All this seems marvellous in view of the difficulty in understanding the uncouth Indian tongue. But Captain Smith seems to have instructed himself. He has been accused of colouring his narratives too highly, indeed, of inventing some of them. For myself I admire him too much to concede more than the cum grano salis, with which, alas, we daily and hourly season much that we hear.
He has given us a practical illustration of his success in mastering the language of the Powhatans. After a short list of Indian words, he has given us a whole sentence, which doubtless he used on this occasion when parting with Powhatan, and inviting him to send his daughter to visit him. It is this: "Kekaten pokahontas patiaquagh niugh tanks manotyens neer mowchick rayrenock audowgh," which means, "Bid Pocahontas bring two little baskets, and I will give her white beads to make a chain."
The captain was not allowed to return to Jamestown without a further trial to his nerves, and another opportunity of noting the family likeness between kings. It must be remembered he saw all these fearful things at night—but without the help, in Powhatan's camp, of sack or aqua vitæ.[36] The night before he left, Powhatan caused him to be brought to a great house in the woods, and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after, from behind a mat that divided the house, came the "most dolefullest" noise that was ever heard. Presently Powhatan, who had hidden (like King James behind the arras), appeared, painted more like a devil than a man, and with two hundred men painted black like himself. After sundry fearful contortions and wild antics,—seeing he could not smite the captain dead with fear,—he expressed himself in a friendly manner, and offered to be a father to him, and esteem him as he did his handsome son Nantauquous, also to give him the country of Capahowsick in return for two great guns and a grindstone.
I have told you this story as it was told by Captain Smith. "The Newes from Virginia," which he wrote immediately upon his return to Jamestown, contained no word of complaint of the Indians. On the contrary, it is full of grateful appreciation of their kindness. Nor does it relate the incident of Pocahontas as the saviour of his life! "The Newes from Virginia" was carefully worded to encourage immigration. He could not frighten away immigrants by stories of bloodthirsty savages; he could not tell of the heroism of Pocahontas without revealing the fact of his own imminent danger. He told the whole again and again afterward. None of the early historians questioned it. All repeated, accepted, and admired it,—Hamor, Strachey, and Stith, who read every written word, and knew every tradition relating to the subject. The later historians—John Burke, Bishop Meade, Gilmore Simms, Charles Campbell, and John Esten Cooke—accept the story without any thought of questioning its truth. So do James Graham and Edward Arber, in England. There seems to have been no adverse suggestion until a few years ago. Those who incline to doubt the truth of John Smith's story will be strengthened by reading Doyle's "English Colonies in America," and "The First Republic," by Alexander Brown. These are only a few of the writers pro and con upon this interesting question. Melvin Arthur Lane in The Strand, London, August, 1906, thus bewails our possible loss of the beautiful romance: "For years antiquarians and other iconoclasts—worthy men, no doubt, but terrible shatterers of other men's ideals—have taken from us, one by one, the historic objects of our love and scorn. Henry VIII, they tell us, was a very good fellow, much less black than he was painted. Richard III likewise was a perfect gentleman. He sent the little princes to the Tower that he might be near them and take a kindly interest in their welfare, as became such a benevolent uncle. Paul Jones, whom we have just reinterred with great honour at Annapolis, is said by some people to have been the bloodiest of pirates, most cruel of men. Captain Kidd may soon turn out to have been a distributer of tracts, Columbus a lifelong landsman, and Bluebeard a model of all the domestic virtues."
He might have made his list longer, and included George Washington and many others whom we have been taught to honour and revere. John Smith, like all strong characters, had good haters as well as devoted lovers. He had the misfortune of living in an age which did not appreciate him. But one must belong to the former prejudiced class, and be a very good hater indeed, to believe him capable of weaving a romance "out of the whole cloth," and retailing it in a dignified letter to his Queen; at a time, too, when Pocahontas was at court and could herself have contradicted it. It is not possible that the attendants upon Queen Anne's Court should have been ignorant of the interesting feature in the letter from John Smith, or failed to refer to it in conversing with Pocahontas and her husband. Nor is it possible that the Christian woman would have assented, even by silence, to a falsehood.
For myself, I see nothing improbable in her action. A reckless, impulsive child will face dangers and take risks that appall those of mature years. Nor was she the only Indian maiden who saved the life of her father's enemy.[37] Hakluyt tells of "John Ortiz, who was captured in Florida in 1528. The Indian chief Ucita was about to have him put to death, but at the intercession of an Indian princess, one of Ucita's daughters, his life was spared. Again, when her father was about to sacrifice him to their god (they being worshippers of the devil), the same maiden rescued him by night and set him in the way to escape, and returned because she would not be discovered." She would have been quite capable of daring even more had she been a little child of ten or eleven years.
I do not believe Pocahontas was an inspired maiden, like Joan of Arc, nor that she was actuated by purely lofty and unselfish motives. I believe that she was a very ardent, impulsive child, fond of trinkets, grateful for favours, absolutely uncontrolled, and with plenty of wild Indian blood in her veins. Whether or no she saved John Smith's life, she deserves our homage for her kindness in warning him of danger, in rescuing Henry Spelman, in bringing food to the colonists during the hard winter of 1608-1609. She knew John Smith for only sixteen months, and yet in that brief time the two have occupied the stage to the exclusion of many noble and good men, such is the eagerness with which we welcome the romances that enliven the prosaic pages of history. She owes much of the interest attending her life to the fact that the child of a savage should be presented at court, and receive attention from the highest lords and ladies in the land. The Beggar-maid was as nothing compared with her, and Cophetua a very humdrum prince indeed beside Captain John Smith.
In his usual style, he was wont to repeat that but for her succour when the colonists were starving, the enterprise would have probably come to naught. The colonists were in worse condition two winters after John Smith left them, and Pocahontas never entered Jamestown after he departed. The colony did not "come to naught." God had planted it; and although it was watered with blood and tears, forgotten often by its friends, constantly threatened and devastated by its enemies, and more than once in peril of utter extinction, it grew and prospered. Never was the prophetic declaration that "a little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation," more wonderfully exemplified than in the planting and rearing of this colony.
CHAPTER XII
The sun was just rising, on a frosty morning in February, when the sentinels on guard at Jamestown challenged a company of Indians who were seen defiling through the woods; and were answered by the shout "wingapoh," on their part, and "friends" in a voice they knew. These were the Indians sent by Powhatan to conduct Captain Smith to Jamestown. Doubtless his heart swelled with grateful emotion at the sight of the humble huts of the little town which meant home to him. He was joyfully welcomed[38] back after his seven weeks' absence by all except Archer and two or three confederates. Archer, who had been illegally admitted into the Council, had now the audacity to indict Smith for the death of Robinson and Emry, who were slain by the Indians on the Chickahominy, claiming that he had led them into the snare which caused their death, and should be executed, according to Levitical law.