1885

Cooke, John Esten. "Did Pocahontas Really Rescue Captain Smith?" Magazine of American History 13 (April 1885): 398-403. Cooke takes an interesting approach to the debunking controversy, purporting to proceed not by argument but by presenting, more objectively, a series of more or less ascertained statements (38 of them) on both sides of the issue, to present the pros and cons "as candidly as possible." Though we might recognize that he is not exactly non-partisan (see Cooke 1861), his reasoned conclusion, "after a full and careful study," is that the objections to Smith's account are "untenable": "Laying aside all other arguments, there is the moral argument which is irresistible -- that the account in the "General Historie" bears on its face every mark of truthfulness." Smith "was a very great man; and probably nothing would have more surprised him than to have been told that he had never been 'rescued'!"
[debunking]
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