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Title: The Pocahontas-John Smith Story

Author: Pocahontas Wight Edmunds

Editor: James H. Bailey

Release date: April 13, 2011 [eBook #35863]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Mark C. Orton, David E. Brown and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POCAHONTAS-JOHN SMITH STORY ***




Produced by Mark C. Orton, David E. Brown and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









THE POCAHONTAS-JOHN SMITH STORY


  The Pocahontas-John
  Smith Story

  _By_

  Pocahontas Wight Edmunds

  JAMES H. BAILEY, PH.D., _Editor_


  THE DIETZ PRESS, INC.
  RICHMOND, VIRGINIA


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  COPYRIGHT © 1956, BY
  POCAHONTAS WIGHT EDMUNDS


  Quotes from _Cornhuskers_ by Carl Sandburg. Copyright, 1918, by
  Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Copyright, 1946, by Carl Sandburg.
  By permission of the publishers.

  Quotes from _Western Star_ by Stephen Vincent Benet. Copyright,
  1943, by Rosemary Carr Benet. Published by Rinehart & Company.


  FROM THE PRESSES OF THE DIETZ PRINTING COMPANY




Introduction


When my _Tales of the Virginia Coast_ was published in 1950 the _New
York Times_ (Book Review) page "In and Out of Books" asked the Dietz
Press: "Do you really have an author named Pocahontas Wight Edmunds?"
Before the printer's ink was dry a reporter rushed in to tell him that
his grandmother had that name. I hastened to write that my
great-grandmother was named Pocahontas as was my mother, my niece and
several cousins. Besides we had two Matoacas in our family and all of us
are descendants in two lines, since first cousins married about a
century ago. The name of the present first lady of Virginia is Anne
Pocahontas Stanley, and Pocahontas was that of her mother. If ships,
hotels, camps, counties and commercial products appropriate the name,
why not descendants? To be named "Pocahontas" is to borrow glory and to
attract excitement as surely as dark flannel attracts lint.

When I was five our family visited the Croatan settlement near Red
Springs, North Carolina, and my father imprudently revealed the Indian
names of his wife and daughter. Mother blushed and I bawled as the
drunken crowd of Sunday afternoon clasped us to their bosoms so
tenaciously that Father could scarcely extricate us from their clutches.
Later in the week, Chief Locklear came calling in a golden, yellow surry
with yellow fringe, bearing tribute of native scuppernong grapes. They
were offered red and sweet, for red, sweet Pocahontas's sake rather than
ours.

I was usually given the Indian role in school plays. In 1923 I was asked
to take the Pocahontas role in the mammoth Virginia pageant in Richmond.
In 1925 the Fox News-Reel introduced me: "Descendant of Chief Powhatan
Opens the Biggest Book in the World." This volume was Dr. Matthew Page
Andrews's _Story of the South_, which had stood ten feet tall on the
stage of the Strand Theater when I had played "Carry Me Back to Old
Virginia" on my violin in front of the illustration of my ancestress.

Lecturers and notables have singled me out of the mob for the name's
sake only. The sonorous American poet Vachel Lindsay bent low as he
halted a campus receiving line: "My dear, I must kiss your hand!" When
Father told Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, who is also a descendant, of his wife's
and daughter's names, she told him: "Now, I want to shake both of your
hands."

A tobacco company sent an agent to ask if Mother and I, as descendants
of John Rolfe, the first tobacconist, would endorse their product. I
have received a letter while abroad addressed: "Mademoiselle, la
Princesse des Peaux Rouges." That is less surprising when it is noted
that a tavern called: "La Belle Sauvage" still stood in England two and
a half centuries after her visit. I was told, even before the daily
newspaper controversy in 1950 about her burial place that every English
school-child knows the story of Pocahontas. The English were delighted
when my three children and I signed the register book at the Pocahontas
Memorial Chapel of Unity on July 3, 1955.

The vestry book at St. George's Church at Gravesend, England declares
that Pocahontas is buried under the chancel there. However, in 1907 a
Mr. Tucker of Dover Road, Norfleet claimed to have exhumed the very
skeleton and relics one mile from the church. In 1923 the Associated
Press reported from Gravesend that excavations had been started to
locate the bones in the presence of the recorder of the church and
representatives of the English-Speaking Union and of the British Museum.
Thirty skeletons were secretly dug up, but not identified. On the last
day of May of that year, it was reported that citizens, who resented
having their ancestors exhumed, had told the offending archaeologists,
one of whom was a descendant of Pocahontas, that they would be punished
by visiting evil spirits. They peered furiously through the gates as one
hundred skeletons were dug up.

In 1914 the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia had
placed two stained glass windows in the church, one depicting Ruth among
the alien corn, and the other Rebecca--that being the baptismal name of
the converted savage. The deserted church became the concern of Rev.
Daughton-Fear. He solicited funds to preserve it as a "Chapel of Unity"
for all faiths as a memorial to Pocahontas. Many Americans urged that
her bones be brought home. A Glass Company offered a reward for their
return, and gallant volunteers such as the Playwright Paul Green were
heard from until the project was dismissed as impractical.




I


John Smith was well worth rescue by Pocahontas for this country's sake,
if not for her own. Americans halt before his statue--however tarnished
and battered the brass. Still, he was no model lad in his lively day. He
was the bold exception to the rules of the school at Louth, England,
which he recommended for the other--and duller fellow. A duller fellow
would have dug in the lush Lincolnshire countryside forever and a day.

His tenant-farmer father, George Smith, had relished the life, whether
he was sitting as juror solemnly, or playing at bowls or horses right
jollily. He died early, leaving his family comfortable feather beds and
goodly pewter plates and candlesticks. His widow married too hastily to
suit her sensitive son John, who now tucked away his memory of her, and
deserted home, having already bolted his desk. Now that he was a free
young man, his place as an apprentice did not detain him, for the call
of salt and hemp in the port of Lynn had already lured him.

At this reckless point Lord Willoughby, his father's protector, stood
him in good stead. The noble was touched by lowly George Smith's bequest
of a two-year old mare. George could not have done better indirectly by
his son John. It was as if he mounted him on a dashing steed, champing
to be off for heroic travel. Willoughby lifted the fatherless young John
Smith into a knightly sphere which was rare for a lad of his station.
Besides being gratified by his friend's affection, he was mindful of
John's resourceful and entertaining companionship for his own two
gentler lads.

He invited him to "Grimothorpe," a rugged castle with a stone tower and
twelve chimneys. Willoughby had fought with Sir Phillip Sydney and he,
like Sydney, had ballads written about himself. John enjoyed his
hospitality before setting out with the boys' tutors, servants and
horses on a Continental journey. They went from northwestern to
southeastern France, stopping at Orleans and at Turenne. After six weeks
with the party, John continued on his own to Paris, Holland and
Edinburgh.

Returning to his home-town John, feeling "glutted with too much company"
took to the woods, where he studied the art of combat. After incredible
exploits, he returned to London as a seasoned hero of twenty-four years,
and was listed as "gent."

He was not ready to settle down yet by any manner of means and he
pricked up his ears at the clarion call of the West. Agriculture and
industry were bogging down and limiting commerce in England, and many
wanted a new livelihood.

The old world's clutch on western shores had failed. The Roanoke Colony
had filed valorously into oblivion to the South after Sir Walter Raleigh
had tried three times to establish a permanent settlement. Attempts in
the North at Elizabeth's Island and at St. George's Fort had been
equally unsuccessful. It was recalled now that Hakluyt had advised
Raleigh in 1586 that the present Virginian coast would be the most
favorable point for colonization. But Raleigh himself was now a prisoner
in the Tower of London, pacing back and forth on the narrow battlement
which was assigned to him for exercise. Queen Elizabeth I herself, as a
young prisoner there, had had but little more range--but she had reigned
long, and had been dead for three years, and the colony which Raleigh
had named Virginia for the Virgin Queen had disappeared.

Yet the men who now induced her successor, King James, to incorporate
two Virginia companies had been associated with Raleigh. That John Smith
should be included in their councils indicated how far he had gotten.
Since he was a veteran traveller, his betters had deigned to include him
in their enterprise, and he was to sail with the group sent by the
company for South Virginia.

Three ships were being loaded. Smith would be on the _Susan Constant_,
of one hundred tons, under Christopher Newport, which carried
seventy-one passengers, and which flew the red cross of England at her
masthead. The _Godspeed_, of forty tons was under Captain Gosnold, a
veteran colonist, and the _Discovery_, of twenty tons, under Captain
John Ratcliffe. All three ships were rigged alike, having three masts,
with square sails on the fore and mainmasts. The weather detained them
until February, although they got off to a false start just before
Christmas when they were clamped in the Downs until New Year's Day.

A third of the passengers were gentlemen, and therefore overbearing.
They resented Smith's assurance and soon had him in chains, accusing him
of exciting mutiny and trying to make himself king of Virginia. The trip
was as stormy without as within, and six weeks of each other's
discordant company seemed too, too much.

At long last, at dawn on the twenty-sixth day of April, they spied land.

Some of them ventured ashore to the envy of Smith, who was still in
chains. All day long they found the calm as deceptive as it was
enticing, for as they returned to the ship in the late afternoon,
savages crept toward them on all fours like bears with their bows in
their mouths. Gabriel Archer got wounded in both hands and a sailor more
seriously.

The colonists crowded on the _Susan Constant_ that night, and opened the
secret box which named the seven leaders. While each hoped to have his
name among the elect, none was so confident as Smith, although he was
not allowed to take his appointed place when his name was read out. He
would bide his time, knowing that he would soon be free to make their
maps with his feet as well as with his hands.

On the twenty-seventh of April they put together the shallop, which had
been brought from England in pieces, so that Newport and a group could
explore further. Their findings were delightful. Oysters covered the
ground as thick as stones and large and tender to the taste. Soon they
pounced upon strawberries too.

"Taste these strawberries! They are four times bigger and better than
ours back home."

"Still the Devonshire cream and sugar dishes are missing, as well as the
Devonshire cream and sugar."

"And the lass with the strawberry and cream complexion!"

"Those savages we saw yesterday certainly had no strawberry and cream
complexions."

They shuddered as they remembered their first glimpse of people painted
black or red, as if nature had not darkened them enough. As they
penetrated the savage forests, in the next few weeks, they learned to
expect any adornment, or none. Anything might dangle for earrings: a
bird's claw, or a chicken leg. A naïvely happy warrior even had a live
yellow and green snake which was attached to his ear, and coiled loosely
about his neck so that the snake would spring forward and kiss the
warrior's lips when he chose.

This particular day they encountered no Indians, but a fire-screen kept
them anxious.

"Who says that there are no cooks over here?" The odor of burning grass
had alerted them. "Sniff these oysters, sizzling yet on somebody's
fires."

On the twenty-ninth they set up a cross and called their first finding
"Cape Henry" for their prince. They spread a sailcloth no longer to the
wind, but blessedly to the beaming sun, and thanked God for bringing
them so far, thus far. Fortunately, another cape would be named for
Prince Charles.

On the thirtieth they found a good channel up the river which they named
"Point Comfort."

Here they saw five Indians. When Newport landed and laid his hand on his
heart, they discarded their bows and arrows and invited him to their
town, Kecoughtan. Here they tasted their first cornbread, and smoked
tobacco. Besides, they were entranced by a native dance which was wild
with shouting, stamping, and such antics as would have been expected of
wolves and devils.

On the thirteenth of May, having probed thirty miles up the river which
Indians called the "Powhatan," but which they would name the "James,"
they stopped at a place six fathoms deep where they tied their ships to
trees--as trustingly as if they had been country nags hitched to
churchyard posts. They landed the next day.

That first night many slept in the open, being too tired to fear any
rustling, whether of Indians or serpents, outside the rim of their
campfire. A few stood watch day and night. The brave explored the
forests to fell trees, but the cautious cleared a spot for tents that
was nearer the boat. Boughs of trees made up a half-moon fortification.
Clapboards were loaded on the ship to return to England where lumber was
not plentiful and free. They were not an industrious crowd by nature,
but necessity now pressed every mother's son of them to work whether his
mother had reared him to do tough chores or not. There were eleven
laborers, four carpenters, a blacksmith, a bricklayer, a sailor, a
mason, a tailor and a chirurgien.

The colonists had been warned against marshy land, and forbidden to
settle near a low or moist place, and that was just what Jamestown
Island was, although it looked enticingly green along the tawny river.
Half of its fifteen hundred acres were swampy, but the settlers counted
on making the cleared land produce crops in another year, and a quick
wheat crop just now. They were tired of seeking a haven, and this spot
had a subtle charm, for secret pools and creeks meandered from marsh to
forests, and wide weed-ridden marshes were slashed through the forests
like alleys. At Black Point they would soon see lilies and mallows
blanching the sable ground.

Smith was allowed to go with Captain Newport on an exploring trip to the
falls of the river in search of gold. On their way they made friends
with a savage chief who was the son of the great Powhatan. Their
"firewater" overwhelmed him for a day, but on the next day he was ready
for more.

While they were gone, the unprotected colony was attacked by Indians.
Fortunately, in Smith's absence, someone else had an idea, and a
thundering broadside from the boat dispersed the enemy who had victory
in their grasp if they had only known it. Smith had been suspecting that
mischief was brewing back behind the screens of fire which the Indians
maintained. Had he not told them that they needed a palisade?




II


He was allowed to take his seat on the council on the tenth of June.
Eleven days later the Reverend Robert Hunt gave Communion to all.
Captain Newport, having dined ashore that Sunday, invited the leaders to
supper on his ship. He sailed the next morning to report the grim time
which the colonists were having without sufficient supplies. Smith
wrote: "Our drink was water, our lodgings, castles in the air."

Every man was doled out three ounces of bread, and a skimpy helping of
bran and water. Typhoid and malaria took their toll. Weakened by both
diet and disease, they staggered as they toted logs to the fort, and
they made a pitiful spectacle for any Indians or spying Spaniards who
may have seen them. While wheat grew as high as a man's head within
seven weeks of the planting, there was not enough to satisfy the hungry.

By mid-June the fort was built on a low and level half-acre, which was
shaped like a triangle. There were streets of occupied houses--each of
which had about thirty feet clearance of the palisade. Mud or
thatched-reed clamped heavy roofs on the early huts, making them
suffocatingly hot. Added to this misery, the eating of molded corn and
drinking of brackish water downed nearly all, and killed half of the
colonists before the summer had passed. Once only five men were up and
about. "Had we been as free from all sins as gluttony and drunkenness we
might have been canonized," observed Smith.

Unwilling to be among the downed, he cured himself somehow and learned
to subsist on crabmeat and sturgeon, going foraging, trading and
exploring up and down the rivers with a few hardy survivors. He heard a
great deal about the great Powhatan whose realm included all of the
country from the Roanoke River in the south to the head of the
Chesapeake in the north. His chief seat was upon the north side of the
York River at Werowocomoco.

As Smith crept up the James River in his shallop, guileless Indian
swimmers beckoned him on. Taken in by Smith's friendly greetings, they
opened the doors of their bark-covered wigwams, where Smith, a natural
and welcome democrat, sat down and ate as one of them. He noted that
their canoes were often carved out of single trees, that their
oval-shaped wigwams were made of bark upon a framework of saplings, and
that their gardens produced cymblings, beans and corn as well as
tobacco.

Soon he was paying return visits to the same places in order to trade
for corn, but hospitality soon gave out, if corn did not. They even
scorned the beads with which he tried to bargain. Counting on relegating
them to their timid places, he fired some muskets, putting the dickering
savages to flight. These white devils were surely "sons of thunder" they
decided, with their "fire-sticks" and their "thunder tubes."

Now, with cool weather, things seemed better. Smith assured the forlorn
colonists that this was a sportsmen's paradise with sturgeon in the sea,
squirrel and deer on the land and quail in the air.

All was not peaceful within the palisade, however. Edward Maria
Wingfield was unpopular as President, and all resented his hauteur and
the luxuries which he allowed himself while others had short rations.
Smith went along with John Martin and Captain Ratcliffe to bear grudges.
What about the bad corn which he had allotted to them? He would not let
Ratcliffe have so much as a penny whittle, a chicken or a spoonful of
beer. Besides, he had called him, Smith, a liar! They won out and
Wingfield was deposed, Ratcliffe being elected in his place.

Smith himself, when he came in and out of Jamestown, was busy preventing
efforts of both Ratcliffe and Wingfield to abandon the country. He was
not yet even the nominal leader of these people but there was a bold
streak in him that darted ahead of the herd. Nothing stumped him--not
even a huge tree sprawled in the Chickahominy River which halted his
boat. Leaving seven of his men in that, he needled his way recklessly
ahead in a canoe with two companions and Indian guides, sailing rashly
right into a trap. Two hundred warriors were hunting deer with crafty
Opechancanough, brother and heir to the chief. They had counted on
trapping a dozen of the timid creatures within a rim of fire, where
their arrows would settle matters briefly; but when they trapped the
cockiest of all palefaces instead, they were exultant. They had not
expected this, although they scorned the English efforts to hunt--noisy,
boasting men that they were. Indians let only their arrows clip the
quiet air, tipping silently, natural Nimrods of these woods, where no
white man was at home, nor welcome.

They had first captured a hapless Englishman who had strayed from the
barge against Smith's orders, and who did not help matters by tattling
that Smith was at large. They scraped off his skin with mussel shells,
and roasted him alive and when they found Smith and his friends, they
did away with all but the leader with similar unscrupulousness. Resting
on their laurels, they now took their time with him as much for their
own amusement as his torment. They were amazed at the nerve with which
he defended himself to the end. First, he thrust his Indian guide in
front of him as a shield, attaching him to his right arm with a garter,
then he felled several Indians before he sank waist deep in the morass
like a fly in glue, flapping his wings hopefully until grounded.

"Your men and your canoe have gone. Hand over your arms if you prefer to
survive them," taunted the chief. They tied him to a tree, shooting
twenty arrows his way, none of which did him much harm. In the nick of
time, Smith now pulled a trick from his sleeve. When he held up a
compass in an ivory case, the naïve onlookers blinked at the tiny magic
arrow under a transparent crust of glass. Wonderful how you could not
feel that arrow with your fingers, yet it went on pointing its stubborn
way just like its owner!

"This is a compass. It points North, and that is the way it told me to
go until you stopped me. It shows me the way out of any dilemma anywhere
in the world, and I have been to most places."

"Not this one, my clever Captain Smith," reminded Opechancanough, who
knew he had him now. Except that he was entertaining his captors, he
would not be dangling this mysterious toy. This moment was amusing to
all around but Smith himself. Still a humorous glint in Smith's eye
warned him not to be so sure about that. "And where is North?" wondered
the chief, whose hungry mind got the better of his discretion.

"Did you not know of the four winds, North, South, East, West? I have
followed them everywhere, and will keep doing it at your kind
permission. I am an explorer. I seek the great salt sea just beyond. I
have crossed one already, and many other waters. My companions flung me
into the Mediterranean like poor Jonah of old. But the Lord looked out
for me too."

"Who was Jonah?"

"Quite a fellow. He had a way with fish. You know we tried to catch some
in frying-pans, yours are so bountiful. Then we decided fish first, fry
afterwards."

"You know nothing of sport. You make too much noise in the woods and
along the streams. If you have been around as much as you say, you
should know better. You talk too much, but I would hear you out. Tell me
some more about this God of yours. I have heard of Captain Smith's God!"

They had a wholesome respect for the Smith God, the Smith nerve, and the
Smith tongue, which was no laggard in any language. All these attributes
stood him in good stead now, but it would not be for long. Smith lapsed
into a long harangue about the mysterious ways God moved, his wonders to
perform, and the mysterious doings of the universe. "Know ye not that
the earth is round, it doth move, and the sun also?" He made grand
gestures describing the movements of the planets.

"What goes on in the world away?" Opechancanough just had to know.
Curiosity killed a cat, but it was not going to kill him, for he was
sparing Captain Smith long enough to empty his mind like a casket for
his captor. What a captive he had bagged! He had none of his big brother
Powhatan's tolerance of the invader. Powhatan was old, fat, and
rich--not enough fight left in him. The people should see what manner of
chief was heir to his dozen tribes, and what a white beast he had
leashed. He sent couriers ahead so that no village between here and
Werowocomoco should fail to note the parade he made of this captain with
the bristling red beard, the flexing muscles, and the bragging airs. He
arranged a square of twenty warriors around him--one with tomahawk to
the left, another with tomahawk to the right of him, and a straggling,
painted and feathered queue bringing up the rear.

John Smith, a swaggering Elizabethan on any stage, however humiliating
his role, contrived to look as if he had matters quite in hand, even
though his hands were tied. Although he had apprehensions about the
medicine man's rites at night he did not bat an eye, later did not close
one. Opechancanough had planned this ceremony to make sure that Smith
was shorn of whatever magic still lurked in his being. He had already
handed over his compass to the chief, of his own accord. Hungry as he
was, Smith had little appetite for the quantity of food offered him, and
he spurned it at first, until he had made sure that it was not poisoned.

"You'd make a nice meal yourself, paleface. Admit we are feeding you
well. That is an old custom of ours. We fatten our captives for the
slaughter."

"Cannibals?" insinuated Smith, insolently.

"Algonquins. You should know. You talk our language. Your head is full
of too much if not your stomach. I'd like to scalp a bushy head like
that."

"Then why don't you?" Smith wondered coolly.

"I'm just the chief's brother. He saves the best of everything for
himself, including the privilege of doing away with you how and when he
likes. He has a line of scalps drying between trees in his back yard
every morning. Old as he is, he has the pick of young women about. You
will see a young one on either side of him, and a row at the back of the
discarded ones, about twenty. He hands them down to favorite warriors,
in order as he thinks them most deserving. Mind you, don't cast a
speculative eye on any of those. You are not a favorite warrior, nor
even a favorite captive." He suspected that this brave man might have a
way with women. "All the women you see, all the feasting will be to
tantalize you, all to make you appreciate how excruciatingly sweet life
can be, when your minutes are numbered."

Smith's bluff was being called. He was frightened over Powhatan's power
over many tribes, but most just now over his own hide. He admitted to
himself that he was intimidated by this emperor, as he was led into his
long house, and in awe of his strange dignity. This savage chieftain
reclining on a couch-like throne could show King James how majestic a
monarch should look. His face wrinkled, round and ugly, seemed to be
carved of granite, and it neither crinkled with mirth nor softened with
mercy. He wore pearls about his neck and a raccoon mantle about his
shoulders. He had two handmaidens bring to Smith, first, a basin in
which to rinse his fingers, then feathers to dry them. The other women
surrounding him, as his brother had described, were silent and
motionless.

A certain little girl in their midst was more moved than any by Smith's
brave appearance, and his fascinating self-defense. Earnest concern for
him made her look more serious than usual, for all her names described
her sunny nature--Pocahontas, they called her, meaning "Playful,"
"Bright Stream between Two Hills," "Quick Water," "Sunlight Running
Through Darkness." She was as blithe and trusting of the stranger as her
father and uncle were wary.

Opechancanough introduced him as the dangerous enemy of the red men, the
toughest and craftiest of his tribe. He showed the compass, and told of
how cleverly Smith had defended himself single-handed. If his brother
wanted peace at any price, now was the time to annihilate this most
dangerous of the invaders.

Powhatan listened without changing his expression. "Now what can you say
for yourself, paleface?"

John Smith said as much as he could, and that was always a great deal.
He boasted of the places to which he had been, miraculously guided by
his compass. He had decapitated three Turks with his sword. If any did
not believe it, they had only to observe his arms.

Powhatan inquired with superb scorn: "Why have you and your people come
into my land without an invitation?"

Smith fibbed: "We had to land while struggling both with our old
enemies, the Spaniards, and the weather."

"Then why did you come up so far in your boat?"

"We were seeking the back sea for salt water. Besides we wanted to
avenge Newport's child who had been slain by the Monacans." He invented
this one, knowing that the Monacans were Powhatan's enemies.

Powhatan could not swallow so many answers whole. Nothing Smith had said
seemed to have made a dent on his equanimity after several conferences,
and Smith, who read faces, began to foresee his doom. "Lay the death
stones beside the fire," commanded Powhatan of two warriors. As soon as
that was done, he motioned to several others to pick him up and lay him
thereon.

Facing first Powhatan's granite countenance, and now the stones, Smith
knew that he had struck real barriers. He was numb with despair as
tomahawks were raised to brain him. His usual imagination could not make
him hopeful.

Pocahontas, as fleet of foot as of heart, darted in the way of the
tomahawks. Smith, barely conscious and having committed his soul to
Divine Mercy alone, broke into a cold sweat, as her soft dark cheek was
pressed against his blanched one. "Save him Father to make toys for me
and hatchets for you if you like."

Powhatan did not like it, but he paused to ponder, as the tomahawks hung
heavily over John Smith's head.

The surly crowd, thirsting for blood, snarled "Pocahontas!" as this
child meddled with grim manly business, Opechancanough's temper leading
the fury. Was that fool brother of his going to let a child keep him
from annihilating this captive? He ought to be on the throne instead of
this weak indulger of children's whims, for no pampered daughter should
challenge his will.

Powhatan had looked obdurate, but with the wilful whimsy of kings, he
suddenly changed his mind, motioning to the warriors to stay their
tomahawks.

"Certainly my daughter can have her wish, if the life of this queer
captive appeals to her. I am the Chief, and she is my playful one, my
Pocahontas."

John Smith scrambled to his feet. "At your service, sire. Hatchets for
you too, as she says."

"I will indeed find need of such stern weapons instead of toys. I should
like some of your swords and fire-tubes too."

"You flatter me. As if I could produce those at will!"

"I think so. You can do anything you say. I hear there is no lack of
them in your men's hands. Give me a few days to ponder our future
relations. Meanwhile, amuse the child. You owe her that at least."

Pocahontas was enchanted. She sat first at John Smith's feet, then
climbed up on his knee, where she listened spellbound to his tales of
Londontown, especially of the Tower where the little princes with corn
silk hair had pined away and been murdered by their wicked old uncle.
"Must be like Uncle Opechancanough," she shuddered.

"Poor things, they didn't have a Pocahontas to save them."

"Who is left yet in the tower?"

"There is a noble knight named Raleigh who started us coming over on
this side. He flung down his velvet cloak across a mud puddle for Queen
Bess to tread on. I would do the same for you, little Princess, only I
have no velvet cloak. I am a poor man."

"Very poor?" she wondered solicitously.

"So poor, that once I went begging. They hold that against me down in
Jamestown."

"As if you could help it! Do you go hungry now?"

"Ravenously. We eat parched and molded corn."

"Ugh. I shall bring you rich dishes from Powhatan's table, and corn for
your men, if they do what you tell them."

"This is exactly what they will not do. They had me in chains until the
secret orders were revealed saying: 'You must put Smith on the
council!'"

"Secret!" She clapped her hands. Then somebody did appreciate her
wonderful Captain. "Then we are your people. I shall call you Father for
I love you just as much as I do Powhatan. Now you must tell me all about
yourself before you become one of us. Tell about the fine Turkish lady,
Tragabigzanda who looked out for you after the cruel Turks, too, put you
in chains. She had dark eyes you say?" Then he liked them with dark
eyes, and she liked that, but she did not like the idea of the lady,
Tragabigzanda. "Was she very beautiful?"

"Oh, my yes."

"What were you to her?"

"A roving adventurer."

"Was she sad when you went away from her?"

"How should I know?"

"I will be sad if you go away from me. You will stay, won't you, a long
time? Powhatan says you can live right by us."

Smith preferred to get himself home to Jamestown, for he felt surfeited
with savage patronage. He was less pleased than he appeared by
Powhatan's invitation.

"So soon? Have we not treated you like an honored guest instead of a
helpless captive?"

"Indeed yes. But I am a man of affairs like yourself. I need to get back
and get busy."

"My affair at the moment is to create peace between our peoples. I am an
old man, and seek no fighting. Tell your friends to come and abide at
the mouth of the Pamunkey. We will live as brothers, each in his own
way, but combine against our common enemy."

Smith promised this or any suggestion now, just to get away.

"Well you may go then, and I will send my trusted Rawhide and other
warriors to escort you. I only stipulate that each shall bring back one
of your guns."

"Indeed they shall."

He thought of a way out of this on the two-day tramp through the woods
home. Just out of Jamestown he breathed easier, but he made sure that
they did not.

"See those big guns by the gates, friends? I want you to take them home
to Father Powhatan."

"You know well enough that they are too big for us to lift. They would
break our backs."

"You have not even tried. First let's see if they work as well as they
were doing when I left. I want to give Powhatan our best."

He mischievously signalled to the gate-keeper to fire one, and it
instantly shook a nearby tree into a spasm. Encrusted with ice as it
was, every brittle twig scattered as far as it could go. So did one
little, two little, three little, four little Indians.

Smith strode into the fort to tell his astounding tale on January 8, but
kept mum about that hair-raising, but thanks to Providence and
Pocahontas, not scalp-raising experience. Better not tell that one, lest
he scare off colonists here, or in England.

His hearers were envious of his account of the food and furs at
Powhatan's long house, but did not praise his prowess in felling several
Indians single-handed. If he was as clever as all this, why did he not
look out for his companions? Three white men were missing, notice.

They unreasonably tried Smith for that, as if he could have helped it.
He threw up his hands in despair for the lot of them.




III


Gabriel Archer was now a member of the council, and since he was
unfriendly to Smith, he summarily had him arrested and tried. He would
have been executed the following day had not Newport arrived from
England in the nick of time and saved him.

Newport was welcome to all because he brought in the first relief supply
as well as new settlers to back them up in their weak situation.
Careless newcomers were blamed, however, for the disastrous fire which
broke out a few days after their landing, and which licked up shacks,
tents and pitiful personal possessions.

Those who groaned over their plight, were rebuked by the meekness of the
Reverend Robert Hunt, who had lost his library--which might have been
the nucleus of culture in the colony. They remembered how he had not
complained before when he was more ill than any of them had been on the
ship coming over. Contritely they built a church for him even though the
palisade was not immediately replaced. A store and storehouse went up
too.

Fifty new houses improved on the former ones. These had cool roofs of
bark, instead of thatch, a page out of the Indian book. Besides they had
"country chimneys" where a man might warm himself in winter at ease,
provided he had a gun handy. Bright Indian mats decorated the huts. A
bell in the church signified when work should begin and when it should
stop. Since there was but one skilled carpenter, the rebuilding of the
settlement after the fire seemed remarkable. The colonists were not
industrious enough to suit Smith, however, who planned a letter to the
Company telling them to send lumber from England next time. That would
be cheaper than paying these lazy aristocrats.

Newport went with Smith to trade with Powhatan, letting Smith talk out a
day first before he appeared.

"What about those guns my men were to bring back, but did not?" the
great chief asked.

"I told Rawhide and another to tote home the two best we had."

"Big ones! You knew very well that they could not lift them. If you had
given them small ones, we would have been quite satisfied."

"I did not want your gracious highness to think me more stingy than
yourself." Smith kept a straight face if not a straight record. "They
didn't even try to lift them."

"No wonder. You scared them with that thunder at your gates, and they
ran home."

"You should have brave warriors. Mine too are sometimes cowards, and
weak with hunger besides. We want corn."

"What shall you pay--guns?"

Smith diverted him with presents, but the Indian kept his disdainful
manner.

"Captain Newport, it is not agreeable with my greatness in this paltry
manner to trade for trifles and I esteem you a great chief. Therefore,
lay down all your commodities together, and what I like I will take."

Smith artfully toyed with a string of blue beads. Their gleam would draw
a brighter one in the eyes of Powhatan's young favorite.

The indulgent old man sighed "How much?"

"These? Why these are not for sale, your Highness. Blue beads are very
rare. You can dye red and brown ones with berries, but these are
imported, and their value high as the blue sky whence descends their
radiance."

"How much?" plugged Powhatan. "I foolishly indulged one girl with your
life. Now probably another must have your foolish bauble."

"I'll let you know tomorrow. I had not thought of parting with them."

By morning, Smith was having Indians load his boat with two hundred
bushels of corn.

Newport was ever for conciliating the chief, and when Powhatan sent him
twenty turkeys saying to send twenty swords back by bearers, he
complied. Not so John Smith, when Newport was gone. This time the
turkeys were kept, but the swords also--in English scabbards.

Powhatan was so riled when the swords were not forthcoming, that he told
his men to get them by hook or crook. When Smith caught them pilfering
he flogged them and imprisoned them. Powhatan now tried diplomacy,
knowing how indebted Smith would feel to "Pocahontas, his dearest
daughter." He sent her down to Jamestown to persuade him to release the
prisoners. He asked Smith "to excuse him of the injuries done by some
rash untoward captains, his subjects, desiring their liberties for this
time with the assurance of his love forever." Smith delivered them to
Pocahontas, "for whose sake only he feigned to have saved their lives
and gave them their liberty."

Pocahontas, with her gay capers, amused all Jamestown enormously. If
this had been a clown's act upon a London stage, or a traveling circus
in the English countryside, it could not have put the discouraged colony
into such a gale.

When Newport returned he brought back an idea of King James, of which
Smith thought little. If they softened Powhatan up with civilized
luxuries, they could handle him more easily. Therefore he should be
crowned at Jamestown. Grudgingly, Smith went to see the hardy old
monarch about it. He found him not "at home." Like a haughty host,
perhaps, thought Smith. But when he saw what an elaborate entertainment
Pocahontas had gotten up for him, he decided that no slight was
intended.

She, a child raised in a heathen sensual court, arranged a show for him
and his four men at which Smith was astonished. Powhatan's warriors, she
knew, would have been enchanted by the dance number put on by older
girls to amuse the strangers. Pocahontas had heard her people wonder how
it was that the English came without women, stayed a long time and yet
got on without them. Their pale women must have been too timid to come
along, and they must be lonesome and bored without feminine allure
around. Thirty girls wearing nothing but green leafy aprons pranced out
of the woods, their bodies painted in various colors. Some wore antler's
horns on their heads, and all were brandishing crude weapons that were
less frightening than their wild contortions and fiendish yells. At
first the men grabbed their own weapons in alert defense. The Englishmen
were embarrassed by the brazen savage scene, and more so when the
dancers ran to the woods to change to regular garb, for they now wound
their arms about blushing necks, murmuring torridly "Lovest thou me?
Lovest thou me?" "These nymphs the more tormented him than ever with
crowding and pressing, hanging upon him, most tediously crying 'love you
me,'" it was reported.

Pocahontas herself would have liked to ask John Smith that, for she knew
that the welling adoration she had for him was growing faster than
herself, and was something she would not put aside with childish
fancies. She was sorry he was not pleased with today's entertainment,
even when great platters of food were set before his men, and they were
led to their rest by torches. He had business on his mind and looked
relieved when Powhatan showed up in the morning.

"Your highness, our king across the seas lives in such grandeur as you
can scarcely imagine. Newport tells me he was so troubled to find out
that you did not have the sort of luxuries that befit a great werowance
like yourself, that he sent back fine gifts for you."

"What then should a king have that I have not?"

"He wears a crown. A king is quite a fellow."

"Indeed. You speak the truth there. That is quite so."

"Come down to Jamestown and be crowned. We will be friends, and fight
our common enemies the Monacans."

Powhatan looked him down cooly. "If your king has sent me presents, I
also am a king and this is my land. Eight days will I stay here to
receive them. Your father is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to
your fort. Neither will I bite at such bait. As for the Monacans, I can
revenge my own injuries."

There was no course left for Newport and Smith but to trudge twelve
miles over land, while they sent the cumbersome presents by water. First
they proffered the red suit and cloak which Powhatan tried on
grudgingly. He knew that he could strut, even in incongruous rigging.
His row of women admired him, putting him in an amiable mood.

"What is this ewer and basin for?"

"Ablutions, Majesty."

His hands were quite clean, but he rinsed them to show that he could use
such fixings. If a European peddler had been opening his bag, the chief
could not have looked more dubious about purchases.

At last they approached with the crown.

"Please kneel, sire."

Indeed he would not an inch, not so much as a notch on a stick. Stiff as
a stalk he stood, but every inch a ruler, defiant in the passing wind.
Smith had already observed that he had never seen such majesty in any
creature.

"It is customary for our monarchs to kneel. They are in a great church.
A man of God anoints them."

"Your O'Kee?"

"His minister. It is not at all humiliating."

"Captain Smith's God?"

"Not mine alone. All believers, sire."

"I am not a believer."

"Will you kneel, sire?"

"A king kneels to none."

They must grin and bear it, so did both. As Smith described it: "At last
by leaning hard on his shoulders he a little stooped, and Newport put
the crown on his head."

It was awry, and more so as a pistol shot succeeded by a volley from the
ship, made Powhatan spring up in an unkingly panic. "What is that?"

"A salute of honor to a king just crowned or born."

"I don't like it. I was born before any of you, if not crowned," he
muttered grumpily, settling back on his throne. As a last disdainful
thrust, he handed over his discarded cloak and moccasins. "Perhaps your
king might like these." His eyes added: "To show how we dress up over
here." Smith caught it.

On April tenth, 1608 Newport took away the mighty fallen Wingfield and
the rebuked Archer. Ten days later Captain Nelson arrived with one
hundred and two colonists and sufficient provisions for those on hand as
well as for his own passengers. On his return trip he took off John
Martin, a veteran colonist, who had cooled lately to Smith's blustering
personality.

Smith got his punishment from nature as well as from people. In June he
was bitten by a stingray fish while he was spearing it. He was so beside
himself with pain that he jumped into the water to cool his agony. His
companions were pessimistically preparing his grave without reckoning on
his vitality. In a short while he had recovered not only his nerve but
even his appetite, and by supper time he was eating that very fish and
chuckling about it.

Usually, it was the others who were down, and he who had the situation
entirely in hand. He made sure that the Indians always supposed that all
was well whether it was or not. When the others on the boat were
prostrate with illness, he covered them with a tarpaulin. Then, for the
wily deception of the red enemy along the shores, he contrived a clever
ruse. He stuck his mens' hats up on sticks like scarecrows, and he
fastened the oars along the boat so that the intimidated Indians kept at
a cautious and unobservant distance.

When he got back, he found that his own prestige in Jamestown was
increasing inversely as that of Ratcliffe tottered. Ratcliffe's position
as President had so gone to his head that he was having a palace built
for himself. Smith stopped it in mid-air when he came back and heard
other colonists hoot at their leader's silly pretensions.

When he returned on September seventh he found Jamestown the worse for
his absence as well as for wear. At long last he was made President, on
the tenth. He resented the London Company's complaints of the sorely
tried colonists. The Company had threatened that if Newport did not
bring back sufficient cargo this fall to pay his two thousand pounds of
expenses that it would abandon the colony. In hot haste, Smith
dispatched a scathing reply, and this fortified his gathering and
overdue popularity. He stood in with the Indians better than others did,
and he believed in friendly and adroit relations with them when
possible. Leadership brought out his prime qualities: his zest for
adventure, his hardihood for physical trials, and his bravery to the
arrow's point. He believed in discipline and hard work, and calling to
mind the strict habits of his school days, he made the sloven and surly
bachelors walk-a-chalk. If they swore, water was dashed down their
sleeves. They must brush their clothes, wash their hands, sing psalms
daily--and like it! He thought this discordant group needed harmony as
well as guidance every rousing morning. Mindful of God, the church was
repaired; mindful of Mammon, too, the storehouse was covered. Early
Virginia was more Puritan than it pretended. Smith also had the fort
increased by three acres and had a pentagon made of it. He had men
getting cedar, walnut and clapboard for buildings.

Newport brought in the second supply in October 1608, and with it many
changes. Two women were among the passengers--Mrs. Forrest and her maid,
Anne Burras. When the latter became the bride of John Laydon, colonists
saw their first recorded marriage on this side of the world.

That October the harvest had not been plentiful so they were cheered by
the prospect of a new business venture. They had sent word that they had
the proper ingredients on hand with which to start a new glass works:
tar, pitch and soap-ashes. Accordingly eight Dutchmen and Poles, who
were skilled in the craft, were among the passengers. The Glass House
soon took its bright stand, like a jewel in the wilderness, about a mile
down the forest from James Fort. Within two months glass was shipped
back, although not very profitably.

Another bright and futile dream bedazzled the lazier colonists--gold.
Smith, having given up the search, was disgusted with men who would do
nothing but "dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, and load gold," and he
scolded them soundly for sending the gilded dirt to England in April
where it was properly dismissed as mica. "For the country was to them a
misery, a ruin, a death, a hell, and their own reports here, and their
own actions according."

Smith and Newport were told by their credulous patrons to hunt up the
lost colonists of Roanoke, for lost brothers, like lost sheep, should be
reclaimed. Powhatan had told Smith of white men who were attired like
himself and who were now abiding in Ocanahawan, so Smith had already
recorded that on his map. Captain Newport now made an expedition to
Panawick, a village beyond Roanoke Island, but his Indian guide led him
astray. In December of 1608 Smith led another expedition and sent Master
Sicklemore and two guides to seek the lost colonists, but Indians merely
showed them some crosses and letters on the bark of trees.

While Newport and Ratcliffe returned to England at the end of December,
Smith enjoyed a Christmas holiday with the Indians near Kecoughtan
without envy of English Yule Logs, plum puddings and traditional
celebrations. He entered into the native merriment heartily. Here was
shining snow, frost and cedar, as well as delicious oysters, fish, flesh
and wild fowl. He declared that he "never had better fires in England
than in the dry, smoky houses of Kecoughtan." Smith knew however that
Powhatan was becoming envious of the English way of life if he was not,
so he was on his way with fourteen men to build a house for the Emperor.

Powhatan had wanted to gird himself with more and more English
trappings, and he requested a cock, a hen and a grindstone. How about a
coach-and-four, such as he heard their king had? Most of all he had
wanted an English house, for nothing less than sheltering walls could
keep off the threat of guns, of which he was so afraid.

Smith already had some German house builders on hand. Instead of having
them build a house for himself, he, the great white father, turned them
over to the great red father. It was not such a sacrifice, for Smith
knew himself to be a born wanderer on the face of the earth. He could do
without his own roof, as without his own woman, more easily than could
most men. Tragabigzanda, his Turkish angel who had left him in her
brother's keeping for a while, had been wasting her pains. Likewise, if
young Pocahontas here had designs upon him, she must give them up before
hero-worship developed into something too mature and possessive. He was
his own man and that of no woman alive.

Smith was embarrassed not so much by indebtedness to the Indian maid as
by apprehension of her adoration. His best gratitude to her who had
saved his life would be to leave her hers without involving it. What
irony that she, like most women, appreciated him too much, while men,
who would do better than women to follow him, appreciated him too
little! The time was coming when he should move on to new worlds to
conquer, for he and his men here could never see eye to eye.

Much less could he and Powhatan. Powhatan, he admitted, had talked to
him with simple eloquence: "Think you I am simple not to know it is
better to eat good meat, lie well and sleep quietly with my women and
children, laugh and be merry with you, have copper, hatchets, or what I
want, be your friend; than be forced to fly from all, to lie cold in the
woods, feed upon acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted by you
that I can neither rest, eat, nor sleep, but my tired man must watch and
if a twig but break every one cry: 'There comes Captain Smith.' Then
must I fly I know not whither, and thus with miserable fear end my
miserable life?"... "What no guns, no swords? The copper hatchets you
made are of no use to me and my people. We can eat our corn, but not
your copper."

Smith reminded him that he had sent the Germans to build a house.
Powhatan said, "If you are such friends of ours, why do you not lay down
your arms in our presence? That is our custom."

Smith stuck to his guns. Then he changed the subject. How would Powhatan
like a kettle which spewed steam out of its snout? Powhatan did bite at
such bait after all.

Not having secured as much corn from Powhatan as he had hoped, Smith
now decided to tackle Opechancanough. He challenged the Indian to
individual combat, being well aware that the old chief had been
impressed with the three Turk's heads on his shield. Cringingly he
offered to heap up all the corn demanded. Smith now snatched him by his
long lock, and then appropriated bow and arrow. "You promised to freight
my ship ere I departed, and so you shall; or I mean to load her with
your dead carcasses." Before he left there, he held his pistol at the
chief's breast, and led him meekly among his own forces, making him fill
his bark with twenty tons of corn.

Still, it was not by parrying words with Powhatan, nor weapons with his
brother, that he secured essential food, but by the loving mercy of
Pocahontas. That frail and loyal bond between them saved the colonists.
She had seemed like the goddess of the maize, bearing corn to them.

With braver mercy still, she stole through the woods at night to tell
Smith of the plot which her father was contriving with the aid of the
treacherous foreigners whom he had sent to build a house for Powhatan.
Powhatan was about to have a gala feast spread for Smith and his men,
but in the morning when they slept stupidly after too much food and
drink, Powhatan's men would descend upon them and kill.

Smith, now prepared, made the bearers of Powhatan's treacherous bounty
taste every dish before he did, and again he escaped, guarding his
appetite and his life.

Between February and May of 1609 a well was dug, forty acres were
cleared and planted in corn, the church was covered, and twenty new
cabins were erected. A blockhouse was built at the isthmus, and a new
fort was reared opposite Jamestown. Food was still scarce, however, and
rats consumed most of the corn crop. Believing that it was best to keep
in with the Indians, Smith induced some Englishmen to live with the
natives. Desperately he sent others to the oyster banks to prevent
starvation, but the queer diet was unhealthy, and made the skin peel
from their bodies.

News of these dire conditions got to London and alienated the Company
to Smith, whose enemies had talked effectively against him. The
stockholders were already displeased with the lack of profit from
Virginia, so they decided to appoint their treasurer, Sir Thomas Smith,
as absentee President. Little did London care if the bitter colonists
saucily wished him astride the mare which they had boiling in a stew,
and if they saluted their fancy with impudent glee: "Sir Thomas!" The
Company decided to dispatch Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers,
followed by Lord Delaware who would get everything under control in
Jamestown.

When Captain Samuel Argall, the privateer, turned up in July with
letters from the Company criticizing Smith and telling of the third
supply to be brought by Lord Delaware, Smith was embittered. A month
later four ships of the supply came in early bearing--of all
people--Smith's former enemies: Ratcliffe, Archer and Martin, all
captains now. The _Sea Venture_ and other ships had not been heard from,
but Smith had had enough and he was hurt by lack of confidence in his
command. He was thinking of returning to England anyhow before his
enemies sped him on his way. An accident made up his mind for him.

While he was napping in the afternoon a keg of gunpowder exploded and
set him on fire. Distracted with agony he jumped into the water to cool
the burns. Much of his flesh was torn from his body and thighs. A
hundred miles stretched between him and Jamestown, and thousands more to
London, but there only he could get proper doctoring. Fortunately a ship
was just leaving Jamestown which could and would take him on. Percy was
the only one who could be persuaded to take his place, for even his
enemies did not want it at this dubious stage.

Smith claimed that the colony now had three ships and seven boats, and
many desirable commodities. There were provisions for ten weeks for the
four hundred and ninety people, besides twenty-four pieces of ordnances,
three hundred muskets, firelocks, shot, powder and match and swords. One
hundred soldiers could speak the Indian language. There were six mares,
horses, five hundred swine, hams, chickens, goats and sheep. He had
done his best, and it was no poor best. His friends agreed eloquently:
"He made justice his first guide and experience his second, ever hating
baseness, sloth, pride and indignity more than any dangers, that never
allowed more for himself than for his soldiers with him, that upon no
danger would send them where he would not lead them himself, that never
see us want what he had or either could by any means get us, that would
rather want than borrow, or starve than not pay, that loved action more
than words, and hated falsehood and covetousness worse than death, whose
adventures were our lives, and whose loss our deaths."

So Smith was out of sight, and for most out of mind. Such word of him as
got to the Indians was that he was dead. Powhatan, who had feared and
hated him when he was around, now defended him. "My daughter, you see
how treacherous the white men are. The foolish palefaces have killed the
best man whom they had."

Without Smith, the remaining whites fared worse with the Indians.
Ratcliffe and others were slaughtered, and Archer died. The "Starving
Time" which had set in during Smith's office was worse than at any
period. An oatmeal thief had a bodkin thrust through his tongue. The
most cruel man of all had chopped up his wife and salted the parts,
consuming some, before he was caught and executed. Only sixty of five
hundred people survived.

There was no way for them to know that the chief relief ship the _Sea
Venture_ had been tossed about at sea, and wrecked on the Bermuda
shores, by a terrible storm. Shakespeare, on hearing of it, wrote his
play the _Tempest_, moved by the drama of the storm, and the strange
lull afterward on the balmy isles.




IV


The _Sea Venture_ which had left England with one hundred and fifty
passengers on June 2, 1609, had not only Sir Thomas Gates aboard, but an
ordinary Englishman named John Rolfe and his wife. The lull after the
storm which wrecked the ship off the Bermuda Isles was such a relief
that they named their baby born there "Bermuda" after the island. She
was baptized by the Reverend Richard Buck, who was to stand by John
Rolfe on many occasions in the future. The burial of the baby was the
next of these. Their sojourn on the healthy islands was a blessing to
most of the refugees, although they were supposed dead by the Jamestown
colonists, few of whom were surviving themselves during their "Starving
Time" that winter and early spring.

Praying only for a safe arrival in Jamestown before long, they looked
only that far ahead. John Rolfe did not anticipate that his wife would
die soon. Sir George Somers did not foresee that he would come to an
inglorious end on this very island many months hence from eating a
surfeit of pig; and Sir Thomas Gates, the first absolute Governor of
Virginia, did not know that his desperate decision on arrival at
Jamestown would nearly end the colony, making it disappear in the
mysterious trail of Roanoke Island, Elizabeth Island and St. George's
Fort.

Resolutely these sanguine refugees saw that boats were built out of
salvaged timbers from the wrecked ship, along with fresh and strong
cedar from the Islands, and they put faith if not wind into the sails of
the aptly named _Patience_ and _Deliverance_.

The forlorn colonists at Jamestown could scarcely believe their eyes as
the stalwart ships came up the river with their castaways a May morning
in 1610. The sixty survivors on the shore were too weak to fall in with
any brave plans at this point, for plague, starvation and Indian enmity
had had their will of them.

Gates landed with high hopes and high orders. He intended to establish a
colony at a higher and healthier spot. He was going to keep looking for
the Roanoke colonists, and yes, for gold, too, until the tottering ruin
of Jamestown appalled him. People had gnawed on molded bread, eaten rats
and snakes, and perhaps corpses. Listening to their tales of woe, he
promised to take them away, for his food would only sustain them all for
sixteen days here. Palisades were torn down, ports opened, gates ripped
from their hinges, the church ruined--and it would have been bitterly
deserted if it had been habitable. Gates declared martial law. The
survivors with their pitiful possessions and small arms were gotten on
board to the militant beating of drums. He saw that the heavier cannon
were buried, and he was himself the last to board the ship, being afraid
that the sullen colonists would set fire to what remained. He considered
himself a good housekeeper, leaving his premises tidy for any who should
come after, never dreaming that that would be of all people--himself.

He had sent the pinnace _Virginia_ to pick up the guard at Point
Comfort. After making six miles, they stopped for the night at Hog
Island. In the morning they had travelled but eight more miles when they
were baffled at sight of the white sails of the _Virginia_, which was
heading toward them with an important message which reversed the course
of western history. Lord Delaware was on his way with one hundred and
fifty men to their rescue, and they must go meekly back to await his
orders. They met this news with bad grace, but followed the directions.

Gates had his company duly standing in arms, and William Strachey, then
Secretary of State, let his colors fall at his lordship's feet, as
Delaware entered from the river that Sunday afternoon, falling on his
knees to pray silently, on the threshold of the fort at the south gate.
He passed on to the church where the Reverend Richard Buck preached.

Delaware was a man who got things done on week days as well as on
Sundays, although he fastidiously kept to his quarters on the ship
after a look about at rotting Jamestown. He got houses mended, having
rails put on leaking roofs, and Indian mats hung over drafty huts. He
dealt with the Indians with short shrift, and he sent to seek gold once
again. Not since John Smith's day had such an efficient leader hustled
lazier men.

The chapel was made the most exalted place of worship yet seen over
here. Pews, pulpit, and chancel were built of pungent cedar, and the
deeper fragrance of fresh flowers cheered the colonists. The Communion
table was built of walnut. Fifty men in bright red livery sat on either
side of Delaware, or behind him, as he attended services. Two preachers
took turns for two services on Sundays and for another on Thursday. Two
bells in the west end of the chapel called all to prayer daily at ten
and at four. Everybody and everything seemed on the mend but his
lordship himself.

He did not have the stamina to endure this unhealthy climate. The flux,
cramp, gout, scurvy and general debility sickened him so that he fled to
the Island of Nevis for the cure, wanting to prescribe for himself in as
modern and salubrious a manner as he had for the ailing colony. His cure
was due to be sunshine, hot baths, balmy climate, oranges and lemons, a
far cry from any at poor Jamestown, but winds and waves swept him to
London sooner than he had planned.

He was briefly succeeded by Sir Thomas Dale, a grim disciplinarian. Dale
was disgusted with the carefree bowling in the streets. He would have
been more so a few years back had he seen the naked Pocahontas turning
cart-wheels in these streets while the serving boys whirled in her
trail, never quite keeping up with her--nor would he have liked the tall
tobacco growing rampant in these streets, a few years hence at a time
when food crops were needed. Dale believed in all work and no
play--never mind dull boys. Houses, the storehouse, and the church
needed repairs. Besides he ordered new buildings: a stable, a munition
house, a powder house, fishhouse, a barn, a smith's forge, a clean well,
and a wharf for landing goods.

He also built up two new towns. Bermuda City he named for the haven
which the _Sea Venture_ survivors had appreciated after the tempest.
After Gates became governor in 1611, Dale preferred to live in
Henricopolis, which was situated on a higher and drier site than
Jamestown enjoyed. It had three streets of well-framed houses, several
having brick first stories. They had gardens and orchards, and more
space than those in Jamestown.

By Christmas there was a pretty street in Jamestown itself which had a
London look. There were "two fair rows of framed timber houses with
upper garrets corn-loft high." Some had plaster on the lower framing and
some weather boarding, while still others had shingle tiles which were
hung from the battens across the posts. There was a blockhouse outside
of town, the town itself being enclosed with a palisade.

Sir Thomas Gates who had arrived again in August of 1611 with six
vessels and three hundred men, replacing Dale, had the "Country House"
for governors built. It had a commanding view of the river, outside of
the town limits.

Fine as these buildings were, they were constantly needing repair. A
jealous Spanish spy declared in 1613 that the whole settlement could be
kicked over. Spanish spies had been captured outside of Jamestown in
1611 and were kept there for several years.

Until 1612 Sir Thomas Smith, who was no kin of John, but who gave
prestige to the name, being the most powerful merchant in London, had
managed the colony by remote control, along with his docile council in
England. Then a joint stock company began, being composed of the "court
party" which urged martial law and the "patriot party." Sir Thomas Smith
gradually veered from the patriot to the court party, leaving the former
to brilliant Sir Edwin Sandys.

Samuel Argall, a cousin of Thomas Smith, had landed with Delaware
earlier. In 1613 he was sent to capture fifteen Frenchmen who had left
Nova Scotia to try a settlement in Mount Desert, Maine, and he brought
them as prisoners to Jamestown.

That same year Argall became a frequent figure in the Pocahontas story.




V


Pocahontas, whose frantic questions had to be hushed with the lie that
Smith was no more, now shunned the colony, and her pent-up adoration
became a resentment against his people. It was as if he had been adopted
into her tribe as well as her heart. A red woman, when she has given her
heart, does not take it back. Her moods were more dark than bright,
although with the braves and girls her own age she smiled and danced
once in a while, like sunlight that would out in darkest woods at noon.
A lovely maiden cannot remain woebegone too long, and Powhatan's people,
especially those eager for his favor, did their merriest to scatter her
dark moods.

She was visiting in the house of Chief Japazaws when he made a deal with
the English of which she was not aware. Captain Argall, whose ship was
anchored nearby, had dangled a copper kettle so temptingly in front of
Japazaws and his greedy squaw that they could not wait until it spewed
steam on their hearth. Captain Argall wanted Pocahontas as a hostage to
exchange for English prisoners whom Powhatan had detained too long. That
would be easy, agreed Japazaws, for she used to like the English and was
grieving even now for their John Smith. After some pouting, she would be
happy as a lark sailing down the river with the English in their great
canoe.

"I have never been on a ship in my life," the artful squaw begged her
spouse. "Captain said he would show it to me."

"Go where you like," shrugged Japazaws.

"Why don't you?" added Pocahontas indifferently.

"Not by myself--the only woman! Besides, I do not know those palefaces.
You used to know them right well, Pocahontas. Come along."

Pocahontas complied, but she appeared listless as she went over the ship
while the squaw squealed with delight at everything she saw. At dinner
Pocahontas did not notice that drunken Japazaws pressed gleefully on
Argall's toes. "She's as good as yours."

Afterwards she was looking over the guns in the gun-room, and thinking
how Powhatan would have coveted them, when she was told that the chief
and his squaw had skipped off of the ship, guiltily swinging their
kettle between them.

When she found herself a prisoner, she pulled such a long face, that the
English gentlemen felt quite contrite, and every man of them henceforth
did his best to cheer her, especially John Rolfe.

John Rolfe was not beholden to the Company for bringing him here, and he
carried his own weight in all general endeavors, as well as in his
personal projects. He was a far cry from the pampered aristocrats whose
idling and futile digging for fool gold had annoyed Captain John Smith.
He hailed from the sturdy British farming class, which could come
through a Bermuda ship-wreck or a Jamestown disaster in that time, as
well as they could a Dunkirk or a "blitz" in the twentieth century.
Having arrived with Gates in a prudently salvaged ship, he left with
Gates when the Jamestown outpost seemed untenable. He also returned with
Gates at Delaware's reinforcement. He, for one, determined to make a go
of it, although after his wife's death he was the loneliest of all the
bachelor colonists. He sublimated his grief in hard work, and soon in a
shrewd project which was to be of value to the colony as well as to his
personal fortunes.

He knew instinctively the wisdom of the dying farmer who told his sons
that they could dig for their heritage and treasure in the lands on
which they lived. If others had heeded such a fable, they would have
warmed on the trail of wealth for the colony. In Rolfe's case this was
not merely profitable production of the land, but of the specific and
prime crop for Virginia--tobacco. He put his finger on the business
pulse of the new world. Here was the pot of gold at the foot of
Columbus's rainbow; here was the gold for which the laziest colonists
had wasted time prospecting elsewhere. For most of the next two
centuries tobacco would be virtually coin of the realm. With it a man
would pay the preacher, buy a wife, set her up in fine style, and then
be taxed according to the degree of that style, paying in tobacco.

Rolfe was the first tobacconist. In 1610 an excellent plant was imported
from Trinidad. Later, another from Venezuela was transported here, and
cross-breeding was tried. He had seeds from Bermuda, and he was willing
to learn from Indians about what they knew of the soil, and its
cultivation. Like a good cook he savored his own product. He sensed that
the Indians had none of the earnest industry of his own thrifty family
who made the most of every tended acre in England, for they craved only
so-so tobacco for their own pipes. This "apooke" was harsh, and English
smokers preferred the West Indies product. He was going to improve it
until England clamored for its import. Tobacco was a better crop than
corn, a more valuable export than mica, lumber, iron, pitch, tar, walnut
or cedar. It was more profitable than the mulberry trees which were
supposed to produce silk. Rats ate the silk worms, and neither foreign
teachers nor statutes could make the silk business succeed. The Glass
House never satisfied investors. Yes, tobacco was the thing, and he was
keenly on its scent. Within two years he and his neighbors were sending
their product to England.

Meanwhile he "looked around," and was one of those Johns who could speak
for himself. He could not do without a woman, any more than John Smith
could have done with one. When he saw the slim and pensive prisoner,
Pocahontas, he was susceptible at first glance, although he admitted
that there were plenty of Christians more pleasing to the eye, and he
tried to convince himself that he was more concerned for her soul than
for her heart. Like an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl she was learning the
language and the catechism from the Reverend Alexander Whitaker, and as
a devout layman Rolfe was happy to enlighten her.

Three months after she had been taken as a hostage Powhatan did return
the seven Englishmen and three muskets and he promised five hundred
bushels of corn. The English did not want to give Pocahontas up until
they got more arms from Powhatan, and Rolfe and Whitaker did not want to
surrender her until they were sure of her becoming the first convert on
this side of the world.

Rolfe craved her in marriage with an intensity that troubled his mind no
less than his heart, and his conscience was more sorely beset than
either, for no one else had risked marriage with the alien race, so why
should he of all people, the most religious and ambitious man in the
lot? His course seemed brave to him--"to sweep and make clean the path
wherein I walk, from all suspicions and doubts." He wrote to Governor
Dale about the "grounds and principal agitations which thus should
provoke me to be in love."

He still had no compunctions about being impure. "Nor am I in so
desperate an estate that I regard not what becometh of me, nor am I out
of hope one day to see my country, not so void of friends, nor mean in
birth, but there to obtain a match to my great content." Rolfe believed
that he was not "led with unbridled desire of carnal affection; but for
the good of this plantation; for the honor of our country; for the glory
of God; for my own salvation; and for the converting to the true
knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelieving creature, namely
Pocahontas, to whom my heart is and best thoughts are, and have a long
time been so entangled, and inthralled in so intricate a labyrinth, that
I was ever awearied to unwind myself thereout."

Rolfe confessed his heart's erring with the local preacher as well as
the Governor. Both surprised him by thinking it a good thing. Governor
Dale thought it would be a love match between the races.

The preacher said: "Don't worry about being unequally yoken with an
unbeliever. That one is easy. Convert the heathan." He thought that it
would be a feather in his cap to baptize, and later to marry the girl to
Rolfe, and not too flamboyant a feather in Rolfe's to marry her.
Powhatan would be immensely pleased, although he would never admit it.

All these doubts that had tormented the distraught John made him more
bewilderingly in love with this dusky sweetheart. It was April, and
redbud blushed through the forest, promising another spring. What that
dogwood drifted tardily along in its trail, pure white, and sure of
itself? For most men dogwood is synonymous of spring in Virginia, but to
him redbud bloomed first, and the more persuasively of spring. To John
Rolfe, this comely maid with gentler manners than habitual in her race,
yet with warm bloom belonging to this land and this moment, seemed
enchanting.

As for Pocahontas, having grieved for that other John two winters, how
could she think of another? She had been immature then and destiny had
moved him beyond her reach, indeed if he had ever been within it. This
man, too, had known grief. The English, unlike Indian men, desired and
valued but one woman. There was an empty place in his life now that she
would fill, for she too was lonely.

Sir Thomas Dale had sailed up the York River with Captain Argall, hoping
to retrieve arms from Powhatan, but without success. John Rolfe was now
sent to deal with Powhatan but he got no closer to him than his brother,
Opechancanough.

While they were arguing with the Indians, John Rolfe's friend, Ralph
Hamor, handed Rolfe's long letter to Dale explaining his confusing love
for the Indian princess. Meanwhile Pocahontas went ashore and told a few
choice Indians of her new romance. She said that if her father had loved
her, he would value her more than old swords and axes. Therefore she
would live instead with the English, who loved her. If there had been a
flag for bold romance it should have whipped in the breeze along the
James River, together with the red cross of St. George at the masthead.
Now the fanfaron was of trumpets, drums, guns, and clapping hands, but
soon wedding-bells would call the tune.

Pocahontas considered herself a grown woman now, and free to go her own
way. This marriage would be an omen of peace, a union of peoples as well
as persons. She anticipated it happily, knowing that it would be an
exciting affair for her own people, and a nostalgic one for the
colonists, who had seen but little romance here. She was baptized and
given the Christian name of "Rebecca" the week before the nuptials.

It was as she surmised. Powhatan was gratified and he could scarcely
keep from showing it, but he did not deign to come to Jamestown for such
a foreign ceremony. If he had not gone to get himself crowned, why
should he go to see his daughter married? Nevertheless, he sent his
brother Apachisco to represent him, for Opechancanough would not flatter
the English by attending, eager as he was to see the goings-on. Powhatan
also sent two of his sons and some other young people to participate,
and these added a colorful note to the scene.

The wedding itself was the most paintable scene yet staged in the
wilderness, and an idealistic picture of it has hung in American homes
ever since. In the wooden church stood guests of international prestige.
The picture shows Don Diego de Molina, a Spanish grandee and Argall's
French prisoners. Governor Dale, ranking highest, wore full regalia:
doublet, ballooning breeches, and stockings with ribbon at the knee. The
strange and haunting romance of the scene lingers with those not there,
for Pocahontas herself was the most romantic figure in American history.
Her sleek black hair dropped upon an Indian mantle which was embroidered
in the native fashion, but the dress was of demure white muslin. Her
tawny skin had a ruddy glow, and her eyes, as they met Rolfe's showed
shining trust, for they intended to live together "civilly and
lovingly."

The couple went to live at Varina which was named for the strain of
tobacco which Rolfe raised there. He was the sort of bridegroom, who
soon forgot the honeymoon, and measured his love in support and proud
surroundings.

Governor Dale, impressed with their success, sent an emissary to
Powhatan. His house was surrounded by two hundred bowmen, but he offered
a friendly pipe of peace, and asked why the messenger did not wear the
pearl chain, due to be worn by any messenger between the two leaders.
"How is my brother?" he asked. "How do my daughter and her husband live,
love and like?"

"Your brother is well, and your daughter is so contented that she would
not live again with you." Answering why he had come, the messenger said:
"Sir Thomas Dale hath sent you two pieces of copper, five strings of
blue and white beads, five wooden combs, two fish-hooks, a pair of
knives, and when you will send for it, he will give you a grindstone."

Glad to live on their own ample acres provided by Powhatan, but left to
themselves, the couple were happy and prosperous. Pocahontas swam,
fished, hunted, and roamed her woods. Housekeeping was easier for her
than for other squaws, for she had not only a solicitous and helpful
husband, but English household goods. Their son Thomas was born in 1615,
and he too thrived here.

After a while she became piqued with her preoccupied spouse, who kept
planting, and improving tobacco crops, having advanced beyond the rugged
Indian agriculture which she had taught him. Indians planted merely
enough for their own pipes, and those of a circle of friends, while John
Rolfe wanted a bigger and better crop each year. The seedlings were
transplanted, thinned and cured as Pocahontas had taught but with added
pains that made the product sweet rather than bitter. Soon hogsheads of
tobacco were being rolled off his wharf for shipment to England, which
rewarded him for his thrifty work. When he got coin of the realm in
exchange, he intended to heap it in her aproned lap, but the ex-Princess
was tired of aprons, and craved something else besides coin out of
England.

If tobacco of the Rolfe plantation rolled the seas, why not its charming
young mistress, who was eager to see the land of John Smith? As she
hoped, Sir Thomas Dale invited the Rolfes to come along on his trip,
thinking they would make a fine advertisement for the London Company.
Just in case they looked too fine, he also took along a savage troop.

Powhatan was more dubious about this than he had been about the
marriage, wanting to keep his bold daughter where he could keep an eye
on her. But finally he consented, provided that she have several of her
own along, and her sister, her brother-in-law Tacomoco, and
Uttamatomakkin. Powhatan told this man to make notches on sticks for
every white he saw over there. He was not too hospitable a host over on
this side, and he would like to get an idea of how many guests were to
be expected in his western world, just in case there was a wholesale
exodus from England.




VI


While away from Virginia Smith had kept up with its happenings, if
Virginia had not of his own. He kept talking it up with missionary
fervor as a place of settlement. "The mildness of the air, the fertility
of the soil, and the situation of the rivers are so propitious to the
nature and the use of man as no place is more convenient for pleasure,
profit and man's sustenance." In England he could chuckle at the
complaints against other leaders. Since he had been blamed for rigid
discipline, he was amused at Dale's martial law. The death penalty was
given for telling lies, blasphemy, gaming or even picking a flower in
another's garden, or in one's own if on the Sabbath. Failing to attend
church or trade with the Indians was as severely punished, but lesser
offenses got merely whipping or mutilation. He could have told them that
a fine gentleman such as Delaware would not stick it out over there. It
seemed to him that neither he nor his men had had a fair chance in
Virginia, for after two years of toil and trials, they had no gold,
silver, nor quantity of fur, tar, pitch and hemp, and little glass. Yet
they had gone without women, drink and entertainment, wealth, even food
and shelter at times, and they had seen their companions drowned,
scalped or starved.

Yes, Smith was very much alive on his side of the great salt waters,
Powhatan to the contrary. He still yearned for Virginia. When he had
left he had been cut to the quick that his righteous authority was
questioned by the sending over of his former enemies--captains all--and
the haughty governor, and other new officers to follow. His pride was
sorer than his burns.

Denied southern Virginia, he began to crave the northern coast which
stretched to the present Nova Scotia. While fifteen voyages had traced
it already, the plan outlined by the second company had not been
successful. "As I liked Virginia well, though not their proceedings, so
I desired to see this country and spend some time in trying what I could
find." He scurried about Plymouth and London until he found backing and
two ships were loaded and manned for him. In spite of his short stature,
and mediocre lineage, he was every inch their commander as he took his
stand high on the poop deck, although he allowed another to run the
ship. He had a high brow, his long hair sweeping back from the temples.
Easily annoyed, furrows soon wrinkled his forehead. A hint of scorn ran
in the line from flaring nostril to mouth. He could be tough or tender,
furious, or exultant, but never niggardly nor lugubrious. His features
have engraved themselves facilely on the American mind, as hero, and
founding father, although his enemies begrudged him the honor.

After two eventful voyages to the Northern coast, he wrote _The
Description of New England_. His boyhood friend and patron, the present
Lord Willoughby, lived with the royal family and Smith easily secured
the help of Prince Charles. Smith indulgently let the Prince give
English names to the coast which he had already decided to name "New
England." On the title page of the book he was heralded as "Admirall of
New England."

Just as his book appeared Smith heard in London that a letter from Sir
Thomas Dale declared that Dale and his party from Virginia were in
Plymouth awaiting a favorable wind before continuing to London. Captain
Argall had brought them over on the _Treasurer_. So ... Smith's colorful
past had caught up with him, and he recognized this as good luck. The
exciting arrival from the other side of the world was a windfall for
him, even if he could not get to either of the Virginias. Publicity
would be opportune for the sale of his book.

He was not entirely mercenary, and he was deeply grateful to Pocahontas
who had saved his life, and the perilous colony besides. Now it could
all be told. He must advise Queen Anne, King James' wife, that it would
help the Virginia plantation if Pocahontas was received like royalty.
Londoners had known of the marriage for a year, but they had never
heard of Pocahontas and John Smith--only of Pocahontas and John Rolfe.
When the council for Virginia in London heard of that marriage they had
debated solemnly whether Rolfe should be tried for treason. Smith was
possibly jealous that Rolfe had hit upon a practical export from
Virginia, if not because he had married Powhatan's daughter. An
idealist, and a soldier-adventurer, he scorned financial success, at
least when it was not his own, and that was usually.

Actually John Rolfe was the independent and industrious colonist for
whom Smith had longed, wanting such a one to stay busy in Jamestown
while he, Smith, did the exploring. Both had been essential to the
colony, the one as path-finder, and the other as planter and producer.
Pocahontas, who loved both, would have been baffled by their
incompatibility had the two men been thrown together, but fate kept them
out of each other's way, and denied both for long to hers, or to the
colony's.

Smith found it easier to make England bow to the Rolfes than to himself.
Pocahontas became the most distinguished visitor of the year in England.
While she could not speak the King's English glibly, she could conduct
herself as the daughter of a king. London gentlemen of the court sent
engravings of her picture to friends around the world, as if to say with
a flourish: "Look whom we have here!"

Uttamatomakkin preferred to impress the English with diabolic antics.
People at the landing in Plymouth and also in London thought the savages
a circus, but not so the stately Pocahontas.

From the moment she walked off the boat, she moved with a strange new
majesty that baffled her own husband as much as others. How could a mere
man explain the unaccountable poise which a clever woman could affect in
the most unfamiliar setting?

In their own modest lodgings, Rolfe could scarcely keep off curiosity
seekers, especially fine lords in elaborate dress who cantered into the
cobblestone court and called for Madame Rolfe.

John Rolfe bowed low, contending that Madame was indisposed after her
trip, and could not see strangers, no matter of what importance. He
would not have them mocking his strange, proud wife. Yet when she met
the same lords at balls, he was surprised to find himself in an humble,
obscure place in the background. A snobbish Britisher, he was secretly
proud of her, though his eyes smouldered occasionally with resentment at
some snobbery to himself. It was enough to turn the impressionable
woman's head, but he told himself she was at heart a sincere sweet
thing.

John Rolfe heard that the King thought that he had aspirations to become
Powhatan's heir, and as such James's rival over there, and for that
reason was snubbing him to keep him in his place.

John Smith, very much alive after all, was just out of three weeks in
jail where he had been put for fancying himself king of Virginia.
Because he should show his gratitude, he thought that England should
show hers, and that the latter was good business, he wrote a "little
book" to the Queen telling her how things were. Now, for the first time
he told her of the rescue, hitherto kept secret by his discretion. Queen
Anne just must do the right thing by Powhatan's girl.

He wrote of how, when he had but eighteen men with him, Pocahontas came
to warn him of her father's plot, and "the dark night could not affright
her from coming through the irksome woods and with watered eyes, gave me
intelligence with her best advice to escape his fury, which had he
known, he had surely slain her. Jamestown with her wild train, she as
freely frequented as her father's habitation; and during the time, two
or three years, she, next under God, was still the instrument to
preserve this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion."

The queen was duly persuaded, commanding, "Bring her on." All the court
was as keen as the people in the street to get a close-up view of the
tamed Pocahontas and her wild retinue. Fastidious Anne saw that these
kept their distance, but she offered her plump, white, jewelled hand to
Pocahontas.

"What do you mean, Mr. Rolfe," King James scolded John, "by marrying a
princess of the blood, you, a mere commoner?"

Royal society tittered behind its hands. Was the king pulling poor
John's leg, or was he really jealous of his share of Powhatan's realm?
After all, John Smith had been put in jail recently. Rolfe had imported
quite a fortune in tobacco, and he had been no fool in marrying
Powhatan's daughter who did him honor as Lady Delaware presented her.

"Captain Smith wrote me of your indispensable aid to our forlorn colony,
my Lady Rebecca, and I thank you for all my people. For myself, I would
say, now that I see how pretty you are, I wonder that John did not speak
for himself."

"I was a child when I saved the brave Captain," murmured Pocahontas
modestly.

She felt here like the princess whose fairy-tale had come true in
climactic palace scenes. There was more of a kind to come because she
was now the fashion--having her portrait painted, and numerous
engagements sought after. The Bishop of London gave a masquerade ball in
her honor, at which she danced with court celebrities. The Bishop, John
King, whom Queen Elizabeth had called the "king of preachers," never
honored a lady more. Her brother-in-law Tacomoco looked on with more
pride than Rolfe, who was too much of a provincial Puritan to enjoy
court circles, especially those at which he was improperly snubbed. He
was repeatedly confounded by his wife's poise. They went to "Twelfth
Night," other theatrical occasions, and one masqued ball after another.
Pocahontas's acquiline features were as inscrutable as Mona Lisa's.
Powdered and painted, dressed up like an English lady in small tailored
hats, and billowing swishing skirts, she kept her face the very mask of
fashion, concealing its Indian thoughts.

"The Masque of Christmas" was attended by King James, Queen Anne and
Pocahontas. There the queen danced with the Earl of Buckingham and the
Earl of Montgomery and Pocahontas had her noble partners too.

In February she would attend the "Masque of Lovers Made Men" as would
the King and Queen. The Lord Mayor would be there as well as the Duke
of Lenox and Lord Hay, the entertainment being in honor of the French
ambassador.

Rolfe, piqued at his own unimportance at these festive occasions, wrote
a political and economic treatise on the colony. Pocahontas objected to
any plans for an early return home.

The Lady Rebecca liked London, even though the foggy climate was giving
her a hacking cough that worried Rolfe, who wanted her to get on to the
country to meet his family. Neither rolling wagons and carriages on the
cobblestone street, nor roistering revellers downstairs beneath their
lodgings disturbed her, she said.

Naïve, ordinary Indians did not admit themselves so pleased as she was.
John Smith ran into Uttamatomakkin in London.

"Powhatan did bid me to find you out to show me your God, the King,
Queen, and Prince, you so much told us of."

"God is not to be seen by human eye. The King you have seen. And the
rest you shall see when you choose."

The Indian shook his head. "Nay, not yet have I seen the King."

"You did see him, just yesterday," insisted Smith.

"He did not look as much like a king as our Powhatan. And he didn't give
me a present. 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." He had long since given up counting white men since he was quickly
weary of that task.

Smith could not do anything about that, but he could and did go calling
on the Rolfes, having no idea that Pocahontas considered him long under
the sod. He knew that now as the pet of society in London, she must have
changed, but he had not known how much, and he was impressed with her
formal appearance when he went to Brentford to see her.

"The Lady Rebecca!" he greeted her with a flourishing bow.

Suddenly the Lady Rebecca in her stiff, swishing London costume
vanished, and only a forlorn little maid was left. Her beating heart,
like her frivolous London mood, nearly stopped with pain at this spectre
from the past! There stood the one she had thought dead, come alive,
too late to be alive for her. She who had saved him, and lost him, had
found him too late, once again--or was it? Her heart seemed bare and
wounded, although she was not disillusioned in the stocky figure in the
shabby clothes of this man who was old in his thirties, because he had
lived too many lives in one. His figure was paunchy and his eyes
bloodshot, but she was blind to imperfections in her hero, for she saw
him only in the colors of her caressing brush. He had come true in the
make-believe world where he was the greatest wonder of all for the
little princess, but this boon which she craved most was probably not
for her.

"They told me you were dead," she muttered dully.

She rushed from the room, and it took her hours to compose herself. When
she would have flung her arms about his neck, his cool English eyes had
reproved her, calling her rebellious heart to a halt. For her there
should be retreat from the Captain, who always had everything under
control, including his own heart. Hers was bleeding unstaunched, for a
red woman, when she has given her heart does not take it back. What they
call Indian-giving was not the heart of Pocahontas, for its pulse
measured out time, that of a country and its founder, if not of herself.

She was not aged, pious and resigned like Moses looking into
unobtainable Canaan. She was a young, wild thing, untamed and hopeful
yet.

When she came back she had washed away her hot tears, powdered and
painted her face, trying to match her stiff London clothes. She was like
a bird with its gay feathers taut and drawn, winging away no more ...
unless some merciful human opened a window. She reproached him, looking
as sad as if death was in the house, as it was in her heart.

"They did always tell us that you were dead, and I did not know that you
were not until after I came to England. Only Powhatan did not believe
that you were, and ordered Tacomoco to seek you out because he said your
people always lie so much."

He smiled, silent for once, and she went on hurting him who had hurt her
so much. "You promised Powhatan that what was yours should be his, and
he promised the same to you. You called him yours when you were a
stranger in his country, and now that I am here in yours, I will call
you 'Father'."

Again he thrust her shameless heart back behind her London lady's mask.
"You mustn't do that. You are a king's daughter, and I am a poor man
looking for a boat."

She reproached him yet again. "You were not afraid to go into my
father's country and put fear into all his people but myself." Perfect
love, she knew casteth out fear--with the simple wisdom of a child of a
childish people. "But now you are afraid to let me call you father. I
tell you that I will, and that you shall ever call me your child, and
remember that you and I are of one people, and that we are fellow
countrymen."

"I cannot, Lady Rebecca Rolfe." He, master of every situation put her in
her place in this.

Ah, if one of her could walk demurely down the dull road to "Heacham
Hall," clinging to John Rolfe's arm, and keep on with him to "Varina"
near Powhatan, bearing other descendants for the pride of Rolfe and
Powhatan, but if the other could wing away with Smith going far places!
Tragabigzanda had tried to keep him in chains for herself; Pocahontas
had saved him only to lose him. He was a man belonging to the world, but
to no woman.

She had to be the staid English housewife, not the princess of the wild
woods. As she had her wild dreams of a different way out, she looked
into his sea-faring blue eyes, and found there no response, only respect
for Anglo-Saxon domestic respectability.

"You are the Lady Rebecca, the toast of London."

Toast, that should be a foaming, intoxicating drink, not a staid,
insipid dose. She was a sick woman, but even sicker at heart.

"It is not seemly that a poor explorer be familiar with a lady of your
position."

Position, she would snap her fingers at it! She wanted yesterday in
Virginia fields where the corn tassels tossed in the sunny breeze, or an
impossible dazzling tomorrow, but must take dull today. She was in
Christian London, where the bells in the church spires chimed
monotonously, chastening the savage din in her ears.

She snatched up small Tom who had been gazing at the captain who had
strode out of a story book into the room. They left the two men to their
boasting--Rolfe of his tobacco crop in the new world, Smith of newer
worlds he would set out to conquer.

So John Smith passed out of Pocahontas' life more finally than he had
before, because he went deliberately. The hand of death was definitely
upon her, not upon him, the more so because she scarcely resisted it.
Her Christian resignation, more like that of an elderly saint, than a
youthful worldling now gratified, now confounded her serious husband.
Gone was her gay delight in the adulation of the London populace, and
the frivolity of the court, which he had long since deplored. She had
not minded the late hours, the murky London atmosphere, worsening her
cough; nor the noise of the cobblestone streets, nor the roisterers
beneath their lodgings before, but now she was as weary of London as he
was.

She was meekly ready to accompany him to "Heacham Hall," his family's
seat in Norfolk, where the sunny air seemed to him the healthiest
atmosphere for a cough like hers. While his doubts about mating with a
strange woman were long past, he wanted to set the seal of his family's
approval upon her. Had there been any doubt about that, news of her
London reception had dispelled it.

Sister Pocahontas was not nearly so savage as they had feared, and her
amenability to their tutelage gratified their provincial vanity. She was
willing to learn how primly a Rolfe wife should fold her hands in church
of a Sabbath morning, and tastefully gather roses and stocks from the
flower borders to arrange them in the parlor mantel vases. It was
important too, to sew a fine seam, or mend to the last thread. Adept
needle-women themselves, the Rolfe sisters made a picture in needlepoint
of Pocahontas and little Tom. She would learn how to bake a steak and
kidney pie, or a goodly pound cake as John liked it.

Strange that whatever they subsisted on over there agreed with John and
little Tom, and after a while John decided that nothing else except
Virginia air would revive his ailing wife. She was not acclimated to
this small, neat isle. Only when she rode horseback, as she had longed
to do, reining in beside the trim stable back of the substantial stone
house was there the wild gay vein in her eyes that had ever led him
where she would. Then she had raced away a while from the broken health
and the broken heart.

Soon she was too ill for the rides, and Rolfe arranged passage on
Argall's boat, _The George_, which was embarking from Gravesend. Its
pitiful passenger was immediately on her deathbed, where her resignation
and Christian testimony inspired the beholders: the ministering foreign
women and the men, Argall and Rolfe reading scriptures. She was buried
beneath the chancel at St. George's Church where her dust rests, some
think, out of place.




VII


Argall's ship had put into Gravesend to have Pocahontas buried in St.
George's Church. The vestry-book recorded her name erroneously: "Rebecca
Wrothe, Wyffe of Thomas Wrothe, a Virginia-lady born here was buried in
ye chancell." While the faded writ remains wrong to this day, it was
preciously bound in white leather and kept in a vault, and the church
building therefore became a shrine, although the argument as to where
she lies there, or whether she should be brought here will be
interminable.

Thomas was the name of her son, and the child's illness on the _George_,
as it put to sea again, distracted John Rolfe, who remembered how he had
lost another wife and child almost within grasp of the waves. Again the
ship returned to English shores, this time to Plymouth, where the
frantic father sought out Sir Lewis Stewkley and persuaded him to take
care of the little lad until Henry Rolfe, a London merchant, could take
his nephew in charge. Stewkley who was to betray his own cousin, Sir
Walter Raleigh, still proved worthy of Rolfe's trust.

At that moment John Smith, who was trying to get support for a New
England colony, bustled about Plymouth unsuccessfully, and then tried
London. Pocahontas was lost to her own country, but her ambitious Johns
both coveted it still for themselves.

Rolfe, in spite of the buffetings of disaster and grief, was a man who
got things done as long as he was alive to do them. Without Smith's
brilliant, antagonistic and fascinating temperament he, if not Smith,
got on to America since that was his aim, and there he took his third
wife, Jane, daughter of William Pearce, Captain of James Fort.

Rolfe was made Secretary and was soon put on the Council. He yearned
over his absent son for the next few years, and wrote Sir Edwin Sandys
that he hoped that he would not be censured for leaving him behind, but
that that seemed the only way the lad could survive. A practical man, he
requested Pocahontas' stipend of the company. Later Henry Rolfe tried to
get more indemnity from the company to repay him for his expenses in
bringing up the lad.

Rolfe's marriage with Pocahontas was credited with bringing about eight
years of peace with the Indians. But Opechancanough had long bided his
time for revenge on the English, grimly sure that the American story
would have been different had he been allowed to deal with John Smith.
He was called "White Hair Man" because of his white fur mantle. Kingly
ermine was never worn more haughtily. He planned the massacre of 1622.
Tragic John Rolfe is supposed to have been among the victims.

Rolfe was a marked man as well as a man of mark. While he could have
handled his own life ably at any time if violent tragedy had not
overcome him, none could have survived his disasters. He achieved the
first colonial business success and the first interracial marriage and
he had mastered personal grief. He had married three women happily
before he was forty years of age, and each bore him a child. He had
survived shipwreck and ship illnesses although his first two wives had
not. He had thought that he had the red man's land in hand, but was
instead in the hands of the red men.

Nevertheless, his son Thomas, then still in England, had inherited lands
from his grandfather, Powhatan, and he would return to the land of his
Indian fathers and now of his English father, who also willed him lands
and carry on in his unique heritage the American tradition. It was
reported that the two old chiefs, Powhatan and Opechancanough had gone
up and down the country asking about the welfare of the motherless boy
in England, and too solicitous for him to return until he was stronger.
After Powhatan's death in 1618 Opechancanough talked grandly of giving
the whole country to the child. Rolfe had been sent to him to be
reassured about the peace between the races ever since the Pocahontas
marriage. To him and others Opechancanough declared that the sun should
sooner fall out of the sky, than his friendliness.

Another colonist had also been deceived by him. This hopeful missionary
believed that he had converted him, and he built him an English house.
The chief was so tickled with lock and key, that he tinkered with both
constantly. Still the naïve builder was killed for his kind pains. In
the massacre Indians had sat at table with English at breakfast Good
Friday only to slay them wherever they found them, in field or cottage.




VIII


And what now of Smith in England? Neither in Plymouth nor in London did
he succeed in getting backers to send him to New England although the
Pilgrims studied his maps and books. He wanted to go along with them but
he was considered too expensive and too headstrong a companion for such
stern settlers. Again he poured out his enthusiasm into another book,
for only his pen could keep busy, but that, like his tongue, was no
lagger. The man himself remained unemployed and unimportant, for his
betters had no idea of letting worth be as recognized as birth. What had
he got for exploring and advising for New England?

He began to brood about what Virginia owed him for his risks and
services. Land had been the only wages of the London Company and he was
not in Virginia to stake his claims. In May 1621 he appealed to the
company court and reminded them that he had risked money and peril of
his life for the good of the Plantation. He had built up Jamestown, and
had given five years of his life at great risk to establish Virginia,
and he had spent five hundred pounds of his scant estate in the effort.
Surely now he deserved remuneration either from the local treasury or
from the general Virginia profit in England--but he got none. The London
Company's affairs were not in good shape in either place and the
massacre of 1622 made them worse. Incensed at this latest blow to his
colony, Smith rashly volunteered to rush to their aid with a small army.

In all of his far-flung adventures there was nothing so satisfying to
him as this colony which he had founded. Raleigh had named Virginia,
while he had named New England, but Virginia was his first love, and he
much preferred her sporting planters and adventurers to the pious and
thrifty townsmen of New England. If there was a woman in his life, it
was Virginia--not Pocahontas nor any other. Virginia had never got out
of his blood. He dreamed of cementing the two coasts on one map, but
this, like his every proposition, was turned down.

Rebuffed, he brought out a revised edition of his _New England's
Trials_, and expressed his love of the American outpost eloquently, "I
may call them my children for they have been my wife, hawks, my hounds,
my dice and in total my best content, as indifferent to my heart as my
left hand to my right." As a patroness for his handsome book _The
General Historie_ in 1624, the Duchess of Richmond came to his aid.

Smith had important male backers of his literary works now, if not of
explorations. When he wrote the _Seaman's Grammar_ in 1629, Sir Samuel
Saltonstall was the backer. Among his friends was a collector and
scientist whose house was called "Tradescant's Ark." If he had not been
close to Smith how could his collection include Powhatan's discarded
robe, Indian combs, rattles, bows and arrows, feathered crowns and
tobacco pipes? Smith even willed him a fourth of his library.

Smith's _True Travels_ appeared in 1629, and the incredible tale of his
adventures read well to Londoners who were disturbed with financial
depression and with the plague besides.

In order to escape the plague Smith spent much time in the country near
Essex in the hospitable home of Sir Humphrey Mildmay. Mildmay dubbed his
wife "the old woman," and he often escaped his family with the
boisterous and masculine Smith to roam his fields, to hunt, fish, dice
and drink. His six children delighted in their tarrying visitor, but
Smith often eluded the happy and hearty family to write history in his
own room. The huge home had wings, and it was set in a shady grove from
which he could see London, thirty miles away, on clear days. He did not
tarry there indefinitely being sometimes impatient for London itself
where he also had a room in Saltonstall's house.

Yes, he had patronizing friends, but he was alone in his frustrated
hopes. He had been so far and done so much as a leader of men whether
they admitted it or not, and as such he was a being apart. He had been
so as an adolescent who had lost his father by death, his mother by
marriage, who had quit school and master as well as home. As an adult he
had left country, colony and yet another colony, and when he wanted them
back they had not wanted him. Finally, he was lonely because he had
risen above his class in society without ever feeling secure among his
betters in spite of their hospitality to an entertaining explorer and
literary notable. Smith was ever without a home of his own, if never
without a hope.

As time went on while the hands of benevolent ladies helped him over
hurdles, men were usually the ones beside him, if not back of him. He
could visit for months at a time as at the Mildmay's or for years as at
Saltonstall's.

It was at the latter house that he died suddenly at the age of
fifty-one. He had made arrangements for a dignified burial, knowing that
others would not make it what it should be--before history inevitably
brought him into his own. Where Shakespeare willed arms, he, Smith, the
hero of legends as well as the author of them, willed books--of which he
had written many and read more. An epitaph in brass extolled his feats:
the victory over the three Turks; and the claim, that he had "dispersed
the heathen like smoke" and made their land "a habitation for a
Christian nation." Because he was buried there, St. Sepulchre's would
become a shrine even as St. George's has.

       *       *       *       *       *

Regardless of the fact that Pocahontas married John Rolfe, the public
unites her name rather with that of Smith. The three make up an integral
triangle. Each lived briefly, but intensely, Pocahontas passing first in
the springtime of her life. Rolfe had wanted to take care of her, giving
her protection, and glory in both of their countries, and proud
descendants. He was more than just her husband. The poet Stephen Vincent
Benet puts it:

    "You may think of him as Pocahontas' husband,
    He was rather more than that and his seed still lives,
    And we would do well to fence the small plot of garden,
    Where, in hose and doublet, he planted the Indian weed."[1]

For all of his practical ability, fate allowed him neither to take care
of her nor of himself. He met violent death at the hands of her people,
dying in her country just as she had gone first in his, for neither was
able to survive an alien way of life.

Although Smith adventured valiantly for God, and Rolfe persuaded himself
that he had married the Indian maid to save her soul more than her
heart, Pocahontas, the purer spirit, transcends both.

The spirit of Pocahontas broods yet on her own side of the great salt
waters. Her dust rests out of place at St. George's Church on the
Thames, even if it is named the "Chapel of Unity" for all faiths,
because of her peaceable heart.

"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or
a paw-paw in May ..." mused the poet Carl Sandburg. "Did she wonder?
Does she remember ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?"[2] She lives,
believed the poet Vachel Lindsay, in the waving corn, and in her
spiritual descendants, the American people. She lives still in the blood
of some Americans, but for longer in her poignant tale, whose true red
hue has not paled through the years.




_Historical Background_


The story of the rescue of America's prime folk-hero, John Smith, by
Pocahontas, America's most appealing heroine, fills such a patriotic
need that it would have been fabricated had it been untrue. It passed
for sure history for two hundred and thirty-six years, except for the
feeble denial of Thomas Fuller in his _Worthies of England_.[1] Smith
held his own word to be the first and last about history and himself.
Yet now the howling squabble over his merits, never hushed in his time,
flairs again after three centuries.

In 1860 Charles Deane of Massachusetts asked why Smith had concealed the
story for sixteen years.[2] Henry Adams, while he bowed to Pocahontas as
the most romantic figure in American history, and as the visiting
celebrity of 1616 in England, stepped up to Deane's standard,[3] as did
William Cullen Bryant and Sydney Howard Gay,[4] and the Southern
scholar, Alexander Brown.[5]

But William Wirt Henry,[6] Mrs. Mary Newton Stanard,[7] and Lyon G.
Tyler[8] remained fast friends of the cherished tale. Edward Arber, the
most careful editor of Smith's work, accepts it.[9] John Fiske points
out that the printed text of the _True Relation_ was incomplete for
Smith had written much which his editor in London omitted as "fit to be
printed."[10] Allan Nevins, in _The Gateway to History_, suggests that
Smith may have told the story in 1608.[11] Mrs. Stanard[12] and William
Wirt Henry[13] also stress this fact. Edward Channing assails the
story[14] but Charles M. Andrews accepts it.[15] Many more writers
contend that Smith may have deliberately kept the story dark in order
that possible new colonists might not be frightened. The tale was not
denied when it was told to Smith's contemporaries in 1624.

Many public school teachers have taken the middle ground that the story
is almost indispensable and is probably true. Bradford Smith, whose
biography of Captain John Smith is notable among a score on the subject,
declares that there is not a scrap of evidence to disprove the
narrative, and many reasons to establish it.[16] Without the story it
would be hard to explain why Powhatan spared Smith since, according to
Smith, two Indians had been killed.[17] It was customary for a chief's
daughter to be allowed the life of a favorite captive. Juan Ortiz had
been saved twice in this manner near Tampa, Florida, nearly a century
before.

While Smith is considered a boastful liar by Alexander Brown and others,
he still has not only reluctant admirers but fervent defenders among
historians. Matthew Page Andrews admitted: "Than Smith there has been
no more daring adventurer in English history."[18] Say Henry Steele
Commager and Allan Nevins in _The Heritage of America_, a source history
for Virginia's high schools: "He was a figure worthy of the English race
which found in him the first great American representative.... Smith was
worth all the others put together."[19]

The public has been inclined to couple the Indian maiden's name with
that of John Smith, more than with that of John Rolfe. But this present
author's point that Pocahontas did not know that Smith was still alive
when she married Rolfe, and that she was still in love with Smith, is
unusual. However, it is not original. It has been taken in some plays
and short stories. William Wirt Henry's address before the Virginia
Historical Society in 1882 and Samuel Purchas's _Pilgrimage_[20] suggest
that Smith could have married her had he so desired. This book is
presented as a probable story rather than as documented history.

THE POCAHONTAS-JOHN SMITH STORY is most stoutly defended not by
historians, nor even patriotic societies, but by poets, dramatists, and
idealistic youth, who think that it is theirs, and by descendants, who
know that it is theirs. The line is utterly Virginian be it in blood or
ink from the Pocahontas, who like Will Rogers's ancestors "met the boat"
to the Pocahontas who wrote the book. And so I sign here

    POCAHONTAS WIGHT EDMUNDS.

  _Halifax, Virginia_,
  _April, 1956._




FOOTNOTES:


  [1] Thomas Fuller, _The History of the Worthies of England_ (John
  Nichols, ed.; London, 1811), I, 189.

  [2] Charles Deane (ed.), "Edward Maria Wingfield, 'A Discourse of
  Virginia,'" _Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian
  Society_, IV (1860), 92-95n.

  [3] Henry Adams, "Captaine John Smith, Sometime Governour in Virginia
  and Admirall of New England," _Chapters of Erie and Other Essays_ by
  Henry Adams and Charles F. Adams, Jr. (Boston: J. R. Osgood & Company,
  1871), pp. 192-224.

  [4] William Cullen Bryant and Sydney Howard Gay, _A Popular History of
  the United States_ (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1885-1886),
  I, 282-283.

  [5] Alexander Brown, _The Genesis of the United States_ (Boston and
  New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890), II, 1006-1010; _The First
  Republic in America_ (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,
  1898), pp. 56-57, 469n.

  [6] William Wirt Henry, "The Settlement at Jamestown With Particular
  Reference to the Late Attacks Upon Captain John Smith, Pocahontas and
  John Rolfe," _Proceedings of the Virginia Historical Society at the
  Annual Meeting, February 24, 1882_ (Richmond: 1882).

  [7] Mary Newton Stanard, _The Story of Virginia's First Century_
  (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1928), p. 47.

  [8] Lyon G. Tyler, _Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625_ (New
  York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1907), p. 28.

  [9] Edward Arber (ed.), _Travels and Works of Captain John Smith_
  (Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1910), I, xiv-xv.

  [10] John Fiske, _Old Virginia and Her Neighbours_ (Boston and New
  York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1897), I, 103-108.

  [11] Allan Nevins, _The Gateway to History_ (New York: D.
  Appleton-Century Co., 1938), pp. 139, 150.

  [12] Stanard, _op. cit._, p. 48.

  [13] Henry, _loc. cit._

  [14] Edward Channing, _History of the United States_ (New York: The
  Macmillan Co., 1925), I, 174.

  [15] Charles M. Andrews, _The Colonial Period of American History_
  (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), I, 142n.

  [16] Bradford Smith, _Captain John Smith, His Life and Legend_
  (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1953), p. 118.

  [17] John Smith, "The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and
  the Summer Isles, 1624," _Travels and Works of Captain John Smith_
  (Edward Arber, ed.; Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1910), II, 395.

  [18] Matthew Page Andrews, _Virginia, the Old Dominion_ (New York:
  Doubleday, Doran, and Company, Inc., 1937), p. 42.

  [19] Henry Steele Commager and Allan Nevins, (eds.), _The Heritage of
  America_ (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939), p. 23.

  [20] Samuel Purchas, _Purchas His Pilgrimage_ (London: 1614), pp.
  764-765.




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       Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown_. Richmond, Va.: Cottrell
       and Cook, Inc., 1930.

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       Smith_. Richmond, Va.: Dietz, 1935.

     Hatch, Charles A., _The Oldest Legislative Assembly in America
       and its First State House_. National Park Service, Series:
       History, No. 2.

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       Merrill, 1913.

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       Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1951.

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       Appleton-Century Company, 1938.

     Page, Thos. Nelson, _Address_. Richmond, Va.: Whittet and
       Shepperson, Printers, 1919.

     Purchas, Samuel, _Purchas His Pilgrimage_. London, 1614.

     Robertson, Wyndham, _Pocahontas and Her Descendants_. Richmond,
       Va.: J. W. Randolph and English, 1887.

     Rolfe, John, _A True Relation of the State of Virginia_. New
       Haven: Yale Press, 1951.

     Sandburg, Carl, _Complete Poems_. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
       Company, 1950. _Cornhuskers._ Henry Holt and Company, 1918.

     Schlesinger, Arthur, _A History of American Life_. 12 Vols. New
       York: The Macmillan and Company, 1927-1944.

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       Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1953.

     Stanard, Mary Newton, _The Story of Virginia's First Century_.
       Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1928.

     Tyler, Lyon G., _Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625_. New
       York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1907.

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       New York, N. Y.: Newson, 1950.




_Comments on Biographies_

By MRS. EDMUNDS AND THE LATE H. J. ECKENRODE


Of Rutherford B. Hayes, first volume of Dodd, Mead and Company's
_American Political Leaders_. New York, 1930:

  "If the series maintains the standard of this first volume it
  will be a landmark in American letters and scholarship. An
  excellent book, interesting and convincing, sane and balanced."
    JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS, Editor of _Dictionary of American Biography_.

  "A fascinating biography, scholarly, brilliant, entertaining
  and illuminating."
    CLAUDE BOWERS, Noted Historian and Ambassador.

  "She contributed several of the early chapters which are
  sprightly and engrossing."
    VIRGINIUS DABNEY, Editor and Author.


Of E. H. Harriman, _The Little Giant of Wall Street_, Greenberg. New
York, 1933:

  "Mrs. Edmunds and Dr. Eckenrode have the gift of breathing life
  into those they treat and I particularly like their force of
  style."
    ALLAN NEVINS, Noted Historian.

  "Excellent capitalist lore":
    Review in the _World Telegram_.


Of Mrs. Edmunds, _Legends of the North Carolina Coast_, Garrett and
Massie. Richmond, Va., 1941:

  "Mrs. Edmunds's style is good."
    DUBOSE HEYWARD, Author of _Porgy_.

  "Charming book ... written with poetic fervor, brief and
  evocative."
    _New York Herald-Tribune Book Review._

  "Written with craftsmanship and genuine artistry."
    _The Atlanta Journal._

  "Written with lyrical beauty and a fine sense of selection."
    _Greensboro News._

  "Interesting new book...."
    DOUGLAS FREEMAN, Editor and Author.


Of Mrs. Edmunds, _Tales of the Virginia Coast_, Dietz Press. Richmond,
Va., 1950:

  "A fine and useful piece of writing."
    LAURA KREY, Author of: _And Tell of Time_.




Transcriber's Notes:


  Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
  the original.

  Obvious typographical errors in the original have been corrected as
  follows:

    Page 15: "sportmens'" changed to "sportsmen's"
    Page 18: "cooly" changed to "coolly"
    Page 37: "fastidously" changed to "fastidiously"
    Page 68: "(Boston: J. R. Osgood & Company, 18713" changed to
             "(Boston: J. R. Osgood & Company, 1871)"
    Page 70: "Refgrence" changed to "Reference"

  Punctuation has been corrected without note.

  Footnote anchors exist on page 64, but no footnotes exist in the
  original.

  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
  copyright on this publication was renewed.







*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POCAHONTAS-JOHN SMITH STORY ***


    

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