As far as I see, Strachey has no theory to serve by inventing Ahone. He asks how any races "if descended from the people of the first creation, should maintain so general and gross a defection from the true knowledge of God". He is reduced to suppose that, as descendants of Ham, they inherit "the ignorance of true godliness."(p. 45). The children of Shem and Japheth alone "retained, until the coming of the Messias, the only knowledge of the eternal and never-changing Trinity". The Virginians, on the other hand, fell heir to the ignorance, and "fearful and superstitious instinct of nature" of Ham (p. 40). Ahone, therefore, is not invented by Strachey to bolster up a theory (held by Strachey), of an inherited revelation, or of a sensus numinis which could not go wrong.
Unless a proof be given that Strachey had a theory, or any other purpose, to serve by inventing Ahone, I cannot at present come into the opinion that he gratuitously fabled, though he may have unconsciously exaggerated.
What were Strachey's sources? He was for nine months, if not more, in the colony: he had travelled at least 115 miles up the James River, he occasionally suggests modifications of Smith's map, he refers to Smith's adventures, and his glossary is very much larger than Smith's; its accuracy I leave to American linguists. Such a witness, despite his admitted use of Smith's text (if it is really all by Smith throughout) is not to be despised, and he is not despised in America. Strachey, it is true, had not, like Smith, been captured by Indians and either treated with perfect kindness and consideration (as Smith reported at the time), or tied to a tree and threatened with arrows, and laid out to have his head knocked in with a stone; as he alleged sixteen years later!
Strachey, not being captured, did not owe his release (1) to the magnanimity of Powhattan, (2) to his own ingenious lies, (3) to the intercession of Pocahontas, as Smith, and his friends for him, at various dates inconsistently declared. Smith certainly saw more of the natives at home: Strachey brought a more studious mind to what he could learn of their customs and ideas; and is not a convicted braggart. I conjecture that one of Strachey's sources was a native named Kemps. Smith had seized Kemps and Kinsock in 1609. Unknown authorities (Powell? and Todkill?) represent these two savages as "the most exact villaines in the country". They were made to labour in fetters, then were set at liberty, but "little desired it". Some "souldiers" ran away to the liberated Kemps, who brought them back to Smith. Why Kemps and his friend are called "two of the most exact villains in the country" does not appear.
Kemps died "of the surveye" (scurvey, probably) at Jamestown, in 1610-11. He was much made of by Lord De la Warr, "could speak a pretty deal of our English, and came orderly to church every day to prayers". He gave Strachey the names of Powhattan's wives, and told him, truly or not, that Pocahontas was married, about 1610, to an Indian named Kocoum. I offer the guess that Kemps and Machumps, who came and went from Pocahontas, and recited an Indian prayer which Strachey neglected to copy out, may have been among Strachey's authorities. I shall, of course, be told that Kemps picked up Ahone at church. This did not strike Strachey as being the fact; he had no opinion of the creed in which Ahone was a factor, "the misery and thraldome under which Sathan has bound these wretched miscreants". According to Strachey, the priests, far from borrowing any part of our faith, "feare and tremble lest the knowledge of God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ be taught in these parts".
Arber, cxvii. Strachey mentions that (before his arrival in Virginia) Pocahontas turned cart-wheels, naked, in Jamestown, being then under twelve, and not yet wearing the apron. Smith says she was ten in 1608, but does not mention the cart-wheels. Later, he found it convenient to put her age at twelve or thirteen in 1608.
Most American scholars, such as Mr. Adams, entirely distrust the romantic later narratives of Smith.
The Proeeedings, etc., by W. S. Arber, p. 151.
Ibid., p. 155.
Ibid., p. 157.
Strachey, pp. 54, 55.
Strachey is therefore for putting down the priests, and, like Smith (indeed here borrowing from Smith), accuses them of sacrificing children. To Smith's statement that such a rite was worked at Quiyough-cohanock, Strachey adds that Sir George Percy (who was with Smith) "was at, and observed" a similar mystery at Kecoughtan.
It is plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or initiation, and the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with the retreat of the boys and their instructors, is very close, and, of course, unnoted by classical scholars except Mr. Frazer.
Strachey ends with the critical remark that we shall not know all the certainty of the religion and mysteries till we can capture some of the priests, or Quiyough-quisocks.
Students who have access to a good library of Americana may do more to elucidate Ahone. I regard him as in a line with Kiehtan and the God spoken of by Heriot, and do not believe (1) that Strachey lied;(2) that natives deceived Strachey; (3) that Ahone was borrowed from "the God of Captain Smith".
