Indian Princess

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6626, 12 August 1931, Page 10

Indian Princess

Who: POCAHONTAS. Where: The United States. When: Sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.

Why famous: An Indian princess, heroine of a thrilling story which every American school child learns as one of his first history lessons. She was the daughter of Powhantau, a powerful Indian chief in Virginia, and sue seems to have felt only tho warmest friendship for the English colonists at Jamestown. What is this legend so keenly enjoyed by youthful students of American History? umiply this: that Capt. John Smith, having wandered up the Chicahomiuy River to shoot wild fowl, was taken prisoner by the Indians and led before Powhatan. Tho clnct was sitting before his lire in his ‘long' or communal house, dressed in his robe of raccoon skins, while tho young squaws stood by, faces and bare shoulders painted a bright red, necks hung with chains of white shells. The great question is. What exactly happened next ?

In a letter which Captain Smith sent to a friend in London, he gave the distinct impression that Powhatan treated him kindly enough, dismissed him and sped him on his way back ' o Jamestown, while, in his “General History of Virginia,” there is related a fuller and altogether different version. According to this second account, Smith was in dire peril when the young and impetuous princess, Pocahontos, rushed forward to shield him and, by that action, saved his life. Now, while it is known that Smith was not above the occasional embroidering of his Virginian memories, yet many historians nokl that the Pocahontos story is founded on fact. John Pisko defends it vehemently and finds it consistent with Indian practice; and ho offers plausible reasons why Smith withheld the full account in that first letter which, unknown to him, was published in pamphlet form. At any rate, one would rather credit it than dwell upon the pitiful end of Pocahontas’ career. The day came when sue was married to one of the colonists whose cause she bad befriended, converted to the Christian faith and taken aver the ocean to London. There her empty triumph lasted only a short time. \Vbat could it matter to the gallant little savage that she was known to society as the Lady Rebecca and accorded a respect due the daughter of a monarch?