1844

McKenney, Thomas, and James Hall. "Po-ca-hon-tas." History of the Indian Tribes of North America. Vol. 3. Philadelphia, 1844. 65-69, 197-98. One of the most beautiful and important books on Indians in the 19th century. A collection of 120 visual and verbal portraits of Indian leaders spearheaded by McKenney, who had been head of the U.S. Department of the Indians. Contains appreciative and historical material on Pocahontas in the essay by James Hall (author of a story called "The Indian Hater"), as well as the lithograph by Rice and Clark (see 1842), and a note on "The Genuineness of the Portrait of Pocahantas" gives evidence for same. About the rescue, Hall says, "The motive of that noble action was benevolence, the purest and most lofty principle of human action. It was not the caprice of a thoughtless girl, it was not a momentary passion for the condemned stranger, pleading at a susceptible heart, for her affections were reserved for another, and the purity as well as the dignity of her after life, shewed that they were truly and cautiously bestowed. . . . Yet this woman was a savage! A daughter of a race doomed to eternal barbarism by the decree of a philosophy which pronounces the soil of their minds too sterile to germinate the seeds of civilization!"
[lithograph; painting; Indian history]
[Electronic Version]