Historic Girlhoods, Part OneHolland, Rupert Sargent
History
Historic Girlhoods, Part One
Holland, Rupert Sargent
Women -- Biography -- Juvenile literature
Po-ca-hun-tas slipped away into the forest as silently as she had come,
and threaded her way safely home to her own "long house." No one knew
she had been out of bed. When the Algonquin braves, in war paint,
reached the bank of the York River they found only the embers of a
camp-fire to show that the white men had waited for them there.
[Illustration: POCAHONTAS
_From the only authentic portrait_]
Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown, but he found many of his
own people discontented, and soon afterward, tired out by the continual
difficulties that beset him in Virginia, he gave up his position there
and sailed back to England. Po-ca-hun-tas heard the news and decided
that she had better keep away from Jamestown now that the settlers were
hostile to her father and her great protector was gone. Troubles were
increasing between the Indians and the white men, and neither trusted
the others any more.
When she was sixteen Po-ca-hun-tas was visiting friends in another
village on the James when she was suddenly made prisoner by a man named
Captain Argall, a trader, who decided to hold the Indian girl as
hostage for the friendship of Pow-ha-tan. He took her to Jamestown, and
there Po-ca-hun-tas was given a certain amount of liberty and met again
some of the boys and girls she had played with before. They all liked
her, and although she missed her free life in the woods she found so
much that was new and strange to interest her that she was not sorry to
stay for a time in Jamestown. Here she soon met a young Englishman
named John Rolfe, who was much attracted by her, and who at length
asked her to marry him. She consented, and a short time after their
marriage she sailed with him to visit his home across seas in England.
The people of London had seen few Indians and were very curious to
learn more about them. They were charmed with Mistress John Rolfe, or
the Princess Po-ca-hon-tas of Pow-ha-tan, as they liked to call her.
Captain John Smith met her again and told his friends how she had saved
his life that night on the York River. The story spread, and the
Princess Po-ca-hon-tas found herself a heroine in England. But she bore
her honors very modestly, and was much happier alone with her devoted
husband than when she was being stared at by crowds of strange people.
She did not live to go back to Virginia or see her own tribesmen again,
but died in England when she was only twenty-two.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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