The Real Pocahontas

The Jamestown Resource | The Virginia Company | Crossing the Atlantic | The Powhatan | Jamestown Fort and Colony | John Smith | The Real Pocahontas | John Rolfe and Tobacco

  Pocahontas was a princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan's many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is better known as Pocahontas, which means "Little Wanton," playful, frolicsome little girl.  Pocahontas probably saw white men for the first time in May 1607 when Englishmen landed at Jamestown. The first meeting of Pocahontas and John Smith is a legendary story, romanticized (if not entirely invented) by Smith. He was taken captive by some Indians while exploring. Days later, he was brought to Powhatan. According to Smith, he was first welcomed by the great chief and offered a feast. Then he was grabbed and forced to stretch out on two large, flat stones. Indians stood over him with clubs as though ready to beat him to death if ordered. Suddenly a little Indian girl rushed in and took Smith's "head in her arms and laid her owne upon his to save him from death.” The girl, Pocahontas, then pulled him to his feet. Powhatan said that they were now friends, and he adopted Smith as his son, or a subordinate chief. Actually, this mock "execution and salvation" ceremony was traditional with the Indians, and if Smith's story is true, Pocahontas' actions were probably one part of a ritual. At any rate, Pocahontas and Smith soon became friends. 

 

~No!  All wrong!!  Bad Disney!  Bad!

Relations with the Indians continued to be generally friendly for the next year, and Pocahontas was a frequent visitor to Jamestown. She delivered messages from her father and accompanied Indians bringing food and furs to trade for hatchets and trinkets. She was a lively young girl, and when the young boys of the colony turned cartwheels, "she would follow and wheele some herself, naked as she was all the fort over."  Unfortunately, relations with the Powhatans worsened. Necessary trading still continued, but hostilities became more open. While before she had been allowed to come and go almost at will, Pocahontas' visits to the fort became much less frequent. In October 1609, John Smith was badly injured by a gunpowder explosion and was forced to return to England. When Pocahontas next came to visit the fort, she was told that her friend Smith was dead. 

 

She lived in Potomac country among Indians, but her relationship with the Englishmen was not over.  In 1613, she was lured into a trap set by colonists and kidnapped in an effort to control Powhatan. She was taken to a new settlement, Henrico. It was here that she began her education in the Christian Faith, and that she met a successful tobacco planter named John Rolfe in July 1613.  The two fell in love, and planned to marry.  Pocahontas was baptized, christened Rebecca, and later married John Rolfe on April 5, 1614. A general peace and a spirit of goodwill between the English and the Indians resulted from this marriage.  In 1613, Pocahontas traveled with Rolfe and their child to England to help raise support for the colony.After seven months Rolfe decided to return his family to Virginia, In March 1617 they set sail. It was soon   apparent, however, that Pocahontas would not survive the voyage home. She was deathly ill from pneumonia or possibly tuberculosis. She was taken ashore, and, as she lay dying, she comforted her husband, saying, "all must die. 'Tis enough that the child liveth." She was buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, England. She was 22 years old.

~A portrait of the real Pocahontas after her marriage to Rolfe