The Story of Pocohantas | Page 7

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."
The Indian girls married very young. The polygamous Powhatan had a
large number of wives, but of all his women, his favorites were a dozen
"for the most part very young women," the names of whom Strachey
obtained from one Kemps, an Indian a good deal about camp, whom
Smith certifies was a great villain. Strachey gives a list of the names of
twelve of them, at the head of which is Winganuske. This list was no
doubt written down by the author in Virginia, and it is followed by a
sentence, quoted below, giving also the number of Powhatan's children.
The "great darling" in this list was Winganuske, a sister of Machumps,
who, according to Smith, murdered his comrade in the Bermudas.
Strachey writes:
"He [Powhatan] was reported by the said Kemps, as also by the Indian
Machumps, who was sometyme in England, and comes to and fro
amongst us as he dares, and as Powhatan gives him leave, for it is not
otherwise safe for him, no more than it was for one Amarice, who had
his braynes knockt out for selling but a baskett of corne, and lying in
the English fort two or three days without Powhatan's leave; I say they
often reported unto us that Powhatan had then lyving twenty sonnes
and ten daughters, besyde a young one by Winganuske, Machumps his
sister, and a great darling of the King's; and besides, younge Pocohunta,
a daughter of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymes past, nowe
married to a private Captaine, called Kocoum, some two years since."
This passage is a great puzzle. Does Strachey intend to say that
Pocahontas was married to an Iniaan named Kocoum? She might have
been during the time after Smith's departure in 1609, and her
kidnapping in 1613, when she was of marriageable age. We shall see
hereafter that Powhatan, in 1614, said he had sold another favorite
daughter of his, whom Sir Thomas Dale desired, and who was not
twelve years of age, to be wife to a great chief. The term "private
Captain" might perhaps be applied to an Indian chief. Smith, in his
"General Historie," says the Indians have "but few occasions to use any

officers more than one commander, which commonly they call
Werowance, or Caucorouse, which is Captaine." It is probably not
possible, with the best intentions, to twist Kocoum into Caucorouse, or
to suppose that Strachey intended to say that a private captain was
called in Indian a Kocoum. Werowance and Caucorouse are not
synonymous terms. Werowance means "chief," and Caucorouse
means" talker" or "orator," and is the original of our word "caucus."
Either Strachey was uninformed, or Pocahontas was married to an
Indian--a not violent presumption considering her age and the fact that
war between Powhatan and the whites for some time had cut off
intercourse between them--or Strachey referred to her marriage with
Rolfe, whom he calls by mistake Kocoum. If this is to be accepted, then
this paragraph must have been written in England in 1616, and have
referred to the marriage to Rolfe it "some two years since," in 1614.
That Pocahontas was a gentle-hearted and pleasing girl, and, through
her acquaintance with Smith, friendly to the whites, there is no doubt;
that she was not different in her habits and mode of life from other
Indian girls, before the time of her kidnapping, there is every reason to
suppose. It was the English who magnified the imperialism of her
father, and exaggerated her own station as Princess. She certainly put
on no airs of royalty when she was "cart-wheeling" about the fort. Nor
does this detract anything from the native dignity of the mature, and
converted, and partially civilized woman.
We should expect there would be the discrepancies which have been
noticed in the estimates of her age. Powhatan is not said to have kept a
private secretary to register births in his family. If Pocahontas gave her
age correctly, as it appears upon her London portrait in 1616, aged
twenty-one, she must have been eighteen years of age when she was
captured in 1613 This would make her about twelve at the time of
Smith's captivity in 1607-8. There is certainly room for difference of
opinion as to whether so precocious a woman, as her intelligent
apprehension of affairs shows her to have been, should have remained
unmarried till the age of eighteen. In marrying at least as early as that
she would have followed the custom of her tribe. It is possible that her

intercourse with the whites had raised her above such an