what was the difference between the Smith and the other tourist they meet later
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Captain John Smith is Saved
by Pocahontas, 1608
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Captain John Smith was an adventurer. In 1596, at age 16, Smith left his home in England to fight against Spain in support of Dutch independence from the Spanish Crown. Two years later he signed on as a crew member of a Mediterranean merchant ship. In 1600 he joined Austrian forces fighting the Turks in Hungary. Captured by the Turks, Smith was enslaved and transported to Istanbul. He escaped by murdering his master, returned to Hungary and rejoined the fighting. Released from military duty with a large reward, Smith made his way back to England in 1604.
John Smith The twenty-five-year-old Smith soon grew restless. The Virginia Company had recently been granted a charter by King James I to colonize Virginia and Smith eagerly joined the expedition which left England in December 1606. The voyage lasted four months during which the abrasive Smith so irritated his fellow colonists that they placed him in irons. Arriving in Virginia in April 1607, the expedition leaders opened a locked box containing the names of seven men selected by the Virginia Company to govern the new colony. We can only imagine their shock when they discovered Smith's name on the list.
The inexperienced colonists struggled for their survival in the harsh environment they now called home. Disease, severe weather, Indian attacks, laziness, internal squabbling and starvation all threatened to destroy the colony. Smith's firm leadership (he was soon elected president of the colony) held the colonists together and narrowly avoided extinction. Wounded by an explosion of gunpowder, Smith sailed to England in late 1609 to recover. He never returned to Virginia.
He did return to the New World, however, as part of an expedition to explore Maine and Massachusetts in 1614 giving the area the name New England. His independence and abrasiveness disqualified him from any further royal sponsorship and he spent the rest of his life in England writing of his adventures. He died in 1631 at age 51 .
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Saved by an Indian Maiden
The story begins when Smith and two English companions are ambushed by Indians. After killing his two companions, the Indians take Smith to their chief, Powhatan. After two months in captivity, Powhatan determines to have the Englishman clubbed to death in a ritual ceremony. According to Smith, the plan is thwarted only when the chief's daughter, Pocahontas (then aged 11 or 12), throws herself between him and his attackers causing her father to relent. Smith published his account of the incident in 1624. It is the only description of the event we have and some historians doubt its authenticity. However, the account permanently etched his name in American folklore. Throughout the account; Smith refers to himself in the third person:
"And now [1608], the winter approaching, the rivers became so covered with swans, geese, ducks, and cranes, that we daily feasted with good bread, Virginia peas, pumpkins, and putchamins, fish, fowl, and divers sorts of wild beasts as fat as we could eat them: so that none of our tuftaffety humorists desired to go for England
But our comedies never endured long without a tragedy; some idle exceptions being muttered against Captain Smith for not discovering the head of Chickahamania River, and taxed by the Council to be too slow in so worthy an attempt. The next voyage he proceeded so far that with much labor by cutting of trees asunder he made his passage; but when his barge could pass no farther, he left her in a broad bay out of danger of shot, commanding none should go ashore till his return: himself with two English and two savages went up higher in a canoe; but he was not long absent but his men went ashore, whose want of government gave both occasion and. opportunity to the savages to surprise one George Cassen, whom they slew, and much failed not to have cut off the boat and all the rest.