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Pocahontas Influence On Jamestown

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On May 13, 1607 marks the date that English settlers arrived at a site they named Jamestown and established the first successful English settlement in the New World. Pocahontas, along with the leadership of Captain John Smith, was instrumental in this accomplishment. Pocahontas was a Native American (daughter of Powhatan, emperor of Werowocomoco) woman who became a fast friend of Smith and the colonists, helping the English colony in Tidewater area of Virginia to survive in its fragile early years. John Smith was a leader of the Virginia Colony. He was considered to have played an important part in the establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
In a well-known historical anecdote, Pocahontas is said …show more content…

1608) he makes no mention of the threat or rescue, and uses words like “friendship” and kindness” to describe meeting Powhatan. He generally presented a favorable picture of his captor, Pocahontas' father Powhatan, and he did not mention either having his life threatened or Pocahontas' saving him. In his other account, written 16 years later (General History), presents a different picture of his captivity by mentioning Powhatan's general cruelty and specifically his attempt to kill Smith. He uses words like “barbarous” and “fearful” to describe the meeting with Powahatan. Moreover, the specific details in Smith's earlier writings do not coincide with those in his later writings, indicating that the latter are full of exaggerations and half-truths. Since Pocahontas was widely popular in England, Smith was obviously trying to take advantage of that fact to enhance his own career and status. These two account are very different in consistent. The the second one was written 16 years later from the first one so he couldn't forgot some of the information which would have lead to him to make up …show more content…

Before Adams, historians had generally accepted that during Smith’s imprisonment with the Chesapeake’s Algonquin Indians, he had been brought before their chief, Powhatan, for execution, and that it was only by the last second intervention of the chief’s favorite daughter that Smith kept his life. The only source for this event was Smith’s own account, published in the General Historie in 1624. Adams cited the absence of the Pocahontas story in the much earlier True Relation as evidence that Smith was simply lying. Also he says that it's rather odd that Smith didn’t mention his own experience about his brains about to be beaten out his head. From Adams, we learn that that Smith’s two completely different versions don’t match up. The later one, A General History of Virginia, exaggerates a lot of details in A True Relation, and brings up new information Smith never mentioned in the 16 years between the publication of the

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