There seems to be no doubt but that the first European to meet the Indians who resided in what is now Pennsylvania was Captain John Smith.
This adventurer explored the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries in 1608, and made a map of his observations, which with the one he made at a later date, of his explorations along the New England coast, were for many years recognized as the authority for this hemisphere.
The Dutch who first came to these shores formed an acquaintance with the Indians in 1615, and the Swedes first met them in 1638.
It seems, therefore, that a story about this intrepid navigator, statesman, soldier, and writer is timely.
Captain John Smith, founder of the Virginia Colony, was an English soldier, a native of Willoughby, in Lincolnshire, where he was born January, 1579; he died in London, June 21, 1631.
From early youth he was a soldier, enlisting in 1596, in the French Army to fight against Spain, but after the peace of 1598, he transferred his services to the insurgents in the Netherlands, and there remained until about 1600.
Returning home he almost immediately started on a career of marvelous adventure.
He sailed from France to Italy, where he was thrown overboard because it was learned he was a Protestant, but he was rescued by a pirate and landed on Italian soil.
He traveled through Italy and Dalmatia to Styria and fought with the Austrian Army against the Turks, distinguished himself in Hungary and Transylvania, for which service he was ennobled and pensioned.
Taken prisoner by the Turks, Smith was sent a slave to Constantinople, where he won the affections of his young mistress. He was sent by her to her brother in the Crimea, with a letter avowing her attachment. The indignant Turk cruelly maltreated Smith, when the latter one day slew his taskmaster, put on the Ottoman’s clothes, mounted a horse and escaped to a Russian port.