brought a blush to the cheeks of those who made it. He said he loved his
daughter as dearly as his life; he had many children, but he delighted
in none so much as in her; he could not live if he did not see her
often, as he would not if she were living with the whites, and he
was determined not to put himself in their hands. He desired no other
assurance of friendship than his brother had given him, who had already
one of his daughters as a pledge, which was sufficient while she lived;
“when she dieth he shall have another child of mine.” And then he broke
forth in pathetic eloquence: “I hold it not a brotherly part of your
King, to desire to bereave me of two of my children at once; further
give him to understand, that if he had no pledge at all, he should not
need to distrust any injury from me, or any under my subjection; there
have been too many of his and my men killed, and by my occasion there
shall never be more; I which have power to perform it have said it; no
not though I should have just occasion offered, for I am now old and
would gladly end my days in peace; so as if the English offer me any
injury, my country is large enough, I will remove myself farther from
you.”
The old man hospitably entertained his guests for a day or two, loaded
them with presents, among which were two dressed buckskins, white as
snow, for his son and daughter, and, requesting some articles sent him
in return, bade them farewell with this message to Governor Dale: “I
hope this will give him good satisfaction, if it do not I will go three
days' journey farther from him, and never see Englishmen more.” It
speaks well for the temperate habits of this savage that after he had
feasted his guests, “he caused to be fetched a great glass of sack, some
three quarts or better, which Captain Newport had given him six or seven
years since, carefully preserved by him, not much above a pint in all
this time spent, and gave each of us in a great oyster shell some three
spoonfuls.”
We trust that Sir Thomas Dale gave a faithful account of all this to his
wife in England.
Sir Thomas Gates left Virginia in the spring of 1614 and never returned.
After his departure scarcity and severity developed a mutiny, and six
of the settlers were executed. Rolfe was planting tobacco (he has the
credit of being the first white planter of it), and his wife was getting
an inside view of Christian civilization.
In 1616 Sir Thomas Dale returned to England with his company and John
Rolfe and Pocahontas, and several other Indians. They reached Plymouth
early in June, and on the 20th Lord Carew made this note: “Sir Thomas
Dale returned from Virginia; he hath brought divers men and women of
thatt countrye to be educated here, and one Rolfe who married a daughter
of Pohetan (the barbarous prince) called Pocahuntas, hath brought his
wife with him into England.” On the 22d Sir John Chamberlain wrote to
Sir Dudley Carlton that there were “ten or twelve, old and young, of
that country.”
The Indian girls who came with Pocahontas appear to have been a great
care to the London company. In May, 1620, is a record that the company
had to pay for physic and cordials for one of them who had been living
as a servant in Cheapside, and was very weak of a consumption. The same
year two other of the maids were shipped off to the Bermudas, after
being long a charge to the company, in the hope that they might there
get husbands, “that after they were converted and had children, they
might be sent to their country and kindred to civilize them.” One of
them was there married. The attempt to educate them in England was not
very successful, and a proposal to bring over Indian boys obtained this
comment from Sir Edwin Sandys:
“Now to send for them into England, and to have them educated here, he
found upon experience of those brought by Sir Thomas Dale, might be far
from the Christian work intended.” One Nanamack, a lad brought over by
Lord Delaware, lived some years in houses where “he heard not much of
religion but sins, had many times examples of drinking, swearing and
like evils, ran as he was a mere Pagan,” till he fell in with a
devout family and changed his life, but died before he was baptized.
Accompanying Pocahontas was a councilor of Powhatan, one Tomocomo, the
husband of one of her sisters, of whom Purchas says in his “Pilgrimes”:
“With this savage I have often conversed with my good friend Master
Doctor Goldstone where he was a frequent geust, and where I have seen
him sing and dance his diabolical measures, and heard him discourse of
his country and religion.... Master Rolfe lent me a discourse which
I have in my Pilgrimage delivered. And his wife did not only accustom
herself to civility, but still carried herself as the daughter of a
king, and was accordingly respected, not only by the Company which
allowed provision for herself and her son, but of divers particular
persons of honor, in their hopeful zeal by her to advance Christianity.
I was present when my honorable and reverend patron, the Lord Bishop of
London, Doctor King, entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond
what I had seen in his great hospitality offered to other ladies. At
her return towards Virginia she came at Gravesend to her end and grave,
having given great demonstration of her Christian sincerity, as the
first fruits of Virginia conversion, leaving here a goodly memory,
and the hopes of her resurrection, her soul aspiring to see and enjoy
permanently in heaven what here she had joyed to hear and believe of her
blessed Saviour. Not such was Tomocomo, but a blasphemer of what he knew
not and preferring his God to ours because he taught them (by his own
so appearing) to wear their Devil-lock at the left ear; he acquainted me
with the manner of that his appearance, and believed that their Okee or
Devil had taught them their husbandry.”
Upon news of her arrival, Captain Smith, either to increase his own
importance or because Pocahontas was neglected, addressed a letter or
“little booke” to Queen Anne, the consort of King James. This letter is
found in Smith's “General Historie” ( 1624), where it is introduced
as having been sent to Queen Anne in 1616. Probably he sent her such a
letter. We find no mention of its receipt or of any acknowledgment of
it. Whether the “abstract” in the “General Historie” is exactly like
the original we have no means of knowing. We have no more confidence in
Smith's memory than we have in his dates. The letter is as follows:
“To the most high and vertuous Princesse Queene Anne of Great Brittaine.
“Most ADMIRED QUEENE.
“The love I beare my God, my King and Countrie hath so oft emboldened me
in the worst of extreme dangers, that now honestie doth constraine mee
presume thus farre beyond my selfe, to present your Majestie this short
discourse: if ingratitude be a deadly poyson to all honest vertues,
I must be guiltie of that crime if I should omit any meanes to bee
thankful. So it is.
“That some ten yeeres agoe being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the
power of Powhaten, their chiefe King, I received from this great Salvage
exceeding great courtesie, especially from his sonne Nantaquaus, the
most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit, I ever saw in a Salvage and
his sister Pocahontas, the Kings most deare and well-beloved daughter,
being but a childe of twelve or thirteen yeeres of age, whose
compassionate pitifull heart, of desperate estate, gave me much cause
to respect her: I being the first Christian this proud King and his grim
attendants ever saw, and thus enthralled in their barbarous power, I
cannot say I felt the least occasion of want that was in the power of
those my mortall foes to prevent notwithstanding al their threats. After
some six weeks fatting amongst those Salvage Courtiers, at the minute of
my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her owne braines to save
mine, and not onely that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was
safely conducted to Jamestowne, where I found about eight and thirty
miserable poore and sicke creatures, to keepe possession of all those
large territories of Virginia, such was the weaknesse of this poore
Commonwealth, as had the Salvages not fed us, we directly had starved.
“And this reliefe, most gracious Queene, was commonly brought us by
this Lady Pocahontas, notwithstanding all these passages when inconstant
Fortune turned our Peace to warre, this tender Virgin would still not
spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jarres have been oft appeased,
and our wants still supplyed; were it the policie of her father thus to
imploy her, or the ordinance of God thus to make her his instrument, or
her extraordinarie affection to our Nation, I know not: but of this I am
sure: when her father with the utmost of his policie and power, sought
to surprize mee, having but eighteene with mee, the dark night could not
affright her from comming through the irksome woods, and with watered
eies gave me intilligence, with her best advice to escape his furie:
which had hee known hee had surely slaine her. Jamestowne with her wild
traine she as freely frequented, as her father's habitation: and during
the time of two or three yeares, she next under God, was still the
instrument to preserve this Colonie from death, famine and utter
confusion, which if in those times had once beene dissolved, Virginia
might have laine as it was at our first arrivall to this day. Since
then, this buisinesse having been turned and varied by many accidents
from that I left it at: it is most certaine, after a long and
troublesome warre after my departure, betwixt her father and our
Colonie, all which time shee was not heard of, about two yeeres longer,
the Colonie by that meanes was releived, peace concluded, and at last
rejecting her barbarous condition, was maried to an English Gentleman,
with whom at this present she is in England; the first Christian ever of
that Nation, the first Virginian ever spake English, or had a childe
in mariage by an Englishman, a matter surely, if my meaning bee truly
considered and well understood, worthy a Princes understanding.
“Thus most gracious Lady, I have related to your Majestic, what at your
best leasure our approved Histories will account you at large, and done
in the time of your Majesties life, and however this might bee presented
you from a more worthy pen, it cannot from a more honest heart, as yet
I never begged anything of the State, or any, and it is my want of
abilitie and her exceeding desert, your birth, meanes, and authoritie,
her birth, vertue, want and simplicitie, doth make mee thus bold, humbly
to beseech your Majestic: to take this knowledge of her though it be
from one so unworthy to be the reporter, as myselfe, her husband's
estate not being able to make her fit to attend your Majestic: the most
and least I can doe, is to tell you this, because none so oft hath tried
it as myselfe: and the rather being of so great a spirit, however her
station: if she should not be well received, seeing this Kingdome
may rightly have a Kingdome by her meanes: her present love to us and
Christianitie, might turne to such scorne and furie, as to divert all
this good to the worst of evill, when finding so great a Queene should
doe her some honour more than she can imagine, for being so kinde to
your servants and subjects, would so ravish her with content, as endeare
her dearest bloud to effect that, your Majestic and all the Kings honest
subjects most earnestly desire: and so I humbly kisse your gracious
hands.”
The passage in this letter, “She hazarded the beating out of her owne
braines to save mine,” is inconsistent with the preceding portion of the
paragraph which speaks of “the exceeding great courtesie” of Powhatan;
and Smith was quite capable of inserting it afterwards when he made up
his
“General Historie.”
Smith represents himself at this time--the last half of 1616 and the
first three months of 1617--as preparing to attempt a third voyage to
New England (which he did not make), and too busy to do Pocahontas the
service she desired. She was staying at Branford, either from neglect
of the company or because the London smoke disagreed with her, and there
Smith went to see her. His account of his intercourse with her, the only
one we have, must be given for what it is worth. According to this she
had supposed Smith dead, and took umbrage at his neglect of her. He
writes:
“After a modest salutation, without any word, she turned about, obscured
her face, as not seeming well contented; and in that humour, her husband
with divers others, we all left her two or three hours repenting myself
to have writ she could speak English. But not long after she began to
talke, remembering me well what courtesies she had done: saying, 'You
did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like to
you; you called him father, being in his land a stranger, and by the
same reason so must I do you:' which though I would have excused, I
durst not allow of that title, because she was a king's daughter. With
a well set countenance she said: 'Were you not afraid to come into my
father's country and cause fear in him and all his people (but me), and
fear you have I should call you father; I tell you then I will, and
you shall call me childe, and so I will be forever and ever, your
contrieman. They did tell me alwaies you were dead, and I knew no other
till I came to Plymouth, yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakkin to seek
you, and know the truth, because your countriemen will lie much.”'
This savage was the Tomocomo spoken of above, who had been sent by
Powhatan to take a census of the people of England, and report what they
and their state were. At Plymouth he got a long stick and began to make
notches in it for the people he saw. But he was quickly weary of that
task. He told Smith that Powhatan bade him seek him out, and get him
to show him his God, and the King, Queen, and Prince, of whom Smith had
told so much. Smith put him off about showing his God, but said he had
heard that he had seen the King. This the Indian denied, James probably
not coming up to his idea of a king, till by circumstances he was
convinced he had seen him. Then he replied very sadly: “You gave
Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan fed as himself, but your king gave
me nothing, and I am better than your white dog.”
Smith adds that he took several courtiers to see Pocahontas, and “they
did think God had a great hand in her conversion, and they have seen
many English ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and behavioured;” and
he heard that it had pleased the King and Queen greatly to esteem her,
as also Lord and Lady Delaware, and other persons of good quality, both
at the masques and otherwise.
Much has been said about the reception of Pocahontas in London, but
the contemporary notices of her are scant. The Indians were objects of
curiosity for a time in London, as odd Americans have often been since,
and the rank of Pocahontas procured her special attention. She was
presented at court. She was entertained by Dr. King, Bishop of London.
At the playing of Ben Jonson's “Christmas his Mask” at court, January
6, 1616-17, Pocahontas and Tomocomo were both present, and Chamberlain
writes to Carleton: “The Virginian woman Pocahuntas with her father
counsellor have been with the King and graciously used, and both she and
her assistant were pleased at the Masque. She is upon her return though
sore against her will, if the wind would about to send her away.”
Mr. Neill says that “after the first weeks of her residence in England
she does not appear to be spoken of as the wife of Rolfe by the letter
writers,” and the Rev. Peter Fontaine says that “when they heard that
Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated in council whether he
had not committed high treason by so doing, that is marrying an Indian
princesse.”
It was like James to think so. His interest in the colony was never
the most intelligent, and apt to be in things trivial. Lord Southampton
(Dec. 15, 1609) writes to Lord Salisbury that he had told the King of
the Virginia squirrels brought into England, which are said to fly. The
King very earnestly asked if none were provided for him, and said he was
sure Salisbury would get him one. Would not have troubled him, “but that
you know so well how he is affected to these toys.”
There has been recently found in the British Museum a print of a
portrait of Pocahontas, with a legend round it in Latin, which is
translated: “Matoaka, alias Rebecka, Daughter of Prince Powhatan,
Emperor of Virginia; converted to Christianity, married Mr. Rolff; died
on shipboard at Gravesend 1617.” This is doubtless the portrait engraved
by Simon De Passe in 1616, and now inserted in the extant copies of the
London edition of the “General Historie,” 1624. It is not probable that
the portrait was originally published with the “General Historie.” The
portrait inserted in the edition of 1624 has this inscription:
Round the portrait:
“Matoaka als Rebecca Filia Potentiss Princ: Pohatani Imp: Virginim.”
In the oval, under the portrait:
“Aetatis suae 21 A.
1616”
Below:
“Matoaks als Rebecka daughter to the mighty Prince Powhatan Emprour of
Attanoughkomouck als virginia converted and baptized in the Christian
faith, and wife to the worth Mr. job Rolff. i: Pass: sculp. Compton
Holland excud.”
Camden in his “History of Gravesend” says that everybody paid this
young lady all imaginable respect, and it was believed she would have
sufficiently acknowledged those favors, had she lived to return to her
own country, by bringing the Indians to a kinder disposition toward the
English; and that she died, “giving testimony all the time she lay sick,
of her being a very good Christian.”
The Lady Rebecka, as she was called in London, died on shipboard at
Gravesend after a brief illness, said to be of only three days, probably
on the 21st of March, 1617. I have seen somewhere a statement, which
I cannot confirm, that her disease was smallpox. St. George's Church,
where she was buried, was destroyed by fire in 1727. The register of
that church has this record:
“1616, May 21 Rebecca Wrothe
Wyff of Thomas Wroth gent
A Virginia lady borne, here was buried
in ye chaunncle.”
Yet there is no doubt, according to a record in the Calendar of State
Papers, dated “1617, 29 March, London,” that her death occurred March
21, 1617.
John Rolfe was made Secretary of Virginia when Captain Argall became
Governor, and seems to have been associated in the schemes of that
unscrupulous person and to have forfeited the good opinion of the
company. August 23, 1618, the company wrote to Argall: “We cannot
imagine why you should give us warning that Opechankano and the natives
have given the country to Mr. Rolfe's child, and that they reserve it
from all others till he comes of years except as we suppose as some
do here report it be a device of your own, to some special purpose for
yourself.” It appears also by the minutes of the company in 1621 that
Lady Delaware had trouble to recover goods of hers left in Rolfe's hands
in Virginia, and desired a commission directed to Sir Thomas Wyatt and
Mr. George Sandys to examine what goods of the late “Lord Deleware had
come into Rolfe's possession and get satisfaction of him.” This George
Sandys is the famous traveler who made a journey through the Turkish
Empire in 1610, and who wrote, while living in Virginia, the first book
written in the New World, the completion of his translation of Ovid's
“Metamorphosis.”
John Rolfe died in Virginia in 1622, leaving a wife and children.
This is supposed to be his third wife, though there is no note of his
marriage to her nor of the death of his first. October 7, 1622, his
brother Henry Rolfe petitioned that the estate of John should be
converted to the support of his relict wife and children and to his own
indemnity for having brought up John's child by Powhatan's daughter.
This child, named Thomas Rolfe, was given after the death of Pocahontas
to the keeping of Sir Lewis Stukely of Plymouth, who fell into evil
practices, and the boy was transferred to the guardianship of his uncle
Henry Rolfe, and educated in London. When he was grown up he returned
to Virginia, and was probably there married. There is on record his
application to the Virginia authorities in 1641 for leave to go into the
Indian country and visit Cleopatra, his mother's sister. He left an only
daughter who was married, says Stith (1753), “to Col. John Bolling; by
whom she left an only son, the late Major John Bolling, who was father
to the present Col. John Bolling, and several daughters, married to
Col. Richard Randolph, Col. John Fleming, Dr. William Gay, Mr. Thomas
Eldridge, and Mr. James Murray.” Campbell in his “History of Virginia”
says that the first Randolph that came to the James River was an
esteemed and industrious mechanic, and that one of his sons, Richard,
grandfather of the celebrated John Randolph, married Jane Bolling, the
great granddaughter of Pocahontas.
In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated with
fighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names and titles;
his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimes Mamauatonick,
and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk. He ruled, by inheritance and
conquest, with many chiefs under him, over a large territory with not
defined borders, lying on the James, the York, the Rappahannock, the
Potomac, and the Pawtuxet Rivers. He had several seats, at which he
alternately lived with his many wives and guard of bowmen, the chief of
which at the arrival of the English was Werowomocomo, on the Pamunkey
(York) River. His state has been sufficiently described. He is said
to have had a hundred wives, and generally a dozen--the
youngest--personally attending him. When he had a mind to add to his
harem he seems to have had the ancient oriental custom of sending into
all his dominions for the fairest maidens to be brought from whom to
select. And he gave the wives of whom he was tired to his favorites.
Strachey makes a striking description of him as he appeared about 1610:
“He is a goodly old man not yet shrincking, though well beaten with cold
and stormeye winters, in which he hath been patient of many necessityes
and attempts of his fortune to make his name and famely great. He is
supposed to be little lesse than eighty yeares old, I dare not saye how
much more; others saye he is of a tall stature and cleane lymbes, of a
sad aspect, rownd fatt visaged, with graie haires, but plaine and thin,
hanging upon his broad showlders; some few haires upon his chin, and so
on his upper lippe: he hath been a strong and able salvadge, synowye,
vigilant, ambitious, subtile to enlarge his dominions:... cruell he hath
been, and quarellous as well with his own wcrowanccs for trifles, and
that to strike a terrour and awe into them of his power and condicion,
as also with his neighbors in his younger days, though now delighted in
security and pleasure, and therefore stands upon reasonable conditions
of peace with all the great and absolute werowances about him, and is
likewise more quietly settled amongst his own.”
It was at this advanced age that he had the twelve favorite young wives
whom Strachey names. All his people obeyed him with fear and adoration,
presenting anything he ordered at his feet, and trembling if he frowned.
His punishments were cruel; offenders were beaten to death before him,
or tied to trees and dismembered joint by joint, or broiled to death on
burning coals. Strachey wondered how such a barbarous prince should put
on such ostentation of majesty, yet he accounted for it as belonging to
the necessary divinity that doth hedge in a king: “Such is (I believe)
the impression of the divine nature, and however these (as other
heathens forsaken by the true light) have not that porcion of the
knowing blessed Christian spiritt, yet I am perswaded there is an
infused kind of divinities and extraordinary (appointed that it shall
be so by the King of kings) to such as are his ymedyate instruments on
earth.”