From the Indian standpoint, there was nothing especially unusual about
this procedure, for any member of the tribe was privileged to claim a
captive, if he wished. A century before, Ortiz, a member of De Soto's
expedition, had been captured by the Indians and saved in precisely the
same way, and many instances of the kind occurred in the years which
followed. But to the captive, it partook of the very essence of
romance; he had only the dimmest idea of what was really happening, and
his account of it, written many years later, was of the most sentimental
kind. Many doubts have been cast on the story, and historians seem
hopelessly divided about it, as they are about many other incidents of
Smith's life. Certain it is, however, that Pocahontas afterwards
befriended the colony on more than one occasion; and was finally
converted, married to a planter named John Rolfe, and taken to England,
where, among the artificialities of court life, she soon sickened and
died.
On the very day that Smith reached Jamestown with his Indian escort, the
supply ship sent out by Captain Newport also arrived, bringing 120 new
colonists. Of the original 105, only thirty-eight were left alive. But
Smith's enemies were yet in the ascendancy, and he spent the summer of
1608 in exploration, leaving the colony to its own devices. When he
returned to it in September, he found it reduced and disheartened. His
brave and cheery presence acted as a tonic, and at last the colonists,
appreciating him at his true value, elected him president. He put new
life into everyone, and when, soon afterwards, Newport arrived again
from England with fresh supplies, he found the colony in fairly good
shape.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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