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1608

Smith, John. A True Relation of Such Occurrences of Noate as Hath Happened in Virginia. London, 1608. B3-C3, E3-E4. (Ed. Charles Deane. Boston, 1866. 24-40, 72-73. See esp. footnote 3, pp. 38-40, for comments on the discrepancy in Smith's accounts of his captivity.) (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Vol. 1. Edinburgh, 1910. 14-21, 38-39.) (Philip L. Barbour, The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609. 2 vols. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1969.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 1. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. 43-59, 93-95.) Written by Smith in Virginia, this document contains the first appearance of Pocahontas in the historical record but no mention of the rescue. Powhatan treats the captive Smith with "kindness," and he is sent back to Jamestown without incident. Pocahontas, "a child of tenne yeares old . . . the only Nonpareil of [Powhatan's] Country," is introduced later as part of a diplomatic mission regarding Indian prisoners.
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

Wingfield, Edward Maria. "A Discourse of Virginia." 1608. Ed. Charles Deane. Archaeologica Americana: Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society 4 (1860): 67-103. Esp. 92 (entry for December 10, 1607) and footnote 8, 92-95, on the omission of the rescue account. (Philip L. Barbour, The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609. 2 vols. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1969. 213-34.) This account by the first president of the Virginia council mentions Smith's captivity and freedom but not the Pocahontas rescue episode -- another piece of evidence for those who question Smith's veracity. Editor Deane, for instance, determines the rescue an "embellishment" that never happened.
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

1609

A Gentleman of Elvas. Chapter 9: "How this Christian came to the land of Florida, and who he was: and what conference he had with the Governor." Virginia Richly Valued by a Portuguese gentleman, translated out of Portuguese. Trans. Richard Hakluyt. London, 1609. (The Indians and Their Captives. Ed. James Levernier and Hennig Cohen. Westport: Greenwood, 1977. 3-11.) The story of John Ortiz, of the Narvaez expedition, rescued by the daughter of the chief, an Indian princess, who argued "that one only Christian could do him neither hurt nor good, telling [her father] that it was more for his honour to keepe him as a captive" -- cited by some skeptics as a possible source for Smith's Pocahontas episode.
[Pocahontas-like]
[Electronic Version]

1612

Smith, John. A map of Virginia VVith a description of the countrey, the commodities, people, government and religion. Oxford, 1612. 4r: beginning section on language. (Richmond, 1819.) (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Edinburgh, 1910. 46.) (New York: Da Capo, 1968.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 1. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. 139.) This is not a history of the colony; for that see Symonds' companion Proceedings. Pocahontas appears here only in one sentence exemplifying Indian language that translates as: "Bid Pokahontas bring hither two little Baskets, and I will giue her white beads to make a chaine."
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

Strachey, William. The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia. 1612. Ed. R. H. Major. London, 1849. 54, 65, 111. (Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund. London: Hakluyt Society, 1953. 62, 72, 113.) Strachey's A true reportory, his account of the shipwreck he survived on the way to Virginia in 1609 (Strachey was in the colony from 1610-1611 and became Secretary), is thought to be a source for Shakespeare's The Tempest. Here in his history of Virginia (not published until Major's edition) he memorably describes Pocahontas as an 11-12 year-old cartwheeling "little wanton," now married to Kocoum, whose right name was Amonute -- but there is no mention of connection with Smith, who had left Virginia by this time.
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

Symonds, William. The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia. Oxford, 1612. 13-14, 24, 99-103. (Richmond, 1819.) (Narratives of Early Virginia. Ed. Lyon Gardiner Tyler. New York, 1907. 119-204.) (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Edinburgh, 1910. 98, 107, 165-69.) (New York: Da Capo, 1968.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 1. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. 212-13, 220-21, 274.) This is a companion to Smith's A Map of Virginia (it's often called Part II or an appendix), and they may have been published together (though they have separate title pages). Proceedings is a collection of narratives by colonists compiled by Symonds, an English minister who wrote an important justification document for the Virginia Company, and describes Smith's captivity for a third time without the rescue by Pocahontas: instead, Smith "procured his owne liberty." But this work does mention that Powhatan sends Pocahontas to seek freedom for Indian prisoners (which Smith grants for her "sake only"), and there is refutation of the claim that Smith would make himself king by marrying Pocahontas. Smith drew heavily on the Proceedings for his 1624 Generall Historie, where he connects Pocahontas with several of the episodes mentioned in this earlier work.
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

1613

Chamberlain, John. Letter 180. To Sir Dudley Carleton. 1613. The Letters of John Chamberlain. Ed. Norman Egbert McClure. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939. 470-71. Letter of August 1, 1613, by Virginia Company shareholder Chamberlain in England to eminent diplomat Carleton advising of news of Pocahontas's capture and the promise of gold among the terms of ransom. First of five letters by Chamberlain mentioning Pocahontas.

Purchas, Samuel. Purchas his pilgrimage. Or Relations of the vvorld and the religions obserued in all ages and places discouered, from the Creation vnto this present In foure parts. 1st. ed. London, 1613. Book 8, chapters 5-6, pp. 634, 638-39. (2nd. ed. London, 1614.) (3rd. ed. London, 1617.) (also see Purchas his pilgrimes. London, 1625.) Purchas, a friend of Smith's and successor to the great Richard Hakluyt as England's premier collector and editor of travel narratives, apparently uses a manuscript of Symonds' 1612 Proceedings here as his source. His account of Virginia and the pertinent Pocahontas episodes grows over the subsequent editions of his work. In this first version there is only mention that "They carryed [Smith] prisoner to Powhatan, and there beganne the English acquaintance with the savage Emperour" -- the fourth published account without mention of a rescue by Pocahontas. The "womens entertainment" or "Virginia Maske" episode is also mentioned, but without reference to Pocahontas.
[Virginia history]

1614

Dale, Thomas. "To the R. and most esteemed friend Mr. D. M. at his house at F. Ch. in London." Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia. London, 1615. 51-59. (Richmond: Virginia State Library Press, 1957, with introduction by A. L. Rowse.) (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.) Letter of June 18, 1614, by the governor of Virginia, who recounts an unsuccessful voyage to Powhatan to negotiate the ransom of Pocahontas and also his role in her conversion to Christianity, a conversion that preceded her marriage to Rolfe, which, in turn, precipitated a period of peace.
[Electronic Version]

Purchas, Samuel. Purchas his pilgrimage. Or Relations of the vvorld and the religions obserued in all ages and places discouered, from the Creation vnto this present In foure parts. 2nd. ed. London, 1614. Book 8, chapters 5-6, pp. 757, 759, 764-65. (1st ed. London, 1613.) (3rd. ed. London, 1617.) (also see Purchas his pilgrimes. London, 1625.) Enhanced account of Virginia in this second edition probably using the published Symonds' 1612 Proceedings as his source. There's more detail about Smith's captivity but still without reference to Pocahontas, for he procures his own liberty: "Smith, with two others, were beset by 200 savages his men slain, & himselfe in a quagmire taken prisoner; but after a moneth he procured himselfe not onely libertie, but great admiration amongst them, and returning, once more stayed the Pinace from flight." Pocahontas's abduction -- just lately happened -- is noted: "they took Pocahuntis (Powhatans deerest daughter) prisoner, and for her ransome had Corne, and redeliverie of their prisoners and weapons."
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

Rolfe, John. Letter to Sir Thomas Dale. 1614. Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia. London, 1615. 61-69. (Richmond: Virginia State Library Press, 1957, with introduction by A. L. Rowse.) (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.) In a 1614 letter to the governor, Rolfe details his crisis of conscience over his attraction to Pocahontas and asks if he should "desist" or "persist" in his desire to marry her.
[Electronic Version]

Whitaker, Alexander. "To my verie deere and loving Cosen M. G. Minister of the B. F. in London." 1614. Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia. London, 1615. 59-61. (Richmond: Virginia State Library Press, 1957, with introduction by A. L. Rowse.) (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.) In a letter of June 18, 1614, Jamestown minister Whitaker, the "Apostle of Virginia," claims that Governor Dale's "best" work has been his "labor" to convert Pocahontas.
[Electronic Version]

1615

Hamor, Ralph. A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia. London, 1615. 3-11, 51-59, 59-61, 61-69. (Richmond: Virginia State Library Press, 1957, with introduction by A. L. Rowse.) (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971.) Hamor, Secretary of the Virginia colony, recounts in detail Captain Argall's capture of Pocahontas, her marriage to Rolfe, and includes the three 1614 letters of Dale, Rolfe, and Whitaker, cited above, as appendices.
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

1616

Chamberlain, John. Letter 244. To Sir Dudley Carleton. 1616. The Letters of John Chamberlain. Ed. Norman Egbert McClure. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939. 12. The second Chamberlain letter, this one June 22, 1616, mentioning Governor Dale's arrival in London with the "most remarquable" Pocahontas.

Maclean, John. Letters from George Lord Carew to Sir Thomas Rowe. 1616. Publications of the Camden Society, vol. 76. Westminster, 1860. 36. Letter of June 20, 1616: "Sir Thomas Dale retourned frome Virginia; he hathe brought divers men and women of thatt countrye to be educated here, and one Rollfe, who maried a daughter of Pohetan, (the barbarous prince,) called Pocahuntas, hathe brought his wife withe him into England. The worst of thatt plantation is past, for our men are well victualled by there owne industrie, but yet no profit is retourned."

Smith, John. Letter to Queen Anne. 1616. John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London, 1624. Book 4, pp. 121-23. In his 1624 history Smith claims (there seems to be no other corroboration) to have sent this "little booke" to the Queen on Pocahontas's 1616 arrival in England. In it, we learn that Pocahontas (now described as "a child of twelve or thirteen years of age" when he knew her) not only rescued Smith more than once but was instrumental in saving the entire colony from starvation. If this letter is genuine, it contains the first description of "the" rescue, though there is no indication it was publicly known in 1616.
[Electronic Version]

Van de Passe, Simon. "Matoaka als Rebecca." 1616. (John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London, 1624.) (In the Delabrere and Fife copies of the 1618 Baziliologia: A Booke of Kings according to H. C. Levis in his 1913 Grolier Club edition. 158, 170.) (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 11.) According to the Smithsonian (see link), "This engraved portrait of Pocahontas [was] created from life during her time in England." Rasmussen and Tilton point out that the portrayal may be "unrepresentative" because it pictures her as the Virginia Company wanted her to be seen.
[painting; engraving]
[Electronic Version]
[View Images: page 11]

1617

Chamberlain, John. Letters 257, 259, 262. To Sir Dudley Carleton. 1617. The Letters of John Chamberlain. Ed. Norman Egbert McClure. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1939. 50, 56-57, 66. The third, fourth, and fifth Chamberlain letters mentioning Pocahontas. January 18, 1617: Pocahontas was "graciously used" by the king, "well placed at the masque," and returning to Virginia ("though sore against her will"). February 22, 1617: "Here is a fine picture of no fayre Lady" . . . "with her tricking up and high stile and titles you might thincke her and her worshipfull husband to be somebody," if you did not know they were supported by the poverty-stricken Virginia Company. March 29, 1617: "The Virginian woman (whose picture I sent you) died last weeke at Gravesend."

Jonson, Ben. "The Vision of Delight." 1617. Ben Jonson: Selected Masques. Ed. Stephen Orgel. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. 149-60. The Christmas masque Pocahontas attended in London.
[play]
[Electronic Version]

Purchas, Samuel. Purchas his pilgrimage. Or Relations of the vvorld and the religions obserued in all ages and places discouered, from the Creation vnto this present In foure parts. 3rd. ed. London, 1617. Book 8, chapters 5-6, pp. 943, 950-51. (1st. ed. London, 1613.) (2nd. ed. London, 1614.) (also see Purchas his pilgrimes, London, 1625.) The Pocahontas story is further updated here in the 3rd. edition to note her baptism and marriage, as well as the Indian reason for concealing her real name. "They tooke Pocahuntis (Powhatans dearest daughter) prisoner, a matter of good consequence to them, of best to her, by this meanes being come a Christian, & married to Master Rolfe, an English Gentleman." The Indians concealed her real name of Matokes "in a superstitious feare of hurt by the English if her name were knowne."
[Virginia history]

Rolfe, John. "Letter of John Rolfe [to Sir Edwin Sandys], 1617." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 10 (1902): 134-38. Rolfe explains to a patron why he left their son in England after Pocahontas died and hopes he will not be criticized for doing so: "I know not how I may be censued [sic] for leaving my childe behinde me, nor what hazard I may incurr of yo'r noble love and other of my best frends."

Rolfe, John. A True Relation of the State of Virginia. 1617. Ed. Henry C. Taylor. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1971. Rolfe's rosy picture of Virginia in 1616 was obviously meant to re-energize the flagging fortunes of the Virginia Company in London on the trip that brought Pocahontas to London as well. Though conversion of a "poore, wretched and mysbeleiving people" was the climactic thrust of his justification of the colony, there is no mention of Pocahontas.

1618

Virginia Company letter to Captain Argall. In his 1869 History of the Virginia Company of London, Edward Neill quotes a letter of August 23, 1618, suggesting that Argall has some ulterior motive in advising them that the Indians "have given the country to Mr. Rolfe's child" (98-100).
[Electronic Version]

1621

"Att a Great and Generall Quarter Courte Held for Virginia the 13th of June 1621." Records of the Virginia Company. Ed. Susan Myra Kingsbury. Volume I: Court Book Part A, 1622-1624. 496. "Two Indian maydes" are sent to the Summer Islands -- the Virginia Company finally gets the women who came over with Pocahontas off the payroll. See also entries for 11/15/20 and 6/11/21.
[Electronic Version]

1622

"An Extraordinary Court Holden for Virginia on Monday the 7th of October 1622." Records of the Virginia Company. Ed. Susan Myra Kingsbury. Volume II: Court Book Part B, 1622-1624. 105-6. John Rolfe having died, his brother Henry asks that he be compensated out of the estate for bringing up Thomas, his child with Pocahontas.
[Electronic Version]

Smith, John. New Englands trials Declaring the successe of 80 ships employed thither within these eight yeares. 2nd edition. London, 1622. C2. "Abstract of Letters . . . July 16, 1622." (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Vol. 1. Edinburgh, 1910. 263.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 1. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. 432.) Perhaps to establish his credentials for command, Smith responds to the 1622 massacre of colonists in Jamestown with a vigorous assertion of his proven ability to handle the Indians, and he affirms Pocahontas as "the meanes to deliuer me [and who] thereby taught me to know their trecheries to preserue the rest." This slim sentence (in the 1622 edition but not in the 1620) seems to be the first verifiably public reference by Smith to the fabled rescue from captivity.
[Electronic Version]

1623

Captain John Smith's circular or prospectus of his Generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the summer Isles. 1623. Ed. Luther Samuel Livingston. Cambridge: privately printed, 1914. The document designed to announce and to raise money for the printing of the Generall Historie informs potential readers that Powhatan's "daughter saved his life, sent him to James towne and releeved him and all the English" -- the second verifiably public reference by Smith to the fabled rescue from captivity.
[Virginia history]

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. 1623. Act 3, scene 2, line 98-113. Possible allusion to Smith's famous 1608 description of Pocahontas in A True Relation as a "Nonpareil": "And that most deeply to consider is / The beauty of his daughter. He himself / Calls her a non pareil."
[play; Pocahontas-like]
[Electronic Version]

1624

Alexander, William, Earl of Stirling [Stirling, William Alexander]. An Encouragement to Colonies. London, 1624. 28. (Same as The Mapp and Description of New England. London, 1630.) In a survey of New World colonization associated with his grant in Newfoundland, Alexander cites the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas as evidence of the value of intermarriage, "for it is the onely course that vniting minds, free from jealousies, can first make strangers confide in a new friendship."

Smith, John. The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London, 1624. "The Epistle Dedicatory" to the Duchess of Richmond and Lenox, 40, 49 [2], 50 [2], 54 [2], 67, 77, 80, 105, 112, 113, 119, 121-23. Illustrations by Simon Van de Passe (see 1616) and Robert Vaughan (see below). (Richmond, 1819.) (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Vol. 2. Edinburgh, 1910. 276, 382, 400, 401, 402, 403, 410 [2], 436, 455, 460, 498, 511-12, 514, 525, 529-35.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 2. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. 42, 130, 151, 152, 154, 160, 182, 198, 203, 232, 243, 245, 251, 255, 258-62.) This, of course, is the source of the widest range of information about Pocahontas, and the source of the full description of Smith's captivity and subsequent rescue by her. In addition, references to Pocahontas include: her name in an Indian language example (the one listed above from Smith's Map), supplying food to stave off starvation, reviving spirits with her love, making amends for injuries, negotiating for prisoners, entertaining Smith with the "maske," traveling through the "irksome woods" to save Smith from a murder plot, saving Richard Wyffin and Henry Spilman, falling captive herself, marrying Rolfe, visiting England, reunion with Smith, and death.
[illustrated; Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

Vaughan, Robert. "King Powhatan Comands C. Smith to be Slayne." John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London, 1624. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 13.) The first image of the rescue here in the book that, as we have seen, contains the first full description of it, if not the first public mention. This first depiction of the rescue, say Rasmussen and Tilton, with elements based on earlier representations of Virginia Indians, is not itself totally original, and, in turn, it stands at the head of a long line of such images, as the image gallery in the archive attests.
[engraving]
[View Images: page 13]

1625

Jonson, Ben. The Staple of News. 1625. Act 2, scene 5, lines 118-26. Mention of Pocahontas in the famous playwright's dialogue between Picklock and Pennyboy Canter. PIC.: "A tauern's as vunfit too, for a Princesse." P.CA.: "No, I haue knowne a Princesse, and a great one, Come forth of a tauerne." PIC.: "Not goe in, Sir, though." P.CA.: "She goe in, if she came forth: the blessed Pocahontas (as the Historian calls her And great Kings daughter of Virginia) Hath bin in womb of a tavern."
[play]
[Electronic Version]

Purchas, Samuel. [Hakluytus Posthumus; or] Purchas his pilgrimes In fiue bookes. The Fourth Part. London, 1625. 1709, 1712, 1731, 1732, 1768, 1771, 1774, 1841. In his fourth and final work on Virginia (see 1613, 1614, 1617), Purchas now uses Smith's Generall Historie to describe the rescue by Pocahontas (p. 1709). Though he includes the 1614 letters by Dale and Whitaker, he only cites three other mentions of Pocahontas from Smith: her diplomatic mission, her "darke night" rescue of Smith, and her rescue of Henry Spilman. Most importantly, Purchas also reports from personal experience that in London Pocahontas "carried her selfe as the Daughter of a King" and, in his presence, was accorded respect by the Bishop of London (p. 1774). Smith's verbatim reference to Pocahontas from the 1622 New Englands trials (p. 1841) is here as well.
[Virginia history]

1630

Alexander, William, Earl of Stirling [Stirling, William Alexander]. The Mapp and Description of New England. London, 1630. 28. (Same as An Encouragement to Colonies, London, 1624.)

Brathwait, R. "To my Worthy Friend, Captain John Smith." John Smith, The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captaine John Smith. London, 1630. A3. Complimentary Verses. (Richmond, 1819.) (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Edinburgh, 1910. 814.) (New York: Da Capo, 1968.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 3. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986.) In this brief laudatory poem, Pocahontas is mentioned with other women who did service for Smith.
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Smith, John. The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captaine John Smith. London, 1630. A3 (complimentary verse by Brathwait), 58 [chap. 27]. (Richmond, 1819.) (Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Edward Arber, with Biographical and Critical Introduction by A. G. Bradley. Edinburgh, 1910. 814, 911-12.) (New York: Da Capo, 1968.) (The Complete Works of John Smith. Ed. Philip L. Barbour. Vol. 3. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986.) In addition to the mention of Pocahontas in the poem in the above entry, her rescue of Smith is listed in a summary of his Virginia "exploits": "How [Powhatan's] daughter Pocahontas saved his life, returned him to James towne, releeved him and his famished company, which was but eight and thirty to possesse those large dominions."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

1634

[Pocahontas rescues Smith] America. Ed. Theodor de Bry et. al. Vol. 13. Frankfurt, 1634. (Discovering the New World. Ed. Michael Alexander. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.) (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 13.) America was a premier, richly illustrated multi-volume collection on voyages and travel and contains three images from the Pocahontas story. This 3-part image follows Smith's capture, the Indian ritual to explore Smith's threat, and the rescue.
[engraving]
[View Images: engraving]

[Pocahontas visited by her brothers in captivity] America. Ed. Theodor de Bry et. al. Vol. 10. Frankfurt, 1634. (Discovering the New World. Ed. Michael Alexander. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.) (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 23.) America was a premier, richly illustrated multi-volume collection on voyages and travel and contains three images from the Pocahontas story. This image records an incident in the attempt by Governor Dale to force Powhatan to deal for hostage Pocahontas or else.
[engraving]
[View Images: engraving]

[The capture of Pocahontas] America. Ed. Theodor de Bry et. al. Vol. 10. Frankfurt, 1634. (Ed. Gereon Sievernich. Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 1992. 338.) (Discovering the New World. Ed. Michael Alexander. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.) (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 21.) America was a premier, richly illustrated multi-volume collection on voyages and travel and contains three images from the Pocahontas story. Captain Argall conspired with the Indians to trick Pocahontas into captivity. Rasmussen and Tilton point out the burning in the background as rationale for the abduction pictured in the foreground and middle image.
[engraving]
[View Images: engraving]

1641

Thomas Rolfe, Pocahontas's son, comes to Virginia. This according to Neill 1869, p. 105, who says the application to Virginia authorities is in the Library of Congress. The reason is to visit Cleopatra, his mother's sister -- the first we hear of this name.
[Electronic Version]

1650

"Pocahontas." Unknown artist. c. 1650. (Frances Mossiker, Pocahontas: The Life and the Legend. New York: Knopf, 1976. Following p. 143.) Mossiker calls this a model for a tavern sign (source is a Smithsonian Anthropology collection).
[painting]
[View Images: page 143]

1662

Fuller, Thomas. The History of the Worthies of England. London, 1662. 179-80. In the Cheshire section. (Ed. John Freeman. London, 1952.) A entry on Smith in what has been called the first attempt at a dictionary of national biography. There is no mention of Pocahontas, and there is a skeptical view of Smith's credibility: "From the Turks in Europe, he passed to the Pagans in America, where towards the latter end of the Raign of Queen Elizabeth, such his Perils, Preservations, Dangers, Deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond Truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the Prose and the Pictures both in his own book, and it soundeth much to the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the Herauld to publish and proclaime them." Often referenced as the first slur on Smith's credibility as historian, an attack that surfaces big time in the 19th century with Charles Deane and Henry Adams.
[debunking]

1671

Ogilby, John. "The Relation of Captain Smith's being taken Prisoner by Powhatan, and of his being deliverd from Death by his Daughter Pocahonta." America: being the latest, and most accurate description of the new vvorld. London, 1671. 200-5. Ogilby was a pioneer British atlas maker. He introduces a virtually exact copy of a goodly chunk of Smith's account of his capture and rescue by Pocahontas from the Generall Historie thus: "Many other Quarrels and Encounters there were in the Infancy of the Plantation . . . some of which had prov'd very pernicious to the Planters, had they not ben betray'd to Captain Smith by Pocahonta, King Powhatan's Daughter, who upon all occasions shew'd her self a great Friend to the English, having sav'd the Captain's Life, when, being her Father's prisoner, he was just brought to execution. This Lady was afterwards brought into England, Christened by the Name of Rebekah, and Married to one Mr. Rolf, and died at Gravesend in an intended Voyage back to her own Countrey."
[illustrated; colonial history]

1682

Vries, S. de. Curieuse aenmerckingen der bysonderste Oost en West-Indische verwonderens-waerdige dingen. Vol. 2. Utrecht: J. Ribbius, 1682. 833-39. Can anyone translate the Dutch? The "Die Barbarische Liebe" image of the rescue in Happel 1685 is a version of the one in this text.
[foreign language; illustrated; engraving]

1685

Crouch, Nathaniel [pseud. Robert Burton]. The English Empire in America. London, 1685. Crouch, author of perhaps a dozen successful histories, used the 1617 3rd. edition of Purchas for his chapter on "A Prospect of Virginia" and mentions Pocahontas not at all, making, in fact, only passing reference to Smith.
[colonial history]

"Die Barbarische Liebe." Eberhard Werner Happel, Groste Denckwurdigkeiten der Welt Oder so genandte Relationes Curiosae. Hamburg, 1685. 200. (Sabine Kyora and Uwe Schwagmeier, eds., Pocahontas Revisited: Kulturwissenschaftliche Ansichten eines Motivkomplexes. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2005. 26.)
[engraving]
[View Images: engraving]

Happel, Eberhard Werner. Groste Denckwurdigkeiten der Welt Oder so genandte Relationes Curiosae. Hamburg, 1685. 195-205. See above "Die Barbarische Liebe" also in 1685 for the image in this work.
[foreign language; illustrated]

Wharton, Henry. The Life of John Smith, English Soldier. 1685. Ed. Laura Polanyi Striker. U of North Carolina P, 1957. 72, 82, 89. Striker feels that the purpose of this unlikely, unpublished account of Smith's life in Latin by a prolific indefatigable theologian was meant to restore heroic status to a man "thwarted from the start by his being a commoner in an aristocratic venture." Striker feels that Wharton's work on the Virginia part of Smith's life (the account ends with his return to England in 1609) is drawn from the Generall Historie. Be that as it may, there are significant variations (there is no confrontation between Smith and Indians over the murder plot that Pocahontas saves them from in her dark night journey), Wharton embellished significantly at times (calling Pocahontas a "mad woman" at the rescue, describing Pocahontas's dark night journey as inspiring "even those who sleep with terror"), and the charge that Smith wanted to marry Pocahontas is only in Symonds (1612) and Purchas (1625), not the Generall Historie. So in Wharton we first see some tentative free-lancing with the historical record. He plays loose with the story for dramatic purposes, and the result is a very good read, indeed. (In 1834 George Hillard used Wharton in his biography of Smith, so that this unpublished work did have influence in the 19th century.)
[Smith biography]

1705

Beverley, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia. London, 1705. 25-33. (Rev. ed. London, 1722.) (Ed. Charles Campbell. Richmond, 1855.) (Ed. Louis B. Wright. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1947. 37-44.) Beverley's influential book is the first history by a native Virginian. Beverley mentions the rescue without fanfare but focuses on Pocahontas's marriage with Rolfe and reunion with Smith. For instance, he gives a long litany of reasons why the English would have been better off accepting Indian proposals for intermarriages, and he prints the entire Smith letter to Queen Anne. Beverley's drawing mostly on Smith (the letter is not in Purchas) but he also adds material not found elsewhere: King James's snit over Rolfe marrying royalty, the dialogue with Uttamaccomack (Uttamatamakin/Tomocomo), that Pocahontas would have brought "the Indians to have a kinder Disposition towards the English." Tilton 1994 says this book "contains the first important colonial attempt to reconstruct the Pocahontas narrative," and he finds the topic of intermarriage (cf. Alexander, Oldmixon, Fontaine, Russell, Chastellux, etc.) central to the first phase of Pocahontas representation.
[Virginia history]

1707

Aa, Pieter van der. Naaukeurige versameling der gedenk-waardigste zee en land-reysen na Oost en West-Indiën. Volume 21. Leyden, 1707. 81. Translators should apply.
[foreign language]

1708

Oldmixon, John. The British Empire in America. London, 1708. 225-33. (2nd. ed. London, 1741. Vol. 1. 360-67.) (New York: Kelley, 1969.) Oldmixon is aware of Smith's Generall Historie, referring readers there for a description of the rescue, saying only that Pocahontas's "wonderful Humanity" in saving Smith is a "remarkable Instance, how vain we are to our selves, in thinking that all who do not resemble us in our Customs are barbarous." Instead, he draws from and adds to Beverley (though in the preface to the 1741 edition he mentions a manuscript by William Byrd I), calling the king's snit a "very notable piece of King-Craft" and suggesting that "the Reader may judge" how likely intermarriage would have brought peace, "but the English were not fond of taking the Indian Women to their Beds as their Wives. Whether it was on account of their being Pagan or Barbarians we cannot decide; or whether that Nicety was not very unseasonable in the Infancy of the Settlement." See also 1741.
[colonial history]

1711

Addison, Joseph. Spectator No. 28, 2 April 1711. Rasmussen and Tilton 1994 (p. 52) indicate that Addison changed the name of Bell Inn, where Pocahontas stayed in London, to "La Belle Sauvage," but the article does not seem to back that up.
[Electronic Version]

Steele, Richard. [The Story of Inkle and Yarico] The Spectator No. 11, 13 March 1711. One of many versions of the Pocahontas-like story of a shipwrecked Englishman who is aided by a native girl; they become lovers; he is rescued; he sells her into slavery. For discussion of the significance of the story, see Hulme 1986.
[Pocahontas-like]
[Electronic Version]

1730

Woodbury, Mary. "Pocahontas." c.1730. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 35.) According to Rasmussen and Tilton, this 1730s painting by a Boston schoolgirl is "a colonial girl's conception of an ideal woman," with "elements of formal English portrait painting of the Georgian period as it was exported to the American colonies." Tilton 1994 says this painting "is certainly the first original depiction of Pocahontas produced in the New World, and almost surely the first done by a woman" (111).
[painting]
[View Images: page 35]

1732

Churchill, John [Awnsham]. A collection of voyages and travels, some now first printed from original manuscripts, others now first published in English. Vol. 2. London, 1732. 365. A full edition of Smith's 1630 True Travels. As in the original, the rescue is listed in a summary of Smith's Virginia "exploits."
[illustrated; colonial history]

1734

Letter ["Accidentally hearing read a Paragraph"]. Boston Gazette 17-24 June 1734. (Lawrence W. Towner, "Ars Poetica et Sculptura: Pocahontas on the Boston Common." Journal of Southern History 28.4 [1962]: 482-85.) Likely the first proposal, says Towner, "urging the elevation of Pocahontas to the status of American folk heroine" via a poem, a painting, or a statue. The anonymous English correspondent writes: "For my own part I don't recollect any of the celebrated Heroines of Antiquity of half so just a behaviour or that any way exceed her in virtue or true greatness of Mind. How many Statues and Medals would have been made by the Romans in memory of such a Lady?" The letter is followed by an account of the Smith-Pocahontas story from Beverley.

1738

Keith, Sir William. The History of the British Plantations in America. London, 1738. 63-71, 98-99, 125-29. (New York: Arno Press, 1972.) Keith, governor of Pennsylvania from 1717-1726 before returning to England, paraphrases Smith's account in the Generall Historie (except for a last paragraph drawn from Beverley), recounting Pocahontas's two rescues of Smith, her abduction and marriage, the trip to England and the meeting with Smith.
[colonial history]

1739

Nolin, Jean Baptiste, Jr. "Etablissement des Anglois a la Virginie [Settlement of the English in Virginia]." c. 1739. (Stuart E. Brown, Jr., Pocahontas. Berryville: Pocahontas Foundation, 1989. 21.) Not sure where this image comes from. Appears in Brown (the only place I've seen it) without explanatory comment.
[engraving]
[View Images: page 21]

1741

Oldmixon, John. The British Empire in America. 1708. 2nd. ed. London, 1741. Vol. 1. 360-67. (New York: Kelley, 1969.) This revised edition acknowledges use of Beverley and an account by William Bird I in the first edition (see 1708), as well as awareness of Keith's work (see the preface). And this edition contains the curious comments about the rescue and Smith's self-aggrandizement, here marked in italics, a century before the skepticism of Charles Deane, Henry Adams, and others: "The manner of his Treatment among the Indians, and his Escape, his Friendship to Nautaquaus the King's Son, and the surprizing Tenderness of Pocahonta, his Daughter, for him, when he was about to be executed, are Incidents equally agreeable and surprizing, but pretty romantick and suspicious, Capt. Smith having never dropt his main Design to make himself the Hero of his History. . . . Capt. Smith's Relation of his Adventures in this Country relates not so much to the Country, Settlement and Trade, as to himself."
[debunking: colonial history]

1747

Stith, William. The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia. Williamsburg, 1747. 54-61, 89-93, 127-30, 142-46. (New York: Sabin, 1865.) (Spartanburg: The Reprint Co., 1965.) Stith, well-regarded influential historian of Virginia after Beverley and president of the College of William and Mary, claims dissatisfaction with previous histories and access to original sources. His work on Pocahontas appears mainly, though, a long, long comprehensive paraphrase solely of Smith's Generall Historie (the rescue, Pocahontas as gift-bringer, her second rescue on the dark night, saving Wyffin, abduction) till the trip to England, which is a blend of material from Smith, Beverley (King James's snit), and Purchas (Tomocomo's failed arithmetic). However, what Stith adds to the Pocahontas story comes at the end, information about her son Thomas, who was first left in England with Sir Lewis Stukley, but then transferred to Henry Rolfe, "and afterwards became a Person of Distinction and Fortune in this Country," where the "Imperial Family of Virginia . . . is now encreased and branched out into a very numerous Progeny."
[Virginia history]
[Electronic Version]

1749

Goadby, Robert. An Apology for the Life of Mr. Bampfylde-Moore Carew. London, 1749. Chapter 11: 137-41. (9th ed. London, 1775. 145-48.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931.) Englishman Bampfylde-Moore Carew was a real, nationally known character -- swindler, imposter, jokester -- whose life was a best seller in numerous and various editions for a hundred years. In this biography he joins the Gypsies, becomes King of the Beggars, is transported to Maryland, escapes, and sojourns with the Indians, at which point, we get the Smith-Pocahontas story (rescue, abduction, marriage, trip to England, meeting Smith) as an example of noble action by an Indian. Goadby has been described as a key figure in the book trade of the west of England, and his Pocahontas account is copied from Oldmixon.
[Electronic Version]

1750

"Pocahontas and Thomas Rolfe." (The Sedgeford Hall portrait) c. 1750-1800. (Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. 110.) May not be Pocahontas and Thomas. See Tilton 1994 (108, 110). Thomas would not have been this old when Pocahontas died. Someone has suggested that the woman might be one of the Indian women who came to London with Pocahontas and stayed on (see 1621). Sedgeford Hall is a property of the Rolfe family in England.
[painting]
[View Images: page 110]

"Pocahontas." (The Booton Hall portrait) c. 1700-1800. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 33.) Derived from van de Passe, what Rasmussen and Tilton call a "loose copy" (note that Rolfe's name is given as Thomas). Booton Hall is the English ancestral home of the Rolfes.
[painting]
[View Images: page 33]

1755

"A clear and succinct Account of North America." [London] The General Magazine of Arts and Sciences, Philosophical, Philological, Mathematical, and Mechanical 9 (June 1755): 89-95. Smith "is preserved by the affection of a young Indian damsel . . . and by her conducted back to the colony." Also mentions Pocahontas saving Henry Spilman, her abduction, her marriage, and her baptism. Pocahontas "was the first christian Indian of these parts, and, as my author says, perhaps the most worthy that has ever been since, her affection to her husband extremely constant, and on his part to her in every respect reciprocal." "My author" is apparently Stith.
[colonial history]
[Electronic Version]

[Kimber, Edward]. "A Short Account of the British Plantations in America." London Magazine 24 (July 1755): 307-12; 24 (August 1755): 355-58; 24 (September 1755): 431-35. Seems to be chiefly copied from Stith, except for embellishments like this, which may be the first expression of love of Pocahontas for Smith: "By this means he [Smith] got them all to resolve to maintain their fort, and to provide for themselves in the best manner they could; and this resolution was in a few days confirmed by Pocahontas's coming with a great number of attendants, and bringing them plenty of all kinds of provisions, which she continued to do every four or five days for some years afterwards; for Capt. Smith had impressed such an idea upon the Indians of the English courage and knowledge, and such a terror of their instruments of war, that Pocahontas easily prevailed with her father and her countrymen to allow her to indulge her passion for the captain, by often visiting the fort, and always accompanying her visits with a fresh supply of provisions; therefore it may justly be said, that the success of our first settlement in America, was chiefly owing to the love that this young girl had conceived for Capt. Smith, and consequently in this instance, as well as many others, that love does all that's great below" (355). Closing the circle, this account describes the reunion of Smith and Pocahontas in this manner: "She at first shewed great resentment against him, which is a plain sign of her having expected that he would have married her, and indeed it was what he ought in gratitude to have done. However, such is the native modesty of the sex in all countries, that she did not even then insinuate any such expectation" (435). Another first here is the charge of ingratitude to Smith for not marrying Pocahontas.
[colonial history]
[Electronic Version]

1757

Fontaine, Peter. Letter to Moses Fontaine. 1757. James Fontaine, et. al., Memoirs of a Huguenot Family. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1967. 348-53. Virginian Fontaine sees value in intermarriage with the Indians (land inheritance, peace, conversion), "but this our wise politicians at home put an effective stop to at the beginning of our settlement here, for when they heard that Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated in Council, whether he had not committed high treason by doing so, that is, marrying an Indian Princess; and had not some troubles intervened which put a stop to the inquiry, the poor man might have ben hanged up for doing the most just, the most natural, the most generous and polite action that ever was done this side of the water."
[Electronic Version]

Prévost, abbé. Histoire générale des voyages, ou Nouvelle collection de toutes les relations de voyages par mer et par terre, qui ont été publiées jusqu’à .... Volume 14. Paris, 1757. 468-72. Translators should apply.
[foreign language]

Salmon, Thomas. A new geographical and historical grammar. 5th ed. London, 1757. 615. In what might be the first mention of it since the Generall Historie, the erotic "Virginia Maske" episode that Smith recounts is the subject of a section entitled "Diversions" of the Indians. See Douglass 1758.

1758

Douglass, William. A Summary, Historical and Political, Of the First Planting. Vol. 2. Boston, 1758 [re-issue of 1753 ed.]. 422-23. Reprints from Salmon (1757) the section based on the erotic "Virginia Maske" episode that Smith recounts.

1759

"History of North America." ["The History of the Northern Continent of America"] [Woodbridge, New Jersey] New American Magazine 2.14-20 (February-August 1759): 173-224. Specifically 178-81, 194, 213-24. The introduction to this long series of articles (Jan. 1758) is a justification document, laying out the contending claims of European powers and seemingly anti-French due to the recent war. Copies accounts by Stith of Pocahontas's two rescues of Smith, her abduction, marriage, trip to England, and reunion with Smith, even including Smith's letter to Queen Anne (these last two points do not seem directly drawn from Stith and may go back to Beverley).
[colonial history]

1767

Winkfield, Unca Eliza. [pseud.] The Female American, or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield. London, 1767. (Rpt. sometimes as The Female American, or, The Extraordinary Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield or The Female American in 1800, 1814, 1970, 1974, 2001.) This early novel, which Burnham (editor of the 2001 edition) says "adds a great deal to our understanding of the cross-articulation of gender, empire, and race," begins with a version of the Pocahontas story in which rescuer and rescued marry. Captured in the 1622 massacre, the narrator's father is about to be executed when the king's daughter "stroked my father with a wand, the signal for deliverance." The Indian declares her love: "Though a complexion so different, as that of the princess from an European, cannot but at first disgust, yet by degrees my father grew insensible to the difference, and in other respects her person was not inferior to that of the greatest beauty; but what was more, her understanding was uncommonly great, pleasantly lively, and wonderfully comprehensive, even of subjects unknown to her, till informed of them by my father, who took extraordinary pains to instruct her; for now he loved in his turn." Marriage to a "Pagan" is out of the question, however, but she "became convinced of her errors" and converts. So "happy was my father . . . that he began to look upon the country he was in as his own." (Interestingly, though we just saw the introduction of Pocahontas's love for Smith in 1755, Smith will not be a romantic partner for a long time.)
[novel; Pocahontas-like]

1771

Rose, Johann Wilhelm. Pocahontas, Schauspiel mit Gesang. 1771. Ansbach, 1784. Not yet seen. Can anyone locate and supply this text?
[play; foreign language; music]

1778

Alvarez, Francisco, Asturian. Noticia del establecimiento y poblacion de las colonias inglesas en la America Septentrional. Madrid, 1778. 29-37. The Rolfe part of Pocahontas's life.
[foreign language]
[Electronic Version]

Russell, William. The History of America, from its Discovery by Columbus to the Conclusion of the Late War. Volume 2. London, 1778. 166-70. Russell, a successful historian who also published major works on modern and ancient Europe, wrote this history during the Revolutionary War, which he calls in his sub-title "the present unhappy contest." Russell footnotes the Generall Historie several times but covers only and briefly Pocahontas's rescuing actions (suggesting her love for Smith) and her marriage with Rolfe (without, amazingly, any indication at all that she was a hostage at the time). For instance, he says, the "kindness of this fair Indian" did not stop with the rescue of Smith, but "Pocahontas supplied her favourite so plentifully with provisions, that he was enabled to save the lives of many, who must otherwise have perished for want." And also "but what contributed more especially to the safety as well as advancement of the colony, was the marriage of John Rolfe, a young gentleman of great merit, to the princess Pocahontas, who had formerly shown such a predilection for captain Smith." This latter point, followed up with a rosy picture of Powhatan's resulting "cordial amity" with the English, generates a footnote about the value of intermarriage similar to Beverley and Oldmixon.
[colonial history]

1779

Granger, James. A Biographical History of England. Vol. 1. London, 1779. 399-400. This enormously successful work is a catalogue of engraved historical portraits, and Granger is important for devising a system, a taxonomy for collectors. But he has nothing to say about Pocahontas in his Smith entry: "He afterwards went to America, where he was taken prisoner by the savage Indians, from whom he found means to escape."

1780

Chalmers, George. Political Annals of the Present United Colonies, from Their Settlement to the Peace of 1763. Vol. 1. London, 1780. 12-51. Chalmers, a loyalist forced to leave America in 1775, wrote to arouse opinions against the Americans. While the notes show he was aware of Smith, Purchas, and Stith, Chalmers (like Crouch a century before) doesn't mention Pocahontas at all, and, in fact, finds little exciting at all in his chapter on Virginia: "In vain shall we search their history for the fate of battles, the sack of cities, the conquest of provinces, for those objects that fix the attention or melt the heart." Apparently, the Smith-Pocahontas narrative did not enliven "the uninteresting turmoils of a few men, stationed in a desert, whose principal pursuit was for some time only in quest of food." What became national mythology for us is not even on his radar screen -- an interesting point relating to the construction of history.
[colonial history]

1781

Scheibler, Carl Friedrich. Leben und Schicksale der Pokahuntas, einer edelmuthigen Americanischen Prinzessin; eine wahre und lehrreiche Geschichte. Berlin, 1781. Not yet seen. Can anyone locate and supply this text?
[novel; foreign language]

1782

Scheibler, Carl Friedrich. Reisen, Entdeckungen und Unternehmungen des Schifs-Capitain Johann Schmidt oder John Smith. Berlin, 1782. Not yet seen. Can anyone locate and supply this text?
[foreign language]

1784

Rose, Johann Wilhelm. Pocahontas, Schauspiel mit Gesang. 1771. Ansbach, 1784.
[play; foreign language; music]

1785

Kent, John. Biographia Nautica: or, Memoirs of those Illustrious Seamen, to whose ... Conduct the English are Indebted. Vol. 3. Dublin, 1785. 385, 433-34, 456-57. Standard mentions of the rescue and the abduction, but the section on Pocahontas in England has this claim, which, though the notes only mention Smith, smells of Beverley: "When preparing for her departure, she expressed a grateful sense of the honours which she had received, and asserted that it was her firm intention to avail herself of every measure that could effect the establishment of an uninterrupted harmony betwixt the English and the Indians. . . . and died rejoicing at having been instructed in the principles of the christian faith."

1786

Chastellux, Marquis de. Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782. Paris, 1786. (Translated by George Grieve. Vol. 2. London, 1787. 135-49.) (New York, 1827. 266-74.) (Translated and notes by Howard C. Rice, Jr. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1963. 419-26.) The Marquis de Chastellux was one of the French Generals who aided the Revolutionary cause. He recounts a visit to the Bollings where he was surprised to find the descendant of Pocahontas -- whom he calls "the protectress of the English" and an "angel of peace" -- quite European looking. His version of Pocahontas's life -- very influential, quite colorful, much copied (even as late as Blake 1825) -- has some interesting touches: savages "more affected by the tears of infancy, than the voice of humanity," begging Smith to "spare her family" and "to terminate all their differences by a new treaty," bitterly deploring her fate as a captive, throwing herself into Smith's arms in England, living "several years" as model wife there. Chastellux also, like Beverley, raises the issue of intermarriage, nailing James I for being "so infatuated with the prerogatives of royalty" to be upset that one of his subjects married a princess. Tilton 1994 believes Chastellux to be the "most important purveyor" of the Pocahontas narrative before John Davis.
[foreign language]
[Electronic Version]

1787

"Anecdote of Pocahunta, a Savage Princess, and Captain Smith, an Englishman." [London] Daily Universal Register 16 April 1787: 3. A bit loosely but clearly drawn from Chastellux. Perhaps for the first time, Pocahontas is given a voice in direct discourse at the rescue scene: at the "fatal moment" Pocahontas cries out, "if you kill him the first blow must fall on me." And Powhatan's "heart melted with sympathy." And thus another small step away from simple reporting of the event.

"Anecdotes of Pocahunta, an Indian Princess, from whom several respectable families in Virginia are descended." [Philadelphia] Columbian Magazine 1 (July 1787): 548-51. Directly from Chastellux. The last clause in the title is interesting, no? Indicative of the emphasis on the intermarriage and its positive value in this early period.
[genealogy]

Smith, Samuel Stanhope. An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species. Philadelphia, 1787. Appendix on Lord Kaims's Discourse, 19-20. (New York, 1810. 332-33.) (Ed. Winthrop D. Jordan. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1965. 201-2.) Relevant to the topic of intermarriage that we've seen raised several times so far in the archive. Smith argues, against Kaims, that in four or five generations, the "dark tinge" in mixing of races "may be entirely effaced." As evidence, he points to two male descendants of Pocahontas, in which Indian characteristics "appear to be entirely obliterated." One in particular is "perfectly Anglo-American." Thus, like Chastellux, there is evidence that what we might call the bad part of the interracial marriage, Indian color, fades while the good characteristics remain.
[Electronic Version]

1788

"A Letter from Capt. John Smith to the Queen, concerning Pocahontas." ["To the Most High and Virtuous Princess QUEEN ANN (wife of James I.) of Great-Britain."] [New York] American Magazine, Containing a Miscellaneous Collection of Original and Other Valuable Essays in Prose and Verse, and Calculated Both for Instruction and Amusement 1.11 (October 1788): 776-78. Reprints exactly and without editorial comment the 1616 "little booke" relating to Pocahontas's London visit, as well as his description of their meeting, that Smith published in the Generall Historie. But the excerpt is noteworthy for its footnotes critical of whites (Noah Webster is editor of the magazine): Pocahontas's charge that Englishmen lie much is "just"; "civilized men lie more than savages"; "How ought christians to blush to be charged with lying and ingratitude by savages!"

[Belknap, Jeremy.] "Memoirs of Captain John Smith." [Philadelphia] Columbian Magazine 2 (August 1788): 418-21; 2 (October 1788): 549-54; 2 (November 1788): 637-41; 2 (December 1788): 699-703; 2 (Supplement 1788): 721-27. (The key pages are 638-40, 702, 722, 725-26.) The American Plutarch series title tells us that this anonymous piece was by Belknap, who published this again in his very influential 1794 American Biography: contains accounts of the rescues, the "Virginia Maske" (perhaps the first time in an historical account since Smith), the reunion in England, and the death. Belknap notes his sources as Smith and Purchas.
[Smith biography]

1789

Morse, Jedidiah. The American geography; or, A view of the present situation of the United States of America. Elizabeth Town, 1789. 398. (2nd. ed. London, 1792.) Morse was the most eminent geographer of his day, author of the first textbook on American geography published in the United States. Brief mention of Pocahontas's marriage, her trip to England (where she was treated by merited "attention and respect"), and her death, leaving a son who eventually returned to Virginia "where he lived and died in affluence and honour." (Same account as Winterbotham 1795)
[Electronic Version]

1790

Castiglioni, Luigi. Viaggio: Travels in the United States of North America, 1785-87. 1790. Ed. Antonio Pace. Syracuse: Syracuse UP: 1983. 190-92. Interesting script by the Italian Naturalist. Smith is condemned to be burned alive. Pocahontas pleads for him, and he was "united with his liberator, and was respected by the Indians, who regard as one of their nation the prisoners that they allow to live." Both go to England, where, when Smith "no longer showed her the affection that he manifested in America, she became disgusted with him and the ingratitude with which she was treated," whereupon she left him, returned to Virginia, and married Rolfe.
[foreign language]

1791

Morse, Jedidiah. Geography made easy: being an abridgement of the American geography. 3rd edition. Boston, 1791. 192-93. The account is the same as 1789.
[Electronic Version]

Webster, Noah. "Story of Capt. John Smith, Who First Settled Virginia." The Little Reader's Assistant. 2nd ed. Northampton, 1791. 6-12. Webster, of course, is the premier early American educator and dictionary maker. This story, likely adapted from Belknap, of Smith as a model hero ("Such a man affords a noble example for all to follow when they resolve to be good and brave") describes Pocahontas saving him from death, warning him about another plot ("Thus this kind and friendly young Indian saved the English from her father's snares"), and their meeting in England ("an agreeable interview with the amiable Pocahontas"). In what is perhaps her first appearance in a schoolbook, Pocahontas is climactically represented as an "excellent woman, who would have done honor to christianity itself."
[illustrated; school book]

1793

"Pocahontas." 1793. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 32.) According to Rasmussen and Tilton, in this re-issue of the van de Passe engraving, Pocahontas's "features have become more those of an Englishwoman": "To eighteenth-century European eyes, this less 'native' Pocahontas perhaps comes closer to achieving the beauty that would have been expected of the 'Indian princess' of legend."
[engraving]

1794

Belknap, Jeremy. "John Smith." American Biography. Vol. 1. Boston, 1794. 240-319. Specifically 269-71, 284-85, 293, 307-9. Published in magazine form 1788. Belknap's collection of biographies was very influential and much copied. The Smith life contains accounts of the rescues, the "Virginia Maske," the reunion in England, and the death. In the magazine publication, Belknap notes his sources as Smith and Purchas. The book version is the same as the magazine version except for the deletion of a transition into the Virginia section and the addition of several paragraphs at the end -- the Pocahontas sections are the same in both versions.
[Smith biography]

1795

Hardie, James. The American Remembrancer, and Universal Tablet of Memory: containing a List of the Most Eminent Men. Philadelphia, 1795. 32. A list of not only eminent men but memorable events. Entry for Rolfe, "married to Pocahontas" -- no entry for Smith.

Latrobe, Benjamin. "The Pocahontas-Rolfe-Bolling Pedigree." The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Latrobe, 1795-1798. Ed. Edward C. Carter, et. al. Vol. 1. New Haven: Yale UP for the Maryland Historical Society, 1977. 111-22. Latrobe, thought of as the father of the American architectural profession and the most important engineer of his day, covers eight generations of genealogy here. Rather fascinating: this edition contains images of Latrobe's handwritten chart. "Should Monarchy and its concomitant, Nobility of blood, ever come again into fashion in this Country, an event which at this moment is most seriously apprehended by, and disturbs the sleep of many of our good citizens, I hope the blood of Powhatan will not be neglected, unless the great good sense, and merit of many of his descendants whom I know, should be thought less necessary to a man of title, than to a plain commoner. It is somewhat singular that, though the family are rather proud of their royal Indian blood, not one of them should have preferred the names of their Ancestors in their own family excepting Robert Bolling, son of Colonel John Bolling who named a son and a daughter Powhatan and Pocahontas. He was a man of great wit and learning."
[genealogy]

Lendrum, John. A Concise and Impartial History of the American Revolution. Boston, 1795. 126-27. (Trenton, 1811. 110-11.) The marriage with Rolfe -- "an opening for friendly intercourse with the natives" -- is given primacy in this brief two-paragraph account.
[U.S. history]

Winterbotham, William. An historical, geographical, commercial and philosophical view of the American United States, and of the European settlements in America. Volume 3. London, 1795. 5. Same account as Morse.

1796

Robertson, William. The History of America. Books IX and X. Edinburgh, 1796. 72-73, 92-95. One of the foremost historians of his day, Robertson, head of the University of Edinburgh, moved in intellectual circles with such men as David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Carlyle. His section on Virginia draws on Smith, Stith, Beverley, and Purchas -- with some interesting variations. Pocahontas's motivation in saving Smith is "that fond attachment of the American women to their European invaders," and her marriage to Rolfe is the consequence of frequent visits to Jamestown, "where her admiration of their arts and manners continued to increase," not to being a prisoner (which is not mentioned at all), as well as the impression her superior beauty made on Rolfe. She seems to have been baptized in England, that is, after her marriage, and Robertson follows Beverley regarding intermarriage in criticizing the English for failure to intermarry (the result of cultural shyness and lack of flexibility), which the Indians "naturally imputed . . . to pride and to their contempt of them as an inferior order of beings."
[U.S. history; colonial history]

1797

Bingham, Caleb. "History of Pocahuntas." The American Preceptor; being a New Selection of Lessons for Reading and Speaking. Designed for the Use of Schools. 4th edition. Boston, 1797. 148-51. Same as Webster this year. From Chastellux. Perhaps her first appearance in a school book under her own heading.
[school book]
[Electronic Version]

Walker, John. Elements of Geography, and of Natural and Civil History. 3rd edition. Dublin, 1797. 534. In a succinct listing for historical events arranged chronologically, there is no mention of Smith's captivity, but the listing for 1613 reads: "John Rolfe was married to Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan, the famous Indian chief. This connection, which was very agreeable, both to the English and Indians, was the foundation of a friendly and advantageous commerce between them."

Webster, Noah. "History of Pocahontas." An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking. 12th edition. Hartford, 1797. 95-97. A collection of essays designed to "form the morals as well as improve the knowledge of youth." Same as Bingham this year. From Chastellux. Perhaps Pocahontas's first appearance in a school book under her own heading.
[school book]
[Electronic Version]

1798

Foster, Hannah Webster. The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to her Pupils. Boston, 1798. 207. (Boston, 1829. 184.) Letter to Maria Williams from Sophia Manchester. In what is basically a treatise, Webster, author of the noted early novel The Coquette, presents through an extended correspondence between schoolgirls her ideas on female education. Reacting to the section in Belknap on Smith: "While we tremble and recoil at his dreadful situation, when bending his neck to receive the murderous stroke of death, the native virtues of our sex suddenly reanimate our frame; and, with sensations of rapture, we behold compassion, benevolence, and humanity triumphant even in a savage breast; and conspicuously displayed in the conduct of the amiable, though uncivilized Pocahontas!" An early example of a woman treating Pocahontas as a model woman.
[novel; gender]
[Electronic Version]

1800

Davis, John. The Farmer of New-Jersey, or, A Picture of Domestic Life. New York, 1800. 10-12. This is the beginning of the Davis cottage industry on Pocahontas that would include eight or so works and extend into the 1820s. Here in a chapter seemingly unrelated to the rest of the plot, the narrator's son tells the family a "once upon a time" story of Pocahuntas, an "Indian Queen," not a "squaw," who saves Captain Smith from death by burning at the stake. This tale, drawn from Chastellux and modified only by fire as the death tool, is tame compared to Davis's following works, which are credited with blowing Pocahontas representations wide open. Tilton 1994 says that Davis removes the Pocahontas story from the "exclusive preserve of historians and biographers."
[novel]

Winkfield, Unca Eliza. The Female American, or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield. Newburyport, 1800. First American edition: see 1767.
[novel; Pocahontas-like]

1801

Chateaubriand, François-René de. Atala. Paris, 1801. (Atala, or, The Love and Constancy of Two Savages in the Desert. Boston, 1802.) (Ed. Irving Putter. Berkeley: U of California P, 1952.) Chactas, a Natchez Indian, is saved from death by the half-Spanish and Christian Atala, but she cannot marry him because she has taken a vow of virginity -- and she commits suicide. See Lombard 1981 and Tilton 1994 for discussion of the effect of Chateaubriand's depiction of Indians on the Pocahontas story, though Tilton says it is "far more likely" that the Pocahontas story influenced Chateaubriand. But Tilton makes the point that "the catastrophic power of the mixing of the races" was an important factor in the fear of miscegenation that characterized the early 19th century.
[foreign language; Pocahontas-like]
[Electronic Version]

Heaton, Nathaniel. "History of Pocahontas." The Columbian Preceptor Containing a Variety of New Pieces in Prose, Poetry, and Dialogues, with Rules for Reading . . . for the Use of Schools in the United States. Wrentham, 1801. 127-30. From Chastellux.
[school book]

1802

Chateaubriand, François-René de. Rene: ou, Les Effets des Passions. Paris, 1802. (Rene: A Tale. Boston, 1815.) (Ed. Irving Putter. Berkeley: U of California P, 1952.) Companion story to Chateaubriand's Atala (1801). See Lombard 1981 and Tilton 1994 for discussion of the effect of Chateaubriand's depiction of Indians on the Pocahontas story, though Tilton says it is "far more likely" that the Pocahontas story influenced Chateaubriand. But Tilton makes the point that "the catastrophic power of the mixing of the races" was an important factor in the fear of miscegenation that characterized the early 19th century.
[foreign language]

Croswell, Joseph. A New World Planted; or, The Adventures of the Forefathers of New-England. Boston, 1802. Pocahonte plays a bit part as an Indian princess (daughter of Massasoit) in love with a white man in this story of the Pilgrim forefathers overcoming dissension in the early days of Plymouth. She's "whiter far, than other natives are," but her lover has to worry "How will it sound, that you are close ally'd / In marriage vows, with a young tawny savage?" The play concludes with a treaty of peace and a vision of the "future destiny" of the colony that is representative of the nationalistic thrust of the time.
[play; Pocahontas-like]

1803

Bolling, Robert. Memoirs of the Bolling Family. 1803. A Memoir of a Portion of the Bolling Family in England and Virginia. Ed. T. H. W. Richmond, 1868. Written in French by Bolling, translated by family member John Robertson, with notes added by John Randolph. Bolling is the husband of Jane Rolf, the grand-daughter of Pocahontas. It is this Mrs. Robert Bolling whom Chastellux visits in 1786. "The memoir relates only to that branch of the family . . . descended from Pocahontas." In the notes we find this in regard to her marriage to Rolfe: "She must have been very beautiful to have won the heart of an Oxford scholar of independent circumstances at a time when the Indian race were regarded as savages and beyond the pale of the affections of a native of Europe."
[illustrated; genealogy]

Davis, John. "Within Powhatans calm retreat." Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. London, New York, 1803. (Ed. Alfred J. Morrison. New York: Holt, 1909. 317.) With Pocahontas within Powhatan's calm retreat, Rolfe envies "not the gaudy great."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Davis, John. Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. London, New York, 1803. Contains four poems within the section on Pocahontas. (Ed. Alfred J. Morrison. New York: Holt, 1909. 285-322. Poems: 309, 310, 311, 317.) (Rpt. as Personal Adventures and Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America. London, 1817.) The second of Davis's book work on Pocahontas, containing perhaps the first poems written about her, and containing the wildest representation of her yet -- initiating future directions. Drawing on Smith and Beverley for his basic "facts" and motivated to best Chastellux as a memorialist ("No Traveller before me has erected a monument to her memory, by a display of her virtues"), Davis completely romanticizes Pocahontas for the first time. Davis's main contribution to the developing representation of Pocahontas is to make love her primary motivation (see Kimber 1755). Pocahontas falls deeply in love with Smith at first sight; he recognizes her love, cultivates it, but doesn't reciprocate it. When Smith leaves, Rolfe capitalizes on her emotional devastation, catches her on the rebound, and eventually marries her, taking her to England, where there is reunion with Smith. For the first time, Pocahontas is "hot."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Davis, John. "Sonnet to Pocahontas." ["WHERE from the shore, I oft have view'd the sail"] Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. London, New York, 1803. (Ed. Alfred J. Morrison. New York: Holt, 1909. 311.) (Also in John Davis, Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas, An Indian Tale. Philadelphia, 1805. 92.) (Also in John Davis, The First Settlers of Virginia, An Historical Novel. New York, 1805. 172.) Lovesick Rolfe: "Here as I pensive wander through the glade, / I sigh and call upon my Indian Maid."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Davis, John. "To Pocahontas." ["HE who thy lovely face beholds"] Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. London, New York, 1803. (Ed. Alfred J. Morrison. New York: Holt, 1909. 310.) Rolfe listing the sensuous joys of loving Pocahontas: "But more than mortal is the bliss / Of him who ravishes a kiss."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Davis, John. "To Pocahontas." ["WHY, sweet Nymph, that heart-fetchd sigh"] Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802. London, New York, 1803. (Ed. Alfred J. Morrison. New York: Holt, 1909. 309.) Rolfe turning Pocahontas away from Smith: should your thoughts recall "a faithless lover," then "disclaim his fickle love."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Hays, Mary. "Matoaks." Female Biography, or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of all Ages and Countries. Volume 5. London, 1803. 498. (Philadelphia, 1807. Vol. 2, 501.) A one-paragraph biography in an enormous collection of women's lives from all over the world (the volume begins with Mary, Queen of Scots) by this English radical, a member of the Godwin-Wollstonecraft circle, who fought for the freedom and equality of women. "The infant colony of Virginia owed its preservation" to Matoaks (so interesting that Hays uses Pocahontas's "real" name!), "who may be considered as a national benefactress." "Her good sense raised her above the prejudices of her education, and the barbarous customs of her country." Perhaps the first of several books in the mid- to late 19th century in which Pocahontas is enshrined in a pantheon of model women -- see, for instance, Knapp, Child, Sarah Hale, Clarke, Frank Goodrich, S. W. Williams.
[gender]
[Electronic Version]

Latrobe, Benjamin. "Account of the descendants of Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, king or chief of the tribe of Powhatan, who inhabited the country about the falls of the James River, Virginia." 1803. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 23 (1885): 33. Simply notes that Latrobe gave a talk with this title on February 18. See Latrobe 1795.
[genealogy]

Review of John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States. Edinburgh Review 2.4 (July 1803): 443-53, esp. 451-52. In a quite tepid review overall, the Pocahontas part gets the booby prize: "We never met with any thing more abominably stupid than this story, and must be excused for passing it over with very little notice."

Wirt, William. The Letters of the British Spy. Richmond, 1803. 37-42 (Letter IV). (New York, 1875. 161-70) (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1970. 161-70. Introduction by Richard Beale Davis.) A visit to Pocahontas’s birthplace spurs a melancholy meditation on the plight of the Indians on the part of this prominent lawyer who, in the 1830s, would defend the Cherokee before the Supreme Court. Virginians have “no right to this country,” and it is “no wonder” that the “poor wretches” are so “implacably vindictive against the white people." Wirt’s “soul melts with pity and shame," and he states that if he were president he would “bury the tomahawk” by asking for forgiveness and permission to remain in their homeland. But Pocahontas, “the patron deity of the enterprise” worthy of “a better fate,” undoubtedly sought in her marriage "the abolition of all distinction between Indians and white men," and deserves a festival “in honour of her memory." Without this “sensible and amiable woman,” “the anniversary cannon of the Fourth of July would never have resounded throughout the United States." And thus this essay is one of the earliest indications of what would be called the "Indian problem" and one of the earliest calls for public canonization of the “unfortunate princess.” (See Ruricola 1831 for testimony to the lasting influence of this essay.)
[Indian problem]
[Electronic Version]

1804

Burk, John. The History of Virginia from its First Settlement to the Present Day. Vol. 1. Petersburg, 1804. 111-15, 168-70, 181-90. This lively, almost literary, historical account of early Virginia, has two very prophetic insights. First, Burk heralds the pictorial potential that would flower in the 19th century: “The spectacle of Pocahontas in an attitude of entreaty, with her hair loose, and her eyes streaming with tears . . . is a situation equal to the genius of Raphael [and in which] the painter will discover a new occasion for exercising his talents.” And, secondly, Burk foresees the emergence of a Smith-Pocahontas romance: “It is not even improbable, that, considering everything relating to captain Smith and Pocahontas as a mere fiction, [posterity] may vent their spleen against the historian, for impairing the interest of his plot, by marrying the princess of Powhatan to a Mr. Rolfe, of whom nothing had previously been said, in defiance of all the expectations raised by the foregoing parts of the fable.”
[Virginia history]

Marshall, John. The Life of George Washington. Vol. 1. London, 1804. 35-36, 52-53. (New York: AMS Press, 1969. 30-31, 43-44.) The influential Supreme Court Justice includes accounts of the rescue, abduction, and marriage as part of a "narrative of principal events" before the Revolution in his biography of Washington, making him, says Tilton 1994, a "figurative descendant of the Jamestown planters."
[Electronic Version]

Review of John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States. The Annual Review, and History of Literature; for 1803. Ed. Arthur Aiken. Vol. 2. London, 1804. 54-59, esp. 57. "The poetry with which the volume is interspersed is very inferior to the prose. It is introduced with peculiar impropriety, in the history of captain Smith and the female Indian Pocahontas. This history, Mr. Davis assures us, has been related with an inviolable adherence to truth, every circumstance being rejected that had not evidence to support it: but by attributing his own verses to one of the personages, he has given a character of fiction to the story which was in itself too romantic to be believed without a solemn affirmation of its authenticity." But the description of the young Indian girl who reminds Smith of Pocahontas is quoted liberally.

"A Sketch of the Life of Pocahontas." [Boston] Monthly Anthology 1.4 (February 1804): 170-74. Not clear if this is by Davis or drawn from his 1803 Travels. Begins right at Smith's capture rather than developing his previous history as in Travels, but the basic plot is the same and some phrases are exact or similar. Most obvious difference is the classical reference: Pocahontas is Dido, Hortensia, the Goddess of Plenty. And ends with: "When we reflect that so much virtue, heroism, intellect and piety adorned so young a native of our country, we cannot but regard America as the natural clime of greatness, and consider Pocahontas, as exhibiting proof of the powers and capacity of savage nature, rather than an exception to common degeneracy." Could well be Davis because a comparison of the 1805 Captain Smith and Pocahontas with Travels shows that Davis recycles his basic plot with variation, and Tilton 1994 (p. 51) shows Davis quoting the Aeneid about Dido. Striking article; reprinted several times -- see below -- through 1814.
[Electronic Version]

"A Sketch of the Life of Pocahontas." [Hanover, N. H.] The Literary Tablet 1.24 (July 12, 1804): 94-95. Reprinted from the Monthly Anthology this year, same title.

1805

Arrowsmith, Aaron. A New and Elegant General Atlas. Comprising All the New Discoveries, to the Present Time. Boston, 1805. 645-46. Brief notice of the marriage of Pocahontas and Rolfe and their honorable descendants, as well as the anecdote about Tomocomo counting the inhabitants of England.

Davis, John. Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas, An Indian Tale. Philadelphia, 1805. Also contains the 1803 poem "Sonnet to Pocahontas" ["Where from the shore, I oft have view'd the sail"]: 92. Davis's third work on this topic, this one boasting Thomas Jefferson as subscriber. Tilton 1994 calls this the first admittedly fictional representation of Pocahontas's life. Same basic story of Pocahontas smitten with Smith who transfers her passion immediately to Rolfe when he is presumed dead as in the 1803 Travels, but there is considerable exotic and erotic elaboration in descriptions of Pocahontas (cherub lips, luxuriant tresses, filling bosom) and events (the happy couple's "first intercourse" and "conjugal endearments"). Pocahontas is even "hotter" than she was in 1803.
[illustrated; novel; poetry]
[View Images: frontispiece]

Davis, John. The First Settlers of Virginia, An Historical Novel. New York, 1805. Also contains the 1803 poem "Sonnet to Pocahontas" ["Where from the shore, I oft have view'd the sail"]: 172. In this fourth work on Pocahontas, by far the longest, Davis continues to flesh in the whole Pocahontas story from Travels to Captain with more details, like, for instance, adding in the abduction portion of her story.
[novel; poetry]

Holmes, Abiel. American Annals, or, A Chronological History of America from Its Discovery in MCCCCXCII to MDCCCV. Vol. 1. Cambridge, 1805. 158-91. (2nd. ed. 1829.)
[U.S. history]
[Electronic Version]

"Memoirs of Pocahontas, from first vol. of Burke's history of Virginia." [Philadelphia] Aurora General Advertiser 7 November 1805: 2; 8 November 1805: 2. See Burk 1804. The excerpt hits the Pocahontas high points: the rescue, the abduction, meeting with Smith in London, her death. Also reprints the prophetic insight about a Smith-Pocahontas romance.

"New History of Virginia." [Bridgeport, Connecticut] Republican Farmer 27 November 1805: 4. Selection from Burk 1804, on the rescue and the abduction.

Pinkerton, John. Pinkerton's Geography Epitomised for the Use of Schools by David Doyle. Philadelphia, 1805. 174-75. Brief note on Pocahontas and Rolfe as in Arrowsmith above, prefaced by the fact that "the first settlement of Virginia" dates from the permanency brought by the 1610 arrival of Lord Delaware. No mention of Smith.
[school book]

"A Sketch of the Life of Pocahontas." The Philadelphia Repository 5.1 (January 5, 1805): 5-6. Reprint of the anonymous 1804 Monthly Anthology selection that might be by Davis.

Wilmer, James Jones. The American Nepos: A Collection of the Lives of the Most Remarkable and the Most Eminent Men, Who Have Contributed to the Discovery, the Settlement, and the Independence of America. Baltimore, 1805. 69-86. Life of Smith from Belknap 1794.
[school book; Smith biography]

1807

Barlow, Joel. The Columbiad: A Poem. Philadelphia, 1807. Book IV. Lines 285-98. (London, 1809. 120-23.) In a major revision of his earlier "Vision of Columbus," in this epic poem (think Aeneid) fueled by nationalistic need the imprisoned Columbus is granted a vision of the future glory of America in which Smith, the "wise chief" of the "queen of colonies," leads "the best of men to wake to fruitful life" the "slumbering soil" of America and "rear an empire with the hand of toil." Pocahontas, a New World Medea, is urged to "Let virtue's voice o'er filial fears prevail" and lead Smith to safety, "For thine shall be his friends, his heart, his name; His camp shall shout, his nation boast thy fame."
[poetry]
[Electronic Version]

Caritat, Hocquet. "Memories des Pocahontas." Bibliotheque américaine, contenant des mémoires sur l’agriculture, le commerce, les manufactures, les moeurs et les usages de l’Amériques. Volume 1. Paris, 1807. 179-86. Selections from Burk.
[foreign language]

"Jubilee Ode for 13th May, 1807." [Philadelphia] Port-Folio 4.3 (July 18, 1807): 47-48. A Bicentennial poem delivered in Jamestown. Defeat of the Indians. A preface notes that the author "has not found place to mention the celebrated Pocahontas," even though the poem is long.
[poetry]

"An Ode delivered by Master C. K. Blanchard, at the Jubilee of Jamestown." [Richmond] American Gleaner and Virginia Magazine 1.10 (1807): 157-60. Same as the Jubilee ode just above, with a similar afterword: "The Verse writers for the next 'Virginiad,' are requested to pay their respects to Princess Pocahontas, unavoidably neglected in this first essay."
[poetry]

Report of the Proceedings of the Late Jubilee at James-Town. Petersburg, 1807. 5, 8, 18, 19, 20, 42, 43. A collection of "orations, odes, and toasts" (including the one in the entries above) delivered at the Bicentennial celebration (the first) on May 13th. The amiable, tender, compassionate Pocahontas is remembered several times, especially in regard to the rescue, and toasted thus: "The benignant spirit, whose humanity and courage so often snatched our ancestors from famine and the sword . . . Her ashes lie neglected in a strange land, without monument or device; without Barrow, or string of Wampum, but her gentle spirit is in the midst of us, and we hail her with reverence and admiration, as the guardian genius of our fathers, or our infancy, of our cradles."

"Sketch of the Life of Pocahontas, The celebrated American Indian Princess." [New York] Lady's Weekly Miscellany 5.31 (May 30, 1807): 244-45. Reprint of the anonymous 1804 Monthly Anthology selection that might be by Davis.

1808

Barker, James Nelson. The Indian Princess; or, La Belle Sauvage. Philadelphia, 1808. Music by John Bray. (Representative Plays by American Dramatists. Ed. Montrose J. Moses. New York: Dutton, 1918.) (The Romantic Indian. Ed. Charles M. Lombard. Vol. 2. Delmar: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1981.) (Early American Drama. Ed. Jeffrey H. Richards. New York: Penguin, 1997.) (John Bray, The Indian Princess. New World Records NW-232.) (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972.) The first play in English about Pocahontas and based, says Barker, on Smith's Generall Historie and "as close an adherence to historic truth has been preserved as dramatic rules would allow of." Which is not much. The English come to the New World for altruistic purposes, to bring civilization to the Indians. Their presence creates a division among the Indians, and the English actually fight with the "good" against the "bad" (led by Pocahontas's Indian lover). Twice Pocahontas saves Smith, whom she treats as a "brother" (asserting the first time, "White man, thou shalt not die; or I will die with thee!"), for it is Rolfe she loves ("I lived not till I saw thee"), though they do not marry within the play. The play ends with a thumpingly patriotic speech by Smith envisioning "a great, yet virtuous empire in the west" disjoined "from old licentious Europe" that underscores Barker's nationalistic purpose.
[play; music]
[Electronic Version]

Bray, John. The Indian Princess, or La Belle Sauvage. 1808. New York: Da Capo Press, 1972. The complete musical score for James Nelson Barker's play.
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Hubbard, John. "Observations on the Indians of Virginia." The American Reader Containing a Selection of Narration, Harangues, Addresses, Orations, Dialogues, Odes, Hymns, Poems . . . Designed for the Use of Schools. Troy, 1808. 212-15. This is a selection of the first seven paragraphs from the 1803 Wirt essay, the part with the very tough comments about the dire state of the Indians. The trip to Pocahontas's birthplace is simply the occasion for this excerpt; the parts of the original Wirt essay relating to h