Evening star., 1933-05-21
BY EMILY C.. DAVIS.

Cant John Smith just now. Like
so~ne other public heroes who have been put
through the debunking process, Capt. Jchn
Smith is shown to be no perfect hero but
Aesh-and- blood person, who had Shortcomings
and foibles and still won his pedestal in the
ball of fame.
The captain is accused Of what might be
called dramatizing himself, and embroidering
his adventures.
First. a professor in California takes fling
ut the old school book classic about Pocahontas.
He doubts that the Indian girl ever threw her.
self over John Smiths oooy 70 save MN y u
the headsman's club.
II was just the captains way Of trimming ,
his adventures with heart interest that thrust
the Indian child so very dramatically into the
middle of the rescue story.
On the heels of this comes . report to the
scentific Monthly from DR.. Elsie Murray, psy-
chologist of Cornell University. Naming the
captain the original Trader Horn Of America,
Dr. Murray gives reasons she has unearthed for
believing Capt John Smith was really the
romancer who launched the noble savage
myth.
You have read about the noble savage craze
which swept Europe IN the eighteenth century.
Civilized French and English folk, cooped up
In their stuffy houses, sighed for the carefree
Me of sayages in the forests. Philosophers
notably Jean Racques Rousseau-wrote about
lights Of the simple life.
rVERYWHERE people talked equality and
Z freedom of living. That noble savage ideal
wns one spark that helped light the fires of the
French Revolution.
DR. Murray writes: "The naive faith in the
nakural man which ran Ike wildfre through
the eighteenth century has bafied the curious
o. more than one generation. The strange OBJ
session that, interrupted BY kings, clothes.
pariiaments printing o. ceramics, man was or
would be a wholly admirable creature must
somewhere have had nucleus Of fact"
That nucleus Of fact she has traced to the
words of Capt. John Smith.
It WAS the custom even In John Smiths day
for European visitors to America to write their
impressions Columbus began 1t. Smith car
ried -- --
Columbus had briefly praised some of the
New World natives he met. But Smith set
forth a full-length pen portrait Of the noble red
mon with their fine, strong bodies and strange
garments and their general superiority.
It was by chance that DR.. Murray got her
solution of the noble savage mystery. She was
thumbing the stained and tattered pages of
caf-bound copy of Smiths True Travels"
when, she says "a sudden light broke in on the
enigma
The captains literary style she found dis
oouragingly hard reading. He piled up phrases
In a fashion reminding her Of that famous
word jungle, Ulysses" BY James Joyce. But
struggl ling through the wordy welter she dis
covered one clear fact: In this little old travel
book of 1909 is buried the first really alluring
picture of the American redskin, living his
happy and enviable life.
The Indians whom Smith saw through bright
rose-colored glasses were the Sasquesahanoughs.
a simpler spelling would be Susquehannock
They lived along the Susquehanna River. north
Of the land where Smith met Chief Powhatan
and his daughter Pocahontas. All that region
was Virginia then
To the captains eye, the Susquehannocks
were very different from PowhatanS tribe, and
decidedly superior. So. with his romantic pen.
3lfi GNJ