POCAHONTAS AND BADEN POWELL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 19 June 1912, Page 6

POCAHONTAS AND BADEN POWELL.

-There is nobody under thirty so at sight oi ct , f gv has such Stevenson; and it .f^f^:* stirring is Wh^Sei-Powl^in America was l\d up to explain to an excited crowd fhe entirely peaceful nature of the stouts Euovemeirj rffiw^Serwas^ot cfe ;Ur dSf grit Chief, to the extremes rf scalping and tomahawking. But f vitrhtenedT Americans should hare reUnred themselves by ft^f^]"^* merciful qualities oi Sir R«hf.rt * °wn American ancestress. According to a very circumstantial account m the Pai'lv Mail, the Chief Scout is descended from that distinguished heroine whose memory is perpetuated by La Belle Sauvage Yard in London, and by Thackeray's chapter m "The Virginians" about an unsuccessful play. Pocahontas, famous daughter ot the Powhattan chief, married John Kolte. almost equally famous early colonist vi Virginia. There were several children of the marriage, and one of their descendants, so this article says, is the Baden-Powell whose inherited scouting instincts have led him to form the most remarkable organisation of our time. "Although Sir R. Baden-Powell is ni complexion what would be described as 'sanely,' in his keen eyes and aquiline nose there is very much of a suggestion nf his Redskin blood." So Pocahontas, dramatically interposing between tbe tomahawk and its victim, is the prototype of action for Peace Scouts. Possibly she sei/.ed the Captain Smith occasion in order to perform her good deed for the day. At any rate the sequence of events might have an interest for students of heredity. Three centuries or so back, John Rolfe. who came of -in ancient Norfolk family, secured for his remote descendants a strain of gentie savage traits. And. in consequence to-day, through all English-speaking lands, we find the influence of Pocahontas marked, in mustard yellow, by the multitudinous small boys bent upon acqtiirimr. the semi-barbaric and wholly desirable virtues of the Scout.