Introduction
In 1607, English settlers founded a colony called Virginia on the east coast of North America, and established Jamestown in honour of King James I (r. 1603-1625). Settler John Smith (1580-1631), telling the story of the colony, recorded that in December that year he was captured by the Algonquin and would have been summarily executed, but for the intervention of a young girl.
AT last they brought him* to Meronocomo,* where was Powhatan their Emperor.* Here more than two hundred of those grim Courtiers stood wondering at him, as he had been a monster; till Powhatan and his train had put themselves in their greatest braveries.* Before a fire upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe, made of Rarowcun* skins, and all the tails hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side the house, two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds; but every one with something: and a great chain of white beads about their necks. At his entrance before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of Appamatuck* was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands, and another brought him a bunch of feathers instead of a towel to dry them.
* Smith tells his story in the third person. Within a few years of publication, doubts were being expressed about the rattling good yarn he made of his exploits. “From the Turks in Europe” wrote Thomas Fuller in his Worthies of England (1662), “he passed to the pagans in America, where, towards the latter end of the reign of queen Elizabeth, such his perils, preservations, dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men above belief, to some beyond truth. Yet have we two witnesses to attest them, the prose and the pictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the herald to publish and proclaim them. [...] However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to have been very instrumental in settling the plantation in Virginia, whereof he was governor, as also admiral, of New England.” That controversy continues to this day, though historian Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853-1935, son of tenth President of the USA John Tyler) objected that Smith’s earlier accounts of the colony failed to mention not only Pocahontas’s intervention, but also other significant events that were Smith’s business rather than the Colony’s.
* The proper name of the lands set aside for the chief of the Powhatan is Werowocomoco (pronounced véro-wóco-móco), literally ‘leader’s settlement’, and Smith uses it quite correctly in many places in his General History of Virginia. Here, however, he wrote Meronocomo, or in some editions Meronocomoco. The lands called Werowocomoco seem to have lain near the north bank of the York River in what is now Gloucester County in Virginia: the court would pitch its dwellings at various locations within this area.
* Powhatan (?1547-?1618), whose personal name was Wahunsenacawh, led an alliance of Algonquin-speaking indigenous Americans named the Powhatan.
* Here, ‘braveries’ means showy dress.
* A seventeenth-century spelling of raccoon.
* A Native American territory and people (sometimes spelt Appomattoc), speaking the Algonquian language, who dwelt along the lower Appomattox River in what is now southeast Virginia.
Précis
John Smith, a founder of the seventeenth-century colony of Virginia, told of his capture by the Powhatan, a native American people: how he was brought before their king and courtiers, the men in their finery and the women wearing white beads and feathers, and how he was bade to wash his hands and dry them on a feather towel. (59 / 60 words)
John Smith, a founder of the seventeenth-century colony of Virginia, told of his capture by the Powhatan, a native American people: how he was brought before their king and courtiers, the men in their finery and the women wearing white beads and feathers, and how he was bade to wash his hands and dry them on a feather towel.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, although, because, besides, despite, just, not, until.
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