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Editorial: No-cahontas?

Virginia’s women are to have their own monument in Capitol Square in Richmond, and this is as it should be. Without one woman in particular, England’s first permanent colony in the New World might have failed.

 

Excuse us? Pocahontas didn’t make the final cut? It’s an outrage that Gloucester County’s own princess somehow did not measure up to join the 12 women who will be cited.

 

In 1607, the year Jamestown was established, its leader nearly perished at the hands of Powhatan’s people. John Smith had been captured in December of that year and taken to Werowocomoco (now known to the world as having been located on Purtan Bay in Gloucester). In 1616 Smith wrote that he had been placed for execution with his head on a stone and a war club poised to strike. In a letter to Queen Anne, he said, “... at the minute of my execution, she [Pocahontas] hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that, but so pr...

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