About a mile below Richmond, in what is now the brickyard region, there used to stand the residence of the Mayo family, a place known as Powhatan.  This place has long been pointed out as the scene of the saving of Smith by the Indian girl, but late research indicates that, though Smith did come up the James to the present site of Richmond, his capture by the Indians did not occur here, but in the vicinity of Jamestown.  Then Indians took him first to one of their villages on York River, near the present site of West Point, Virginia, and thence to a place, on the same stream, in the county of Gloucester, where the tribal chief resided.  I was under the impression that this worthy’s name was Powhatan, but Mr. Stanard declared “powhatan” was not a proper name, but an Indian word meaning “chief.”

The Virginia Historical Society is satisfied that Smith was rescued by Pocahontas at a point about nine miles from Williamsburg on the west side of York River, but there are historians who contend that the whole story of the rescue is a fiction.  One of these is Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, who lists Smith among “Historical Liars.”  Virginians, who regard Smith as one of their proudest historical possessions, are somewhat disposed to resent this view, but it appears to me that there is at least some ground for it.  Matthew Page Andrews, another historian, himself a Virginian, points out that many of our ideas of the Jamestown colony have been obtained from Smith’s history of the settlement, which he wrote in England, some years after leaving Virginia.

“From these accounts,” says Mr. Andrews, “we get an unfavorable impression of Smith’s associates in the colony and of the management of the men composing the popular or people’s party in the London Company.  As we now know that this party in the London Company was composed of very able and patriotic Englishmen, we are inclined to think that Captain Smith not only overrated his achievement, but was very unjust to his fellow-colonists and the Company.”

The story of the rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, with the strong implication that the Indian girl was in love with him, comes to us from Smith himself.  We know that when Pocahontas was nineteen years of age (seven years after the Smith rescue is said to have occurred), she married John Rolfe—­the first Englishman to begin the cultivation of the tobacco plant.  We know that she was taken to England, that she was welcomed at court as a princess, that she had a son born in England, and that she herself died there in 1617.  We know also that her son, Thomas Rolfe, settled in Virginia, and that through him a number of Virginians trace descent from Pocahontas. (Mr. Andrews points out that in 1915 one of these descendants became the wife of the President of the United States.)

But we know also that John Smith, brave and daring though he was, was not above twisting and embroidering a tale to his own glorification.  While, therefore, it is too much to affirm that his rescue story is false, it is well to remember that Pocahontas was but twelve years old when the rescue is said to have occurred, and that Smith waited until after she had become famous, and had died, to promulgate his romantic story.