In Captain John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, published in 1624, he tells of being taken captive in December 1607, to Werowocomoco, the capitol of Pocahontas' father Powhatan. He evidently was about to be killed when, according to Smith, Pocahontas suddenly flung herself across his body in an attempt to prevent his death.
Did the above incident actually happen? We have only the word of John Smith for it but that is not to say that it did not occur just because no other Englishman was present to also record or repeat the incident. The theories run, if the incident actually happened, from the act being a symbolic ceremony to a public acknowledgment that Powhatan, through his daughter, was adopting Smith in to the tribe. Considering that Pocahontas was a mere child at the time, as well as a female, it seems contradictory that such a powerful leader as Powhatan would need a go-between of any sort just to adopt someone into the tribe.
Another probable myth that writers and historians have considerably enjoyed pouncing upon is the creation of a romance between Pocahontas and Captain Smith. Of course, such a thing is and was possible. But consider the following facts, which are facts and not myths. Captain John Smith was born in 1579, or at least he was baptized in that year. Smith was at the ripe old age of twenty-eight when he came to Jamestown. Pocahontas, estimated to have been born around 1596, was some seventeen years younger than Smith. Captain John Smith was already a young man of the world when Pocahontas was a swaddled papoose peering from her cradleboard.
Putting possible legends aside, what Pocahontas actually accomplished was to act as a mutually trusted intermediary who carried food, gifts, and messages back and forth between her people and the good folks at Jamestown. Some time between 1608 and 1610, she gained the release of Powhatan prisoners that were being held by the English. She also at times protected some of the colonists from her father's anger and revenge. But that was all to come to an end sometime between 1610 and 1614.
Pocahontas continued.
