MATOACA (LADY REBECCA ROLFE) AND JOHN ROLFE
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
Matoaca (Lady Rebecca Rolfe) and John Rolfe
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The Disney Company’s publicity bio on Pocahontas follows:
“As a historical figure, the real Pocahontas has been the subject of much debate over the past four centuries
and remains shrouded in mystery to this day. Details regarding her early years and adventures were
documented solely by the English settlers, who were not always the most impartial of observers. John Smith
himself is the only source of the well-known tale about Pocahontas saving his life, but curiously he didn’t write
about the incident until 1624, long after she was dead. Over the years, storytellers have romanticized and
embellished her life to the point where it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. Although the Disney version
of the Pocahontas story takes liberties with regard to her actual age at the time she met Smith and speculates
about their friendship, it remains true to her spirit and enhances her acknowledged role as a peace keeper.
Pocahontas’ real name was Matoaca, which by custom is kept secret. Her father, Chief Powhatan, gave her the
more familiar nickname, which means ‘little mischief.’ She was born into a highly sophisticated culture that
had some knowledge of Europeans. By most accounts, when Smith and his fellow settlers came to Virginia,
she was indeed attracted to these peculiar ‘strangers’ and played an important role in keeping them alive
through her diplomatic and charitable efforts. In reality, she may have been only 11 or 12 at the time the British
first arrived, but her winning carefree personality helped to ease tensions between the two decidedly different
cultures.
Smith himself was born in 1580 in Willoughby, Lincolnshire, England and had been involved in a lifetime of
international adventures before arriving in Virginia in 1607 at age 27. His wild escapades included a stint as a
soldier-of-fortune in the fighting between the Holy Roman Empire and the Turks, being captured and enslaved
in Istanbul followed by a daring escape to Russia where he was again enslaved only to escape again across
Europe. In Virginia, he helped to save the colony when it fell on hard times with his expert skills as a forager
and an Indian trader. Without the help of the Powhatan Indians, who shared food with the Englishmen and
showed them how to plant corn and yams, and introduced them to the ways of the forest, the Jamestown settlers
would have certainly perished. As it was, all but 51 of the original 150 colonists to arrive in 1607 died within
a few months. Smith became a virtual military dictator but managed to keep the settlement afloat. He was both
respected and feared by the Native Americans, but was generally considered fair in his dealings with them.
Although Disney’s ‘Pocahontas’ only deals with the brief episode in her life where she meets and rescues
Smith, what happened to the real Pocahontas during the rest of her short-but-eventful life is equally
fascinating. In 1613, at the instigation of Captain Samuel Argall, Pocahontas was kidnapped by an Indian chief
named Japazaws and used as a bargaining chip to secure the release of British soldiers being held prisoner by
her father. Powhatan released seven hostages but his abducted daughter was still not returned. One year later,
with a fierce confrontation in the offing, British settler John Rolfe (who discovered a new strain of tobacco in
1612 and thus gave the New World its first viable cash crop) declared his love for Pocahontas and his desire
to marry her. Sometime prior to her wedding in April, 1614, she was baptized and given the name ‘Lady
Rebecca Rolfe.’
In the spring of 1616, Rolfe, his wife and their young son, Thomas, left for England where the Virginia
Company was anxious to use her to attract investors for their New World ventures. Pocahontas became a huge
sensation and was presented at the court of King James and to English society. At one social gathering, she
was reunited with John Smith after an absence of seven years. She had apparently been told that he was dead
and was shocked to see him. In the early spring of 1617, the Rolfe family set off for Virginia, but got no further
than the English seaport of Gravesend when she was stricken with smallpox and suddenly died at the age of
21. Her final resting place is at St. George’s Church at Gravesend.”
Pocahontas. The Walt Disney Company, 1995. Directed by
Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg. Produced by James
Pentecost. Songs composed by Alan Menken; lyrics by
Stephen Schwartz. Associate producer, Baker Bloodworth.
Screenplay by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant, and Philip
LaZebnik. Reviewed by Pauline Turner Strong, University
of Texas at Austin. Published by [email protected]
(July, 1995)
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Disney’s Pocahontas is easily caricatured — as politically correct, historically incorrect, ethnographically
sensitive or suspect, sexist, feminist, exploitative, what have you. There is more than enough basis for each of
these labels but, as the co-existence of contradictory caricatures suggests, this complex film should not be so
easily dismissed. Disney’s heavily promoted feature not only, as advertised, “brings an American legend to life”;
it also takes considerable risks in doing so. These are not financial risks, to be sure: Disney’s powerful marketing
machine can count on the American public’s perennial fascination with “playing Indian” as it hawks polyester
“buckskin,” plastic beads, and endless trinkets laden with Pocahontas’s image. Rather, the risks are artistic,
intellectual, and ethical. Pocahontas not only retells the romantic story of Captain John Smith’s rescue from an
executioner’s tomahawk by an adoring Pocahontas but seeks to challenge its audience to see ethnocentrism and
androcentrism, spiritual alienation, commodification, and exploitation as barriers to the dream of interethnic
harmony –of “getting along together”– that Smith and Pocahontas represent. In short, Pocahontas risks being
taken seriously and evaluated against its makers’ lofty –and generally laudable– intentions. To what extent does
the animated film successfully meet the challenges of its own message, as articulated in its dialogue, lyrics, and
promotional material? (The latter are available in a press packet and online at http://www.disney.com; the lyrics,
on the soundtrack, currently second on Billboard’s chart.) In pursuing this question, we can go beyond an
appraisal of Pocahontas that measures the film against an uncertain historical truth — particularly elusive in this
case, as scholars such as Reyna Green, Philip Young, Philip L. Barbour, and Mary V. Dearborn have pointed out.
Pocahontas may be the first “real-life figure” to be featured in a Disney film, but the pre-Disney Pocahontas was
already a highly mythologized heroine known only through colonial representations — from the beginning a
product of Anglo-American desire and discontent. The Disney Studio has drawn upon various versions of
Pocahontas –and Indians more generally– in the American imagination, giving new life and ubiquitous
circulation to those deemed resonant with contemporary concerns. That is to say, the animated Pocahontas is
necessarily located within the entire colonial tradition of noble savagism: the natural virtues, cultural critique,
and self-sacrifice she embodies are those found in Montaigne and Rousseau and Cooper and Kirkpatrick Sale.
This is not to say, to be sure, that Pocahontas is entirely a product of Western colonialism, but that we only
“know” her within that arena — which, after all, is tantamount to not knowing her very well at all. Given all this,
the most productive question to bring to the film may be one of appropriateness: how appropriate is the
filmmakers’ selective construction of Pocahontas vis-a-vis their own aims? How salutary is the relationship
between Pocahontas as a sign vehicle and the message she embodies? Significantly, this is a two-way
relationship: just as the animated Pocahontas may be (in)appropriate as a vehicle for the film’s message of
tolerance and harmony, so too the message may be (in)appropriate to the Pocahontas story, however construed.
If we take the producer of the message and its young, semi-captive audience into account, as we must, the
question becomes even more complex, for the big-screen Pocahontas can not be understood apart from the
proliferation of her image in the lucrative summer-to-fall kiddy marketplace. Outside of promotional material,
the film’s message is articulated most fully in “Colors of the Wind,” the song that the filmmakers believe
“perhaps best sums up the entire spirit and essence of the film.” (Throughout this review, quotations not attributed
to the film are taken from the press packet.) You think the only people who are people Are the people who look
and think like you But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger You’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.
In Disney’s Pocahontas, as in John Smith’s and John Barth’s, the heroine is both spritely and sensual. However,
unlike Smith’s and Barth’s Pocahontas, Disney’s is, above all, a teacher. Not, as one might expect, a teacher of
the Powhatan language and standards of diplomacy, for the time-consuming process of learning to translate
across cultural and linguistic borders is finessed through Pocahontas’s mystical skill in “listening with her heart.”
Rather, Pocahontas is a teacher of tolerance and respect for all life. Disney’s Pocahontas is not a cultural
interpreter but first and foremost a “child of nature” — an unfortunate impoverishment that produces a truly
awkward moment in the film. “She was just speaking English!” observed my ten-year-old daughter, as
Pocahontas momentarily, before her mystical transformation, had difficulty communicating with Smith. “That’s
because they were translating her own language into English so we could understand it,” replied her seven-yearold sister. A few Algonquian words are sprinkled through the film, but Pocahontas gives no sense of the
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intelligence, dedication, and humility needed to “learn things you never knew you never knew.” In becoming part
of the series Ariel/Beauty/Jasmine/Pocahontas, this most famous of cultural mediators (to a North American
audience) is removed from the series Malinche/Pocahontas/Sacajewa/Sarah Winnemucca. Magic and love
conquer all cultural distance for Pocahontas and John Smith. This is not to say that it is entirely implausible that
Pocahontas teach Smith tolerance and respect for all life. One of the more subtly effective moments in the film
is the animated sequence corresponding to the passage of the song quoted above: “the footsteps of a stranger” are
the tracks of a Bear Person, a concept as unfamiliar to most viewers of the film as to John Smith. “Colors of the
Wind” not only challenges racism, but also humanism or androcentrism, and this passage offers a striking popular
expression of the vastly expanded consciousness available through embracing cultural relativism. In another
couplet of the same song, Pocahontas again contrasts Smith’s mode of thought with her own: You think you own
whatever land you land on The earth is just a dead thing you can claim But I know ev’ry rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name. She then invites or, better, seduces Smith to Come run the hidden pine trails
of the forest Come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth Come roll in all the riches all around you And for once,
never wonder what they’re worth. Alan Menken’s tune is so memorable and Stephen Schwartz’s poetic devices
so effective that these words will be imprinted on our collective memories even if Vanessa Williams’s pop version
of the song does not win an Academy Award. It is the clear exposition of colonial materialism and possessiveness
in scenes and lyrics like this that won Russell Means’s tribute to Pocahontas as “the single finest work ever done
on American Indians by Hollywood” by virtue of being “willing to tell the truth.” I, too, am pleased to find a
critique of capitalist appropriation embedded in the film, even if it is enunciated by a Pocahontas whose licensed
image saturates the marketplace — along with that of her father Powhatan who, even more ironically, is modeled
after and voiced by the same Russell Means who has demonstrated against the use of Indian images as sports
mascots. It is also good to see John Smith presenting the gold-hungry Governor Ratcliffe with a golden ear of
corn as the true “riches” of Powhatan’s land, but it is a superficial “truth” indeed that excludes that other sacred
indigenous plant, tobacco — which became the salvation of the Virginia economy thanks to John Rolfe, the
husband of a mature, Christian, and Anglicized Pocahontas never seen in the film. Is this story reserved for
Pocahontas II? Likely not, for the tale of Pocahontas’s capture by the English as a hostage, transformation into
Lady Rebecca Rolfe, and early death in London does not resonate as well with an Anglo-American audience’s
expectations as the story of Smith’s capture and salvation by an innocent, loving, and self-sacrificing child of
nature. Of course, resonating with expectations is what creating a “timeless, universal, and uniquely satisfying
motion picture experience” is all about. In imagining Pocahontas, the filmmakers relied not only on consultation
with native people, but also on what resonated with their own experience and desires. As lyricist Stephen
Schwartz comments on the composition of “Colors of the Wind”: “We were able to find the parts of ourselves
that beat in synchronicity with Pocahontas.” But there is a significant tension between this process and “walk[ing]
in the footsteps of a stranger.” This is not the Pocahontas we never knew we never knew, but the Pocahontas we
implicitly knew all along, the Pocahontas whose story is “universal” –that is, familiar– rather than strange and
particular. This is a Pocahontas whose tale, like that of Simba in The Lion King, fits into the mold of an
individualistic Western coming-of-age story, progressing from youthful rebellion to self-knowledge and mature
responsibility through courage and love. A Pocahontas who speaks what is known in anthologies as “the wisdom
of the elders,” and communes with a Grandmother Willow who, although kindly, reminiscent of Babes in
Toyland. A Pocahontas who, despite a tattoo and over-the-shoulder dress loosely consistent with the sixteenthcentury Algonquians depicted by John White, has a Barbie-doll figure, an exotic model’s glamour, and an instant
attraction to a distinctively Nordic John Smith. In short, Disney has created a marketable New Age Pocahontas
to embody our millennial dreams for wholeness and harmony, while banishing our nightmares of savagery
without and emptiness within. Just as the dream of tolerance and respect for all life is voiced in song, so too is
the nightmare of savagery and emptiness — the first figured as feminine in the lyrical “Colors of the Wind,” the
second as masculine in the brutal “Savages.” What can you expect From filthy little heathens? Their whole
disgusting race is like a curse Their skin’s a hellish red They’re only good when dead They’re vermin, as I said
And worse. They’re savages! Savages! Barely even human. Savages! Savages! Drive them from our shore!
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They’re not like you and me Which means they must be evil We must sound the drums of war! Strong stuff, this:
the ideology of ignoble savagism at its dehumanizing extreme, representative more of colonial sentiment after
Powhatan’s heir Opechancanough’s war of resistance in 1622 than that of the earliest years of the Jamestown
colony. Still, in the context of the film, appearing as the English prepare to attack the Powhatan people, it is
extremely effective, serving to underscore the brutishness of the English colonists rather than that of the Indians.
Already, in the opening to “Colors of the Wind,” ignoble savagism has been gently invoked and dismantled: You
think I’m an ignorant savage And you’ve been so many places I guess it must be so But still I cannot see If the
savage one is me How can there be so much that you don’t know? Who is the savage? Certainly not Pocahontas,
with her knowledge of the spirits of this land. So the colonists’ rhetoric of savagery turns against them...at least
Powhatan leads his people in a similar chorus: This is what we feared The paleface is a demon The only thing
they feel at all is greed Beneath that milky hide There’s emptiness inside I wonder if they even bleed They’re
savages! Savages! Barely even human. Savages! Savages! Killers at the core They’re different from us Which
means they can’t be trusted We must sound the drums of war. As in “Colors of the Wind,” Powhatan’s portion of
this song purports to offer a portrait of the English colonists from an Indian point of view, portraying them as
greedy, soulless, untrustworthy killers. Given what has gone on thus far in the film, and what we know of
subsequent history, the accusation strikes home. But this passage, too, ultimately rebounds against those who
utter it. John Smith is laid out, the executioner’s tomahawk is raised, Smith is about to be mercilessly executed
for a murder another young sailor committed...and Pocahontas saves him by throwing her body upon John
Smith’s, successfully pleading with her father for his life. The savagery of intolerance is vanquished through the
power of love. So the story goes, in Smith’s telling, at least. It may be that this was all an elaborate adoption
ceremony in which Smith became a vassal of Powhatan, who ruled over an expending collection of villages. It
may be that Pocahontas was playing a traditional female role in choosing between life and death for a sacrificial
victim. The incident may not have happened at all, except in Smith’s imaginative self-fabrication — particularly
plausible since this is the second time such a rescue appears in his journals. Disney is not to be faulted for
repeating the story as it is commonly known, nor perhaps even for opposing violent male savagery to selfsacrificing female love. After all, both Powhatan and Smith are shown as capable of self-sacrificing love. But
what about the litany “Savages! Savages!”? Does this not level the English and the Algonquian people to the
same state of brutishness and ethnocentrism, portraying the prejudice of savagism as somehow natural rather than
having cultural and historical roots? And what about disseminating this song on the soundtrack, outside the
context of the film, where it may have a very different impact upon an impressionable audience? For many Native
Americans and other colonized peoples, “savage” is the “S” word, as potent and degrading as the word “nigger.”
I can not imagine the latter epithet repeated so often, and set to music, in a G rated film and its soundtrack. It is
even shocking to write it in a review. Is “savage” more acceptable because it is used reciprocally? But then does
this not downplay the role the colonial ideology of savagism played in the extermination and dispossession of
indigenous people? The filmmakers are quite aware that they are in risky territory here, and characterize the
episode as dealing with “one of the most adult themes ever in a Disney film.” The theme is “the ugliness and
stupidity that results when people give into racism and intolerance,” and it is refreshing to have it out in the open,
especially from a studio with a history, even recently, of racist animation. But I believe a more responsible
treatment of the theme –one more consistent with the filmmakers’ aims– would be more nuanced, distinguishing
between English savagism and Algonquian attitudes towards their own enemies (whom they generally aimed to
politically subordinate and socially incorporate, rather than exterminate and dispossess). This could be done by
telling more of Powhatan’s subsequent dealings with Smith, whom he treated as a subordinate “werowance” or
chief. Lacking that, I believe the circulation of the song “Savages” should have been limited to the film, where
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its offensiveness is tempered by its relevance to the narrative That Pocahontas raises a number of difficult and
timely issues –not all of which could be discussed here– is a tribute to its seriousness and ambition. Indeed, the
film begs to be read as a plea for tolerant, respectful, and harmonious living in a world torn by ethnic strife and
environmental degradation. That Pocahontas is rife with tensions and ironies is also a testimony to the limitations
of serious cultural critique in an artistic environment devoted to the marketing of dreams. That our children are
surrounded with Pocahontas hype while being called upon to treat other cultures and the land with respect
requires us to clarify for them the difference between consuming objectified difference and achieving respectful
relationships across difference. In other words, Pocahontas provides a valuable teachable moment that we can
further by encouraging our children –and ourselves– to take it seriously when Pocahontas sings And we are all
connected to each other In a circle, in a hoop that never ends.
Citation:
Pauline
Turner
Strong,
“Review
of
Pocahontas,” [email protected], H-Net Reviews,
July, 1995. URL: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/
showrev.cgi?path=41. Copyright © 1995 by H-Net, all
rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit
educational use if proper credit is given to the author
and the list.
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1595
circa September 17: The Powhatan confederacy included some 200 tribes living in the coastal areas of what
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is now southeastern Virginia and northern North Carolina.
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
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We now refer to the main sachem of this Powhatan confederacy as Powhatan, even though his name was
Wahunsonacock. On about this date Matoaka or Amonute was born to a squaw of this headman, named
Winanseka Nonama. As a little girl Matoaka or Amonute would acquire the nickname Pocahontas meaning
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“Playful One” or “Frisky” or “Mischief,” and then as an adult woman she earn the name Lady Rebecca Rolfe:
We know nothing about this mother Winanseka Nonama beyond the fact that since her infant did not look
anything like her father or any of the other relatives, some have suspected that she may have been a woman
from the Roanoke “Lost Colony” — and thus, her daughter would have been a cross rather than fully native
American. As “Pocahontas,” this daughter would not only be honored with her own variant Barbie Doll® but
would also become the 1st historical individual to have her life reduced to a cartoon romance by Disney
Corporation:
Wayne Newton (a contemporary Powhatan/Cherokee lounge-lizard singer based in Las Vegas) has been
agitating to have Matoaka/Pocahontas/Lady Rebecca Rolfe’s remains returned from Gravesend, England
to tidewater Virginia — despite the inconvenience that the church there in which her body had been interred
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was later burned and reconstructed, and her gravesite is now unlocated.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
Matoaca (Lady Rebecca Rolfe) and John Rolfe
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1607
The lasting “plantation” of English culture in the Americas began at this point with the founding of the
settlement of Jamestown on a coast which at that time was “all Virginia” for thousands of miles, as the Virginia
Company of London disembarked yet another group of adventurers quite as ill-prepared as the groups that had
gone before.
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
When she was first sighted by the English, frolicking with four of their cabin boys, Pocahontas seemed about
ten years of age.
This attempt at settlement –wracked by malaria, Indian attacks, intrigue, laziness, torture, starvation, and
cannibalism– would be arguably saved not by the Indian princess, but by her husband John Rolfe’s cultivation
of tobacco to break the monopoly of King Philip III of Spain.1
A log tells us that within a month they were able to compete the building of a large triangular fort on the banks
of a river they named the James, after their King. At first the climate seemed mild, the Indians friendly. As John
Smith commented, “heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitations.” Then came
blistering heat, swarms of insects spawned in the nearby wetlands, typhoid fever, unfit water supplies,
starvation, fierce winters, Indian attacks, influxes of inappropriately-prepared “Colonists” sent from a
1. Without this success of the Jamestown VA plantation, the dominant culture everywhere south and west of New England could
well have become Spanish.
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changing England that had no other place for them, and a period of tyrannical martial law when missing church
3 times was a capital offense. Many of the colonists we could call gentlemen-adventurers, “whose breeding,”
a contemporary said, “never knew what a day’s labour meant.” These were men, often lesser scions of nobility,
with no future in England, who were lured by the Virginia Company by promises of land and wealth,
much as people would be lured to California during the Gold Rush. But there was no gold in Virginia,
and these “prospectors” didn’t know how to farm, didn’t know how to hunt, and –possibly feeling betrayed by
the Virginia Company’s promises, and lacking any land of their own– were not known for their spirit of
cooperation either among themselves, nor with the Americans of the Powhattan confederacy.
Captain Smith wrote of the ground-nut’s utility.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
Matoaca (Lady Rebecca Rolfe) and John Rolfe
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December 29, Tuesday (Old Style): The American deer hunters who had captured John Smith took him to Powhatan
at Werawocomoo (which, according to Smith, was located on the north side of the Pamaunkee River, now the
York River, 25 miles below where the “river is divided” at what we call West Point in Gloucester County) to
evaluate his fate. The sachem was apparently as greatly impressed with Smith’s self-confidence as by any of
the contents of his pockets. Smith was questioned about his colony and then participated in some sort of ritual
or trial, after which, in keeping with an Indian custom, he was made a subordinate chief in the tribe.
Powhatan’s 11-year-old daughter took part in the ceremony in some way, and Smith would eventually be
proclaiming the likely story that this girl, nicknamed Pocahontas, had somehow romantically determined his
destiny.
Smith would be released on January 2 and guided back to Jamestown. Meanwhile the colony had been in a
ferment due to lack of supplies, laziness, and periodic attempts at desertion by many of the colonists, personal
conflicts among its various leaders, and disagreement over various new policies being formulated in London.
At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great
shout. The Queen of Appomattock was appointed to bring him
water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of
feathers, instead of a towel to dry them: having feasted him
after their best barbarous manner they could, a long
consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two great
stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could
lay hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereupon laid
his head, and being ready with their clubs to beat out his
brains, Pocahontas the King’s dearest daughter, when no
entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid
her own upon his to save him from death....
There are a couple three major problems with this, not least the fact that even if such a scene had gone down
during John Smith’s captivity, it would not necessarily have been interpretable as a failed execution. Captives
were regularly adopted into the tribes by some such symbolism as preparing them for execution then
embracing them, and virtually anyone in the area at the time, even a white man, would have well understood
this. One of the major problems to be overcome, in order to accept such a narrative at face value, is that this
eager cultivator of a personal legend breathed not a work of this fave story at the time: Smith would only begin
to tell of this dramatic crisis in his life at a much later date, specifically 1622, the last year in which it would
have possible for anyone else who had been on the scene to step forward and announce “That’s just not what
happened, not what happened at all.” Where had this interesting detail been during the fourteen full years from
1608 to 1621?
The lie now seems almost too obvious: the rescue story did
not appear anywhere in his published writings until 1622,
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the year that Rolfe died; by dint of hearsay at least, he
had been the last possible witness.
C AMBRIDGE H ISTORY OF E NGLISH AND A MERICAN L ITERATURE
Another major problem is that this would not be the only time Smith would brag that his life had been saved
by one or another notable woman. Over the years the guy would claim to have been saved by, count them,
•
•
•
•
“The beauteous Lady [Charatza] Tragabigganza, when I was a slave to the Turks”
[in Constantinople]
“[T]he charitable Lady Callamata [a Russian], when I overcame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria”
“[T]hat blessed Pocahontas, the great King’s daughter of Virginia”
“[T]he good Lady Madame [de] Chanoyes [a Frenchwoman], when I escaped the cruelty of pirates
and most furious storms, a long time alone in a small boat at sea”
Smith mangles the names, and presents them all Italian style, as if he were copying such materials out of one
or another book he had been perusing, a book which we have unfortunately not as yet identified.
(Actually, this self-promoter would embellish that Princess Pocahontas had saved his life not merely once, but
“oft.” His word, “oft.” “Oft.” This guy had stories he hadn’t even made up yet.)
Another major problem is that this soldier’s autobiography seems to be constructed in long narrative
paragraphs, in which he recounts general details of which he would not be likely as a person passing through
to have had any personal knowledge, followed by short particular paragraphs, in which he makes his claims
to his dramatic personal exploits such as chopping off three heads in a row. There seem to be in addition
significant similarities between the general narratives Smith provided, and some secondhand extrapolations
from an unpublished manuscript now lost to which Smith very likely had access by way of its editor the
Reverend Samuel Purchas, to wit, Francisco Ferneza’s THE WARS OF HUNGARY, WALLACHIA AND
MOLDAVIA.
Smith seems to have embellished his own recollections with
some outside literary materials.
Well, figure this out for yourself.
Interestingly, at another point in his elaborate bragging about himself Smith relates that once upon a time
Pocahontas came out of the woods with a pair of antlers strapped to her head to do an elaborate dance for the
white people, attired only in a few strategically placed leaves. Smith may have been having a whole lot of fun
at our expense not only with brags, but also with erotic fantasies.
We tend to think of Captain Smith as having been something of a friend to the native Americans, on the basis
of his having been adopted into one of their tribes. For a time it met the colony’s publicity needs, to pretend
this, but by 1624 the original financial backers of the Virginia colony were no longer part of the picture, with
what was left of the colony having been placed under the control of the crown. At that point there was no
further need for Smith to dissimulate, and so, at the end of his account of the 1622 attack by tribespeople upon
the white settlement, he included the following material which to my reading establishes as fact that he was
not merely a get-tough guy but was inspired by a serious long-term racist genocidal intent:
[N]ow we have just cause to destroy [the Salvages] by all
means possible: but I think it had been much better [that
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the 1622 attack] had never happened, for they have given us
an hundred times as just occasions long ago to subject
them.... Moreover, where before we were troubled in clearing
the ground of great timber, which was to them of small use:
now we may take their own plain fields and habitations, which
are the pleasantest places in the country. Besides, the deer,
turkeys, and other beasts and fowls will exceedingly
increase if we beat the Salvages out of the country: for at
all times of the year they never spare male nor female, old
nor young, eggs nor birds, fat nor lean, in season or out of
season; with them all is one. The like they did in our swine
and goats, for they have used to kill eight in ten more than
we, or else the wood would most plentifully abound with
victual; besides it is more easy to civilize them by conquest
than fair means; for the one may be made at once, but their
civilizing will require a long time and much industry. the
manner how to suppress them is so often related and approved,
I omit it here: And you have twenty examples of the Spaniards
how they got the West Indies, and forced the treacherous and
rebellious infidels to do all matters of drudgery work and
slavery for them, themselves living like soldiers upon the
fruits of their labors. This will make us more circumspect,
and be an example to posterity: (But I say, this might as
well have been put in practise [sic] sixteen years ago as
now.)
TURKEYS
I think the last word on Smith has already been said:
In the last analysis, Smith the man was not
merely cruel-minded,
but
pathetically
irrelevant.
The manufacturers of his legend had, in the end, taken
only what they wanted of him, and left him behind.
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1608
The Jamestown colony had been established in Virginia in the previous year. The starving settlers survived to
this point because the Powhatan Indians had been bringing them gifts of corn, fish, and wild game. At this
point John Smith asked the Powhatan to submit to the English Crown and provide the settlers with an annual
tribute of corn. They were not agreeable so Smith took corn by force. Full-scale war between the Powhatan
and the English would break out in the following year.
The popular legend has it that Smith was captured and the 12-year-old princess Pocahontas saved his life.
However, neither such a capture nor such a redemption are to be found in Smith’s earlier reports to the Crown,
being placed on the record only in memoirs he wrote in his old age. His memory improved in his old age to
such a degree that he was able to mention not one but several occasions on which his life had been saved by
attractive young ladies.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?
— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.
LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
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On the Virginia coast, some Dutchmen were building Powhatan a house in Gloucester near Werawocomoco.2
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
Meanwhile, in England, the Separatist congregation in the village of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire in rural
England, led by William Brewster and the Reverend Richard Clifton, emigrated to Amsterdam in order to
escape harassment and religious persecution. The next year they would move to Leiden, where, enjoying full
religious freedom, they would remain for almost 12 years. In 1617, discouraged by economic difficulties, the
pervasive Dutch influence on their children, and their inability to secure civil autonomy, the congregation
would vote to emigrate again, this time to America. Through the Brewster family’s friendship with Sir Edwin
Sandys, treasurer of the London Company, the congregation would secure two patents authorizing them to
settle in the northern part of the company’s jurisdiction. Unable to finance the costs of the emigration with their
own meager resources, they would negotiate a financial agreement with Thomas Weston, a prominent London
iron merchant. Fewer than half of the group’s members would, however, elect eventually to leave Leiden. A
2. The reconstructed chimney of that house now stands in “Powhatan’s Subdivision” at Wicomoco.
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small ship, the Speedwell, would convey them to Southampton, England, where they were to join another
group of Separatists and pick up a 2d ship. After some delays and disputes, the voyagers would regroup at
Plymouth aboard the 180-ton Mayflower. This vessel would begin its historic voyage on September 16, 1620,
with about 102 passengers — fewer than half of them from Leiden. After a 65-day journey, these “Old
Comers”3 would sight Cape Cod on November 19th. Unable to reach the land they had contracted for, they
would anchor on November 21st at the site of Provincetown. It was because they had no legal right whatever
to settle in this region that they would need to draw up a compact creating their own government. The settlers
soon discovered Plymouth Harbor, on the western side of Cape Cod Bay, and make their historic landing on
December 21st;
the main body of settlers would follow along after them on December 26th.
The Mayflower Compact
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the
Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the
Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of
the Faith, e&. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and
Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King
and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern
3. They knew themselves as “Old Comers” rather than as the “Pilgrim Fathers.” Although the term “Pilgrim” had been applied by
William Bradford to the Leiden Separatists while they were in the process of leaving Holland, the Mayflower’s passengers would
not be characterized as “Pilgrim Fathers” until the year 1799 — considerably outside this emigration timeframe.
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parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually
in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine
ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better
Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends
aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame,
such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and
Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we
promise all due submission and obedience. In Witness whereof we
have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of
November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of
England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the
fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.
There followed the signatures of 41 of the 102 passengers, 37 of whom were members of the “Separatists”
who were fleeing religious persecution in Europe. This compact established the first basis in the new world
for written laws. Half the colony would not survive the 1st winter but the remainder would persist and,
eventually, more or less, some of them, prosper.
“The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity
to be free, that is the task.”
— André Gide, THE IMMORALIST
translation Richard Howard
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, page 7
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1612
March 12, Thursday (1611, Old Style): The 3d Virginia Charter. Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the
Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided capital punishment even for the pilfering of someone else’s
grapes, the killing of someone else’s chickens — and, of course, it goes without saying, trading with the local
natives.
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
To help save the desperately struggling Jamestown settlement, John Rolfe (whose English wife and child had
recently died in the New World) was experimenting with a crop of “tall tobacco.”4 Rolfe shunned the harsh
product grown by the local Indians, Nicotiana rustica or “poke,” and somehow obtained seeds of the coveted
Nicotiana tabacum strain then being grown in Trinidad and South America. Then Pocahontas (who, although
4. Tobacco is a pioneer species, and although the second crop on virgin land is better than the first, after four crops the land must
be abandoned to crops such as maize that do not place such heavy demands upon the richness of the soil. Tobacco would be
profitably grown only where there were vast quantities of virgin land to be wrested from nature and from the native Americans, and
where great numbers of black slaves could be brought in from Africa to clear and plant these new fields and process the crop.
Otherwise, white man, forget tobacco as a crop, because you’re never going to become a rich planter and sit on the cool porch of a
colonnaded mansion sipping mint juleps and whipping your darkies for fun — you’re going to become, instead, a poor-white-trash
tobacco grubber and chewer with a red neck living in an unpainted shack by the side of the road and swigging moonshine out of a
Mason jar.
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young, already had a husband in her tribe) entered Rolfe’s life. Relations with the natives had continually
plagued the settlers. While the Americans were holding several English captive, the colonists captured the
chief’s beloved young daughter, Pocahontas, in order to have an important hostage of their own. John Smith’s
later writings assure us that a few years earlier at the age of 12, Pocahontas had dramatically saved Smith from
her father, the Powhattan’s, wrath. The incident could more likely have been a ceremonial “saving,” or
nonexistent, but it is more verifiably established that in the early days she did indeed help the colony — with
food or with warnings of attack. How much did Pocahontas know about tobacco? It is true that Powhattan
women grew the food, while in a completely separate sector, in a sort of back area of the village, the men grew
the tobacco. “Frisky,” however, had a seemingly insatiable curiosity, and tended to roam where she wanted.
It is likely she either already knew a great deal about tobacco cultivation, or knew how to get answers.
But, how did Pocahontas become a captive, a hostage? We can read what Sir Samuel Argall or Argoll wrote
about his expedition to capture the princess Pocahontas and hold her for ransom in PURCHAS: HIS PILGRIMES
(1625) Volume IV, page 1765, “A letter of Sir Samuel Argoll touching his Voyage to Virginia, and actions
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there. Written to Master Nicholas Hawes, June, 1613.”:
Whilst I was in this business, I was told by certaine Indians,
my friends, that the Great Powhatans Daughter Pokahuntis was
with the great King Patowoneck, whether I presently repaired,
resolving to possesse myselfe of her by any strategem that I
could use, for the ransoming of so many Englishmen as were
prisoners with Powhatan; as also to get such armes and tooles,
as hee, and other Indians had got by murther and stealing from
others of our Nation, with some quantitie of corne, for the
Colonies reliefe. ... As soon as I had unladen this corne, I set
my men to the felling of Timber, for the building of a Frigat,
which I had left half finished at Point Comfort, the 19. of
March: and returned myself with the ship into Pembrook [Potomac]
River, and so discovered to the head of it, which is about 65
leagues into the Land, and navigable for any ship. And then
marching into the Countrie, I found great store of Cattle as big
as Kine [Eastern Wood Bison, Bison bison pennsylvanicus], of
which the Indians that were my guides killed a couple, which we
found to be very good and wholesome meate, and are very easie
to be killed, in regard they are heavy, slow, and not so wild
as other beasts of the wildernesse.
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The dramatic success of the white settlers’ tobacco crop is credited not only to Rolfe’s importation of the
Spanish strain, but to his finding better ways of growing and curing it, and we may only conjecture how much
he was guided in this by Pocahontas. During captivity, the girl received daily bible lessons, and eventually
converted to Christianity, her name becoming “Rebecca.”
Jamestown would grow rich on tobacco and the import duties would alter King James I’s attitude toward
tobacco. In China in this year, however, an imperial edict forbade either the cultivation or the use of this plant.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
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1613
April 13, Tuesday (Old Style): Captain Argall brought the captured Pocahontas, age about 13, into the Jamestown VA
settlement as a hostage.
June:
John Rolfe (whose English wife and child had died subsequent to their emigration to the New World) exported
his 1st crop of his improved “tall tobacco” Nicotiana tabacum of the West Indies grown on the Virginia coast,
to England (other sources declare the date to be June 28, 1614 and July 22, 1620).
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1614
March: At Jamestown, “Jack of the Feathers” was killed. This is thought to be the final straw leading up to the attack
upon the settlement by local natives.
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
During the year: Opechancanough Powhatan, the brother of the Powhatan, led an attempt at genetic cleansing in which
350, more than a quarter of the whites living in England’s Jamestown colony, were offed. The directors of the
Virginia Company would discover that one reason why the attack had been so successful was that most of their
whites had been drunk. It is to be noted that the Indians generally spared the blacks — this, presumably, was
due to significant intermarriage between runaway slaves and natives. (In 1930, sociologist Melville Herskovitz
would estimate that 29% of African Americans have some native American ancestry — surely, therefore, a
similar percentage of native Americans have some African ancestry.)
After John Rolfe had returned alone to Virginia in 1617, he had married a 2d time, to Joane, the daughter of
William Pierce, who had come to the colony in 1609. When he made out his will in this year, he confessed to
being “sick and weak in body.” His name does not appear among those massacred but, since his farm at
Bermuda Hundred was destroyed, some suspect he was one of those who were killed. He was 37.
The town itself was spared by a warning from an Indian boy named Chanco. The colony went directly from a
population of 1,400 to a population of 1,050.
December 20: The Abigail arrived at Jamestown, not only bringing no food to replenish the losses from the massacre,
but infecting the colony with a shipload of diseased survivors poisoned by one Jeffrey Dupper’s “stinking
beere.” The resulting plague and starvation reduce the colony to 500, as survivors desperately await the
Abigail’s companion ship Seaflower — which would not arrive.
June 28, Tuesday (Old Style): John Rolfe exported his 1st crop of his improved “tall tobacco” Nicotiana tabacum of
the West Indies grown on the Virginia coast, to England (other sources declare the date to be June 1613 and
July 22, 1620).
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND
YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
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1615
John Rolfe and Rebecca Pocahontas Rolfe had a child whom they named Thomas Rolfe.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
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1616
May:
John Rolfe, Pocahontas, and their son departed from Virginia for London. Rolfe indicated that at this point in
time there settlements established on the Virginia coast at Henrico with 38 men under Captain Smalley,
Bermuda Nether Hundred with 119 under Captain Yeardley, West and Sherley Hundred with 25 under Captain
Maddeson, James Towne with 50 under Lieutenant Sharpe, Kequoughtan with 20 under Captain George
Webb, and Dales Gifte with 17 under Lieutenant Cradock.
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June 3, Monday (Old Style): John Rolfe and Pocahontas arrived in London. With them was their one child, Thomas
Rolfe.5
Each of them had been
married before, although
this factoid somewhat
spoils the illusion.
Despite King James I’s disapproval of the Jamestown colony’s dependence on a crop he despised,6 the very
survival of the colony could be in Rolfe’s hands, and, of course, James could not ignore the enormous import
duties Rolfe’s Virginia tobacco, termed “Orinoco,”7 brought to the royal treasury — Londoners and others
around the world liked its taste and had begun to demand it. Since all sales had to be made through London,
the English treasury was growing with every transaction. Rolfe’s trip was a success despite the English king’s
fury at the idea that Rolfe, a mere commoner, had managed to marry a princess, and his fury at the thought
5. Rolfe’s English wife and child had died after leaving with him for the New World, and young Pocahontas already had a native
husband before she was kidnapped and took up housekeeping with this white widower. On an unknown date Thomas Rolfe would
remarry a 3d time, with Jane Poythress. Their only child, date of birth unknown, would be given the name of Jane. Jane Rolfe
married Colonel Robert Bolling in 1675, gave birth to a child in 1676 which was named John Bolling, and died either during or
shortly after childbirth. This child grew up to be a Colonel like his father, was married to Mary Kennon, and left six children when
he died in 1729: John Bolling, Jane Bolling Randolph, Mary Bolling Fleming, Elizabeth Bolling Gay, Martha Bolling Eldridge, and
Anne Bolling Murray. These six children have descendants in at least the following families: Alfriend, Allen, Ambler, Archer,
Austin, Bannister, Baskerville, Bentley, Berkeley, Bernard, Berry, Bland, Bolling, Bolton, Bott, Botts, Bradford, Branch, Brown,
Buchanan, Buford, Burton, Byrd, Cabell, Carr, Cary, Catlett, Chalmers, Clarke, Cobbs, Coleman, Covington, Cross, Dandridge,
Davies, Deane, Dixon, Doswell, Douglass, Duval, Eggleston, Elam, Eldridge, Ellett, Feing, Flood, Fox, Friend, Garrett, Gay,
Gifford, Glover, Goode, Gordon, Grattan, Graves, Grayson, Green, Gregg, Griffin, Hackley, Hamilton, Hamlin, Hardaway, Harris,
Harrison, Hereford, Houston, Hubbard, Irving, James, Jeffrey, Jones, Kincaid, Knox, Lea, Lewis, Logan, McRae, Macon, Markham,
Maury, May, Meade, Megginson, Meredith, Mewburn, Michaux, Morris, Morrison, Murray, Page, Paulett, Perkins, Pleasants,
Powell, Randolph, Rawlins, Robertson, Robinson, Roper, Ruffin, Russell, Scott, Shield, Skein, Skipwith, Southall, Stanard,
Stockdell, Strange, Tazewell, Thornton, Throckmorton, Tucker, Vaughn, Walke, Wallace, Watkins, Watson, Webber, Weisiger,
West, White, Whittle, Wiley, Willard, Williams, Winston, Woodlief, Woodridge, Yates, and Yuilee. (If any of your early Colonial
family relatives are listed above, then you may conceivably be a descendant of Pocahontas, and you may consider that it is currently
considered socially acceptable to be the descendant of an “Indian Princess” (in case you haven’t noticed, race contamination applies
primarily, in the public mentation, to the offspring of male nonwhites upon female whites — rather than vice versa). If you believe
you have found an honorable ancestry, you should write to The Pocahontas Trails Genealogical Society, 3628 Cherokee Lane,
Modesto CA 95356, for, should you be able to establish to these people’s satisfaction that you are of blood descent from Pocahontas,
you may be invited to pay dues. (Incidentally, as a point of information, are there any black Americans who take pride in descent
from such an Indian Princess? Are there any red Americans who take pride in descent from such an Indian Princess? Or would this
sort of thing be exclusively a pride mode of the white Americans?)
6. He had authored what many consider the 1st anti-smoking tract, “De abusu tobacci” (“A Counterblaste to Tobacco”) in 1603.
7. John Rolfe had named his brand of tobacco “Orinoco” in order to evoke the mystery and exotic adventure of tobacco-popularizer
Sir Walter Raleigh’s expeditions up the Orinoco river in Guiana in search of the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado.
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that, should Powhattan die, Rolfe would become in the New World a king on a par with himself.8
JAMES I
The princess, Pocahontas, encountered John Smith once again in London, but because of their newly created
class difference they were unable to rekindle their old relationship.
8. In a ceremony he had ordered a few years earlier, James had actually had a reluctant Powhatan crowned “King of Virginia.”
Powhattan would die in April 1618 but King James I’s trepidations would not be realized. Note carefully that James’s objection was
not that Rolfe had married outside his race, down, to a person of color, but that, a mere commoner, he had married up, outside his
class.
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1617
March 17, Monday (1616, Old Style): When it came time for the Rolfes to return to their plantation in the New World,
John Rolfe’s and Pocahontas’s son Thomas Rolfe was sickly and had been left behind to be reared in England.
Although he would return to Virginia in 1640, marry and beget a family, the boy would never see either of his
parents again. Having barely begun the voyage back to Jamestown on the American “Virginia” coast, while in
fact the ship was still in the Thames estuary, his “princess” mother’s illness, perhaps influenza, perhaps
pneumonia, perhaps smallpox, brought her life to an end at age 22. The ship would need to put in at Gravesend
to offload its royal corpse.
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April 11, Friday (Old Style): Pocahontas had become so ill that the ship bearing her and her husband John
Rolfe back to Jamestown on the Virginia coast would be forced to put in at Gravesend to offload her corpse.
On this day she died, age 22, while the ship was still in the estuary of the Thames. She would be interred
somewhere in the nave of St. George’s Church, which would burn in 1727. The grave would be destroyed in
1731 during reconstruction of the church but a plaque would be created in her memory.
Her widower upon arriving in Virginia would marry again, to Joane the daughter of William Pierce.
The son who had been left behind in England would not again see either parent.
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1619
End of August: From the diary of John Rolfe, back on the Virginia coast after the death of his wife, “About the last of
August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.” This first slave transport had arrived at Point
Comfort in Virginia (not at Jamestown) a few days after the first meeting of the House of Burgesses. The
standard account by W.F. Craven, pages 77-80 of WHITE, RED, AND BLACK: THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
VIRGINIAN, notes that this ship was of about 160 tons and that its Captain sold to the Governor, Sir George
Yeardley, and to the Cape Merchant, Abraham Piersey, “20. and odd Negroes.” The ship Treasurer under
Captain Daniel Elfrith, which was sailing along with this Dutch vessel as the result of “an accidental
consortship in the West Indies,” did not arrive at Point Comfort until three or four days afterward, and there is
no record of any blacks having been delivered or sold from the Treasurer — though there is a record that this
ship went on to Bermuda and there did offload 14 blacks. All standard textbook accounts of this are in need of
revision because of the recent discovery of a large cache of early Virginia records in the Ferrar Papers in the
Old Library of Magdalen College, Cambridge. There is reported to be in these records an item marked March
1619 that lists 15 black men and 17 black women already living in the colony as well as 4 native Americans
in service to the planters. Clearly persons of color were living and working in the colony well before the
canonical date. When that famous 20 and odd people brought from Africa arrived as described above by the
tobacco planter, there were according to the record already 32 persons of African descent present in the
English colony and there is every reason to presume that these African persons of color were expected to work
and work hard but no reason whatever to presume that at this point such persons would have been enslaved
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for life or would have been treated in any particular any different than, say, your normal Irish or Scotch bondlaborer. It is suspected that from this point forward, however, about 11,500,000 persons would be loaded
aboard ships to be brought across from Africa, but that about 2,000,000 of these 11,500,000 persons would
have to be thrown overboard as damaged merchandise leaving only about 9,500,000 persons to follow this
initial consignment9 of 20 persons onto the slave auction blocks of America.
This is what Howard Pyle (1853-1911) would make of it, for publication in the Harper’s Monthly Magazine
issue of January 1901 (Volume 102, page 172):
9. I use the term “consignment” because, according to a poorly recollected albeit well documented clause of the US Constitution,
a white person coming to the New World is to be considered to be a passenger whereas a person of color coming to the New World
is to be considered to constitute a cargo item!
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That Dutch man-of-war was out of Flushing, in Zeeland. The name Jesus, traditionally assigned, has been
challenged:
SLAVERY
An interesting side issue: miscegenation in the USA began early, as the female captives disembarked from this
ship had already been serviced and impregnated, by its crew. (At least, this will be found to be interesting by
those who find this sort of thing interesting.)
These blacks were exchanged for food because that was what this ship needed. According to tradition, if the
Africans had not been sellable, it is likely that they would have been thrown overboard to save their rations.
The 90 English women that were being supplied by a private company cost 120 pounds of tobacco each,
nominally to pay for their passage.
INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Dutch seem to have commenced the
slave-trade to the American continent, the Middle colonies and
some of the Southern receiving supplies from them. John Rolfe
relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia
“a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars.”10 This was
probably one of the ships of the numerous private Dutch tradingcompanies which early entered into and developed the lucrative
African slave-trade. Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got
slaves in exchange for their goods, carried the slaves to the
West Indies or Brazil, and returned home laden with sugar.11
Through the enterprise of one of these trading-companies the
settlement of New Amsterdam was begun, in 1614. In 1621 the
private companies trading in the West were all merged into the
Dutch West India Company, and given a monopoly of American
trade. This company was very active, sending in four years
15,430 Negroes to Brazil,12 carrying on war with Spain, supplying
even the English plantations,13 and gradually becoming the great
slave carrier of the day.
10. Smith, GENERALL HISTORIE OF VIRGINIA (1626 and 1632), page 126.
11. Cf. Southey, HISTORY OF BRAZIL.
12. De Laet, in O’Callaghan, VOYAGES OF THE SLAVERS, etc., page viii.
13. See, e.g., Sainsbury, CAL. STATE PAPERS; COL. SER., AMERICA AND W. INDIES, 1574-1660, page 279.
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The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and
emulation of the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was
aimed at them, and two wars were necessary to wrest the slavetrade from them and place it in the hands of the English. The
final terms of peace among other things surrendered New
Netherland to England, and opened the way for England to become
henceforth the world’s greatest slave-trader. Although the Dutch
had thus commenced the continental slave-trade, they had not
actually furnished a very large number of slaves to the English
colonies outside the West Indies. A small trade had, by 1698,
brought a few thousand to New York, and still fewer to New
Jersey.14 It was left to the English, with their strong policy
in its favor, to develop this trade.
READ ABOUT VIRGINIA
14. Cf. below, pages 27, 32, notes; also FREEDOMS, XXX., in O’Callaghan, LAWS OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1638-74 (ed. 1868), page
10; Brodhead, HISTORY OF NEW YORK, I. 312.
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1731
St. George’s Church in Gravesend having burned in 1727, it was reconstructed in this year.
During reconstruction the grave of Pocahontas in the nave of this English church unfortunately was destroyed.
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1800
Jane Johnston (Schoolcraft) was born in this year as one of eight children of an Irish fur trader and an
influential Chippewa or Ojibwa (alternate Englishings of the same tribal name) woman, daughter of tribal
leader Waub Ojeeb (White Fisher). Jane would grow up in Sault Ste. Marie and returned there after being
educated in Ireland. She would learn tribal lore from her mother and would speak Ojibwa fluently.
War Department agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft would board with the Johnston family when he arrived in
1822, assigned to gain tribal cooperation in new policies concerning control of the Great Lakes area
established after the War of 1812. The Johnstons would assist him in researching Indian culture. Jane would
help him compile a Chippewa vocabulary and would draw his interest toward tales and legends. They would
marry in 1823. With her husband, beginning in 1826, Schoolcraft would publish THE LITERARY VOYAGER OR
MUZZENIEGUN (printed document or book), a weekly magazine distributed in eastern cities as well as locally,
with articles on Ojibwa culture, history, and biography. Her writings, including Christian devotional poems,
tributes to her grandfather, and poems on the death of her son, would appear in the magazine under the
pseudonyms Rosa and Leelinau. Jane Johnston Schoolcraft would become widely known as “The Northern
Pocahontas” and would be sought out by traveling public intellectuals, among them British authors Harriet
Martineau and Anna B. Jameson. She would die in 1841.
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1930
According to this illustration cut from a box of Post Cereal manufactured in 1930, the Indian princess
Pocahontas was important because, supposedly, she had saved the life of an important white man.
(We notice that on the Post Toasties planet, it is not skins but skies that are red — and the military facility of
the white man equates to safety.)
The inference, that the life of Pocahontas the colored woman is of importance because she saved the life of a
white man –a service of such importance that even a person of color may be allowed to perform it– is borne
out by the erotic postcard from 1907 featuring a recumbent John Smith, that is displayed on a following screen:
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1938
Paul Cadmus painted his mural “Pocahontas and John Smith” on canvas in oil and tempera, 82 inches by 162
inches, in the Parcel Post Building of Richmond, Virginia. (He would need to alter a fox’s head, on a pelt worn
as a breechclout by one of the Powhatans, into a tail, as, for the board of approval for this mural, the head of
the fox would be found too suggestive of the human genitalia. Well, Disney would have the same sort of
problem.)
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1991
Michael Puglisi’s “Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and a Clash of Cultures: A Case for the Ethnohistorical
Perspective” (History Teacher 25:1:97-103).
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1996
In the Disney biography of Pocahontas, put out in this year and now available at your local video rental, you
will notice that there is no John Rolfe character. The film is weak on the roles of women and elders in tribal
cultures and does nothing to clarify important ingredients of the tale such as the local rituals of adoption and
diplomacy. The governor character is made to seem evil through straightforward deployment of the
conventions of gay-baiting. This cartoon Pocahontas, unlike the real personage, is not taken hostage and then
coerced into Christianity and marriage, and does not get taken to Europe to die of civilized diseases
(perhaps this will happen in “Pocahontas II”).
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
Matoaca (Lady Rebecca Rolfe) and John Rolfe
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,
such as extensive quotations and reproductions of
images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great
deal of special work product of Austin Meredith,
copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will
eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some
of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button
invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap
through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—
allows for an utter alteration of the context within
which one is experiencing a specific content already
being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin
Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by
all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any
material from such files, must be obtained in advance
in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”
Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please
contact the project at <[email protected]>.
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until
tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”
– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”
in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: March 27, 2015
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that
we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the
shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these
chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by
ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the
Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a
request for information we merely push a button.
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious
deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in
the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we
need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —
but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary
“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this
originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,
and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever
has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire
operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished
need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect
to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic
research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge.
Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.