1840

Webster, Mrs. M. [Mary] M. [Mosby] Pocahontas: A Legend. Philadelphia, 1840. (very short excerpt in Burton Stevenson, My Country: Poems of History for Young Americans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932. 20-21.) Mosby, who identifies herself as a seventh generation descendant of Pocahontas, indulges in the "wildest fancy," the "poetic mixture of unvarnished truth [the notes to established sources are many] with time-worn legends. . . a few speculative opinions and occasional snatches of the purely ideal." The story is melancholy, moving from Pocahontas's attachment to her mother Ila (descendant of a Norseman), who dies; to her attachment to the son of Powhatan's other wife, Ergina, who also dies; to exile from her father for not marrying as he demands; to saving Smith who is not interested in any connection; to seer Manatowa's vision; to Japazaw's treachery; to her baptism and marriage, barely saving Rolfe from murder by her father; to escape from a storm on the way to England; and ending without elaboration of events in England with an image of her faithful page (Tomocomoco?) returning to Virginia to die wandering alone.
[poetry]
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