1705

Beverley, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia. London, 1705. 25-33. (Rev. ed. London, 1722.) (Ed. Charles Campbell. Richmond, 1855.) (Ed. Louis B. Wright. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1947. 37-44.) Beverley's influential book is the first history by a native Virginian. Beverley mentions the rescue without fanfare but focuses on Pocahontas's marriage with Rolfe and reunion with Smith. For instance, he gives a long litany of reasons why the English would have been better off accepting Indian proposals for intermarriages, and he prints the entire Smith letter to Queen Anne. Beverley's drawing mostly on Smith (the letter is not in Purchas) but he also adds material not found elsewhere: King James's snit over Rolfe marrying royalty, the dialogue with Uttamaccomack (Uttamatamakin/Tomocomo), that Pocahontas would have brought "the Indians to have a kinder Disposition towards the English." Tilton 1994 says this book "contains the first important colonial attempt to reconstruct the Pocahontas narrative," and he finds the topic of intermarriage (cf. Alexander, Oldmixon, Fontaine, Russell, Chastellux, etc.) central to the first phase of Pocahontas representation.
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