THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9602020526
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
The Walt Disney film on Pocahontas is misleading because it implies she was the only Colonial era Indian princess who married an English settler. Historical evidence reveals there was at least one other high-born Native American female of a slightly later date whose marriage to a white man had as far reaching consequences as the earlier coupling of Powhatan's ``darling daughter'' with John Rolfe.
Pocahontas was fortunate in having better press agents - beginning with her admirer Capt. John Smith. As a result, she has never been forgotten, while her less fortunate counterpart is now only an historical footnote.
Pocahontas' lesser known rival was Kittamaqund, The Piscataway Indian child bride of Capt. Giles Brent, a Maryland settler who later became one of the earliest inhabitants of Virginia's Northern Neck. Kittamaqund was the only child of the Tayac, or emperor, of the Piscataway Indians, whose principal village was located on Piscataway Creek on the Maryland side of the Potomac. At that point the river, which marked the boundary between the Province of Maryland and the Virginia colony, was less than a mile wide.
In 1640, Father Andrew White, a Catholic missionary, visited ``Piscatoe,'' at which time he baptized Kittamaqund's parents and others. Soon afterward, the Indian emperor brought his 7-year-old daughter to St. Mary's City and placed her in Father White's care, specifying ``when she shall well understand the Christian mysteries'' she was ``to be washed in the sacred font of baptism.''
Later, when Kittamaqund's father died, Mistress Margaret Brent, an early Maryland feminist who acted as a legal agent for Lord Baltimore, took the little Indian girl under her protection. By 1642, she had become so ``proficient in the English language'' she was baptized by Father White. At that time she took the additional name of Mary. Since she was an important personage, her baptism was conducted with ceremony with Mistress Brent and Leonard Calvert, a kinsmen of the Lord Proprietor of Maryland, as her sponsors. Meanwhile, Kittamaqund's destiny was being steered in another direction.
Mistress Brent has a brother, Giles, who was born in Gloucestershire, England, around 1600. Emigrating to Maryland in 1637, he received a grant for the Manor of Kent on Kent Island. Later he was a member of the Maryland Assembly and also served as ``Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Admiral of Maryland.''
Since Kittamqund lived with his sister at St. Mary's, a courtship ensued. And although the groom was 33 years older than ``The Little Empress'' - as she was called - they were soon married.
Brent was an ardent Royalist in the struggle between Charles I and Parliament. Before the Cromwellian forces took over Maryland he seized a ship in the Chesapeake Bay and tried to persuade its crew to take him to England to serve with the king's army. This rash act resulted in a severe repremand after which Brent, his child bride and his sister Margaret moved across the Potomac into Virginia where Royalist sympathies ran high.
Even though sentimentalists like to regard Brent's marriage to Kittamaqund romantically, realistic historians speculate the marriage was largely governed by the fact that Brent believed his Indian princess would inherit her father's vast tracts of land. In any event, Brent was never successful in claiming the property. The Piscataway Indians decided that Kittamaqund was not their legitimate ruler and bestowed the chieftainship on another member of the tribe.
Brent's two Virginia homes, ``Peace'' and ``Retirement,'' were the Old Dominion's northern outposts. At these places he established a lucrative Indian trade and kept open house for travelers going to and from Maryland.
During her brief married life ``Mistress Mary Kattamaqund'' bore her husband three children, Giles, Richard and Mary. All of them survived infancy, married and had issue.
The site of Kittamaqund's burial place near the ``Potomac Freshes'' has long been forgotten, but her descendants, like those of Pocahontas, are as numerous today as the proverbial sands of the seashore. by CNB