The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1869-12-30
TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS.
From the Spectator

Ii is a habit of the English people, one of
the many characteristic habits which have
made them so beloved throughout the world,
to forget the very names of the races whom,
in the course OF their destiny as God AL
nights ploughshare, they plough into the
soil. Not one in ten thousand Of them has
the faintest recollection of the name of any
Irish sept, and it seems to them quite ludi-
crouS that the representa- of an Irish chief
tain should call himself The O'Donoghue
Welsh pedigrees are satirized by every cock
ney, and none but Anglo-Indians have an
idea whether any family in India is IIindoo
o. though the names are
quite AS unlike rs those of the Jews and
Christians-which no Red Indian, or Austria
lian on Tasmanian. or Dyak name is so much
rs pronouncable. A sort Of legandery halo
has, however preserved the word ''Pocahan-
tas' rs the name of a Red Indian lady who
did something or other which was somehow
romantic, and who became the founder of a
great Nirginian family The kind of idea
atioat among almost all educated men is, we
believe, that there was once a Virginian
princess belonging to a native tribe, and
named Pocahontas, who married an English
man under most romantic circumstances,
came over to England, and died of broken
heart for love of an Englishman other than her
husband, whom she believed dead, but found
10 be alive. With the legend there has float
cd down through two centuries an idea of
The lady, the gentle savage-the ''blessed
Pocahontas, and great kings daughter of
Nirgiania," as Ben Johnson does not call her
but says somebody else does-who was the
embodiment in some way Of the melancholy
natural to her race, who was so beautiful
and SO refined, and from whom sprang one of
the few aristocratic families of America the
R9ntDInhS a. nEn Mr. oil
United States Consul in Dublin has been at
some pains to examine the ground work OF
tins legend, and has written Il ongraph up
ON 1t, which Is, we fear, conclusive, and which
will destroy in he minds of most men the
illusions which have hitherto surrounded the
name Of the Indian Princess" She was
Just savage of the ordinary Indian kind,
who ran naked in the woods till she was
twelve, lived at thirteen with an English col
onist, and was married at fifteen by an am
bilious settler named Rolfe, for the good OF
the colony, and from a secret hope of get
ting good bargain out of her fathers
lands.
Pocahontas, otherwise Matoa, was born in
1898, daughter of an Indian chief in Virginia
named Powhatan, the sachem of a tribe very
much dreaded by the early settlers but she
was in our English sense, neither princess
nor queen, and the efforts to eXalt her rank
was, 10 all appearance, part OF a Well-planned
fraud upon the British Government The
popular story that while still q child oftweve
She saved an English settler, Captain Smith,
by taking his head in her arms Just as his
brains We're to be beaten out and that she
died tor him, is an invention of the said
Smith, who had originally written very diff
erent report OF the affair, given by Mr.. Neil,
IN which he describes Powhatan as extreme
ly kind to him. The truth seems to be that
her father, POwhatan u chief who cultivated
the English used to send her in token of
triendliness into the English fort, where
William Stachey, Secretary OF the Colony,
saw and described her in 1910: Their Young
CT women gpe not Swallowed amongst their
owne comp;nlie until they be nigh eleven OF
twelve returnes of the leate old (for soc they
accompt and bring abont the yeare, calling
the fall OF the leate taquitock) nor are they
much ashamed thereof; and therefore would
the before remember Pocahuntas, a we'll fea-
tured but wanton young girle, Powhatan's
daughter, SOMETIMES resorting to the our fort
of the age then Of eleven or twelve wears,
get the boys forth with her into the market
place, and make them wheele, falling on with
their hands, turning up their heels upwards,
whom she would follow and wheele So her
shlf, naked as she was, all the fort over"
The young lady who thus anticipated our
II, after which time Indian etiquette i'm
posed some measures of decorum, in the
hape of a leather apron like those worn by
slacksmiths, or at that time other English
handicraftmen.
1t is probable, from n casual notice bv the
same Mr.. Strachey, that she lived for a short
time as wife to a 'private captain named
kOcoum," that is a ''volunteer captain named
Cookham," it being for moment a part of
Firginian policy to encourage such unions in
order to populate the colony but there is be-
yond this casual notice, no distinct proof of
the fact. In 1913, when Pocahontas was Is
years old, Powhatan had, for reasons I'M
known, quarreled with the settlers, and held
certain of them prisoners, and a Captain Ar
gall, a bold and INSCRIPTIONS man, consid-
cred that the easiest way OF recovering the
men, and containing some quantity of corne
for the colony's reliete,'' would be to sieze
Pocahontas as a hostage, and he according
ly coerced another chief, Patawomek (Poto-
macO into betraying her into his hands,
which done, he sent a messenger to Powhat-
an demanding the prisoners and a great
quantity of corne' Powhatan at once Weld
ed, sent in the prisoners, broad axe, a long
wht-saw-both Of them stolen-and lone
canow of corne," and Captain Argall, it is
tear, congratulated himself on very bold
and successful warlike mauoeuvre The
betrayal was effected by enticing her on
board to see the ship, and brbing her guardi-
an, Potomak, with "a small copper kettle
and other less valuable toies." so highly by
him esteemed that, doubtless, he would have
betrayed his own father for them, particu-
lurly to Captain Argall, whom he esteemed
his ''brother' after the Indian fashion, Po-
cahontas, however, was not restored, but re-
tanned by Sir Thomas Dale, the governor of
10 IF ct:1 hoft
conditions, which he was explaining to Pow
hatan, when it was suggested to him by Mr.
John Rolfe-a person apparently of some