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Updated: May 8, 2025
Several of them were caught and confined in the fort, and, guarded, were conducted to the morning and evening prayers. By threats and slight torture, the captives were made to confess the hostile intentions of Powhatan and the other chiefs, which was to steal their weapons and then overpower the colony.
He says: "Both men, women, and children have their severall names; at first according to the severall humor of their parents; and for the men children, at first, when they are young, their mothers give them a name, calling them by some affectionate title, or perhaps observing their promising inclination give it accordingly; and so the great King Powhatan called a young daughter of his, whom he loved well, Pocahontas, which may signify a little wanton; howbeyt she was rightly called Amonata at more ripe years."
As they walked along the path from the fort to Jamestown's one street he asked: "Tell me, my little jailor, how came The Powhatan to set me free? I have wondered every day since, and I cannot understand. Thou didst prevail with him, was it not so?" "Aye," answered the girl.
Smith was ignorant of certain facts about the Indians with which we are now familiar. The curious ceremony which took place in the hut in the forest, just before Powhatan freed Smith and allowed him to return to Jamestown, was one he could not comprehend. Modern historians believe that it was probably the ceremony of adoption by which Smith was made one of the tribe.
Pocahontas hid him for a time, and by her means, and extraordinary bribes, in three days' travel he reached Smith. Powhatan, according to Smith, threatened death to his followers if they did not kill Smith. At one time swarms of natives, unarmed, came bringing great supplies of provisions; this was to put Smith off his guard, surround him with hundreds of savages, and slay him by an ambush.
Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had beene a monster, till Powhatan and his trayne had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, made of Rarowcun skinnes and all the tayles hanging by.
While she was still looking around to see who the lucky spectators were, the entrance to the lodge was darkened and a great shouting went up from all the braves as Opechanchanough strode in, followed by his prisoner. Powhatan sat in silence until Smith stood directly before him, and then he spoke: "We have waited many days and nights to behold thee, wayfarer from across the sea."
Edward Boynton and Richard Savage, who had been left with Powhatan, seeing the treachery, endeavored to escape, but were apprehended by the Indians. At Pamaunky there was the same sort of palaver with Opechancanough, the king, to whom Smith the year before had expounded the mysteries of history, geography, and astronomy.
According to Spelman's Relation, he stayed only seven or eight days with the little Powhatan, when he got leave to go to Jamestown, being desirous to see the English and to fetch the small articles that belonged to him. The Indian King agreed to wait for him at that place, but he stayed too long, and on his return the little Powhatan had departed, and Spelman went back to Jamestown.
It is fair, in passing, to remark that the above allusion to the night visit of Pocahontas to Smith in this tract of 1612 helps to confirm the story, which does not appear in the previous narration of Smith's encounter with Powhatan at Werowocomoco in the same tract, but is celebrated in the "General Historie."
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