There are two copies of the Strachey manuscript.  The one used by the Hakluyt Society is dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, with the title of “Lord High Chancellor,” and Bacon had not that title conferred on him till after 1618.  But the copy among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford is dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley, with the title of “Purveyor to His Majestie’s Navie Royall”; and as Sir Allen was made “Lieutenant of the Tower” in 1616, it is believed that the manuscript must have been written before that date, since the author would not have omitted the more important of the two titles in his dedication.

Strachey’s prefatory letter to the Council, prefixed to his “Laws” (1612), is dated “From my lodging in the Black Friars.  At your best pleasures, either to return unto the colony, or pray for the success of it heere.”  In his letter he speaks of his experience in the Bermudas and Virginia:  “The full storie of both in due time [I] shall consecrate unto your view....  Howbit since many impediments, as yet must detaine such my observations in the shadow of darknesse, untill I shall be able to deliver them perfect unto your judgments,” etc.

This is not, as has been assumed, a statement that the observations were not written then, only that they were not “perfect”; in fact, they were detained in the “shadow of darknesse” till the year 1849.  Our own inference is, from all the circumstances, that Strachey began his manuscript in Virginia or shortly after his return, and added to it and corrected it from time to time up to 1616.

We are now in a position to consider Strachey’s allusions to Pocahontas.  The first occurs in his description of the apparel of Indian women: 

“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.”