The Pocahontas-John Smith StoryEdmunds, Pocahontas Wight
History
The Pocahontas-John Smith Story
Edmunds, Pocahontas Wight
Pocahontas, -1617; Smith, John, 1580-1631
When Newport returned he brought back an idea of King James, of which
Smith thought little. If they softened Powhatan up with civilized
luxuries, they could handle him more easily. Therefore he should be
crowned at Jamestown. Grudgingly, Smith went to see the hardy old
monarch about it. He found him not "at home." Like a haughty host,
perhaps, thought Smith. But when he saw what an elaborate entertainment
Pocahontas had gotten up for him, he decided that no slight was
intended.
She, a child raised in a heathen sensual court, arranged a show for him
and his four men at which Smith was astonished. Powhatan's warriors, she
knew, would have been enchanted by the dance number put on by older
girls to amuse the strangers. Pocahontas had heard her people wonder how
it was that the English came without women, stayed a long time and yet
got on without them. Their pale women must have been too timid to come
along, and they must be lonesome and bored without feminine allure
around. Thirty girls wearing nothing but green leafy aprons pranced out
of the woods, their bodies painted in various colors. Some wore antler's
horns on their heads, and all were brandishing crude weapons that were
less frightening than their wild contortions and fiendish yells. At
first the men grabbed their own weapons in alert defense. The Englishmen
were embarrassed by the brazen savage scene, and more so when the
dancers ran to the woods to change to regular garb, for they now wound
their arms about blushing necks, murmuring torridly "Lovest thou me?
Lovest thou me?" "These nymphs the more tormented him than ever with
crowding and pressing, hanging upon him, most tediously crying 'love you
me,'" it was reported.
Pocahontas herself would have liked to ask John Smith that, for she knew
that the welling adoration she had for him was growing faster than
herself, and was something she would not put aside with childish
fancies. She was sorry he was not pleased with today's entertainment,
even when great platters of food were set before his men, and they were
led to their rest by torches. He had business on his mind and looked
relieved when Powhatan showed up in the morning.
"Your highness, our king across the seas lives in such grandeur as you
can scarcely imagine. Newport tells me he was so troubled to find out
that you did not have the sort of luxuries that befit a great werowance
like yourself, that he sent back fine gifts for you."
"What then should a king have that I have not?"
"He wears a crown. A king is quite a fellow."
"Indeed. You speak the truth there. That is quite so."
"Come down to Jamestown and be crowned. We will be friends, and fight
our common enemies the Monacans."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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