Pocahontas was among this people, (the Potommacks;) the reason of her
absence from her father's court, is imperfectly afforded by the early
historians. Stith conjectures "it was to withdraw herself from being a
witness to the frequent butcheries of the English, whose folly and
rashness after Smith's departure put it out of her power to save
them." Probably she had been exiled by the displeasure of her father,
for her partiality to the English; or he had confided her to the
protection of the neighboring king, to secure her from the dangers of
the war in which he was involved with the whites.
The temptation of possessing such an hostage as the princess, was too
powerful to be restrained, by the few scruples of conscience that
arise in the breast of a rude English sailor. Argall seduced
Jappassas, by a paltry bribe, and Pocahontas was betrayed by her
perfidious host into the hands of the English, to be led into
captivity. Power was never yet at a loss for plausible pretexts to
palliate its outrage on virtue: policy, expediency, necessity, are the
hackneyed themes resorted to, to mitigate the merited reprobation; but
the human heart will not be answered so. Insulted, not convinced, by
the proffered palliative, it recoils from the false and unnatural
subterfuge, and true to its connate susceptibilities, entertains
forever the same sentiment of instinctive abhorrence. As long as the
memory of the compassionate Pocahontas shall be cherished by a remote
and admiring posterity in Virginia, so long will the unhallowed names
of Argall and Jappassas be associated with deep and bitter
execrations.