school histories, Pocahontas is merely a figure in one dramatic
scene--her rescue of John Smith. We see her in one mental picture only,
kneeling beside the prostrate Englishman, her uplifted hands warding off
the descending tomahawk.

By chance I began to read more about the settlement of the English at
Jamestown and Pocahontas' connection with it, and the more I read the
more interesting and real she grew to me. The old chronicles gave me the
facts, and guided by these, my imagination began to follow the Indian
maiden as she went about the forests or through the villages of the
Powhatans.

We are growing up in this new country of ours. And just as when children
get older they begin to feel curious about the childhood of their own
parents, so we have gained a new curiosity about the early history of
our country. The earlier histories and stories dealing with the Indians
and the wars between them and the colonists made the red man a devil
incarnate, with no redeeming virtue but that of courage. Now, however,
there is a new spirit of understanding. We are finding out how often it
was the Indian who was wronged and the white man who wronged him. Many
records there are of treaties faithfully kept by the Indians and
faithlessly broken by the colonists. Virginia was the first permanent
English settlement on this continent, and if not the _most_ important,
at least equally as important to our future development as that of New
England. From how small a seed, sown on that island of Jamestown in
1607, has sprung the mighty State, that herself has scattered seeds of
other states and famous men and women to multiply and enrich America.
And amid what dangers did this seed take root! But for one girl's
aid--as far as man may judge--it would have been uprooted and destroyed.