Volume 16 , Issue 44

Captain John Smith, English Colonist

We all know through our schooling were taught that Captain John Smith and Pocahontas were famously linked linked. Captain Smith, arriving in Virginia with just more than a hundred other settlers in April 1607.

After building a fort on a marshy peninsula poking out into the James River, the Englishmen had numerous encounters over the the next several months with the Natives of Tsenacommacah, some of them friendly, some hostile.

It was in December 1607, while exploring on the Chickahominy river, Smith was captured by a hunting party led by Powhatan's younger brother, or close relative Opechancanough and brought to Powhatan's capital of Werowocomoco.

Smith described his account in 1608 as a large feast followed by a long talk with Powhatan. He does not mention Pocahontas in relation to his capture. Smith does not meet Pocahontas for the first time until a few months later.

It was in 1616 that Captain Smith wrote a letter to Queen Anne in anticipation of Pocahontas's visit to England. In this account, his capture included the threat of his own death: "she [Pocahontas] hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown."

We find in early histories that Pocahontas befriended Smith and the Jamestown colony, because Pocahontas often went to the settlement and played games with the boys there. We also learn that when the colonists were starving, every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought Smith so much provision that saved many of their lives that else of all this had starved with hunger. The colonists expanded their settlement further, and the Powhatan felt their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again and again.

It was in late 1609, an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care. The English told the Powhatans that Smith was dead. Pocahontas believed that account and stopped visiting Jamestown. Much later, Pocahontas learned that Smith was living in England when she traveled there as the wife of Joh Rolfe.
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