Project Gutenberg's The Story of Pocahantas, by Charles Dudley Warner

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Title: The Story of Pocahantas

Author: Charles Dudley Warner

Last Updated: February 22, 2009
Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3129]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

THE STORY OF POCAHONTAS

By Charles Dudley Warner

The simple story of the life of Pocahontas is sufficiently romantic
without the embellishments which have been wrought on it either by the
vanity of Captain Smith or the natural pride of the descendants of this
dusky princess who have been ennobled by the smallest rivulet of her red
blood.

That she was a child of remarkable intelligence, and that she early
showed a tender regard for the whites and rendered them willing and
unwilling service, is the concurrent evidence of all contemporary
testimony. That as a child she was well-favored, sprightly, and
prepossessing above all her copper-colored companions, we can believe,
and that as a woman her manners were attractive. If the portrait taken
of her in London--the best engraving of which is by Simon de Passe--in
1616, when she is said to have been twenty-one years old, does her
justice, she had marked Indian features.

The first mention of her is in "The True Relation," written by Captain
Smith in Virginia in 1608. In this narrative, as our readers have seen,
she is not referred to until after Smith's return from the captivity
in which Powhatan used him "with all the kindness he could devise." Her
name first appears, toward the close of the relation, in the following
sentence:

"Powhatan understanding we detained certain salvages, sent his daughter,
a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance,
and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of his people, but for
wit and spirit the only nonpareil of his country: this hee sent by his
most trusty messenger, called Rawhunt, as much exceeding in deformitie
of person, but of a subtill wit and crafty understanding, he with a long
circumstance told mee how well Powhatan loved and respected mee, and in
that I should not dou