Now, however, tobacco was grown by all Virginia Indians, and
was regarded as the Great Spirit's best gift. In the final happy
hunting-ground, kings, werowances, and priests enjoyed it forever. When,
in the time after the first landing, the Indians brought gifts to the
adventurers as to beings from a superior sphere, they offered tobacco as
well as comestibles like deer-meat and mulberries. Later, in England and
in Virginia, there was some suggestion that it might be cultivated among
other commodities. But the Company, not to be diverted from the path
to profits, demanded from Virginia necessities and not new-fangled
luxuries. Nevertheless, a little tobacco was sent over to England, and
then a little more, and then a larger quantity. In less than five years
it had become a main export; and from that time to this profoundly has
it affected the life of Virginia and, indeed, of the United States.

This then is the wide and general event with which John Rolfe is
connected. But there is also a narrower, personal happening that has
pleased all these centuries. Indian difficulties yet abounded, but Dale,
administrator as well as man of Mars, wound his way skilfully through
them all. Powhatan brooded to one side, over there at Werowocomoco.
Captain Samuel Argall was again in Virginia, having brought over
sixty-two colonists in his ship, the Treasurer. A bold and restless man,
explorer no less than mariner, he again went trading up the Potomac,
and visited upon its banks the village of Japazaws, kinsman of Powhatan.
Here he found no less a personage than Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas.
An idea came into Argall's active and somewhat unscrupulous brain.
He bribed Japazaws with a mighty gleaming copper kettle, and by that
chief's connivance took Pocahontas from the village above the Potomac.
He brought her captive in his boat down the Chesapeake to the mouth of
the James and so up the river to Jamestown, here to be held hostage for
an Indian peace. This was in 1613.

Pocahontas stayed by the James, in the rude settlers' town, which may
have seemed to the Indian girl stately and wonderful enough. Here Rolfe
made her acquaintance, here they talked together, and here, after some
scruples on his part as to "heathennesse," they were married. He writes
of "her desire to be taught and instructed in the knowledge of God; her
capableness of understanding; her aptnesse and willingnesse to
recieve anie good impression, and also the spiritual,