THE PRINCESSPOCAHONTAS

BY

VIRGINIA WATSON

Author of "WITH CORTES THE CONQUEROR"

WITH DRAWINGS AND DECORATIONS BYGEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS

THE HAMPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY

NEW YORK

THE WHITE FIGURE MOVED RAPIDLY

INTRODUCTION

To most of us who have read of the early history of Virginia only in ourschool histories, Pocahontas is merely a figure in one dramaticscene—her rescue of John Smith. We see her in one mental picture only,kneeling beside the prostrate Englishman, her uplifted hands warding offthe descending tomahawk.

By chance I began to read more about the settlement of the English atJamestown and Pocahontas' connection with it, and the more I read themore interesting and real she grew to me. The old chronicles gave me thefacts, and guided by these, my imagination began to follow the Indianmaiden as she went about the forests or through the villages of thePowhatans.

We are growing up in this new country of ours. And just as when childrenget older they begin to feel curious about the childhood of their ownparents, so we have gained a new curiosity about the early history ofour country. The earlier histories and stories dealing with the Indiansand the wars between them and the colonists made the red man a devilincarnate, with no redeeming virtue but that of courage. Now, however,there is a new spirit of understanding. We are finding out how often itwas the Indian who was wronged and the white man who wronged him. Manyrecords there are of treaties faithfully kept by the Indians andfaithlessly broken by the colonists. Virginia was the first permanentEnglish settlement on this continent, and if not the most important,at least equally as important to our future development as that of NewEngland. From how small a seed, sown on that island of Jamestown in1607, has sprung the mighty State, that herself has scattered seeds ofother states and famous men and women to multiply and enrich America.And amid what dangers did this seed take root! But for one girl'said—as far as man may judge—it would have been uprooted and destroyed.

In truth, when I look over the whole world history, I can find no otherchild of thirteen, boy or girl, who wielded such a far-reachinginfluence over the future of a nation. But for the protection and aidwhich Pocahontas coaxed from Powhatan for her English friends atJamestown, the Colony would have perished from starvation or by thearrows of the hostile Indians. And the importance of this Colony to thefuture United States was so great that we owe to Pocahontas somewhat thesame gratitude, though in a lesser degree, that France owes to her Joanof Arc.

Pocahontas's greatest service to the colonists lay not in the saving ofCaptain Smith's life, but in her continued succour to the starvingsettlement. Indeed, there are historians who have claimed that the storyof her rescue of Smith is an invention without foundation. But inopposition to this view let me quote from "The American Nation: AHistory." Lyon Gardiner Tyler, author of the volume "England in America"says: