1857

Windle, Mary J. "Pocahontas: A Legend of Virginia." Life at the White Sulphur Springs; or, Pictures of a Pleasant Summer. Philadelphia, 1857. 229-75. Smith and Rolfe are the leaders of the English expedition. Pocahontas volunteers to Rolfe to be a hostage so that the English can obtain food, and, "gentle and timid on ordinary occasions" but "intrepid in the cause of humanity," she rescues Smith. But Windle's contributions to widening the range of Pocahontas representation include detailed scenes of Powhatan giving Pocahontas away at her marriage to Rolfe (Smith has little prominence in the story at all), her baptism in England, and her death in Jamestown, before which she enjoins her father to read the Bible with Rolfe. Hand in hand, in fact, Powhatan and Rolfe mourn at her death. And then there is the powerful ending: "It seemd as if a peculiar blessing was attached to [Pocahontas's] love, her voice, her glance, her smile. Wherever they fell, flowers as to the soft rain of spring, were destined to shoot up." And to her influence is to be "attributed, perhaps, the number of Virginians distinguished by the vigor of their judgment, the soundness of their views, the steadiness of their principles, the force of their eloquence, the loftiness of their conceptions, the purity of their lives, the warmth, and truth, and strength of their patriotism; of such were Washington, Randolph, Jefferson, Clay, Marshall, and a host of other immortal names. May these not have been formed, humanly speaking, by the gentle, undying influence of their quiet, retiring, simply educated ancestors, who were the descendants of Pocahontas?"
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