In truth, when I look over the whole world history, I can find no other
child of thirteen, boy or girl, who wielded such a far-reaching
influence over the future of a nation. But for the protection and aid
which Pocahontas coaxed from Powhatan for her English friends at
Jamestown, the Colony would have perished from starvation or by the
arrows of the hostile Indians. And the importance of this Colony to the
future United States was so great that we owe to Pocahontas somewhat the
same gratitude, though in a lesser degree, that France owes to her Joan
of Arc.

Pocahontas's greatest service to the colonists lay not in the saving of
Captain Smith's life, but in her continued succour to the starving
settlement. Indeed, there are historians who have claimed that the story
of her rescue of Smith is an invention without foundation. But in
opposition to this view let me quote from "The American Nation: A
History." Lyon Gardiner Tyler, author of the volume "England in America"
says:

"The credibility of this story has been attacked.... Smith was
often inaccurate and prejudiced in his statements, but that is far
from saying that he deliberately mistook plain objects of sense or
concocted a story having no foundation."

and from "The New International Encyclopaedia":

"Until Charles Deane attacked it (the story of Pocahontas's rescue
of Smith) in 1859, it was seldom questioned, but, owing largely to
his criticisms, it soon became generally discredited. In recent
years, however, there has been a tendency to retain it."