The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1870-01-07
From the i
THE STORY OF PocAHoNTAs.

THE STORY OF PocAHoNTAs.
1t is habit of the English people, one of
the many characteristic habits which make
them 50 beloved throughout the world, to
forget the very names of the races whom,
in the course of their destiny as God AL
mighty's plough share they plough up into
to TIL soil. Not one in a thousand of them
has the faintest recollection of the name of
any Irish sept, and it seems to them quite
ludicrous that the representative of an
Irish chieftain should call himself The
O'Donoghue Welsh pedigrees are satirized
by every cockney, and none but Anglo.
Indians have an idea whether any family
in India is Hindoo or Mohammedan-
though the names are quite as unlike as
those of Jews and Christians no
Red Indian, or Australian, or Tasmanian,
or Dyak name is so much as pronounceable.
sort of legendary halo has, however, pre-
served the word "Pocahontas" as the name
of a Red Indian lady who did something or
other which was somehow romantic, and
who became the founder of great Virgin
ia family.
The kind of idea atloat among almost all
educated men is, we believe, that there was
once Virginian princess belonging to ma
tive tribe, and named Pocahontas who
married an Englishman under most roman
tic circumstances, came over to England,
and died OF a broken heart for love of an
Englishman other than husband, whom
she believed dead but found to be alive
With the legend there has foated down
through two centuries an idea of the lady,
the gentle savage the "blessed Pocahon-
tas and great kings daughter of Virginia"
as Ben johnson does not call her, but saws
somebody else does-who was the embodi
ment in some way of the melancholy natu-
raj to her race, who was so beautiful and
SO refined, and from whom sprang one of
the few aristocratic families of America,
the Randolphs of Roanoke. Mr. E. Neill,
now United States Consul in Dublin, has
been at some pains to examine the ground
work of this legend, and has written a
monograph upon it, which is, we fear con.
elusive, and which will destroy in the
minds ofmost men the illusions which have
hitherto surrounded the name of the SIN
dian Princess"
She was just Il savage Of the ordinary
Indian kind, who ran naked in the woods
till she was twelve, lived at thirteen with
an English colonist, and was married at
fifteen by an ambitious settler named Rolfe,
for the good of the colony, and from a
secret hope of getting a good bargain out
OF her fathers lands. Pocahontas, other
wise Matoa was borne in $685. daughter
to an Indian chief in Virginia, named
Powhatan, the Sachem of tribe very
much dreaded by the early settlers but
she was, in our English sense, neither Prin-
cess nor Queen, and the effort to exalt her
rank was to all appearance part of we'll
planned fraud upon the British Govern
ment. The popular story that while still
u child Of twelve she saved an English set
tier, Captain Smith, by taking his head in
her arms just as his brains were about to
be beaten out, and that she died of love for
him, is an invention of the said Smith,
who had originally written very differ
erent report of the affair, given by Mr.
Ncill, in which he describes Powhatan as
extremely kind to him. The truth seems
to be that her father, Powhatan, chief
who cultivated the English, used to send
her in token Of friendliness into the ENGLISH
fort, where William Strachey, Secretary of
the Colony saw and described her in 1910.
Their younger woman goe not Swallowed
amongst their owne companie until they be
nigh eleven or twelve returns of the leafe
old Gor soc they accompt and bring about
the yeare, calling the fall of the leate taqui-
tock); nor are they much ashamed thereof,
and therefore would the before remember
ed Pocahuntas a wellfeatured but wonton
young girle, Powhatan's daughter, some
tymes resorting to our fort, of the age then
Of eleven or twelve years, get the boyes
forth with her into the market place, and
make them wheele, falling on with their
hands, turning up their heeles upwards,
whome she would follow and wheele
so herself naked as she was all the
fort over" The young lady who thus
anticipated our city Arabs was, we
should mention, under twelve; after which
time Indian etiquettes imposed some meas
ure of decorum, in the shape of leather
apron like those worn by blacksmiths, or at
that time other English handicraftsmen. 1t
is probable, from casual notice by the
same Strachy, that she lived for short
time us wife to 'private captain named
Kocoum," that is, volunteer captain
named Cookham," it being for the moment
part of Virginian policy to encourage
such unions in order to populate the colo
ny, but there is beyond this casual notice
no distinct proof of the fact.
In 1913, when Pocahontas was fifteen
years old, Powhatan had, for reasons un.
known, quarreled with the settlers, and held
certain of them prisoners, and Captain
Argall, bold and INSCRIPTIONS man, con-
sidered that the easiest way of recovering
thp men and Containing soma nuaptitv of