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Pocahontas (c. 1595 – March 21, 1617) was a Native American woman who married an Englishman, John Rolfe, and became a celebrity in London in the last year of her life. She was a daughter of Wahunsunacawh (also known as Chief or Emperor Powhatan), who ruled an area encompassing almost all of the neighboring tribes in the Tidewater region of Virginia (called Tenakomakah at the time).
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Pocahontas (c. 1595 – March 21, 1617) was a Native American woman who married an Englishman, John Rolfe, and became a celebrity in London in the last year of her life. She was a daughter of Wahunsunacawh (also known as Chief or Emperor Powhatan), who ruled an area encompassing almost all of the neighboring tribes in the Tidewater region of Virginia (called Tenakomakah at the time). Her formal names were Matoaka (or Matoika) and Amonute; Pocahontas was a childhood nickname referring to her frolicsome nature (in the Powhatan language it meant "little wanton", according to William Strachey). After her baptism, she went by the name Rebecca, becoming Rebecca Rolfe on her marriage.
Biography
In May 1607, when the English colonists arrived in Virginia and began building settlements, Pocahontas was around the age of 12-14 years old, and her father was the leader of the Powhatan Confederacy. One of the leading colonists, John Smith, subsequently recounted that he was captured by a group of Powhatan hunters and brought to Werowocomoco, one of the chief villages of the Powhatan Empire. According to Smith, he was laid across a stone and was about to be executed, (beaten with clubs) when Pocahontas threw herself across his body: "Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death". She earned respect from the other people and the English Settlements.
John Smith's version of events is the only source, and since the 1860s, skepticism has increasingly been expressed about its veracity. One reason for such doubt is despite having published two earlier books about Virginia, Smith's earliest surviving account of his rescue by Pocahontas dates from 1616, nearly 10 years later, in a letter entreating Queen Anne to treat Pocahontas with dignity. The time gap in publishing his story raises the possibility Smith may have exaggerated or invented the event to enhance Pocahontas' image; however, in a recent book, J.A.O. Lemay points out Smith's earlier writing was primarily geographical and ethnographic in nature and did not dwell on his personal experience; hence there was no reason for him to write down the story until this point.
Further skepticism arose from the fact that Smith had earlier told a very similar story of being rescued through the intervention of a beautiful young girl after he was captured by Turks in Hungary in 1602. Even if Smith's version of events was accurate, some experts have recently suggested that, although Smith believed he had been rescued, he had in fact been involved in a ritual intended to symbolize his death and rebirth as a member of the tribe. However, in Love and Hate in Jamestown, David A. Price notes this is only guesswork, since little is known of Powhatan rituals, and there is no evidence for any similar rituals among other North American tribes.
Whatever really happened, this encounter initiated a friendly relationship with Smith and the Jamestown colony, and Pocahontas would often come to the settlement and play games with the boys there. During a time when the colonists were starving, "every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought him [Smith] so much provision that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger." As the colonists expanded further, however, some of the Native Americans felt their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again.
In 1608, Pocahontas is said to have saved Smith a second time. Smith and some other colonists were invited to Werowocomoco by Chief Powhatan on friendly terms. They were treated kindly and traded with the Indians, but missed the tide and had to spend the night. That night, Pocahontas came to Smith's hut and told him that her father was planning to send men with food who would kill them when they put down their weapons to eat. She had been told not to inform them, but she begged the Englishmen to leave. Being forewarned, the English kept their weapons ready by them even while eating, and no attack came.
In 1609, an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care. The English told the natives Smith was dead, he had been captured by a French pirate, the pirate ship had been wrecked on the Brittany coast, and it had gone down with all hands. Pocahontas believed Smith was dead until she arrived in England several years later, the wife of John Rolfe.
According to William Strachey, Pocahontas married a Powhatan warrior called Kocoum at some point before 1612; nothing more is known about this marriage.
There is no suggestion in any of the historical records Smith and Pocahontas were lovers. This romantic version of the story appears only in fictionalized versions of their relationship (such as the animated Walt Disney version).
Capture
In March 1613, Pocahontas was residing at Passapatanzy, a village of the Patawomecks, a Native American tribe that did some trading with Powhatans. They lived in present-day Stafford County on the Potomac River near Fredericksburg, about from Werowocomoco. Smith writes in his Generall Historie she had been in the care of the Patawomec chief, Japazaws (or Japazeus), since 1611 or 1612.
When two English colonists began trading with the Patawomec, they discovered Pocahontas' presence. With the help of Japazaws, they tricked Pocahontas into captivity. Their purpose, as they explained in a letter, was to ransom her for some English prisoners held by Chief Powhatan, along with various weapons and tools the Powhatans had stolen. Powhatan returned the prisoners, but failed to satisfy the colonists with the amount of weapons and tools he returned, and a long standoff ensued.
During the year-long wait, Pocahontas was kept at Henricus, in modern-day Chesterfield County, Virginia. Little is known about her life there although colonist Ralph Hamor wrote she received "extraordinary courteous usage." An English minister, Alexander Whitaker, taught her about Christianity and helped to improve her English. After she was baptized, she took the name Rebecca as her English name.
In March 1614, the standoff built to a violent confrontation between hundreds of English and Powhatan men on the Pamunkey River. At the Powhatan town of Matchcot, the English encountered a group that included some of the senior Powhatan leaders (but not Chief Powhatan himself, who was away). The English permitted Pocahontas to talk to her countrymen; however, according to the deputy governor, Thomas Dale, Pocahontas rebuked her absent father for valuing her "less than old swords, pieces, or axes" and told them she preferred to live with the English.
Marriage to John Rolfe
During her stay in Henricus, Pocahontas met John Rolfe. Rolfe, whose English-born wife had died, had successfully cultivated a new strain of tobacco in Virginia and spent much of his time there tending to his crop. He was a pious man who agonized over the potential moral repercussions of marrying a heathen. In a long letter to the governor requesting permission to wed her, he expressed both his love for her and his belief he would be saving her soul. He claimed he was not motivated by:
- "the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God, for my own salvation… namely Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was even a-wearied to unwind myself thereout."
Pocahontas's feelings about Rolfe and the marriage are unknown.
They were married on April 5, 1614. Pocahontas was christened Lady Rebecca. For a few years after the marriage, the couple lived together on Rolfe's plantation, Varina Farms, which was located across the James River from the new community of Henricus. They had a child, Thomas Rolfe, born on January 30, 1615.
Their marriage was unsuccessful in winning the English captives back, but it did create a climate of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's tribes for several years; in 1615, Ralph Hamor wrote ever since the wedding "we have had friendly commerce and trade not only with Powhatan but also with his subjects round about us".
Journey to England and death
The Virginia Colony's sponsors found it difficult to lure new colonists and investors to Jamestown. They used Pocahontas as an enticement and as evidence to convince people in Europe the New World's natives could be colonized, and the settlement made safe. In 1616, the Rolfes traveled to England, arriving at the port of Plymouth on the 12th of June and, then journeying to London by coach in June 1616. They were accompanied by a group of around eleven other Powhatan natives including Tomocomo, a holy man. John Smith was living in London at the time and, while Pocahontas was in Plymouth she learned he was still alive. Smith did not meet Pocahontas at this point, but he wrote a letter to Queen Anne urging Pocahontas be treated with respect as a royal visitor, because if she were treated badly, her "present love to us and Christianity might turn to… scorn and fury", and England might lose the chance to "rightly have a Kingdom by her means".
Pocahontas was entertained at various society gatherings. On January 5, 1617 she and Tomocomo were brought before the King at the Banqueting House in Whitehall Palace at a performance of Ben Jonson's masque The Vision of Delight. According to Smith, King James was so unprepossessing neither of the Natives realized whom they had met until it was explained to them afterward.
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Pocahontas and Rolfe lived in the suburb of Brentford, Middlesex for some time, as well as Rolfe's family home at Heacham Hall, Heacham, Norfolk. In early 1617, Smith visited them at a social gathering. According to Smith, when Pocahontas saw him "without any words, she turned about, obscured her face, as not seeming well contented" and was left alone for two or three hours. Later, they spoke more; Smith's record of what she said to him is fragmentary and enigmatic. She reminded him of the "courtesies she had done" and "you did promise Powhatan what was yours would be his, and he the like to you". She then discomfited him by calling him "father", explaining Smith had called Powhatan "father" when a stranger in Virginia, "and by the same reason so must I do you". Smith did not accept this form of address, since Pocahontas outranked him as "a King's daughter". Pocahontas then, "with a well-set countenance", said
Finally, she said the natives had thought Smith dead but her father had told Tomocomo to seek him "because your countrymen will lie much".
In March 1617, Rolfe and Pocahontas boarded a ship to return to Virginia. However, the ship had only gone as far as Gravesend on the River Thames when Pocahontas became ill. The nature of the illness is unknown, but since she had been described as sensitive to London's smoky air, pneumonia or tuberculosis are likely, although smallpox has also been suggested. She was taken ashore and died. According to Rolfe, she died saying "all must die, but tis enough that her child liveth." Her funeral took place on March 21, 1617 in the parish of Saint George's, Gravesend. The site of her grave is unknown, but her memory is recorded in Gravesend with a life-size bronze statue at St George's Church.
Descendants
Pocahontas and Rolfe had one child, Thomas Rolfe, who was born at Varina Farms in 1615 before his parents left for England. Through this son Pocahontas has many living descendants. Many First Families of Virginia trace their roots to Pocahontas and Chief Powhatan, including such notable individuals as Edith Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson; George Wythe Randolph; Admiral Richard Byrd; Virginia Governor Harry Flood Byrd; fashion-designer and socialite Pauline de Rothschild; former First-Lady Nancy Reagan; and astronomer and mathematician Percival Lowell.
Title and status
Pocahontas was the daughter of Wahunsunacock or Wahunsenacawh (spellings vary), chief or leader of the Native American confederation which is now known as the Powhatan. Wahunsunacock referred to himself as 'Powhatan', and thus is commonly known in English as Chief Powhatan, yet 'Powhatan' was not a personal name, but a title. As John Smith explained in A Map of Virginia, "Their chiefe ruler is called Powhatan, and taketh his name of the principall place of dwelling called Powhatan. But his proper name is Wahunsonacock."
However, although the young Pocahontas was a favorite of her powerful father—his "delight and darling" according to one of the colonists—it is not certain that her society regarded her to have a high social rank. This is because Powhatan society was structured differently from that of Europe. While women could inherit power in Powhatan society, Pocahontas herself could not have done so, because the inheritance of power was matrilineal. In A Map of Virginia John Smith explains:
Because of this, Pocahontas would not have inherited his power under any circumstances. Furthermore, her mother's status was probably lowly. In his Relation of Virginia (1609), Henry Spelman explains that Powhatan had many wives and always sent them away after they had given birth to their first child, so that they resumed their commoner status. It is not certain whether Pocahontas' status was regarded as equal only to her mother's.
Regardless of the exact nature of Pocahontas' status among the Powhatan, it is clear that many English people regarded her as a princess in the European sense. One example of a contemporary English view is the 1616 engraving of Pocahontas. The inscription to which reads "MATOAKA ALS REBECCA FILIA POTENTISS : PRINC : POWHATANI IMP:VIRGINIĆ". This translates as: "Matoaka, alias Rebecca, daughter of (filia) the most powerful (potentiss[imi]) prince (princ[eps] of the Powhatan Empire (imp[erii]) of Virginia." Thus, at least some contemporary English recognised Wahunsunacock as ruler of an empire, and presumably accorded what they considered as appropriate status to Pocahontas (Matoaka). This is supported by Captain John Smith's 1616 letter of recommendation to Queen Anne (King James' wife) concerning Pocahontas, which refers to "Powhatan their chief King". Samuel Purchas recalled Pocahontas in London, saying that she impressed those she met because she "carried her selfe as the daughter of a king" and when he met her in London, Smith referred to her deferentially as a "Kings daughter".
A more ambivalent English view of Wahunsunacock's status can be seen in the description of him as a "barbarous prince" by Lord Carew on 20 June 1616 (as reported by Charles Dudley Warner in his essay on Pocahontas).
William Stith writes that "her real Name, it seems, was originally Matoax; which the Indians carefully concealed from the English, and changed it to Pocahontas, out of a superstitious Fear, lest they, by the knowledge of her true Name, should be enabled to do her some hurt." (History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, p. 136)
There is no evidence that Pocahontas was formally presented to King James and his court, but she was introduced to him at a masque, at which the letter-writer John Chamberlain recorded that she was "well placed"—that is, given a good seat that suited her status. Furthermore, Purchas recorded that the Bishop of London "entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond what I have seen in his greate hospitalitie afforded to other ladies".
Posthumous legend
After her death, increasingly fanciful and romanticized representations of Pocahontas were produced. The only contemporary portrait of Pocahontas is Simon Van de Passe's copperplate engraving of 1616. In this portrait, her Native American facial structure is clear, despite her European clothing. Later portraits often 'Europeanized' her appearance.
Subsequent images and reworkings of Pocahontas' story presented her as an emblem of the potential of Native Americans to be assimilated into European society. For example, the United States Capitol prominently displays an 1840 painting by John Gadsby Chapman, The Baptism of Pocahontas, in the Rotunda. A government pamphlet was circulated, entitled The Picture of the Baptism of Pocahontas, explaining the characters in the painting, congratulating the Jamestown settlers for introducing Christianity to the "heathen savages", and thus showing that the settlers did not simply "exterminate the ancient proprietors of the soil, and usurp their possessions".
In another development, Pocahontas' story was romanticized so that her 'rescue' of Smith begins a love story between the two. Although there had been earlier examples, the first writer to tell such a story at length was John Davis in his Travels in the United States of America (1803). Because Pocahontas' well-documented marriage to Rolfe did not fit this interpretation, at least one author, John R. Musick, retold the story to "clarify" the relationship between the three. In Musick's account, Rolfe is a back-stabbing liar who, seeing the opportunity to marry "royalty," tells the "Indian princess" Pocahontas that her true love, Smith, is dead. She then reluctantly agrees to marry Rolfe. After the two begin preparations to leave England, Pocahontas encounters Smith, still alive. Overcome by emotion and recollections, she dies of a broken heart three days later.
Several films about Pocahontas have been made, beginning with a silent film in 1924. In recent film versions of her story, Pocahontas has been seen less as an image of idealized assimilation, and more as an image of the perceived superiority of traditional Native American values over western ones. The Walt Disney Company's 1995 animated feature Pocahontas presents a highly-romanticized and fictional view of a love affair between Pocahontas and John Smith, but in this version, Pocahontas teaches Smith the value of respect for nature. The sequel, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, depicts her journey to England. Pocahontas: The Legend is the second feature film based on the life of Pocahontas (Sandrine Holt and Miles O'Keeffe) that was released in 1995. John Rolfe does not appear in this motion picture but was portrayed by Robert Clarke in Captain John Smith and Pocahontas (1953). In Terrence Malick's film The New World, an attempt at greater historical accuracy, Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) and Smith (Colin Farrell) are still depicted as lovers.
Neil Young recorded an eponymous song about Pocahontas which detailed a meeting between Marlon Brando and the songwriter around a campfire discussing Hollywood, the Astrodome stadium and the genocide of Native American peoples. The song appeared as the fourth track on 1979's Rust Never Sleeps.
Namesakes
Several places and landmarks take their name from Pocahontas.
- Pocahontas was the namesake for one of the richest seams of bituminous coal ever found in Virginia and West Virginia, and the Pocahontas Land Company, a subsidiary of the Norfolk and Western Railway.
- From 1930 into the 1960s, one of the Norfolk and Western Railway's named luxury trains was the "Pocahontas" and ran between Norfolk, Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio behind the Norfolk and Western Railway's famous J class 4-8-4 streamlined steam engines. In 1946, the Norfolk and Western Railway added the similarly-equipped "Powhatan Arrow" on the same route.
- The town of Pocahontas, Virginia.
- Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
- The village of Indian Queens in Cornwall, UK is sometimes said to be named after her, although this is highly dubious.
- Matoaca, Virginia is located in Chesterfield County on the Appomattox River. County historians say this is the site of the Indian village Matoax, where she was raised. It is about three miles (5 km) from the present city of Petersburg, Virginia — which in 1784 incorporated another town that had been called 'Pocahontas', where her great grandson, Col. John Bolling, had run a tobacco warehouse. This is still called the "Pocahontas neighbourhood" of Petersburg today.
- Matoaka, West Virginia.
- Pocahontas, Iowa is in Pocahontas County.
- Pocahontas, Arkansas.
- Pocahontas, Illinois.
- Po-ca-hon-tas, or The Gentle Savage is a 19th-century burlesque about the woman by John Brougham
- Fort Pocahontas was an American Civil War fortification in Charles City County, Virginia.
- Lake Matoaka, part of the campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
- Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield Virginia.
- Pocahontas Village, a neighborhood in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
- MV Pocahontas is a river tour boat operated from Gravesend in London, UK.
- Four United States Navy ships named and one named .
- Pocahontas, Mississippi.
In Henrico County, Virginia, where Pocahontas and John Rolfe lived together at the Varina Farms Plantation, a middle school has been named after each of them. Pocahontas Middle School and John Rolfe Middle School thus reunite the historic couple in the local educational system—Henrico being one of 5 remaining original shires that date to the early 17th century of the Virginia Colony.
Footnotes
Further reading
- Barbour, Philip L. Pocahontas and Her World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970. ISBN 0-7091-2188-1
- Neill, Rev. Edward D. Pocahontas and Her Companions. Albany: Joel Munsell, 1869.
- Price, David A. Love and Hate in Jamestown. Alfred A. Knopf, 2003 ISBN 0-375-41541-6
- Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8061-2280-3
- Sandall, Roger. 2001 The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
- Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. ISBN 0-8090-7738-8
- Warner Charles Dudley, Captain John Smith, 1881. Repr. in Project Gutenberg Text, accessed 4 July, 2006
- Warner Charles Dudley, The Story of Pocahontas, Repr. in Project Gutenberg Text, accessed 4 July, 2006
- Woodward, Grace Steele. Pocahontas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969. ISBN 0-8061-0835-5 or ISBN 0-8061-1642-0
External links
- A sceptical reading of the Pocahontas legend, presenting her as a victim of oppression.
- Summary of the history.
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- Compares the historical Pocahontas to the Disney version. Pictures and extensive links.
- . Family tree and genealogy of her descendants.
- Summarises J.A.O. Lemay's book on the subjet.
- . Links to several articles on the Pocahontas legend and its cultural meaning.
- —Essay on teaching the Pocahontas legends.
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- Includes text of many original accounts, including:
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- Scroll down to middle of page for essay described as "first definitive examination of Pocahontas written by a Powhatan Native American descendant."
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