According to the long-accepted story of Pocahontas, she did something
more than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death a stranger
and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting those who opposed
his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribes and in
civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity by the sight of
a prisoner, and risked life to save him--the impulse was as natural to a
Highland lass as to an African maid. Pocahontas went further than
efforts to make peace between the superior race and her own. When the
whites forced the Indians to contribute from their scanty stores to the
support of the invaders, and burned their dwellings and shot them on
sight if they refused, the Indian maid sympathized with the exposed
whites and warned them of stratagems against them; captured herself by a
base violation of the laws of hospitality, she was easily reconciled to
her situation, adopted the habits of the foreigners, married one of her
captors, and in peace and in war cast in her lot with the strangers.
History has not preserved for us the Indian view of her conduct.
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."
Sir Thomas Dale was on the whole the most efficient and discreet Governor
the colony had had. One element of his success was no doubt the change
in the charter. By the first charter everything had been held in common
by the company, and there had been no division of property or allotment
of land among the colonists. Under the new regime land was held in
severalty, and the spur of individual interest began at once to improve
the condition of the settlement. The character of the colonists was also
gradually improving. They had not been of a sort to fulfill the earnest
desire of the London promoter's to spread vital piety in the New World.
A zealous defense of Virginia and Maryland, against "scandalous
imputation," entitled "Leah and Rachel; or, The Two Fruitful Sisters," by
Mr John Hammond, London, considers the charges that Virginia "is an
unhealthy place, a nest of rogues, abandoned women, dissolute and rookery
persons; a place of intolerable labour, bad usage and hard diet"; and
admits that "at the first settling, and for many years after, it deserved
most of these aspersions, nor were they then aspersions but truths.
There were jails supplied, youth seduced, infamous women drilled in, the
provision all brought out of England, and that embezzled by the
Trustees."