Did Smith plagiarize Pocahontas tale?
Florida account predates famous encounter
By Bill Kaczor, Associated Press writer
When the Indian chief ordered the execution of a European
captive, the chief's daughter persuaded him to spare the
white man's life.
Does that sound like the story of Captain John Smith,
the Jamestown colonist, now being retold in the popular
Walt Disney movie "Pocahontas"?
Actually, it happened in Florida nearly 80 years before
Smith set foot in Virginia. The European was Spaniard Juan
Ortiz and the Indian maiden was known as Ulele.
Many historians doubt that young Pocahontas ever saved
Smith's life and some contend the Englishman probably made
up the story after reading previously published accounts
of Ortiz's ordeal.
Not until after Pocahontas died in 1617 did the story
show up in a revised account of Smith's adventures. Some
historians dismiss Smith as a "blowhard" and self-promoter.
One biography is titled "The Great Rogue."
"It's something nobody can prove one way or the other,"
said historian William Coker. "But on the other hand the
evidence, I think, leans pretty heavily in favor of him
borrowing the story."
In 1528, Timucua Indians captured Ortiz and three other
Spaniards who were searching for missing explorer Panfilio
de Narvaez near Tampa Bay.
"The first thing they did was . . . use them for target
practice," said Mr. Coker, an emeritus professor of history
at the University of West Florida. Three of the Spaniards
were killed by arrows but Ortiz survived, he said.
Hirrihugua, chief of the Ucita village, had a score to
settle with the Spanish because Narvaez had cut off his
nose and killed his mother by throwing her to a pack of
dogs.
The chief saved Ortiz for a special torture called "barbacoa,"
a word that survives as "barbecue."
Ortiz was strung up over a fire to be roasted alive but
Ulele pleaded with her father to spare his life. The chief's
wife joined in the appeal and he relented.
However, the chief again threatened to have Ortiz killed.
Before his sentence could be carried out, Ulele helped Ortiz
escape to the village of a neighboring chief, Mocoso.
Ortiz lived there in relative peace until he encountered
Hernando de Soto's expedition 11 years later. Ortiz, covered
with tattoos as was the Timucuan custom, joined the Spaniards
as an interpreter. He and de Soto both died during the winter
of 1541-42 near the Mississippi River.
A de Soto survivor known as the Gentleman of Elvas included
the Ortiz rescue in his account of the expedition published
in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1557. An English translation was
printed about 1605. A Spanish account by Garcilasco de la
Vega appeared in 1601.
"Lisbon and London were on good terms," Mr. Coker said.
"There's no question in my mind that copies of the book
in Portuguese, Spanish and English were in London early
on and early enough for Smith to have made a thorough study
of them."
Smith encountered Pocahontas in 1607 and returned to England
two years later. Pocahontas married another colonist, John
Rolfe, in 1614 and they moved to England in 1616. She died
a year later.
Smith's tale of rescue, never written about by any other
colonists, does have supporters. Some say he may have left
out the rescue initially to avoid scaring away potential
colonists. Others say his first writings were heavily edited,
possibly deleting the Pocahontas story.
But Helen Roundtree of Old Dominion University in Norfolk,
Va., has another reason for doubting the Pocahontas rescue
story.
It claims that Pocahontas' father, Powhatan, planned to
bash out his brains with stones. The Indians of that time
and place would have used a slower, more torturous method
of death, she said.
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