The Story of Pocohantas | Page 8

alliance as
would be offered her at the court of Werowocomoco.
We are without any record of the life of Pocahontas for some years.
The occasional mentions of her name in the "General Historie" are so
evidently interpolated at a late date, that they do not aid us. When and
where she took the name of Matoaka, which appears upon her London
portrait, we are not told, nor when she was called Amonata, as Strachey
says she was "at more ripe yeares." How she was occupied from the
departure of Smith to her abduction, we can only guess. To follow her
authentic history we must take up the account of Captain Argall and of
Ralph Hamor, Jr., secretary of the colony under Governor Dale.
Captain Argall, who seems to have been as bold as he was
unscrupulous in the execution of any plan intrusted to him, arrived in
Virginia in September, 1612, and early in the spring of 1613 he was
sent on an expedition up the Patowomek to trade for corn and to effect
a capture that would bring Powhatan to terms. The Emperor, from
being a friend, had become the most implacable enemy of the English.
Captain Argall says: "I was told by certain Indians, my friends, that the
great Powhatan's daughter Pokahuntis was with the great King
Potowomek, whither I presently repaired, resolved to possess myself of
her by any stratagem that I could use, for the ransoming of so many
Englishmen as were prisoners with Powhatan, as also to get such armes
and tooles as he and other Indians had got by murther and stealing
some others of our nation, with some quantity of corn for the colonies
relief."
By the aid of Japazeus, King of Pasptancy, an old acquaintance and
friend of Argall's, and the connivance of the King of Potowomek,
Pocahontas was enticed on board Argall's ship and secured. Word was
sent to Powhatan of the capture and the terms on which his daughter
would be released; namely, the return of the white men he held in
slavery, the tools and arms he had gotten and stolen, and a great
quantity of corn. Powhatan, "much grieved," replied that if Argall
would use his daughter well, and bring the ship into his river and
release her, he would accede to all his demands. 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 is possible that Powhatan
suspected her friendliness to the whites, and was weary of her
importunity, and it may be that she wanted to escape the sight of
continual fighting, ambushes, and murders. More likely she was only
making a common friendly visit, though Hamor says she went to trade
at an Indian fair.
The story of her capture is enlarged and more minutely related by
Ralph Hamor, Jr., who was one of the colony shipwrecked on the
Bermudas in 1609, and returned to England in 1614, where he
published (London, 1615) "A True Discourse of Virginia, and the
Success of the Affairs there till the 18th of June, 1614." Hamor was the
son of a merchant tailor in London who was a member of the Virginia
company. Hamor writes:
"It chanced Powhatan's delight and darling, his daughter Pocahuntas
(whose fame has even been spread in England by the title of Nonparella
of Firginia) in her princely progresse if I may so terme it, tooke some
pleasure (in the absence of Captaine Argall) to be among her friends at
Pataomecke (as it seemeth by the relation I had), implored thither as
shopkeeper to a Fare, to exchange some of her father's commodities for
theirs, where residing some three months or longer, it fortuned upon
occasion either of promise or profit, Captaine Argall to arrive there,
whom Pocahuntas, desirous to renew her familiaritie with the English,
and delighting to see them as unknown, fearefull perhaps to be
surprised, would gladly visit as she did, of whom no sooner had
Captaine Argall intelligence, but he delt with an old friend Iapazeus,
how and by what meanes he might procure her caption, assuring him
that now or never, was the time to pleasure him, if he intended indeede
that love which he had made profession of, that in ransome of hir he
might redeeme some of our English men and armes, now in the

possession of her father, promising to use her withall faire and gentle
entreaty; Iapazeus well assured that his brother, as he promised, would
use her courteously, promised his