POCAHONTAS
Pocahontas or the Settlers of Virginia represents the plays on Indian themes and also the drama written in the South. The first Indian play to be written by an American was the tragedy of Ponteach or The Savages of America, by Major Robert Rogers (1766). This was not acted. There were many Indian dramas in the first half of the nineteenth century—the earliest by an American to be performed being Barker's Indian Princess, (1808). It began the series of the Pocahontas plays, the theme being used by Custis in 1830 in the play now reprinted, by the Englishman, Robert Dale Owen, in his Pocahontas, acted February 8, 1838, at the Park Theatre, New York, in which Charlotte Cushman played "Rolfe," and by Mrs. Charlotte Barnes Conner in her Forest Princess, played in Philadelphia, February 16, 1848. Finally the motive ran to satire in John Brougham's burlesque of Pocahontas or the Gentle Savage, produced at Wallack's Theatre, New York, on December 24, 1855. Custis's drama is especially significant in a comparative study of the Pocahontas plays. Its author is deserving of recognition, if for nothing else, for his self-restraint in not endowing Pocahontas with the ability to speak blank verse. But his dramatic instinct showed itself most definitely in his handling of the theme. The trouble with the Pocahontas plays in general is that the most dramatic incident, the saving of Smith's life, comes too early in the play. The other playwrights in their endeavor to follow history have sacrificed dramatic effectiveness. Custis, with cheerful courage, took liberties with actual facts in order to put the striking event in the last Act.
Perhaps the most significant of the Indian plays in general was Metamora or the Last of the Wampanoags, written for Edwin Forrest by John A. Stone, and produced at the Park Theatre, New York, December 15, 1829. Forrest played in this for many years. So far as the editor is aware, Metamora exists only in the manuscript of the name part in the Forrest Home, at Holmesburg, Pennsylvania. The language of the fragment is bombastic, but the play was effective and was widely imitated. Besides the Pocahontas series, the most important Indian play that has survived seems to have been Dr. Bird's Oralloossa (1832), laid in Peru. Very few of the forty Indian plays of which record has been made, have come down to us. They were popular between 1830 and 1850, but they were usually artificial and their picture of the Indian was not a true one.
George Washington Parke Custis was born at Mount Airy, Maryland, April
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