"The better sort of women cover themselves (for the most part) all over with skin mantells, finely drest, shagged and fringed at the skyrt, carved and coloured with some pretty work, or the proportion of beasts, fowle, tortayses, or other such like imagry, as shall best please or expresse the fancy of the wearer; their younger women goe not shadowed amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes of the leafe old (for soe they accompt and bring about the yeare, calling the fall of the leaf tagnitock); nor are thev much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pocahontas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan's daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe and wheele so herself, naked as she was, all the fort over; but being once twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as do our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac't to be seene bare.We have seene some use mantells made both of Turkey feathers, and other fowle, so prettily wrought and woven with threeds, that nothing could be discerned but the feathers, which were exceedingly warme and very handsome."Strachey did not see Pocahontas.She did not resort to the camp after the departure of Smith in September, 1609, until she was kidnapped by Governor Dale in April, 1613.He repeats what he heard of her.The time mentioned by him of her resorting to the fort, "of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares," must have been the time referred to by Smith when he might have married her, namely, in 1608-9, when he calls her "not past 13 or 14 years of age." The description of her as a "yong girle" tumbling about the fort, "naked as she was," would seem to preclude the idea that she was married at that time.
The use of the word "wanton" is not necessarily disparaging, for "wanton" in that age was frequently synonymous with "playful" and "sportive"; but it is singular that she should be spoken of as "well featured, but wanton." Strachey, however, gives in another place what is no doubt the real significance of the Indian name "Pocahontas." He says:
"Both men, women, and children have their severall names; at first according to the severall humor of their parents; and for the men children, at first, when they are young, their mothers give them a name, calling them by some affectionate title, or perhaps observing their promising inclination give it accordingly; and so the great King Powhatan called a young daughter of his, whom he loved well, Pocahontas, which may signify a little wanton; howbeyt she was rightly called Amonata at more ripe years."The Indian girls married very young.The polygamous Powhatan had a large number of wives, but of all his women, his favorites were a dozen "for the most part very young women," the names of whom Strachey obtained from one Kemps, an Indian a good deal about camp, whom Smith certifies was a great villain.Strachey gives a list of the names of twelve of them, at the head of which is Winganuske.
This list was no doubt written down by the author in Virginia, and it is followed by a sentence, quoted below, giving also the number of Powhatan's children.The "great darling" in this list was Winganuske, a sister of Machumps, who, according to Smith, murdered his comrade in the Bermudas.Strachey writes:
"He [Powhatan] was reported by the said Kemps, as also by the Indian Machumps, who was sometyme in England, and comes to and fro amongst us as he dares, and as Powhatan gives him leave, for it is not otherwise safe for him, no more than it was for one Amarice, who had his braynes knockt out for selling but a baskett of corne, and lying in the English fort two or three days without Powhatan's leave; I say they often reported unto us that Powhatan had then lyving twenty sonnes and ten daughters, besyde a young one by Winganuske, Machumps his sister, and a great darling of the King's; and besides, younge Pocohunta, a daughter of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymes past, nowe married to a private Captaine, called Kocoum, some two years since."This passage is a great puzzle.Does Strachey intend to say that Pocahontas was married to an Iniaan named Kocoum? She might have been during the time after Smith's departure in 1609, and her kidnapping in 1613, when she was of marriageable age.We shall see hereafter that Powhatan, in 1614, said he had sold another favorite daughter of his, whom Sir Thomas Dale desired, and who was not twelve years of 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.
