Pocahontas, -1617; Powhatan Indians -- Biography; Powhatan women -- Biography
“Concerning-the latter [Virginia], Capt. John Smith, partly by word
of mouth, partly by his mappe thereof in print, and more fully by a
Manuscript which he courteously communicated to mee, hath acquainted
me with that whereof himselfe with great perill and paine, had been
the discoverer.” Strachey in his “Travaile” alludes to it, and pays a
tribute to Smith in the following: “Their severall habitations are more
plainly described by the annexed mappe, set forth by Capt. Smith, of
whose paines taken herein I leave to the censure of the reader to judge.
Sure I am there will not return from thence in hast, any one who hath
been more industrious, or who hath had (Capt. Geo. Percie excepted)
greater experience amongst them, however misconstruction may traduce
here at home, where is not easily seen the mixed sufferances, both of
body and mynd, which is there daylie, and with no few hazards and hearty
griefes undergon.”
There are two copies of the Strachey manuscript. The one used by the
Hakluyt Society is dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, with the title of
“Lord High Chancellor,” and Bacon had not that title conferred on him
till after 1618. But the copy among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford
is dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley, with the title of “Purveyor to His
Majestie's Navie Royall”; and as Sir Allen was made “Lieutenant of
the Tower” in 1616, it is believed that the manuscript must have been
written before that date, since the author would not have omitted the
more important of the two titles in his dedication.
Strachey's prefatory letter to the Council, prefixed to his “Laws”
(1612), is dated “From my lodging in the Black Friars. At your best
pleasures, either to return unto the colony, or pray for the success of
it heere.” In his letter he speaks of his experience in the Bermudas and
Virginia: “The full storie of both in due time [I] shall consecrate unto
your view.... Howbit since many impediments, as yet must detaine such
my observations in the shadow of darknesse, untill I shall be able to
deliver them perfect unto your judgments,” etc.
This is not, as has been assumed, a statement that the observations were
not written then, only that they were not “perfect”; in fact, they
were detained in the “shadow of darknesse” till the year 1849. Our
own inference is, from all the circumstances, that Strachey began his
manuscript in Virginia or shortly after his return, and added to it and
corrected it from time to time up to 1616.
We are now in a position to consider Strachey's allusions to Pocahontas.
The first occurs in his description of the apparel of Indian women:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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