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.

After a meal, a brief trial followed, and ended with Smith forced to lay his head upon a great stone. A man stepped up with an ominous club, but before he could wield it Pocahontas, the chief’s teenage daughter, flung herself in its path. Thanks to her, Smith was reprieved and set to work in the camp, anxious but alive.

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