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U.S. Landmark Books #3
Pocahontas and Captain John Smith: The Story of the Virginia Colony
This book deals with one of the most dramatic and moving episodes in our history. It tells of a band of adventures who set out from England ad landed four months later in the New World. Despite disappointments and failures that would have discouraged less gallant men, they remained to build Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World. Here is the story of shipwrecked colonist who lived a Robinson Crusoe existence on the island of Bermuda until they were able to build small boats to carry them to Virginia. Here is the mystery of the "lost colony" that vanished, leaving no clue but the strange word "Croatan" carved on a tree. Here is the horror of a massacre by Indians who were angered and terrified by Jamestown's growth. And here is the romantic history of Pocahontas, the Indian Princess who saved the life of Captain John Smith. Marie Lawson has brought the people of the colony as vividly to life as if she had been there with them.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
185 pages
First published January 1, 1950
100 people want to read
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March 5, 2022
Book #3 of 2022: Pocahontas & Captain John Smith: Story of the Virginia Colony by: Marie Lawson
(Landmark Book Series)
(#35 I’ve completed in the series)
We all know the story of Jamestown and the first English settlement in Virginia. But I enjoy reading these books to try to learn some new tidbit about a well known historical event.
The reader is introduced to Captain John Smith and the members of the Virginia Company. You are also introduced to Chief Powhatan, his daughter Pocahontas, and the members of the Algonquian-speaking American Indians.
I liked that the author focused on the youth of Pocahontas and didn’t try to perpetuate the myth of a romance blooming between her and John Smith.
I also liked that the author did not mainly focus on John Smith and Pocahontas, but all the colonists and Native Americans.
The new bit of historical fact that I did not previously know was that tensions with England began building almost from the beginning of Jamestown. England was only interested in the colonies as a means to provide wealth and support to England. Colonists realize this; grievances begin to build to rebellion and eventually war with England for independence.
(Landmark Book Series)
(#35 I’ve completed in the series)
We all know the story of Jamestown and the first English settlement in Virginia. But I enjoy reading these books to try to learn some new tidbit about a well known historical event.
The reader is introduced to Captain John Smith and the members of the Virginia Company. You are also introduced to Chief Powhatan, his daughter Pocahontas, and the members of the Algonquian-speaking American Indians.
I liked that the author focused on the youth of Pocahontas and didn’t try to perpetuate the myth of a romance blooming between her and John Smith.
I also liked that the author did not mainly focus on John Smith and Pocahontas, but all the colonists and Native Americans.
The new bit of historical fact that I did not previously know was that tensions with England began building almost from the beginning of Jamestown. England was only interested in the colonies as a means to provide wealth and support to England. Colonists realize this; grievances begin to build to rebellion and eventually war with England for independence.
July 27, 2024
This is another installment in the 1950s "Landmark" series, so, not surprisingly, the subject matter encompasses a rather controversial subject in today's world. Initially, this volume recounts the story of the colonization of New England, Virginia in particular, but from a decidedly European perspective.
I like reading these books, more for the method than the material, as they are definitively a product of their time. As such, adults should read them first (some are more egregious than others, and a fair few I've read in this series I couldn't recommend for children at all), and then be sure to discuss the material and how it's presented with younger readers to provide some perspective and balance, as the language is often problematic. This one is no exception. It's also a heavily fictionalized account, so it's more historical fiction than history book, as we now know, based on research over the last six decades or so.
Pocahontas, whose birth name was perhaps Amonute or Matoax, was a member of the Powhatan tribe in the area of what would become the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, in what is now known as the Tidewater region. Members of the tribe often concealed their true names from European settlers, believing that they were endowed with magical powers which could be wielded against someone if a person knew their actual name.
Pocahontas was the daughter of the chief, also called Powhatan. She was born around the year 1596, according to some estimates. A letter written by John Smith dating to 1611 mentions her as being a child of twelve or thirteen years. She was most famously linked to same said John Smith, who arrived in the colony with about a hundred other settlers in 1607. The colonists built a fort on the James River, which eventually resulted in conflict between the natives and the colonists.
A hunting party captured John Smith in December, 1607, and brought him to the Powhatan capital. Smith recounted a story (and it is almost certainly just that) to Queen Anne of Denmark, the wife of King James (but not until 1616, in anticipation of Pocahontas's visit to England), which was the first of any mention of a threat made to his life. Smith claimed that the natives brought him before Chief Powhatan, dragged him to a great stone where they laid his head upon it, ready to club him to death, when Pocahontas reportedly ran to him and cradled his head in her arms, imploring her father to spare his life. The reasons why she would have done this are not specified.
It is now widely accepted that Smith's account should not be taken at face value - far from it - as there were probably ulterior motives at play, specifically to play up that Pocahontas was a notable, even royal figure worthy of publicity at European royal courts. Other accounts did state that Pocahontas had befriended the colonists, including Smith, as she often visited the fort and played with the local children. She is also credited with providing aid to them, in bringing food when they were starving, which did genuinely probably save lives.
However, accounts of Pocahontas having any romantic attachment to Smith are almost certainly completely fabricated, and, frankly, are not a little insulting. The first mentions of any romantic notions between them aren't documented until after her death, in fact. Contemporary accounts do describe their friendship, but not any romance - in fact, the first documented claim of any amorous involvement wasn't even invented until the early 1800s, nearly TWO CENTURIES later - apparently first appearing in John Davis's "Travels in the United States of America" (1803).
Smith was reportedly injured in 1609 from a gunpowder explosion, and was forced to return to England. That same year, Pocahontas was captured during a conflict between the Jamestown settlers and the local natives - so much for her friendship with them. She was reportedly tricked into boarding a ship, and was then held for ransom, specifically the release of other colonists being held by her father, along with the return of stolen weapons and tools. Powhatan returned the captives but not all the weapons that the colonists accused them of stealing, so they continued to hold his daughter captive. She was held at an English settlement of Henricus in chesterfield County, Virginia, where she was essentially indoctrinated into the Christian religion, eventually taking the biblical name "Rebecca" at her baptism.
She was at one point even taken ashore to speak with her father about the stolen goods, whereby she informed him that since he apparently cared more about the colonists' weapons and tools than her, she preferred to live with the English who loved and cared for her. If this actually happened, it would constitute a sterling example of Stockholm Syndrome. Nothing was said, of course, about the good colonists who could have decided to release her when it became apparent that her father wasn't going to relinquish the weapons anyway, to allow her to return to her people, which they certainly could have done - but didn't.
Pocahontas also met John Rolfe while she was in captivity, whose wife and child had died on the trip to Virginia. He reportedly wrote a letter to the governor requesting permission to marry her, which he claimed would result in the saving of her soul, even though she had already been baptized by that time. There were some reports that she had been married to an indigenous man previously, who was killed during the war with the colonists. Rolfe and "Rebecca" were married in April, 1614, and their one and only child, Thomas, was born in January, 1615. The marriage reportedly did finally usher in a period of peace between the Jamestown colonists and her father's tribal coalition, which endured for eight years, a period some refer to as "The Peace of Pocahontas."
The London Company which had sponsored the colonial venture then decided to bring Pocahontas to England, an effort many consider to be nothing more than a publicity stunt, which involved parading her around England as a trophy symbolizing the taming of the New World "savages" and the civilizing influence of the Virginia colony. Whatever the motives: the Rolfes arrived at Plymouth in June, 1616 and from there traveled to London, along with eleven other Powhatans. It was there that Pocahontas learned that John Smith was still alive. He did not meet her there but wrote to Queen Anne, urging that she be treated as a royal dignitary, as the daughter of the chief.
The situation was not to last, however: less than a year later, Pocahontas was dead. In March, 1617, she and husband Rolfe boarded a ship to return to Virginia, but while still on the river Thames, she reportedly became seriously ill. She was taken ashore for treatment, but soon died, at about age 21. The cause of her death has never been established. She was not returned to her homeland: she was buried at St. George's Church in Gravesend, where her remains lie to this day. The exact location of her grave is unknown, actually, as the church was destroyed by fire in 1727. Her body was believed to have been located under the church's chancel, but its exact location remains unknown.
Through her sole child, Thomas, Pocahontas still has living descendants today. She is reportedly the 12th great-grandmother of American actor Edward Norton. She was the first Native American to be honored on a US Postage stamp, in 1907. As we see, her story is still being told and retold, although it is almost always heavily fictionalized. The best recent example is the Disney animated film (1995), which depicts her as MUCH older than she actually would have been - when Smith was at the colony, as he states, Pocahontas would only have been a twelve or thirteen year old girl.
It is questionable, in fact, if she even had a romantic attachment to Rolfe, as the account is told almost exclusively from his perspective. To that end: in teaching the material, it's important to try to find some accounts of the Powhatan people of their own traditions and culture, to balance the almost exclusively European perspective on the life of this legendary figure, who, despite her life which was cut tragically short, remains essentially a household name.
I like reading these books, more for the method than the material, as they are definitively a product of their time. As such, adults should read them first (some are more egregious than others, and a fair few I've read in this series I couldn't recommend for children at all), and then be sure to discuss the material and how it's presented with younger readers to provide some perspective and balance, as the language is often problematic. This one is no exception. It's also a heavily fictionalized account, so it's more historical fiction than history book, as we now know, based on research over the last six decades or so.
Pocahontas, whose birth name was perhaps Amonute or Matoax, was a member of the Powhatan tribe in the area of what would become the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, in what is now known as the Tidewater region. Members of the tribe often concealed their true names from European settlers, believing that they were endowed with magical powers which could be wielded against someone if a person knew their actual name.
Pocahontas was the daughter of the chief, also called Powhatan. She was born around the year 1596, according to some estimates. A letter written by John Smith dating to 1611 mentions her as being a child of twelve or thirteen years. She was most famously linked to same said John Smith, who arrived in the colony with about a hundred other settlers in 1607. The colonists built a fort on the James River, which eventually resulted in conflict between the natives and the colonists.
A hunting party captured John Smith in December, 1607, and brought him to the Powhatan capital. Smith recounted a story (and it is almost certainly just that) to Queen Anne of Denmark, the wife of King James (but not until 1616, in anticipation of Pocahontas's visit to England), which was the first of any mention of a threat made to his life. Smith claimed that the natives brought him before Chief Powhatan, dragged him to a great stone where they laid his head upon it, ready to club him to death, when Pocahontas reportedly ran to him and cradled his head in her arms, imploring her father to spare his life. The reasons why she would have done this are not specified.
It is now widely accepted that Smith's account should not be taken at face value - far from it - as there were probably ulterior motives at play, specifically to play up that Pocahontas was a notable, even royal figure worthy of publicity at European royal courts. Other accounts did state that Pocahontas had befriended the colonists, including Smith, as she often visited the fort and played with the local children. She is also credited with providing aid to them, in bringing food when they were starving, which did genuinely probably save lives.
However, accounts of Pocahontas having any romantic attachment to Smith are almost certainly completely fabricated, and, frankly, are not a little insulting. The first mentions of any romantic notions between them aren't documented until after her death, in fact. Contemporary accounts do describe their friendship, but not any romance - in fact, the first documented claim of any amorous involvement wasn't even invented until the early 1800s, nearly TWO CENTURIES later - apparently first appearing in John Davis's "Travels in the United States of America" (1803).
Smith was reportedly injured in 1609 from a gunpowder explosion, and was forced to return to England. That same year, Pocahontas was captured during a conflict between the Jamestown settlers and the local natives - so much for her friendship with them. She was reportedly tricked into boarding a ship, and was then held for ransom, specifically the release of other colonists being held by her father, along with the return of stolen weapons and tools. Powhatan returned the captives but not all the weapons that the colonists accused them of stealing, so they continued to hold his daughter captive. She was held at an English settlement of Henricus in chesterfield County, Virginia, where she was essentially indoctrinated into the Christian religion, eventually taking the biblical name "Rebecca" at her baptism.
She was at one point even taken ashore to speak with her father about the stolen goods, whereby she informed him that since he apparently cared more about the colonists' weapons and tools than her, she preferred to live with the English who loved and cared for her. If this actually happened, it would constitute a sterling example of Stockholm Syndrome. Nothing was said, of course, about the good colonists who could have decided to release her when it became apparent that her father wasn't going to relinquish the weapons anyway, to allow her to return to her people, which they certainly could have done - but didn't.
Pocahontas also met John Rolfe while she was in captivity, whose wife and child had died on the trip to Virginia. He reportedly wrote a letter to the governor requesting permission to marry her, which he claimed would result in the saving of her soul, even though she had already been baptized by that time. There were some reports that she had been married to an indigenous man previously, who was killed during the war with the colonists. Rolfe and "Rebecca" were married in April, 1614, and their one and only child, Thomas, was born in January, 1615. The marriage reportedly did finally usher in a period of peace between the Jamestown colonists and her father's tribal coalition, which endured for eight years, a period some refer to as "The Peace of Pocahontas."
The London Company which had sponsored the colonial venture then decided to bring Pocahontas to England, an effort many consider to be nothing more than a publicity stunt, which involved parading her around England as a trophy symbolizing the taming of the New World "savages" and the civilizing influence of the Virginia colony. Whatever the motives: the Rolfes arrived at Plymouth in June, 1616 and from there traveled to London, along with eleven other Powhatans. It was there that Pocahontas learned that John Smith was still alive. He did not meet her there but wrote to Queen Anne, urging that she be treated as a royal dignitary, as the daughter of the chief.
The situation was not to last, however: less than a year later, Pocahontas was dead. In March, 1617, she and husband Rolfe boarded a ship to return to Virginia, but while still on the river Thames, she reportedly became seriously ill. She was taken ashore for treatment, but soon died, at about age 21. The cause of her death has never been established. She was not returned to her homeland: she was buried at St. George's Church in Gravesend, where her remains lie to this day. The exact location of her grave is unknown, actually, as the church was destroyed by fire in 1727. Her body was believed to have been located under the church's chancel, but its exact location remains unknown.
Through her sole child, Thomas, Pocahontas still has living descendants today. She is reportedly the 12th great-grandmother of American actor Edward Norton. She was the first Native American to be honored on a US Postage stamp, in 1907. As we see, her story is still being told and retold, although it is almost always heavily fictionalized. The best recent example is the Disney animated film (1995), which depicts her as MUCH older than she actually would have been - when Smith was at the colony, as he states, Pocahontas would only have been a twelve or thirteen year old girl.
It is questionable, in fact, if she even had a romantic attachment to Rolfe, as the account is told almost exclusively from his perspective. To that end: in teaching the material, it's important to try to find some accounts of the Powhatan people of their own traditions and culture, to balance the almost exclusively European perspective on the life of this legendary figure, who, despite her life which was cut tragically short, remains essentially a household name.
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April 30, 2024Review of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith: The Story of the Virginia Colony
By: Marie Lawson
This work tells you about the history of the Virginia colony and the legend of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith for young readers. The writing is simple and explains the history in an easy-to-understand way. It states facts to make an elementary reader aware of this history. It doesn’t cover too many details, just tells the information. The sketches were fun to look at reminding me of the Illustrated classics editions of classic literature. I did learn a few new things such as John Smith being a prisoner because the council that planned to rule the colony didn’t trust him. Ratcliff didn’t seem to be much of a threat like in the Disney movie, which made him an antagonist, but he and John Smith were rivals. Thankfully, they didn’t romanticize John Smith and Pocahontas’ relationship, but Smith did for a second show interest other than friends. Of course, he realized he was too old for her. It mostly focuses on colonist rather than the Native Americans and what they had experienced such as starvation. I would recommend a reader take on a work about history of the Native Americans as well to get a fair amount history.
By: Marie Lawson
This work tells you about the history of the Virginia colony and the legend of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith for young readers. The writing is simple and explains the history in an easy-to-understand way. It states facts to make an elementary reader aware of this history. It doesn’t cover too many details, just tells the information. The sketches were fun to look at reminding me of the Illustrated classics editions of classic literature. I did learn a few new things such as John Smith being a prisoner because the council that planned to rule the colony didn’t trust him. Ratcliff didn’t seem to be much of a threat like in the Disney movie, which made him an antagonist, but he and John Smith were rivals. Thankfully, they didn’t romanticize John Smith and Pocahontas’ relationship, but Smith did for a second show interest other than friends. Of course, he realized he was too old for her. It mostly focuses on colonist rather than the Native Americans and what they had experienced such as starvation. I would recommend a reader take on a work about history of the Native Americans as well to get a fair amount history.
December 13, 2023
Weight: 2, Research: 2, Logic: 2, Style: 2, Affections: 1. This well-written tale explained the most important details of how Virginia was founded. It treats American heroes like the heroes they are. John Smith was only in Virginia three years, and only led the colony for a year and a half, which was surprising. I loved the explanation of the Virginians battling for their freedoms. The most encouraging thing from this book was that Pocahontas (a.k.a Rebecca) may have been born again.
April 14, 2018
I read a bunch of the Landmark series books as a kid. Our school library had a huge collection of them, so I just made my way down the shelves. I remember enjoying them, but I was too young at the time to question the narrative or the quality of writing. I just liked reading biographies and histories, and there wasn't a lot of interesting non-fiction for kids at that time. Most of what did exist was either boring or more myth than fact. (And these do suffer from a bit of the latter.)
Would I read it to kids today? Nah. The whole "Great White Race has God-given right to take, kill, abuse, and exploit whatever and whoever in the name of making America Great" slant doesn't sit well. It never did; we just were too indoctrinated in it to know better 50+ years ago when these came out. I'm rating them on the memory of enjoyment alone, not on accuracy or how they would go over today. Fortunately, kids today have a lot better from which to choose.
Would I read it to kids today? Nah. The whole "Great White Race has God-given right to take, kill, abuse, and exploit whatever and whoever in the name of making America Great" slant doesn't sit well. It never did; we just were too indoctrinated in it to know better 50+ years ago when these came out. I'm rating them on the memory of enjoyment alone, not on accuracy or how they would go over today. Fortunately, kids today have a lot better from which to choose.
June 3, 2012
An interesting view of history from the middle twentieth century. I wonder how much of the story is artistry since current belief is that Pocahontas did not save John Smith from certain death. Disney must not have gotten the memo...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews