 |
 In
a volume recounting the history of the English colony in Virginia,
Smith describes a famous incident in which Powhatan's 12-year-old
daughter, Pocahontas (1595?-1617), saved him from execution. Although
some have questioned whether this incident took place (since Smith
failed to mention it in his Historie's first edition), it may
well have been a "staged event," an elaborate adoption
ceremony by which Powhatan symbolically made Smith his vassal
or servant. Through similar ceremonies, the Powhatan people incorporated
outsiders into their society. Pocahontas reappears in the colonial
records in 1613, when she was lured aboard an English ship and
held captive. Negotiations for her release failed, and in 1614,
she married John Rolfe, the colonist who introduced tobacco to
Virginia. Whether this marriage represented an attempt to forge
an alliance between the English and the Powhatan remains uncertain.
|
|
