Pocahontas Totally Explained

Everything about Pocahontas totally explained

Pocohontas (c. 1595 – bur. 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 Wahunsenacawh (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

Early life

Little is known about Pocahontas' early childhood. She was born in Virginia. She was the daughter of Powhatan by one of his many wives and was brought up in his household; her mother was sent away after giving birth to her, as was tradition with Powhatan's wives.

Relationship with John Smith

In April 1607, when the English colonists arrived in Virginia and began building settlements, Pocahontas was about 10 to 12 years old, and her father was the leader of the Powhatan Confederacy. One of the leading colonists, John Smith, 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 a club by the Chief himself) when Pocahontas threw herself across his body: "at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that, but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown" Pocahontas didn't quite understand the bravery she showed in saving Smith. 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 that 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.
   Some experts have suggested that, although Smith believed he'd been rescued, he'd 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 that this is only guesswork, since little is known of Powhatan rituals, and there's 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, "ever 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 that 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, but Pocahontas came to the hut where the English were staying and warned them that Powhatan was planning to kill them. Due to this warning, the English stayed on their guard, and the attack never came.
   An injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England in 1609 for medical care. The English told the natives that Smith was dead; he'd 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 that Smith and Pocahontas were lovers. This romantic version of the story appears only in fictionalized versions of their relationship.

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 that she'd 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 that 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. Little is known about her life there although colonist Ralph Hamor wrote that she received "extraordinary courteous usage." An English minister, Alexander Whitaker, taught her about Christianity and helped to improve her English. After she was baptized, her name was changed to Rebecca.
   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 that she preferred to live with the English.

Marriage to John Rolfe

During her stay in Henricus, Pocahontas met John Rolfe, who fell in love with her. 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 that he'd be saving her soul. He claimed he wasn't motivated by ť "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 at 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 that 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 that the New World's natives could be tamed, and the colony 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 in Plymouth, Pocahontas learned that he was still alive. Smith didn't meet Pocahontas at this point, but he wrote a letter to Queen Anne urging that 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". 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' wasn't 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."
   However, although the young Pocahontas was a favorite of her powerful father—his "delight and darling" according to one of the colonists—it isn't 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 couldn't have done so, because the inheritance of power was matrilineal. In A Map of Virginia John Smith explains:
Relation of Virginia (1609), Henry Spelman explains that Powhatan had many wives and always sent them away after they'd given birth to their first child, so that they resumed their commoner status. It isn't 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's 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:VIRGINIÆ". 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". 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).
   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've seen in his greate hospitalitie afforded to other ladies". Because Pocahontas' well-documented marriage to Rolfe didn't 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.
   More recently, 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,, depicts her journey to England. 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. See Pocahontas (film) for a list of films about the story.

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 is named after her.
Pocahontas County, West Virginia is also named after her, as is Pocahontas County, Iowa.
The village of Indian Queens in Cornwall, UK is sometimes said to be named after her, although this is highly dubious.and turned 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 village that had been called 'Pocahontas', known as 'Apomattock' in Smith's day. This is still called the 'Pocahontas' neighbourhood of Petersburg today. Matoaca High School is also named after Pocahontas.
Matoaka, West Virginia named after her, is located in Mercer County.
Pocahontas, Iowa located in Pocahontas County is named after her.
Pocahontas, Arkansas named after her is located in Randolph County.
Pocahontas, Illinois named after her is located in Bond County.
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, is named after her.
Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield Virginia is named after her.
Pocahontas Village, a neighborhood in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is named after her.
MV Pocahontas is a river tour boat operated from Gravesend in London, UK.
Four United States Navy ships named and one named were all named after her.

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.

Further Information

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