Pocahontas, -1617; Powhatan Indians -- Biography; Powhatan women -- Biography
The next allusion to her is in the fourth chapter of the narratives
which are appended to the “Map of Virginia,” etc. This was sent home by
Smith, with a description of Virginia, in the late autumn of 1608. It
was published at Oxford in 1612, from two to three years after Smith's
return to England. The appendix contains the narratives of several of
Smith's companions in Virginia, edited by Dr. Symonds and overlooked
by Smith. In one of these is a brief reference to the above-quoted
incident.
This Oxford tract, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, contains no
reference to the saving of Smith's life by Pocahontas from the clubs of
Powhatan.
The next published mention of Pocahontas, in point of time, is in
Chapter X. and the last of the appendix to the “Map of Virginia,” and is
Smith's denial, already quoted, of his intention to marry Pocahontas.
In this passage he speaks of her as “at most not past 13 or 14 years of
age.” If she was thirteen or fourteen in 1609, when Smith left Virginia,
she must have been more than ten when he wrote his “True Relation,”
composed in the winter of 1608, which in all probability was carried to
England by Captain Nelson, who left Jamestown June 2d.
The next contemporary authority to be consulted in regard to Pocahontas
is William Strachey, who, as we have seen, went with the expedition of
Gates and Somers, was shipwrecked on the Bermudas, and reached Jamestown
May 23 or 24, 1610, and was made Secretary and Recorder of the colony
under Lord Delaware. Of the origin and life of Strachey, who was a
person of importance in Virginia, little is known. The better impression
is that he was the William Strachey of Saffron Walden, who was married
in 1588 and was living in 1620, and that it was his grandson of the same
name who was subsequently connected with the Virginia colony. He was,
judged by his writings, a man of considerable education, a good deal of
a pedant, and shared the credulity and fondness for embellishment of the
writers of his time. His connection with Lord Delaware, and his part
in framing the code of laws in Virginia, which may be inferred from
the fact that he first published them, show that he was a trusted and
capable man.
William Strachey left behind him a manuscript entitled “The Historie of
Travaile into Virginia Britanica, &c., gathered and observed as well by
those who went first thither, as collected by William Strachey, gent.,
three years thither, employed as Secretaire of State.” How long he
remained in Virginia is uncertain, but it could not have been “three
years,” though he may have been continued Secretary for that period, for
he was in London in 1612, in which year he published there the laws of
Virginia which had been established by Sir Thomas Gates May 24, 1610,
approved by Lord Delaware June 10, 1610, and enlarged by Sir Thomas Dale
June 22, 1611.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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