Thread by @JessRobeson

1) On the weekend, I visited the grave of Pocahontas in Gravesend in Kent.

She died there during a trip to England in 1617.

I see parallels between her story, female compassion and the Islamisation of the West.

Bear with me….

2) If you’re of a certain age, chances are you know about Pocahontas from the song, Fever.

“Now Captain Smith and Pocahontas, had a very mad affair.
When her Daddy tried to kill him, she said “Daddy of don’t you dare, he gives me fever.”

3 ) Smith - the governor of the Jamestown colony in Virginia, the first successful English colony in the New World - was probably the kind of man who did, indeed, give women ‘fever’.

A swashbuckling hero of the old world. Soldier. Mercenary. Colonist. Explorer. Governor.

4) An anecdote best portrays the man: after being captured and sold into slavery in his early 20s by the Muslim Turks, Smith escaped and crossed Europe and North Africa to get back to England.

Thanks to @AnatomicallyOK for alerting me to this aspect of his biography.

5) Pochantas, who was between the ages of 10 and 14 when Smith was Governor almost certainly did not have a very mad affair with him.

What she did do was save his life and thus helped lay the grounds for the English colonisation of the New World, the USA being the end result.

6) Her father, Powhatan, was the native American chief whose tribe lived nearest to the Jamestown colony.

In the early 1600s he became increasingly alarmed by the numbers of Englishmen turning up at Jamestown and decided to do away with Captain Smith.

7) As Smith tells it, Powhatan’s henchmen had his head on a block and were about to bash his skull in when Pocahontas lay across him, provoked her father’s pity and saved his life.

8) This did not mark the end of her fascination with the English. She visited the Jamestown colony often and played with the other children. She brought them food when they were starving - more than half the original colonists perished over the first winter.

9) After being captured and used as a pawn between the colonists and the natives, she chose the English and converted to Christianity.

10) She married colonist John Rolfe and had a child with him. She was visiting England with him when she died.

In short she was entranced by the new, exotic, cultural enrichers, took pity on them and gave them significant help.

11) Would the colony have survived without Smith’s iron grip leadership? Without food?

12) It may be a stretch but it is here that I see parallels between her story and the Islamisation of the West.

Like her father, many today, men mainly, are alarmed at the newcomers arriving on our shores, with very different cultures, ways and values.

13) But like Powhatan, many are prevented by the pity of women, especially young ones like Pocahontas.

14) For it is they who try to provoke guilt with pictures of drowned children.

It is they who insist that all newcomers are innocent refugees, not single, fighting-age, Muslim men.

It is they who fawn over the newcomer’s culture, convert to it, sleep with and marry its men.

14) The question is, will this pity, reckless in its lack of foresight, cost an entire continent?