Pocahontas, -1617; Powhatan Indians -- Biography; Powhatan women -- Biography
The reply of the noble old savage to this infamous demand ought to have
brought a blush to the cheeks of those who made it. He said he loved his
daughter as dearly as his life; he had many children, but he delighted
in none so much as in her; he could not live if he did not see her
often, as he would not if she were living with the whites, and he
was determined not to put himself in their hands. He desired no other
assurance of friendship than his brother had given him, who had already
one of his daughters as a pledge, which was sufficient while she lived;
“when she dieth he shall have another child of mine.” And then he broke
forth in pathetic eloquence: “I hold it not a brotherly part of your
King, to desire to bereave me of two of my children at once; further
give him to understand, that if he had no pledge at all, he should not
need to distrust any injury from me, or any under my subjection; there
have been too many of his and my men killed, and by my occasion there
shall never be more; I which have power to perform it have said it; no
not though I should have just occasion offered, for I am now old and
would gladly end my days in peace; so as if the English offer me any
injury, my country is large enough, I will remove myself farther from
you.”
The old man hospitably entertained his guests for a day or two, loaded
them with presents, among which were two dressed buckskins, white as
snow, for his son and daughter, and, requesting some articles sent him
in return, bade them farewell with this message to Governor Dale: “I
hope this will give him good satisfaction, if it do not I will go three
days' journey farther from him, and never see Englishmen more.” It
speaks well for the temperate habits of this savage that after he had
feasted his guests, “he caused to be fetched a great glass of sack, some
three quarts or better, which Captain Newport had given him six or seven
years since, carefully preserved by him, not much above a pint in all
this time spent, and gave each of us in a great oyster shell some three
spoonfuls.”
We trust that Sir Thomas Dale gave a faithful account of all this to his
wife in England.
Sir Thomas Gates left Virginia in the spring of 1614 and never returned.
After his departure scarcity and severity developed a mutiny, and six
of the settlers were executed. Rolfe was planting tobacco (he has the
credit of being the first white planter of it), and his wife was getting
an inside view of Christian civilization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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