hope
but one day to see my country, nor so void of friends, nor mean in
birth, but there to obtain a mach to my great con’tent.... But shall it
please God thus to dispose of me (which I earnestly desire to fulfill
my ends before set down) I will heartily accept of it as a godly taxe
appointed me, and I will never cease (God assisting me) untill I have
accomplished, and brought to perfection so holy a worke, in which I will
daily pray God to bless me, to mine and her eternal happiness.”

It is to be hoped that if sanctimonious John wrote any love-letters to
Amonata they had less cant in them than this. But it was pleasing to Sir
Thomas Dale, who was a man to appreciate the high motives of Mr. Rolfe.
In a letter which he despatched from Jamestown, June 18, 1614, to a
reverend friend in London, he describes the expedition when Pocahontas
was carried up the river, and adds the information that when she went on
shore, “she would not talk to any of them, scarcely to them of the best
sort, and to them only, that if her father had loved her, he would not
value her less than old swords, pieces, or axes; wherefore she would
still dwell with the Englishmen who loved her.”

“Powhatan’s daughter [the letter continues] I caused to be carefully
instructed in Christian Religion, who after she had made some good
progress therein, renounced publically her countrey idolatry, openly
confessed her Christian faith, was, as she desired, baptized, and is
since married to an English Gentleman of good understanding (as by his
letter unto me, containing the reasons for his marriage of her you may
perceive), an other knot to bind this peace the stronger. Her father
and friends gave approbation to it, and her uncle gave her to him in
the church; she lives civilly and lovingly with him, and I trust will
increase in goodness, as the knowledge of God increaseth in her. She
will goe into England with me, and were it but the gayning of this one
soule, I will think my time, toile, and present stay well spent.”

Hamor also appends to his narration a short letter, of the same date
with the above, from the minister Alexander Whittaker, the genuineness
of which is questioned. In speaking of the good deeds of Sir Thomas Dale
it says: “But that which is best, one Pocahuntas or Matoa, the
daughter of Powhatan, is married to an honest and discreet English
Gentleman--Master Rolfe, and that after she had openly renounced her
countrey Idolatry, and confessed the faith of Jesus Christ, and was
baptized, which thing Sir Thomas Dale had laboured a long time to ground
her in.” If, as this proclaims, she was married after her conversion,
then Rolfe’s tender conscience must have given him another twist for
wedding her, when the reason for marrying her (her conversion) had
ceased with her baptism. His marriage, according to this, was a pure
work of supererogation. It took place about the 5th of April, 1614. It
is not known who performed the ceremony.

How Pocahontas passed her time in Jamestown during the period of her
detention, we are not told. Conjectures are made that she was an inmate
of the house of Sir Thomas Dale, or of that of the Rev. Mr. Whittaker,
both of whom labored zealously to enlighten her mind on religious
subjects. She must also have been learning English and civilized ways,
for it is sure that she spoke our language very well when she went to
London. Mr. John Rolfe was also laboring for her conversion, and we may
suppose that with all these ministrations, mingled with her love of Mr.
Rolfe, which that ingenious widower had discovered, and her desire to
convert him into a husband, she was not an unwilling captive. Whatever
may have been her barbarous instincts, we have the testimony of Governor
Dale that she lived “civilly and lovingly” with her husband.



STORY OF POCAHONTAS, CONTINUED

Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreet
Governor the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubt the
change in the charter of 1609. By the first charter everything had
been held in common by the company, and there had been no division of
property or allotment of land among the colonists. Under the new regime
land was held in severalty, and the spur of individual interest began
at once to improve the condition of the settlement. The character of the
colonists was also gradually improving. They had not been of a sort
to fulfill the earnest desire of the London promoter’s to spread vital
piety in the New World. A zealous defense of Virginia and Maryland,
against “scandalous imputation,” entitled “Leah and Rachel; or, The
Two Fruitful Sisters,” by Mr. John Hammond, London, 1656, considers
the charges that Virginia “is an unhealthy place, a nest of rogues,
abandoned women, dissolut and rookery persons; a place of intolerable
labour, bad usage and hard diet”; and admits that “at the first
settling, and for many years after, it deserved most of these
aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but truths.... There were
jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous women drilled in, the provision
all brought out of England, and that embezzled by the Trustees.”

Governor Dale was a soldier; entering the army in the Netherlands as a
private he had risen to high position, and received knighthood in 1606.
Shortly after he was with Sir Thomas Gates in South Holland. The States
General in 1611 granted him three years’ term of absence in Virginia.
Upon his arrival he began to put in force that system of industry and
frugality he had observed in Holland. He had all the imperiousness of a
soldier, and in an altercation with Captain Newport, occasioned by some
injurious remarks the latter made about Sir Thomas Smith, the treasurer,
he pulled his beard and threatened to hang him. Active operations for
settling new plantations were at once begun, and Dale wrote to Cecil,
the Earl of Salisbury, for 2,000 good colonists to be sent out, for the
three hundred that came were “so profane, so riotous, so full of mutiny,
that not many are Christians but in name, their bodies so diseased and
crazed that not sixty of them may be employed.” He served afterwards
with credit in Holland, was made commander of the East Indian fleet in
1618, had a naval engagement with the Dutch near Bantam in 1619, and
died in 1620 from the effects of the climate. He was twice married, and
his second wife, Lady Fanny, the cousin of his first wife, survived him
and received a patent for a Virginia plantation.

Governor Dale kept steadily in view the conversion of the Indians to
Christianity, and the success of John Rolfe with Matoaka inspired
him with a desire to convert another daughter of Powhatan, of whose
exquisite perfections he had heard. He therefore despatched Ralph Hamor,
with the English boy, Thomas Savage, as interpreter, on a mission to
the court of Powhatan, “upon a message unto him, which was to deale with
him, if by any means I might procure a daughter of his, who (Pocahuntas
being already in our possession) is generally reported to be his delight
and darling, and surely he esteemed her as his owne Soule, for surer
pledge of peace.” This visit Hamor relates with great naivete.

At his town of Matchcot, near the head of York River, Powhatan
himself received his visitors when they landed, with great cordiality,
expressing much pleasure at seeing again the boy who had been presented
to him by Captain Newport, and whom he had not seen since he gave him
leave to go and see his friends at Jamestown four years before; he also
inquired anxiously after Namontack, whom he had sent to King James’s
land to see him and his country and report thereon, and then led the way
to his house, where he sat down on his bedstead side. “On each hand of
him was placed a comely and personable young woman, which they called
his Queenes, the howse within round about beset with them, the outside
guarded with a hundred bowmen.”

The first thing offered was a pipe of tobacco, which Powhatan “first
drank,” and then passed to Hamor, who “drank” what he pleased and then
returned it. The Emperor then inquired how his brother Sir Thomas Dale
fared, “and after that of his daughter’s welfare, her marriage, his
unknown son, and how they liked, lived and loved together.” Hamor
replied “that his brother was very well, and his daughter so well
content that she would not change her life to return and live with him,
whereat he laughed heartily, and said he was very glad of it.”

Powhatan then desired to know the cause of his unexpected coming, and
Mr. Hamor said his message was private, to be delivered to him without
the presence of any except one of his councilors, and one of the guides,
who already knew it.

Therefore the house was cleared of all except the two Queens, who may
never sequester themselves, and Mr. Hamor began his palaver. First there
was a message of love and inviolable peace, the production of presents
of coffee, beads, combs, fish-hooks, and knives, and the promise of
a grindstone when it pleased the Emperor to send for it. Hamor then
proceeded:

“The bruite of the exquesite perfection of your youngest daughter, being
famous through all your territories, hath come to the hearing of your
brother, Sir Thomas Dale, who for this purpose hath addressed me hither,
to intreate you by that brotherly friendship you make profession of, to
permit her (with me) to returne unto him, partly for the desire which
himselfe hath, and partly for the desire her sister hath to see her of
whom, if fame hath not been prodigall, as like enough it hath not, your
brother (by your favour) would gladly make his nearest companion, wife
and bed fellow [many times he would have interrupted my speech, which
I entreated him to heare out, and then if he pleased to returne me
answer], and the reason hereof is, because being now friendly and firmly
united together, and made one people [as he supposeth and believes] in
the bond of love, he would make a natural union between us, principally
because himself hath taken resolution to dwel in your country so long as
he liveth, and would not only therefore have the firmest assurance hee
may, of perpetuall friendship from you, but also hereby binde himselfe
thereunto.”

Powhatan replied with dignity that he gladly accepted the salute of love
and peace, which he and his subjects would exactly maintain. But as to
the other matter he said: “My daughter, whom my brother desireth, I sold
within these three days to be wife to a great Weroance for two bushels
of Roanoke [a small kind of beads made of oyster shells], and it is true
she is already gone with him, three days’ journey from me.”

Hamor persisted that this marriage need not stand in the way; “that if
he pleased herein to gratify his Brother he might, restoring the Roanoke
without the imputation of injustice, take home his daughter again, the
rather because she was not full twelve years old, and therefore not
marriageable; assuring him besides the bond of peace, so much the
firmer, he should have treble the price of his daughter in beads,
copper, hatchets, and many other things more useful for him.”

The reply of the noble old savage to this infamous demand ought to have
brought a blush to the cheeks of those who made it. He said he loved his
daughter as dearly as his life; he had many children, but he delighted
in none so much as in her; he could not live if he did not see her
often, as he would not if she were living with the whites, and he
was determined not to put himself in their hands. He desired no other
assurance of friendship than his brother had given him, who had already
one of his daughters as a pledge, which was sufficient while she lived;
“when she dieth he shall have another child of mine.” And then he broke
forth in pathetic eloquence: “I hold it not a brotherly part of your
King, to desire to bereave me of two of my children at once; further
give him to understand, that if he had no pledge at all, he should not
need to distrust any injury from me, or any under my subjection; there
have been too many of his and my men killed, and by my occasion there
shall never be more; I which have power to perform it have said it; no
not though I should have just occasion offered, for I am now old and
would gladly end my days in peace; so as if the English offer me any
injury, my country is large enough, I will remove myself farther from
you.”

The old man hospitably entertained his guests for a day or two, loaded
them with presents, among which were two dressed buckskins, white as
snow, for his son and daughter, and, requesting some articles sent him
in return, bade them farewell with this message to Governor Dale: “I
hope this will give him good satisfaction, if it do not I will go three
days’ journey farther from him, and never see Englishmen more.” It
speaks well for the temperate habits of this savage that after he had
feasted his guests, “he caused to be fetched a great glass of sack, some
three quarts or better, which Captain Newport had given him six or seven
years since, carefully preserved by him, not much above a pint in all
this time spent, and gave each of us in a great oyster shell some three
spoonfuls.”

We trust that Sir Thomas Dale gave a faithful account of all this to his
wife in England.

Sir Thomas Gates left Virginia in the spring of 1614 and never returned.
After his departure scarcity and severity developed a mutiny, and six
of the settlers were executed. Rolfe was planting tobacco (he has the
credit of being the first white planter of it), and his wife was getting
an inside view of Christian civilization.

In 1616 Sir Thomas Dale returned to England with his company and John
Rolfe and Pocahontas, and several other Indians. They reached Plymouth
early in June, and on the 20th Lord Carew made this note: “Sir Thomas
Dale returned from Virginia; he hath brought divers men and women of
thatt countrye to be educated here, and one Rolfe who married a daughter
of Pohetan (the barbarous prince) called Pocahuntas, hath brought his
wife with him into England.” On the 22d Sir John Chamberlain wrote to
Sir Dudley Carlton that there were “ten or twelve, old and young, of
that country.”

The Indian girls who came with Pocahontas appear to have been a great
care to the London company. In May, 1620, is a record that the company
had to pay for physic and cordials for one of them who had been living
as a servant in Cheapside, and was very weak of a consumption. The same
year two other of the maids were shipped off to the Bermudas, after
being long a charge to the company, in the hope that they might there
get husbands, “that after they were converted and had children, they
might be sent to their country and kindred to civilize them.” One of
them was there married. The attempt to educate them in England was not
very successful, and a proposal to bring over Indian boys obtained this
comment from Sir Edwin Sandys:

“Now to send for them into England, and to have them educated here, he
found upon experience of those brought by Sir Thomas Dale, might be far
from the Christian work intended.” One Nanamack, a lad brought over by
Lord Delaware, lived some years in houses where “he heard not much of
religion but sins, had many times examples of drinking, swearing and
like evils, ran as he was a mere Pagan,” till he fell in with a
devout family and changed his life, but died before he was baptized.
Accompanying Pocahontas was a councilor of Powhatan, one Tomocomo, the
husband of one of her sisters, of whom Purchas says in his “Pilgrimes”:
“With this savage I have often conversed with my good friend Master
Doctor Goldstone where he was a frequent geust, and where I have seen
him sing and dance his diabolical measures, and heard him discourse of
his country and religion.... Master Rolfe lent me a discourse which
I have in my Pilgrimage delivered. And his wife did not only accustom
herself to civility, but still carried herself as the daughter of a
king, and was accordingly respected, not only by the Company which
allowed provision for herself and her son, but of divers particular
persons of honor, in their hopeful zeal by her to advance Christianity.
I was present when my honorable and reverend patron, the Lord Bishop of
London, Doctor King, entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond
what I had seen in his great hospitality offered to other ladies. At
her return towards Virginia she came at Gravesend to her end and grave,
having given great demonstration of her Christian sincerity, as the
first fruits of Virginia conversion, leaving here a goodly memory,
and the hopes of her resurrection, her soul aspiring to see and enjoy
permanently in heaven what here she had joyed to hear and believe of her
blessed Saviour. Not such was Tomocomo, but a blasphemer of what he knew
not and preferring his God to ours because he taught them (by his own
so appearing) to wear their Devil-lock at the left ear; he acquainted me
with the manner of that his appearance, and believed that their Okee or
Devil had taught them their husbandry.”

Upon news of her arrival, Captain Smith, either to increase his own
importance or because Pocahontas was neglected, addressed a letter or
“little booke” to Queen Anne, the consort of King James. This letter is
found in Smith’s “General Historie” ( 1624), where it is introduced
as having been sent to Queen Anne in 1616. Probably he sent her such a
letter. We find no mention of its receipt or of any acknowledgment of
it. Whether the “abstract” in the “General Historie” is exactly like
the original we have no means of knowing. We have no more confidence in
Smith’s memory than we have in his dates. The letter is as follows:

“To the most high and vertuous Princesse Queene Anne of Great Brittaine.

“Most ADMIRED QUEENE.

“The love I beare my God, my King and Countrie hath so oft emboldened me
in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honestie doth constraine mee
presume thus farre beyond my selfe, to present your Majestie this short
discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poyson to all honest vertues,
I must be guiltie of that crime if I should omit any meanes to bee
thankful. So it is.

“That some ten yeeres agoe being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the
power of Powhaten, their chiefe King, I received from this great Salvage
exceeding great courtesie, especially from his sonne Nantaquaus, the
most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit, I ever saw in a Salvage and
his sister Pocahontas, the Kings most deare and well-beloved daughter,
being but a childe of twelve or thirteen yeeres of age, whose
compassionate pitifull heart, of desperate estate, gave me much cause
to respect her: I being the first Christian this proud King and his grim
attendants ever saw, and thus enthralled in their barbarous power, I
cannot say I felt the least occasion of want that was in the power of
those my mortall foes to prevent notwithstanding al their threats. After
some six weeks fatting amongst those Salvage Courtiers, at the minute of
my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her owne braines to save
mine, and not onely that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was
safely conducted to Jamestowne, where I found about eight and thirty
miserable poore and sicke creatures, to keepe possession of all those
large territories of Virginia, such was the weaknesse of this poore
Commonwealth, as had the Salvages not fed us, we directly had starved.

“And this reliefe, most gracious Queene, was commonly brought us by
this Lady Pocahontas, notwithstanding all these passages when inconstant
Fortune turned our Peace to warre, this tender Virgin would still not
spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jarres have been oft appeased,
and our wants still supplyed; were it the policie of her father thus to
imploy her, or the ordinance of God thus to make her his instrument, or
her extraordinarie affection to our Nation, I know not: but of this I am
sure: when her father with the utmost of his policie and power, sought
to surprize mee, having but eighteene with mee, the dark night could not
affright her from comming through the irksome woods, and with watered
eies gave me intilligence, with her best advice to escape his furie:
which had hee known hee had surely slaine her. Jamestowne with her wild
traine she as freely frequented, as her father’s habitation: and during
the time of two or three yeares, she next under God, was still the
instrument to preserve this Colonie from death, famine and utter
confusion, which if in those times had once beene dissolved, Virginia
might have laine as it was at our first arrivall to this day. Since
then, this buisinesse having been turned and varied by many accidents
from that I left it at: it is most certaine, after a long and
troublesome warre after my departure, betwixt her father and our
Colonie, all which time shee was not heard of, about two yeeres longer,
the Colonie by that meanes was releived, peace concluded, and at last
rejecting her barbarous condition, was maried to an English Gentleman,
with whom at this present she is in England; the first Christian ever of
that Nation, the first Virginian ever spake English, or had a childe
in mariage by an Englishman, a matter surely, if my meaning bee truly
considered and well understood, worthy a Princes understanding.

“Thus most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majestic, what at your
best leasure our approved Histories will account you at large, and done
in the time of your Majesties life, and however this might bee presented
you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more honest heart, as yet
I never begged anything of the State, or any, and it is my want of
abilitie and her exceeding desert, your birth, meanes, and authoritie,
her birth, vertue, want and simplicitie, doth make mee thus bold, humbly
to beseech your Majestic: to take this knowledge of her though it be
from one so unworthy to be the reporter, as myselfe, her husband’s
estate not being able to make her fit to attend your Majestic: the most
and least I can doe, is to tell you this, because none so oft hath tried
it as myselfe: and the rather being of so great a spirit, however her
station: if she should not be well received, seeing this Kingdome
may rightly have a Kingdome by her meanes: her present love to us and
Christianitie, might turne to such scorne and furie, as to divert all
this good to the worst of evill, when finding so great a Queene should
doe her some honour more than she can imagine, for being so kinde to
your servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endeare
her dearest bloud to effect that, your Majestic and all the Kings honest
subjects most earnestly desire: and so I humbly kisse your gracious
hands.”

The passage in this letter, “She hazarded the beating out of her owne
braines to save mine,” is inconsistent with the preceding portion of the
paragraph which speaks of “the exceeding great courtesie” of Powhatan;
and Smith was quite capable of inserting it afterwards when he made up
his

“General Historie.”

Smith represents himself at this time--the last half of 1616 and the
first three months of 1617--as preparing to attempt a third voyage to
New England (which he did not make), and too busy to do Pocahontas the
service she desired. She was staying at Branford, either from neglect
of the company or because the London smoke disagreed with her, and there
Smith went to see her. His account of his intercourse with her, the only
one we have, must be given for what it is worth. According to this she
had supposed Smith dead, and took umbrage at his neglect of her. He
writes:

“After a modest salutation, without any word, she turned about, obscured
her face, as not seeming well contented; and in that humour, her husband
with divers others, we all left her two or three hours repenting myself
to have writ she could speak English. But not long after she began to
talke, remembering me well what courtesies she had done: saying, ‘You
did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like to
you; you called him father, being in his land a stranger, and by the
same reason so must I do you:’ which though I would have excused, I
durst not allow of that title, because she was a king’s daughter. With
a well set countenance she said: ‘Were you not afraid to come into my
father’s country and cause fear in him and all his people (but me), and
fear you have I should call you father; I tell you then I will, and
you shall call me childe, and so I will be forever and ever, your
contrieman. They did tell me alwaies you were dead, and I knew no other
till I came to Plymouth, yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakkin to seek
you, and know the truth, because your countriemen will lie much.”’

This savage was the Tomocomo spoken of above, who had been sent by
Powhatan to take a census of the people of England, and report what they
and their state were. At Plymouth he got a long stick and began to make
notches in it for the people he saw. But he was quickly weary of that
task. He told Smith that Powhatan bade him seek him out, and get him
to show him his God, and the King, Queen, and Prince, of whom Smith had
told so much. Smith put him off about showing his God, but said he had
heard that he had seen the King. This the Indian denied, James probably
not coming up to his idea of a king, till by circumstances he was
convinced he had seen him. Then he replied very sadly: “You gave
Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan fed as himself, but your king gave
me nothing, and I am better than your white dog.”

Smith adds that he took several courtiers to see Pocahontas, and “they
did think God had a great hand in her conversion, and they have seen
many English ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and behavioured;” and
he heard that it had pleased the King and Queen greatly to esteem her,
as also Lord and Lady Delaware, and other persons of good quality, both
at the masques and otherwise.

Much has been said about the reception of Pocahontas in London, but
the contemporary notices of her are scant. The Indians were objects of
curiosity for a time in London, as odd Americans have often been since,
and the rank of Pocahontas procured her special attention. She was
presented at court. She was entertained by Dr. King, Bishop of London.
At the playing of Ben Jonson’s “Christmas his Mask” at court, January
6, 1616-17, Pocahontas and Tomocomo were both present, and Chamberlain
writes to Carleton: “The Virginian woman Pocahuntas with her father
counsellor have been with the King and graciously used, and both she and
her assistant were pleased at the Masque. She is upon her return though
sore against her will, if the wind would about to send her away.”

Mr. Neill says that “after the first weeks of her residence in England
she does not appear to be spoken of as the wife of Rolfe by the letter
writers,” and the Rev. Peter Fontaine says that “when they heard that
Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated in council whether he
had not committed high treason by so doing, that is marrying an Indian
princesse.”

It was like James to think so. His interest in the colony was never
the most intelligent, and apt to be in things trivial. Lord Southampton
(Dec. 15, 1609) writes to Lord Salisbury that he had told the King of
the Virginia squirrels brought into England, which are said to fly. The
King very earnestly asked if none were provided for him, and said he was
sure Salisbury would get him one. Would not have troubled him, “but that
you know so well how he is affected to these toys.”

There has been recently found in the British Museum a print of a
portrait of Pocahontas, with a legend round it in Latin, which is
translated: “Matoaka, alias Rebecka, Daughter of Prince Powhatan,
Emperor of Virginia; converted to Christianity, married Mr. Rolff; died
on shipboard at Gravesend 1617.” This is doubtless the portrait engraved
by Simon De Passe in 1616, and now inserted in the extant copies of the
London edition of the “General Historie,” 1624. It is not probable that
the portrait was originally published with the “General Historie.” The
portrait inserted in the edition of 1624 has this inscription:

Round the portrait:

“Matoaka als Rebecca Filia Potentiss Princ: Pohatani Imp: Virginim.”

In the oval, under the portrait:

         “Aetatis suae 21 A.
            1616”
 Below:

“Matoaks als Rebecka daughter to the mighty Prince Powhatan Emprour of
Attanoughkomouck als virginia converted and baptized in the Christian
faith, and wife to the worth Mr. job Rolff. i: Pass: sculp. Compton
Holland excud.”


Camden in his “History of Gravesend” says that everybody paid this
young lady all imaginable respect, and it was believed she would have
sufficiently acknowledged those favors, had she lived to return to her
own country, by bringing the Indians to a kinder disposition toward the
English; and that she died, “giving testimony all the time she lay sick,
of her being a very good Christian.”

The Lady Rebecka, as she was called in London, died on shipboard at
Gravesend after a brief illness, said to be of only three days, probably
on the 21st of March, 1617. I have seen somewhere a statement, which
I cannot confirm, that her disease was smallpox. St. George’s Church,
where she was buried, was destroyed by fire in 1727. The register of
that church has this record:


       “1616, May 21 Rebecca Wrothe
        Wyff of Thomas Wroth gent
     A Virginia lady borne, here was buried
          in ye chaunncle.”

Yet there is no doubt, according to a record in the Calendar of State
Papers, dated “1617, 29 March, London,” that her death occurred March
21, 1617.

John Rolfe was made Secretary of Virginia when Captain Argall became
Governor, and seems to have been associated in the schemes of that
unscrupulous person and to have forfeited the good opinion of the
company. August 23, 1618, the company wrote to Argall: “We cannot
imagine why you should give us warning that Opechankano and the natives
have given the country to Mr. Rolfe’s child, and that they reserve it
from all others till he comes of years except as we suppose as some
do here report it be a device of your own, to some special purpose for
yourself.” It appears also by the minutes of the company in 1621 that
Lady Delaware had trouble to recover goods of hers left in Rolfe’s hands
in Virginia, and desired a commission directed to Sir Thomas Wyatt and
Mr. George Sandys to examine what goods of the late “Lord Deleware had
come into Rolfe’s possession and get satisfaction of him.” This George
Sandys is the famous traveler who made a journey through the Turkish
Empire in 1610, and who wrote, while living in Virginia, the first book
written in the New World, the completion of his translation of Ovid’s
“Metamorphosis.”

John Rolfe died in Virginia in 1622, leaving a wife and children.
This is supposed to be his third wife, though there is no note of his
marriage to her nor of the death of his first. October 7, 1622, his
brother Henry Rolfe petitioned that the estate of John should be
converted to the support of his relict wife and children and to his own
indemnity for having brought up John’s child by Powhatan’s daughter.

This child, named Thomas Rolfe, was given after the death of Pocahontas
to the keeping of Sir Lewis Stukely of Plymouth, who fell into evil
practices, and the boy was transferred to the guardianship of his uncle
Henry Rolfe, and educated in London. When he was grown up he returned
to Virginia, and was probably there married. There is on record his
application to the Virginia authorities in 1641 for leave to go into the
Indian country and visit Cleopatra, his mother’s sister. He left an only
daughter who was married, says Stith (1753), “to Col. John Bolling; by
whom she left an only son, the late Major John Bolling, who was father
to the present Col. John Bolling, and several daughters, married to
Col. Richard Randolph, Col. John Fleming, Dr. William Gay, Mr. Thomas
Eldridge, and Mr. James Murray.” Campbell in his “History of Virginia”
 says that the first Randolph that came to the James River was an
esteemed and industrious mechanic, and that one of his sons, Richard,
grandfather of the celebrated John Randolph, married Jane Bolling, the
great granddaughter of Pocahontas.

In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated with
fighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names and titles;
his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimes Mamauatonick,
and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk. He ruled, by inheritance and
conquest, with many chiefs under him, over a large territory with not
defined borders, lying on the James, the York, the Rappahannock, the
Potomac, and the Pawtuxet Rivers. He had several seats, at which he
alternately lived with his many wives and guard of bowmen, the chief of
which at the arrival of the English was Werowomocomo, on the Pamunkey
(York) River. His state has been sufficiently described. He is said
to have had a hundred wives, and generally a dozen--the
youngest--personally attending him. When he had a mind to add to his
harem he seems to have had the ancient oriental custom of sending into
all his dominions for the fairest maidens to be brought from whom to
select. And he gave the wives of whom he was tired to his favorites.

Strachey makes a striking description of him as he appeared about 1610:
“He is a goodly old man not yet shrincking, though well beaten with cold
and stormeye winters, in which he hath been patient of many necessityes
and attempts of his fortune to make his name and famely great. He is
supposed to be little lesse than eighty yeares old, I dare not saye how
much more; others saye he is of a tall stature and cleane lymbes, of a
sad aspect, rownd fatt visaged, with graie haires, but plaine and thin,
hanging upon his broad showlders; some few haires upon his chin, and so
on his upper lippe: he hath been a strong and able salvadge, synowye,
vigilant, ambitious, subtile to enlarge his dominions:... cruell he hath
been, and quarellous as well with his own wcrowanccs for trifles, and
that to strike a terrour and awe into them of his power and condicion,
as also with his neighbors in his younger days, though now delighted in
security and pleasure, and therefore stands upon reasonable conditions
of peace with all the great and absolute werowances about him, and is
likewise more quietly settled amongst his own.”

It was at this advanced age that he had the twelve favorite young wives
whom Strachey names. All his people obeyed him with fear and adoration,
presenting anything he ordered at his feet, and trembling if he frowned.
His punishments were cruel; offenders were beaten to death before him,
or tied to trees and dismembered joint by joint, or broiled to death on
burning coals. Strachey wondered how such a barbarous prince should put
on such ostentation of majesty, yet he accounted for it as belonging to
the necessary divinity that doth hedge in a king: “Such is (I believe)
the impression of the divine nature, and however these (as other
heathens forsaken by the true light) have not that porcion of the
knowing blessed Christian spiritt, yet I am perswaded there is an
infused kind of divinities and extraordinary (appointed that it shall
be so by the King of kings) to such as are his ymedyate instruments on
earth.”

Here is perhaps as good a place as any to say a word or two about the
appearance and habits of Powhatan’s subjects, as they were observed
by Strachey and Smith. A sort of religion they had, with priests or
conjurors, and houses set apart as temples, wherein images were kept
and conjurations performed, but the ceremonies seem not worship, but
propitiations against evil, and there seems to have been no conception
of an overruling power or of an immortal life. Smith describes a
ceremony of sacrifice of children to their deity; but this is doubtful,
although Parson Whittaker, who calls the Indians “naked slaves of the
devil,” also says they sacrificed sometimes themselves and sometimes
their own children. An image of their god which he sent to England
“was painted upon one side of a toadstool, much like unto a deformed
monster.” And he adds: “Their priests, whom they call Quockosoughs, are
no other but such as our English witches are.” This notion I believe
also pertained among the New England colonists. There was a belief
that the Indian conjurors had some power over the elements, but not a
well-regulated power, and in time the Indians came to a belief in the
better effect of the invocations of the whites. In “Winslow’s Relation,”
 quoted by Alexander Young in his “Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers,”
 under date of July, 1623, we read that on account of a great drought
a fast day was appointed. When the assembly met the sky was clear. The
exercise lasted eight or nine hours. Before they broke up, owing to
prayers the weather was overcast. Next day began a long gentle rain.
This the Indians seeing, admired the goodness of our God: “showing the
difference between their conjuration and our invocation in the name
of God for rain; theirs being mixed with such storms and tempests, as
sometimes, instead of doing them good, it layeth the corn flat on the
ground; but ours in so gentle and seasonable a manner, as they never
observed the like.”

It was a common opinion of the early settlers in Virginia, as it was of
those in New England, that the Indians were born white, but that they
got a brown or tawny color by the use of red ointments, made of earth
and the juice of roots, with which they besmear themselves either
according to the custom of the country or as a defense against the
stinging of mosquitoes. The women are of the same hue as the men, says
Strachey; “howbeit, it is supposed neither of them naturally borne so
discolored; for Captain Smith (lyving sometymes amongst them) affirmeth
how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the
women,” “dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming
it the best beauty to be nearest such a kind of murrey as a sodden
quince is of,” as the Greek women colored their faces and the ancient
Britain women dyed themselves with red; “howbeit [Strachey slyly adds]
he or she that hath obtained the perfected art in the tempering of this
collour with any better kind of earth, yearb or root preserves it not
yet so secrett and precious unto herself as doe our great ladyes their
oyle of talchum, or other painting white and red, but they frindly
communicate the secret and teach it one another.”

Thomas Lechford in his “Plain Dealing; or Newes from New England,”
 London, 1642, says: “They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their
children are borne white, but they bedawbe them with oyle and colors
presently.”

The men are described as tall, straight, and of comely proportions; no
beards; hair black, coarse, and thick; noses broad, flat, and full at
the end; with big lips and wide mouths’, yet nothing so unsightly as
the Moors; and the women as having “handsome limbs, slender arms, pretty
hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in their voices.
The men shaved their hair on the right side, the women acting as
barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side, with a lock an
ell long.” A Puritan divine--“New England’s Plantation, 1630”--says of
the Indians about him, “their hair is generally black, and cut before
like our gentlewomen, and one lock longer than the rest, much like to
our gentlemen, which fashion I think came from hence into England.”

Their love of ornaments is sufficiently illustrated by an extract from
Strachey, which is in substance what Smith writes:

“Their eares they boare with wyde holes, commonly two or three, and in
the same they doe hang chaines of stayned pearle braceletts, of white
bone or shreeds of copper, beaten thinne and bright, and wounde up
hollowe, and with a grate pride, certaine fowles’ legges, eagles,
hawkes, turkeys, etc., with beasts clawes, bears, arrahacounes,
squirrells, etc. The clawes thrust through they let hang upon the cheeke
to the full view, and some of their men there be who will weare in these
holes a small greene and yellow-couloured live snake, neere half a yard
in length, which crawling and lapping himself about his neck oftentymes
familiarly, he suffreeth to kisse his lippes. Others weare a dead ratt
tyed by the tayle, and such like conundrums.”

This is the earliest use I find of our word “conundrum,” and the sense
it bears here may aid in discovering its origin.

Powhatan is a very large figure in early Virginia history, and deserves
his prominence. He was an able and crafty savage, and made a good fight
against the encroachments of the whites, but he was no match for
the crafty Smith, nor the double-dealing of the Christians. There is
something pathetic about the close of his life, his sorrow for the death
of his daughter in a strange land, when he saw his territories overrun
by the invaders, from whom he only asked peace, and the poor privilege
of moving further away from them into the wilderness if they denied him
peace.

In the midst of this savagery Pocahontas blooms like a sweet, wild rose.
She was, like the Douglas, “tender and true.” Wanting apparently the
cruel nature of her race generally, her heroic qualities were all of the
heart. No one of all the contemporary writers has anything but gentle
words for her. Barbarous and untaught she was like her comrades, but of
a gentle nature. Stripped of all the fictions which Captain Smith has
woven into her story, and all the romantic suggestions which later
writers have indulged in, she appears, in the light of the few facts
that industry is able to gather concerning her, as a pleasing and
unrestrained Indian girl, probably not different from her savage sisters
in her habits, but bright and gentle; struck with admiration at the
appearance of the white men, and easily moved to pity them, and so
inclined to a growing and lasting friendship for them; tractable and apt
to learn refinements; accepting the new religion through love for those
who taught it, and finally becoming in her maturity a well-balanced,
sensible, dignified Christian woman.

According to the long-accepted story of Pocahontas, she did something
more than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death a stranger
and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting those who
opposed his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribes and in
civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity by the sight
of a prisoner, and risked life to save him--the impulse was as natural
to a Highland lass as to an African maid. Pocahontas went further than
efforts to make peace between the superior race and her own. When the
whites forced the Indians to contribute from their scanty stores to the
support of the invaders, and burned their dwellings and shot them on
sight if they refused, the Indian maid sympathized with the exposed
whites and warned them of stratagems against them; captured herself by a
base violation of the laws of hospitality, she was easily reconciled to
her situation, adopted the habits of the foreigners, married one of her
captors, and in peace and in war cast in her lot with the strangers.
History has not preserved for us the Indian view of her conduct.

It was no doubt fortunate for her, though perhaps not for the colony,
that her romantic career ended by an early death, so that she always
remains in history in the bloom of youth. She did not live to be pained
by the contrast, to which her eyes were opened, between her own and her
adopted people, nor to learn what things could be done in the Christian
name she loved, nor to see her husband in a less honorable light than
she left him, nor to be involved in any way in the frightful massacre
of 1622. If she had remained in England after the novelty was over, she
might have been subject to slights and mortifying neglect. The struggles
of the fighting colony could have brought her little but pain. Dying
when she did, she rounded out one of the prettiest romances of all
history, and secured for her name the affection of a great nation, whose
empire has spared little that belonged to her childhood and race, except
the remembrance of her friendship for those who destroyed her people.





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