“A long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could, layd hands on him [Smith], dragged him to them, and thereon layd his head, and being ready with their clubs to beate out his braines, Pocahontas, the King’s dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death; whereat the Emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her, bells, beads, & copper; for they thought him as well of all occupations as themselves. For the King himselfe will make his owne robes, shoes, bowes, arrowes, pots; plant, hunt, or doe anything so well as the reste.”
Captain Smith’s “True Relation” was published in England in 1608, and his “Map of Virginia,” with memoranda of his observations, in 1612. In neither of them, nor in contemporary writings, such as the narrative of Wingfield, the first President of the Colony, is there any reference to his deliverance from savage clubbing. Smith’s first reference to it was in 1816 in a letter addressed to the Queen in behalf of “the Lady Rebecca,” or Pocahontas. The outward and visible motive of the invention was commendable enough. In the earnest expression of his regard for her, and of his acknowledgment of her touching friendship for him, he found the surest medium for the promotion of her welfare in attracting to her the special sympathy and attention of the English Court. Whether or not he was too gallant to seek prestige for himself, it is certain that he had little need of it, for his whole life was crowded with strange adventure.
The Penn Treaty
Our great painters sometimes usurp the functions of the historian, but with their anachronisms and audacities they do more to perpetuate the memory of scenes which never occurred than tradition-mongers and story-tellers are capable of doing. The apocryphal character of some of the scenes in the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington has often been noted. West’s familiar painting of Penn’s treaty with the Indians under the elm at Shackamaxon is a notable example of this class. As a mere work of art it has been subjected to scornful criticism, because of its improbable groupings, and, as Mr. Bancroft says, “the artist, faithful neither to the Indians nor to Penn, should have no influence on history.” As to the conference, it has been utterly demolished by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. No treaty of amity was made in 1682. The earliest formal agreement to live in friendship and peace, on record, was in 1701, and that was made, not with the Delawares, but with the interior tribes,—the Susquehannas, Minnequas, and Conestogas. Penn was a methodical man, and careful to preserve the evidences of his purchases of lands from the Indians. They are to be found in the minutes of the Provincial Council and in the books of the Recorders of Deeds in the various counties of the Province. But the treaty of 1682, if there had been such an agreement, was of immeasurably more value than any of them. It was a covenant for quiet possession of those lands which might thereafter be acquired under covenant of title. Conceding the great importance of the treaty, it can scarcely be conceived that all proof connected with it should be allowed to perish. There is nothing to be found in the Archives of Pennsylvania, in the writings of William Penn himself, or of his friends and contemporaries, to show that such an event ever took place. The only plea under which it can be sheltered is a letter preserved in the State records at Harrisburg, under date of April 21, 1682, which Penn gave to Lieutenant-Governor Markham previous to the first voyage, and was addressed to the Indians, offering them peace, friendship, and protection. There is an endorsement upon this letter, stating that Thomas Holme, his Surveyor-General, “did read this letter to the Indians,” and as he lived in the house near the elm which stood where the monument has since been erected, this circumstance may have given early currency to the Penn treaty story, which has since been strengthened by West’s picture. Holme probably did call the Indians together beneath the great elm, as it was a spot likely to be selected for the purpose, and there read them the letter from Penn, month of August following, but this is all there ever was of a treaty.
The Good Old Times
What fallacies and sophistries are comprehended in that oft-repeated phrase, “The good old times.” There are still people who sigh for the grand old days of Good Queen Bess! Glorious days, truly, when the common people lived like swine and starving wretches were hung for stealing a loaf; when the filthy rushes on palace floors bred pestilence; when gluttony and drunkenness and brutality were masked under courtly manners; when conversation among the highest class was spiced with profanity and vulgarity; when the coin was clipped and debased; when the whole kingdom was overrun with thieves and highwaymen; when royal usurpations and proclamations assumed the force of law; and when the Crown compelled plunder of church property, iniquitous taxation, coercion of juries, and arbitrary imprisonment. In our daily life we are in the enjoyment of material comforts and conveniences, at home, in business, in travel, in distant communication, in the market, in commerce, in government, the cheapest of which the royal revenues of Queen Bess could not have purchased. Edmund Burke lamented that the age of chivalry passed away with Marie Antoinette. He forgot that her Court was itself grossly immoral, and the passionate admirers of chivalry seem to forget that the knights were not all Sidneys or Bayards. St. Palaye says in his “Memoirs of Chivalry” that never was there greater corruption of manners than in the times of knight-errantry,—never was the empire of debauchery more universal. St. Louis discovered a sink of iniquity close to his own tent in the most holy of the crusades. The intelligent reader of “Ivanhoe” knows full well that the thrilling scene between the Templar Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca, as she stood upon the verge of the parapet ready for the fatal plunge, is not a mere fancy sketch. How few ever stop to consider why the most honorable order of British knighthood is called the Order of the Bath. Dean Stanley says “it is because the knights who enlisted in the defense of right against wrong, truth against falsehood, honor against dishonor, were laid in a bath on the evening before they were admitted to the Order, and thoroughly washed, in order to show how bright and pure ought to be the lives of those who engage in a noble enterprise.” What gave the symbol special significance was the fact that it was the one wash of a lifetime. Dr. Playfair, in speaking of the causes of epidemics, says, “Think of 33 generations, who, like Oppian, never washed at all!”
Shakespeare’s Defiance of Historical Fact
The audacity of Shakespeare in constructing the plots of certain of his plays, in “defiance of the possibilities of history and the capacities of human nature,” has been sharply commented upon by Dr. Van Buren Denslow and other recent writers. Attention has been drawn to the fact that at no period in the administration of the civil law in Italy during the Middle Ages could the validity of the bond given to Shylock by Antonio, in the “Merchant of Venice,” have been made the subject of grave judicial investigation. Dr. Denslow thinks that the “literary audacity” shown in the “Merchant of Venice” pales before the “crude and barbarous vigor” with which all the legal ideas of the Danes and of every other race are defied in “Hamlet,” and all the possibilities of Scotch history, habits, and character are trampled under foot in “Macbeth.” Concerning “Hamlet” he says,—
It is contrary to the principles of human nature everywhere that the affection of parents for their brothers and sisters should exceed that for their children, and especially for their sons. This being true, the law of inheritance of thrones and rank, which is always fashioned after the law of descent of lands and goods, would necessarily require that when Claudius Hamlet, King of Denmark, the father of young Hamlet, died, leaving a son of full age, the crown should descend directly to the son, and if young Hamlet were a minor the late queen consort would be regent merely.
But the play of “Hamlet” opens one month after Claudius’s death, with his brother enthroned instead of his son, and the former queen consort to Claudius Hamlet is now consort to his surviving brother.