The Land We Live In: The Story of Our CountryMann, Henry
History
The Land We Live In: The Story of Our Country
Mann, Henry
United States -- History
Pocahontas continued to be a friend to the white man. Learning, two years
later, of an Indian plot to exterminate the intruders, she sped
stealthily from her father's home to the English settlement, warned
Captain Smith of the impending peril, and was back in Powhatan's cabin
before morning. The English were not ungrateful for her goodness, even
although it appears she was unable to prevent her father from giving
expression at times to his hatred of the colonists. On one occasion, when
the settlers were suffering from scarcity of food, and Powhatan would not
permit his people to carry corn to Jamestown, an Englishman named Samuel
Argall went on a foraging expedition near the home of Powhatan, and
enticed Pocahontas on board his vessel. He held the young woman as a
prisoner, and offered to release her for a large ransom in corn. Powhatan
refused to have anything to do with Argall, but sent word to Jamestown
saying that if his daughter should be returned to him he would treat the
English as friends. Pocahontas was detained at Jamestown for several
months, being treated with respect, and having the free run of the
colony. She appears to have been a romping, good-natured young woman,
comely for an Indian, passing her time as happily as possible, without
moping for her kinspeople, and not at all the typical heroine of song and
story. It was wicked to detain her, but she seemed to enjoy her captivity
and frolicked about the place in a way that must have shocked those who
regarded her as of royal birth. Evidently Pocahontas liked the English
from the first, and preferred their company at Jamestown to her childhood
home in the Virginia forests. A young Englishman, named John Rolfe, fell
in love with her. Wives from England were scarce, and this fact may have
made Pocahontas more attractive in his eyes. When some one objected that
she was a pagan--"Is it not my duty," he replied, "to lead the blind to
the light?" Pocahontas learned to love Rolfe in return, and love made
easy her path to conversion to Christianity. She was baptized by the name
of Rebecca, and was the first Christian convert in Virginia. Powhatan
consented to his daughter's marriage--he had probably concluded by this
that she was bound to be English anyhow--and the ceremony was performed
in the chapel at Jamestown, on a delightful spring day in April, 1613.
Pocahontas, we are told, was dressed in a simple tunic of white muslin
from the looms of Dacca. Her arms were bare even to her shoulders, and
hanging loosely to her feet was a robe of rich stuff presented by the
Governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and fancifully embroidered by Pocahontas and
her maidens. A gaudy fillet encircled her head, and held the plumage of
birds and a veil of gauze, while her wrists and ankles were adorned with
the simple jewelry of the native workshops. When the ceremony was ended,
the eucharist was administered, with bread from the wheat fields around
Jamestown, and wine from the grapes of the adjacent woodland. Her
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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