ith Argall, but sent word to Jamestown
saying that if his daughter should be returned to him he would treat the
English as friends. Pocahontas was detained at Jamestown for several
months, being treated with respect, and having the free run of the
colony. She appears to have been a romping, good-natured young woman,
comely for an Indian, passing her time as happily as possible, without
moping for her kinspeople, and not at all the typical heroine of song and
story. It was wicked to detain her, but she seemed to enjoy her captivity
and frolicked about the place in a way that must have shocked those who
regarded her as of royal birth. Evidently Pocahontas liked the English
from the first, and preferred their company at Jamestown to her childhood
home in the Virginia forests. A young Englishman, named John Rolfe, fell
in love with her. Wives from England were scarce, and this fact may have
made Pocahontas more attractive in his eyes. When some one objected that
she was a pagan--"Is it not my duty," he replied, "to lead the blind to
the light?" Pocahontas learned to love Rolfe in return, and love made
easy her path to conversion to Christianity. She was baptized by the name
of Rebecca, and was the first Christian convert in Virginia. Powhatan
consented to his daughter's marriage--he had probably concluded by this
that she was bound to be English anyhow--and the ceremony was performed
in the chapel at Jamestown, on a delightful spring day in April, 1613.
Pocahontas, we are told, was dressed in a simple tunic of white muslin
from the looms of Dacca. Her arms were bare even to her shoulders, and
hanging loosely to her feet was a robe of rich stuff presented by the
Governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and fancifully embroidered by Pocahontas and
her maidens. A gaudy fillet encircled her head, and held the plumage of
birds and a veil of gauze, while her wrists and ankles were adorned with
the simple jewelry of the native workshops. When the ceremony was ended,
the eucharist was administered, with bread from the wheat fields around
Jamestown, and wine from the grapes of the adjacent woodland. Her
brothers and sisters and forest maidens were present; also the Governor
and Council, and five English women--all that there were in the
colony--who afterward returned to England. Rolfe and his spouse "lived
civilly and lovingly together" until Governor Dale went back to England
in 1616, when they and the Englishwomen in Virginia accompanied the
Gove