Volume 17 , Issue 41

Walking With Sadie

Do you remember anything from your school days lessons concerning John Smith, John Rolfe, Jamestown and Pocahontas? Well! Here are a few memory boosters from the newspapers archives that we found online at newspapers.com.

Found on Newspapers.com

Pocahontas Again

History has, indeed, been rather hard on the conventional heroines of romance. The late M. Edouard Fornier spent a cynical life in upsetting figures which uncritical chroniclers had set up, and in showing the half the sharp sayings were uttered by them. The first American romancer had not even been spared evisceration. In the parish register of Gravesends is an entry which every year the "good American" reverently peruses. It relates how, in "1616, March 21, Rebecca Wrolfe, Wyffe of Thos. Wrolfe, gent., a Virginia lady borne, was buried in the chancel." This, of course, refers to the Princess Pocahontas, or Matoax - which was her real name - one of the numerous family of Powhatan, the Indian "Emperor of Virginia," who saved the life of the doughty Capt. John Smith, married John - not "Thomas" - Rolfe, and for the year preceding her death was the sensation of the english court.

It now turns out that so far from being the innocent young barbarian of the novelist, she was an impish and not very well-behaved little squaw, well known in the court yard of the English fort at Jamestown. She even scandalized the free and easy Virginia dames by becoming, in early life, the brevet spouse of one Bookham, a captain of volunteers, and subsequently was "married" to John Rolfe, simply as part of the policy of that unscrupulous satrap, Gov. Argall, in order to extract favorable terms from her wily sire, Powhatan.

So far from her having saved Capt. John Smith's life, as related by this unfortunate adventurer, thee is every reason for believing that he was barely acquainted with her in Virginia, and certainly never saw his supposed benefactress on her visit to England. Indeed the story was most probably invented after the red damsel became famous, in order to give currency to the "General Historie of Virginia," and its penniless author. As for Master John Rolfe being the love sick swain he is variably represented to be in the transpontine drama, it is now ascertained that he was a married man, and therefore more rogue than fool when he committed bigamy with the "Virginia lady borne."

There threatens to be no end to this cruel awakening from the dreams of our youth. - London Standard.

Woof! Woof!
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