age, to be wife to a great chief. The term "private
Captain" might perhaps be applied to an Indian chief. Smith, in his
"General Historie," says the Indians have "but few occasions to use
any officers more than one commander, which commonly they call
Werowance, or Caucorouse, which is Captaine." It is probably not
possible, with the best intentions, to twist Kocoum into Caucorouse,
or to suppose that Strachey intended to say that a private captain
was called in Indian a Kocoum. Werowance and Caucorouse are not
synonymous terms. Werowance means "chief," and Caucorouse means"
talker" or "orator," and is the original of our word "caucus."

Either Strachey was uninformed, or Pocahontas was married to an
Indian--a not violent presumption considering her age and the fact
that war between Powhatan and the whites for some time had cut off
intercourse between them--or Strachey referred to her marriage with
Rolfe, whom he calls by mistake Kocoum. If this is to be accepted,
then this paragraph must have been written in England in 1616, and
have referred to the marriage to Rolfe it "some two years since," in
1614.

That Pocahontas was a gentle-hearted and pleasing girl, and, through
her acquaintance with Smith, friendly to the whites, there is no
doubt; that she was not different in her habits and mode of life from
other Indian girls, before the time of her kidnapping, there is every
reason to suppose. It was the English who magnified the imperialism
of her father, and exaggerated her own station as Princess. She
certainly put on no airs of royalty when she was "cart-wheeling"
about the fort. Nor does this detract anything from the native
dignity of the mature, and converted, and partially civilized woman.

We should expect there would be the discrepancies which have been
noticed in the estimates of her age. Powhatan is not said to have
kept a private secretary to register births in his family. If
Pocahontas gave her age correctly, as it appears upon her London
portrait in 1616, aged twenty-one, she must have been eighteen years
of age when she was captured in 1613 This would make her about twelve
at the time of Smith's captivity in 1607-8. There is certainly room
for difference of opinion as to whether so precocious a woman, as her
intelligent apprehension of affairs shows her to have been, should
have remained unmarried till the age of eighteen. In marrying at
least as early as that she would have followed the custom of her
t