Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1899-06-05
MYTH OF POCAHONTAS.
THE BEAUTIFUL LEGEND SHATTERED
BY GRIM IcoNOcLASTS.


Shows to Be the Facts in the Case.
The iconoclast is never a popular
person, least of all when his irreverent
hammer assails the cherished heroines
of history. We are willing to give up,
if we must, King Canute and William
Tell, the apple of Newton and the
cherry tree of Washington, the hump
of Richard III. and the cat of Whit
tington, but when the ruthless hand
of modern investigation strikes at
Lucretio and Godiva, Jeanne dare
and Pocahontas, we are ready to cry,
"Vandal, stay thy inpious hand"
Around the story of Pocahontas and
her rescue of Captain John Smith the
charm of poetry and romance has ever
fingered. Every child is familiar with
it. In his recent speech in the Senate,
presenting to the United States an oil
portrait OF the Indian princess, Sena-
tor Daniel, of Virginia, thus described
the incident which young America has
always loved to believe as gospel his
tory:
Wrapped in robe of coon skins
sat the tall, gaunt, sour old Indian
Emperor, and Smith, who had slain
two of his Indian assailants in the
hight on the Chickahominy, was con-
demned to die. Two stones were
brought forth before Tuwhatan and
Smith was dragged to til \, and clubs
were raised to beat out his brains,
when, 10, an Indian girl Of twelve or
thirteen years of age ru ned upon the
scene, caught his head in her arms
and laid her own upon Lis to save him
from death. The sour old King re-
Tented and Smith was saved, for the
intercessor was Powhatan's favorite
daughter, Pocahontas.
But, alas for faith in history and in
human nature, and alas for some of
the first families of Virginia, modern
investigators have pronounced the in
cident myth, and have even furnished
the fair fame of the lovely Pocahontas,
declares the New York Mail and Ex-
press. One historian assures us that
the coppercolored lady was mere
camp follower of the whites, and Pro-
fessor Cooke in his "History CT Vir.
ginia," gives an alleged interview be.
tween Smith and Pocahontas, then
Mrs. John Rolfe, in London, which
would indicate that she had the
strongest possible motive for rescuing
the adventurous gallant from the club
of her father, had his head ever been
in any danger.
Unfortunately for the credibility of
the clubbing story, it rests upon the
unsupported testimony of Captain
Smith, who was notorious braggart
and liar, or, as historian Fuller more
euphemistically puts it, in the earliest
known biography of Smith, "It
soundeth much to the diminution of
his deeds that he alone is the herald
to publish and proclaim them"
1t was on the 5th of January, 1908,
that Smith left jamestown for Wero-
w6wocomoca, the Indian village, to
visit King Powhatar in his wigwam.
Three days later he returned, escorted
by four Indians. OF what occurred
in the meantime there was no other
white witness than Smith himself, and
he tells two stories about it. In his
''True Relation" written soon after
his visit to Powhatan and published
in London in June, 1908, there is no
mention whatever of the romantic Po-
cahontas incident. On the contrary,
he says ''The Powhatan treated me
most courteously, and sent me back
to jamestown" Sixteen years later,
while in London, where Pocahontas was
being feted as the daughter of king,
Smith published his General His
torie." in which he for the first time
recalls to his own mind the alleged
fact that Powhatan's courtesy had
been administered with a club and
that the tawny lady ''hazarded the
beating out of her own brains to save
mine"
1t is significant fact that Fan
croft, most accurate and conscien-
tious of historians, while he mentions
the rescue incident, with qualifying
annexation in the first edition of his
history, entirely omits it in the last.
Deane, in note to his edition of
Smiths works, attributes the legend
to Smiths "naturai propensity for
uS Woll us W IL ueSlr6
to feed the interest felt in Pocahontas,
then visiting in England Mr.. Z. d.
Neill, in his English Colonization in
America" rejects the clubbing Incl
dent entirelys follows Strachey's
statement of marriage of Pocahon.
tas earlier than her union with Rolfe,
and seriously questions other charac.
ters than that c9 the notorious gallant,
Captain Smith. Charles Dudley
Warner, in his "Study of the Life and
Writings of John Smith," treats the
rescue humorously and with obvious
skepticism. Henry Adams rejects it
entirely, as does Henry Cabot Lodge
IN his English Colonies in America"
Yet, as beautiful idealization, the
portrait presented by Senator Daniel
in the name of Mr.. Henry S. Well
come, an American citizen residing in
London, was properly accepted by
the Government, and it will worthily
adorn the new Library of Congress.
That noble structure is full of aIle-
gorical representations, and among