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 not understand or was, perhaps, a mock execution to demonstrate Powhatan’s power over the English. If the chief had intended to kill him, it is unlikely that a young Pocahontas would have defied her father’s wishes and intervened. She might, however, have participated in a ritual that inducted Smith into the tribe. But then we will never know for sure. More certainly, she did save his life on another occasion by warning him of a plot against him.
Further Reading
Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: Virginia, 1607-2007
Helen Rountree, Pocahontas’s People
Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma : An American Portrait
James Horn, A Land As God Made It. Jamestown and the Birth of America
This Vignette Provided By
Ronald Heinemann and Anthony Parent
On January 26 2010 mac said: @ 3:16 pm
where did that illustration come from and where can i get a larger copy of it ? mac(Quote)