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Virginia Vignettes
Pocohantas
saved John
Smith?
Most modem historians do not think so. Although Smith in his 1624 memoirs credited eleven-year old Pocahontas with his reprieve from death at her father Powhatan’s hand in 1607, his account, replete with sexual fantasy, lacks collaboration and is considered myth. The ceremony that Smith described may have been an adoption ceremony that he did not understand or was, perhaps, a mock execution to demonstrate Powhatan’s power over the English. If the chief had intended to kill him, it is unlikely that a young Pocahontas would have defied her father’s wishes and intervened. She might, however, have participated in a ritual that inducted Smith into the tribe. But then we will never know for sure. More certainly, she did save his life on another occasion by warning him of a plot against him.
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