Pocahontas & What's More Important: To Appreciate Rightly or Be Praised?

Pocahontas and the Desire to See

The Native American woman, Pocahontas, who lived from about 1595 to 1617, had something large and kind in her that every woman can learn from and which I believe, is why her meaning for people has lasted nearly four centuries.

In a documentary about her life titled Pocahontas, Her True Story, it is said that she was "intelligent, and visionary," that she had "vitality and brilliance," and "large sparkling brown eyes with a sensitive and caring face." Pocahontas was affected by the new people she met who sailed from England in 1607 to establish the first English colony in America at Jamestown. Her life, so much standing for the desire to appreciate and see, took place at a time of intense drama between seeing and grabbing in American history.

Pocahontas, whose name means full of joy and mischief, was one of about 25 children born to the great Chief Powhatan who ruled over 160 villages on the east coast—including what came to be most of Virginia. At 13, she was already a trusted advisor to her father, and from all accounts, persuaded him to "understand the settlers." In Pocahontas The Life and The Legend, Frances Mossiker writes that Powhatan was:

Highly articulate, eloquent, with a sentimental, poetic, as well as philosophical mind. The extraordinary closeness between father and daughter was attested to by almost every reporter of the period: those who saw Powhatan saw Pocahontas at his side, in his longhouse, at his hearth, in his retinue.

I respect Pocahontas who, though she was her father's favorite child, described as his "dearest jewel," had a large desire to know and be kind. This is very different from girls today who are their fathers' favorites, and feel through the importance they get this way, don't have to be fair to anything. I know this territory personally. From what I have read, Pocahontas did not misuse her father to be unjust to others.

On the 26th day of April in 1607, three ships carrying 104 Englishmen arrived at the New World. Mossiker quotes from the diary of Sir George Percy:

We entered into the Bay of Chesupioc. There we landed and discovered a little way, fair meadows and goodly tall trees: with such fresh waters running through the woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof.

Yet these same people, filled with wonder at what they saw, also wanted to grab. This expedition was backed by The Virginia Company which, under the auspices of King James "was a joint stock corporation" whose sole purpose was to make profit for their investors in England. Powhatan would later say to the English, "many do inform me your coming...is not for trade, but to invade my people and possess my country." He watched the settlers very carefully.

One of the Englishmen was Captain John Smith, whose courage led to the success of the Jamestown settlement. In the winter of 1607, he was taken prisoner by Powhatan's brother, and after days of questioning about the European's purpose in America, brought before Powhatan. Mossiker quotes Smith's account of what happened then—which has lived in American history:

Two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could laid hands on [Smith], dragged him to [the stones], and thereon laid his head ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains [when] Pocahontas the King's dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from death."

Two days later, Smith was told he was now an adopted son of Powhatan, and could return to Jamestown. This story is generally believed to be true. He wrote in a letter to Queen Anne years later:

Pocahontas, the Kings most deare and beloved daughter, being a child of 12 or 13...whose compassionate pitifull heart, of my desperate state, gave me much cause to respect her.

Pocahontas became the benefactress of Jamestown. She insisted on learning English and Smith was impressed by the speed and ease with which she learned. I believe she had what every woman can learn from—which Mr. Siegel describes: "The tendency to see...to make things part of oneself through knowing them." She also taught Smith the Powhatan language, and he wrote:

Once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants, brought [us] so much provision, that saved many of [our] lives, that else for all this, [we] had starved with hunger...[she] was still the instrument to preserve this Colony from death, famine and utter confusion...

Tragically, John Smith was injured by gun powder while on an expedition and had to depart for England to recover. With Smith gone, negotiations for peaceful co-habitation between the Indians and the English deteriorated.

Pocahontas was captured by the English and used as a hostage for the return of settlers held by the Powhatan, but her captors were so taken by her dignity that they treated her with "great respect." It was at this time she met and came to care for the Englishman, John Rolfe. Rolfe stood for a world so different from her own which she wanted to know. They married and had a son, and it seems their marriage made for a cessation of hostilities between the Indians and the English—it came to be known as the Peace of Pocahontas. The desire in this woman to know the world, to appreciate things rightly represents what women are hoping for in love. I speak now about what I am so fortunate to be learning about marriage.

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