Powhatan; A Metrical Romance, in Seven CantosSmith, Seba
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Powhatan; A Metrical Romance, in Seven Cantos
Smith, Seba
Indians of North America -- Poetry; Powhatan, approximately 1550-1618 -- Poetry; Virginia -- Poetry
Whatever account Japazaws may have given of the capture of Metoka, or
Pocahontas, history attributes the incident altogether to his own
treachery. She was carried away by Captain Argall, who was up the
Potomac with his vessel for the purpose of trading with the natives. The
following account is copied from Burk.
“By the means of Japazaws, king of Potomac, he discovered that
Pocahontas was concealed in the neighborhood, and he immediately
conceived the design of getting her into his power; concluding that the
possession of so valuable an hostage would operate as a check on the
hostile dispositions of the emperor, and might perhaps be made an
instrument of peace and reconciliation. The integrity of Japazaws was
not proof against the seducing appearance of a copper kettle, which was
fixed as the price of his treachery; and this amiable maiden, whose soul
nature formed on one of her kindest and noblest models, was betrayed by
her perfidious host into the hands of a people, whom her tender and
compassionate spirit had often snatched from famine and the sword.
“For the causes of this princess’s absence from her father, we are left
to bare conjecture. Her avowed partiality for the English had probably
drawn down on her the displeasure of this high-spirited monarch; and she
had retired to avoid the effects of his immediate resentment.”
[NOTE 27--CANTO SEVENTH, SECT. VIII.]
Sir John had led him by the hair
With pistol at his breast;
The rankling thought was a raging fire,
That never let him rest.
“The president, (Smith,) some time after this, being on a visit to
Pamunky, an attempt was made by Opechancanough to seize him; for which
purpose he beset the place, where they had met to trade, with seven
hundred Indians, well-armed, of his own tribe. But Smith, seizing him by
the hair, led him trembling in the midst of his people, who immediately
laid down their arms.”--_Burk’s Virginia._
[NOTE 28--CANTO SEVENTH, SECT. X.]
When morning came, the sun look’d down
Where many a cottage stood,
But he only saw black smouldering heaps,
And fields that smoked with blood.
The great massacre of the Virginia colony by the Indians in 1622, is
thus described by Burk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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