[47] See above, p. 75.
[48] It was not far from this spot that Ayllon had made his unsuccessful attempt to found a Spanish colony in 1526. See my Discovery of America, ii. 490.
[49] The Englishmen were bewildered by barbaric usages utterly foreign to their experience. Kinship among these Indians, as so generally among barbarians and savages, was reckoned through females only, and when the English visitors were told that The Powhatan's office would descend to his maternal brothers, even though he had sons living, the information was evidently correct, but they found it hard to understand or believe. So when one of the chiefs on the James River insisted upon giving back some powder and balls which one of his men had stolen, it was regarded as a proof of strict honesty and friendliness, whereas the more probable explanation is that a prudent Indian, at that early time, would consider it bad medicine to handle the thunder-and-lightning stuff or keep it about one. See my Beginnings of New England, p. 85.
[50] See above, p. 75.
[51] Smith's Works, ed. Arber, p. 95.
[52] Smith's Works, p. lxxii.
[53] Neil's Virginia Company, p. 19.
[54] Smith's Works, p. lxxxiv.
[55] It is true, this letter of 1616 was first made public in the "General History" in 1624 (see Smith's Works, p. 530); so that Smith's detractors may urge that the letter is trumped up and was never sent to Queen Anne. If so, the question recurs, Why did not some enemy or hostile critic of Smith in 1624 call attention to so flagrant a fraud?
[56] Brown's Genesis, ii. 964; Neill's Virginia Vetusta, pp. v-x.