1854

Simms, William Gilmore. "Pocahontas; A Legend of Virginia." Southward Ho! A Spell of Sunshine. New York, 1854. Chapters 7-8. (New York: AMS, 1970.) A sea journey from New York to Charlestown is the literary pretext for story telling, and Simms's fourth Pocahontas work is prefaced by scorn at the mere compilers of Southern history and the claim (with Prescott as the model) that "art is just as necessary in truth as in fiction." With this license, Simms makes Smith "an object of the love of Pocahontas." By nature Pocahontas has a "Christian heart" and eschews violence, avowing no chief will win her hand with his "bloody spear." So when her father, bent on a just revenge, prepares to kill the momentarily shaken Smith, Pocahontas intervenes, and Powhatan learns pity. Her "idol," then, goes free, but she, now smitten, "dreams not, in that parting hour, / The gyves that from his limbs she tears, / Are light in weight, and frail in power, / To those that round her heart she wore."
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