Love and Hate in Jamestown by Price David A

Author:Price, David A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307426703
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

12

POCAHONTAS IN LONDON

Within a few months of Pocahontas’s marriage in April 1614, Dale began to think of bringing her to England for the company’s benefit. It was such a compelling proposition from the company’s standpoint that the only mystery is why the company took another two years to bring it about. The company’s broadsides, or printed flyers, for the Virginia lottery had been adorned by illustrations of exotic-looking native figures; now the company could bring those drawings to reality. A character in The Tempest remarks that although the English “will not give a doit [half a farthing, a trivial amount] to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.” As a publicity device for the lottery—the Virginia Company’s lifeblood since the collapse of the investors’ confidence—nothing could compare to a living, breathing native princess.

There were other benefits. The ministers of London who had done so much to rally public interest in the company’s stock offering in 1609 would be able to see their reward: a convert to Christianity. And possibly, just possibly, King James could be roused to take an interest in the enterprise, and to lend it royal support. After granting the charter of 1606, he had become either bored or impatient with Virginia, and lost all enthusiasm for it. The only evident attraction the colony had held for him in recent years was as a source of flying squirrels for his exotic-animal collection.1

Pocahontas and John Rolfe (or, more properly, Rebecca and John Rolfe) landed at Plymouth on or shortly before June 3, 1616. They were now the parents of a one-year-old son, Thomas, who was said to resemble his mother. Samuel Argall was captain of the ship—an awkward circumstance, no doubt, considering the manner of her capture two years before. The Rolfes were joined by an entourage of ten or twelve Powhatans, including a priest named Tomocomo, from whom Chief Powhatan had ordered a firsthand report on the English homeland; Tomocomo’s wife Matachanna, who was also Pocahontas’s half sister; and a group of male and female servants. In the hold were barrels of John Rolfe’s tobacco, along with modest amounts of sassafras (believed to be effective against a range of diseases), sturgeon, pitch, and clapboard.

Dale was also there to bask in reflected glory and, presumably, to become reacquainted with his wife. He was “safely returned from the hardest task I ever undertook,” he wrote to King James’s principal secretary upon his arrival, “and by the blessing of God have with poor means left the colony in great prosperity and peace, contrary to many men’s expectation.” In truth, the peace could be credited to his fellow passengers, Pocahontas and her husband. Dale did bring discipline and a degree of prosperity to the colony, but it is debatable whether a merciful God would have blessed his methods.

The first task of reconnaissance that Chief Powhatan had assigned Tomocomo was to count the number of Englishmen he saw by making notches in a long stick. About

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