Virginia Vignettes

Most modern historians do not think so. Although Smith in his 1624 memoirs credited eleven-year old Pocahontas with his reprieve from death at her father Powhatan’s hand in 1607, his account, replete with sexual fantasy, lacks collaboration and is considered myth. The ceremony that Smith described may have been an adoption ceremony that he did [...]

The defeat of King Charles I in the English Civil War of the 1640s led many of his aristocratic followers to seek exile in Virginia, which was known for its loyalty to the crown during the war. These royalist cavaliers included members of the Randolph, Carter, and Lee families, who would be so influential in [...]

Pocahontas (1596?-1617) was a daughter of the head of the Powhatan chiefdom, Wahunsonacock or Powhatan. She had two other Indian names, Matoaka and Amonute. She reputedly saved the life of Captain John Smith. After this episode, Pocahontas often visited James Fort, serving as an intermediary and translator. In March 1613, during the ongoing war between [...]

It was not the English and John Smith in 1607! Almost a century before, in 1521 and 1525, the Spanish had explored the Chesapeake Bay region, calling it Bahia de Santa Maria. At the same time the French also sailed into the area, but neither nation was inclined to establish a colony, preferring to create [...]