Best remembered for his association with Pocahontas, John Smith had already lived an extraordinary life filled with danger and adventure. As a soldier, he fought the Turks in Eastern Europe and was sold into slavery in Ottoman Crimea, then murdered his master to escape. He sailed under a pirate flag, was shipwrecked and marched to the gallows, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour. Smith's steady leadership saved the Jamestown colony, and as R.E. Pritchard suggests here, this resourceful adventurer was emblematic of what America would become.