Surname 2
colonists. She continued assisting them whenever a crisis occurred and continuously warned the
colonists and Smith about her father's warriors planned ambush (Lewis n.p).
Do You Believe this Event Ever Actually Occurred?
Yes, the event took place. First, John Smith is favored as an honest man. His descriptions
of Early Virginia and Eastern Europe have been depicted as accurate. Therefore, why would
some historians want to convict him of falsehood for writing that Pocahontas saved him? Adams
and Deane did not believe Smith, arguing that between 1608 and 1612, when Smith initially
wrote of his captivity, he portrayed chief Powhatan as a favorable man and never mentioned
about how Pocahontas saved him, until after she had died with her husband.
The argument enveloped by two main flaws resulting from Adam and Deane’s
anachronistic historical methods. One, the two assumed that the episode of Pocahontas would
have been necessary for the 17
th
century to the Englishmen as it was to the Americans in the 19
th
century; hence, failure to mention it shows that it never happened. However, in the days of
Smith, the story did not take the romantic dimension that it assumed in later centuries. As such, it
should not be a surprise that he left the bits out. Two, Adam and Deane accuse Smith of
inconsistency in his writings because, in one book, he says he had enough Venison to serve 10
men, only to argue in later years that it was enough for 20 men. Nonetheless, during Smith’s
time, writers who followed the Jacobean, Romantic style did not pay close attention to search
details. What is important is that it was a lot of venison (Birchfield n.p).
