The rescue by Pocahontas.
This was on the 5th of January, 1608, and on the 8th Smith returned to Jamestown, escorted by four Indians. What had happened to him in the interval? In his own writings we have two different accounts. In his tract published under the title, "A True Relation,"—which was merely a letter written by him in or about June, 1608, to a "worshipful friend" in London and there published, apparently without his knowledge, in August,—Smith simply says that The Powhatan treated him very courteously and sent him back to Jamestown. But in the "General History of Virginia," a far more elaborate and circumstantial narrative, published in London in 1624, written partly by Smith himself and partly by others of the colony, we get a much fuller story. We are told that after he had been introduced to The Powhatan's long wigwam, as above described, the Indians debated together and presently two big stones were placed before the chief, and Smith was dragged thither and his head laid upon them; but even while warriors were standing, with clubs in hand, to beat his brains out, the chief's young daughter Pocahontas rushed up and embraced him and laid her head upon his to shield him, whereupon her father spared his life.
Recent attempt to discredit the story.
For two centuries and a half the later and fuller version of this story was universally accepted while the earlier and briefer was ignored. Every schoolboy was taught the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, and for most people I dare say that incident is the only one in the captain's eventful career that is remembered. But in recent times the discrepancy between the earlier and later accounts has attracted attention, and the conclusion has been hastily reached that in the more romantic version Smith is simply a liar. It is first assumed that if the Pocahontas incident had really occurred, we should be sure to find it in Smith's own narrative written within a year after its occurrence; and then it is assumed that in later years, when Pocahontas visited London and was lionized as a princess, Smith invented the story in order to magnify his own importance by thus linking his name with hers. By such specious logic is the braggadocio theory of Smith's career supported, and underneath the whole of it lies the tacit assumption that the Pocahontas incident is an extraordinary one, something that in an Indian community or anywhere would not have been likely to happen.
As this view of the case has been set forth by writers of high repute for scholarship, it has been generally accepted upon their authority; in many quarters it has become the fashionable view. Yet its utter flimsiness can be exhibited, I think, in very few words.
Percy's pamphlet, 1625.
The first occasion on which Smith mentions his rescue by Pocahontas was the occasion of her arrival in London, in 1616, as the wife of John Rolfe. In an eloquent letter to King James's queen, Anne of Denmark, he bespeaks the royal favour for the strange visitor from Virginia and extols her good qualities and the kindness she had shown to the colony. In the course of the letter he says "she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine." There were then several persons in London, besides Pocahontas herself, who could have challenged this statement if it had been false, but we do not find that anybody did so.[55] In 1624, when Smith published his "General History," with its minutely circumstantial account of the affair, why do we not find, even on the part of his enemies, any intimation of the falsity of the story? Within a year George Percy wrote a pamphlet[56] for the express purpose of picking the "General History" to pieces and discrediting it in the eyes of the public; he was one of the original company at Jamestown. If Smith had not told his comrades of the Pocahontas incident as soon as he had escaped from The Powhatan's clutches, if he had kept silent on the subject for years, Percy could not have failed to know the fact and would certainly have used it as a weapon. There were others who could have done the same, and their silence furnishes a very strong presumption of the truth of the story.
The printed text of the "True Relation" is incomplete.
Why then did Smith refrain from mentioning it in the letter to a friend in England, written in 1608, while the incidents of his captivity were fresh in his mind? Well, we do not know that he did refrain from mentioning it, for we do know that the letter, as published in August, 1608, had been tampered with. Smith was in Virginia, and the editor in London expressly states in his Preface that he has omitted a portion of the manuscript: "somewhat more was by him written, which being (as I thought) fit to be private, I would not adventure to make it public." Nothing could be more explicit. Observe that thus the case of Smith's detractors falls at once to the ground. Their rejection of the Pocahontas story is based upon its absence from the printed text of the "True Relation," but inasmuch as that printed text is avowedly incomplete no such inference is for a moment admissible. For the omitted portion is as likely as not to have been the passage describing Smith's imminent peril and rescue.
Reason for omitting the Pocahontas incident.