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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."
She abideth gladly amongst us, for she groweth restless as a young brave, and Werowocomoco hems her in."
But she herself had never before seen any one faint for food, and it hurt her when she thought of the abundance at Werowocomoco, where not even the dogs went hungry, to know that there were men not far away who must go without. Her father made no objection when a day or two later she told him that she wished to take another supply of provisions to the white men. "So be it," nodded Powhatan.
"I wish to go to him." Nautauquas looked at her earnestly as if he would question her, but did not. "They say he is on his way to Jamestown and should reach there on the morrow." As Pocahontas and Nautauquas returned at sunset to Werowocomoco, the girl stopped at Wansutis's lodge. "Thou comest for healing herbs for thy white man," exclaimed the old woman before Pocahontas had spoken a word.
While Powhatan's two children were adding to the well-filled larder of Werowocomoco, there was real dearth of food at Jamestown. The stores, many of them musty and almost inedible after the long voyage, were growing daily scarcer. There was fish in the river, but the colonists grew weary of keeping what they called "a Lenten diet," and in their dreams munched juicy sirloins of fat English beef.
So even when Pocahontas left Werowocomoco to visit her kinsfolk, the Patowomekes, he bided his time and spent his days building a new lodge nearby that of Wansutis, that it might be in readiness for the day when he should bring his squaw to light their first fire beneath the opening under the sky. Meanwhile affairs in Jamestown had been going from bad to worse.
But when they stealthily stole up to the seat of that crafty chief, they found that those "damned Dutchmen" had caused Powhatan to abandon his new house at Werowocomoco, and to carry away all his corn and provisions. The reward of this wearisome winter campaign was two hundred weight of deer-suet and four hundred and seventy-nine bushels of corn for the general store.
She had always been accustomed to the deference paid her as the daughter of the great werowance, ruler over thirty tribes, and now she received that of the English, who treated her as the daughter of a powerful ally. For Powhatan had seen the wisdom of keeping peace between Werowocomoco and Jamestown and its settlement up the river of Henrici, of which Rolfe's estate, Varina, was a portion.
Therefore, on the 13th of April, Argall repaired to Governor Gates at Jamestown, and delivered his prisoner, and a few days after the King sent home some of the white captives, three pieces, one broad-axe, a long whip-saw, and a canoe of corn. Pocahontas, however, was kept at Jamestown. Why Pocahontas had left Werowocomoco and gone to stay with Patowomek we can only conjecture.
It was at Werowocomoco that Smith observed certain conjurations of the medicine men, which he supposed had reference to his fate.
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