John Smith in this chromolithograph, credited to the New England Chromo. Lith. Company around 1870. The scene is idealized; there are no mountains in
Tidewater, Virginia, for example, and the Powhatans lived in thatched houses rather than
tipis. Pocahontas is most famously linked to colonist John Smith, who arrived in Virginia with 100 other settlers in April 1607. The colonists built a fort on a marshy peninsula on the
James River, and had numerous encounters over the next several months with the people of Tsenacommacah – some of them friendly, some hostile. A hunting party led by Powhatan's close relative
Opechancanough captured Smith in December 1607 while he was exploring on the
Chickahominy River and brought him to Powhatan's capital at
Werowocomoco. In his 1608 account, Smith describes a great feast followed by a long talk with Powhatan. He does not mention Pocahontas in relation to his capture, and claims that they first met some months later. Margaret Huber suggests that Powhatan was attempting to bring Smith and the other colonists under his own authority. He offered Smith rule of the town of Capahosic, which was close to his capital at Werowocomoco, as he hoped to keep Smith and his men "nearby and better under control". In 1616, Smith wrote a letter to Queen
Anne of Denmark, the wife of
King James, in anticipation of Pocahontas' visit to England. In this new account, his capture included the threat of his own death: "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."
Karen Ordahl Kupperman suggests that Smith used such details to embroider his first account, thus producing a more dramatic second account of his encounter with Pocahontas as a heroine worthy of Queen Anne's audience. She argues that its later revision and publication was Smith's attempt to raise his own stock and reputation, as he had fallen from favor with the
London Company which had funded the Jamestown enterprise. Anthropologist
Frederic W. Gleach suggests that Smith's second account was substantially accurate but represents his misunderstanding of a three-stage ritual intended to adopt him into the confederacy, but not all writers are convinced, some suggesting the absence of certain corroborating evidence. Early histories did establish that Pocahontas befriended Smith and the colonists. She often went to the settlement and played games with the boys there. As the colonists expanded their settlement, the Powhatans felt that their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again. In late 1609, an injury from a
gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care and the colonists told the Powhatans that he was dead. Pocahontas believed that account and stopped visiting Jamestown but learned that Smith was living in England when she traveled there with her husband
John Rolfe.
Capture , depicting a full narrative. Starting in the lower left, Pocahontas (center) is deceived by
weroance Iopassus, who holds a copper kettle as bait, and his wife, who pretends to cry. At center right, Pocahontas is put on the boat and feasted. In the background, the action moves from the Potomac to the York River, where negotiations fail to trade a hostage and the colonists attack and burn a Native village. Pocahontas' capture occurred in the context of the
First Anglo-Powhatan War, a conflict between the Jamestown settlers and the Natives which began late in the summer of 1609. In the first years of war, the colonists took control of the James River, both at its mouth and at the falls. In the meantime, Captain
Samuel Argall pursued contacts with Native tribes in the northern portion of Powhatan's paramount chiefdom. The
Patawomecks lived on the
Potomac River and were not always loyal to Powhatan, and living with them was Henry Spelman, a young English interpreter. In March 1613, Argall learned that Pocahontas was visiting the Patawomeck village of Passapatanzy and living under the protection of the
weroance Iopassus (also known as Japazaws). With Spelman's help interpreting, Argall pressured Iopassus to assist in Pocahontas' capture by promising an alliance with the colonists against the Powhatans. During the year-long wait, Pocahontas was held at the English settlement of
Henricus in present-day
Chesterfield County, Virginia. Little is known about her life there, although colonist
Ralph Hamor wrote that she received "extraordinary courteous usage" (meaning she was treated well). Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow refers to an oral tradition which claims that Pocahontas was
raped; Helen Rountree counters that "other historians have disputed that such oral tradition survived and instead argue that any mistreatment of Pocahontas would have gone against the interests of the English in their negotiations with Powhatan. A truce had been called, the Indians still far outnumbered the English, and the colonists feared retaliation." At this time, Henricus minister
Alexander Whitaker taught Pocahontas about Christianity and helped her improve her English. Upon her baptism, she took the Christian name "Rebecca". In March 1614, the stand-off escalated to a violent confrontation between hundreds of colonists and Powhatan men on the
Pamunkey River, and the colonists encountered a group of senior Native leaders at Powhatan's capital of Matchcot. The colonists allowed Pocahontas to talk to her tribe when Powhatan arrived, and she reportedly rebuked him for valuing her "less than old swords, pieces, or axes". She said that she preferred to live with the colonists "who loved her".
Possible first marriage Mattaponi tradition holds that Pocahontas' first husband was Kocoum, brother of the Patawomeck
weroance Japazaws, and that Kocoum was killed by the colonists after his wife's capture in 1613. Today's Patawomecks believe that Pocahontas and Kocoum had a daughter named Ka-Okee who was raised by the Patawomecks after her father's death and her mother's abduction. Kocoum's identity, location, and very existence have been widely debated among scholars for centuries; the only mention of a "Kocoum" in any English document is a brief statement written about 1616 by William Strachey that Pocahontas had been living married to a "private captaine called Kocoum" for two years. Pocahontas married John Rolfe in 1614, and no other records even hint at any previous husband, so some have suggested that Strachey was mistakenly referring to Rolfe himself, with the reference being later misunderstood as one of Powhatan's officers.
Marriage to John Rolfe During her stay at Henricus, Pocahontas met
John Rolfe. Rolfe's English-born wife Sarah Hacker and child Bermuda had died on the way to Virginia after the wreck of the ship
Sea Venture on the Summer Isles, now known as
Bermuda. He established the Virginia plantation
Varina Farms, where he cultivated a new strain of
tobacco. Rolfe was a pious man and agonized over the potential moral repercussions of marrying a heathen, though in fact Pocahontas had accepted the Christian faith and taken the baptismal name Rebecca. In a long letter to the governor requesting permission to wed her, he expressed his love for Pocahontas and his belief that he would be saving her soul. He wrote that he was: The couple were married on April 5, 1614, by chaplain
Richard Buck, probably at Jamestown. For two years they lived at Varina Farms, across the James River from Henricus. Their son,
Thomas, was born in January 1615. The marriage created a climate of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's tribes; it endured for eight years as the "Peace of Pocahontas". The marriage was controversial in the English court at the time because "a commoner" had "the audacity" to marry a "princess".
England One goal of the London Company was to convert Native Americans to Christianity, and they saw an opportunity to promote further investment with the conversion of Pocahontas and her marriage to Rolfe, all of which also helped end the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The company decided to bring Pocahontas to England as a symbol of the tamed
New World "savage" and the success of the Virginia colony, and the Rolfes arrived at the port of
Plymouth on June 12, 1616. The family journeyed to
London by coach, accompanied by eleven other Powhatans including a holy man named
Tomocomo. John Smith was living in London at the time while Pocahontas was in Plymouth, and she learned that he was still alive. Smith did not meet Pocahontas, but he wrote to Queen Anne urging that Pocahontas be treated with respect as a royal visitor. He suggested that, 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". According to Smith, the king was so unprepossessing that neither Pocahontas nor Tomocomo realized whom they had met until it was explained to them afterward. When he met her again in London, Smith referred to her deferentially as a "King's daughter". Pocahontas was apparently treated well in London. At the masque, her seats were described as "well placed" and, according to Purchas, London's Bishop
John King "entertained her with festival state and pomp beyond what I have seen in his greate hospitalitie afforded to other ladies". Not all the English were so impressed, however. Helen C. Rountree claims that there is no contemporaneous evidence to suggest that Pocahontas was regarded in England "as anything like royalty," despite the writings of John Smith. Rather, she was considered to be something of a curiosity, according to Rountree, who suggests that she was merely "the Virginian woman" to most Englishmen. Pocahontas and Rolfe lived in the suburb of
Brentford,
Middlesex, for some time, as well as at Rolfe's family home at
Heacham,
Norfolk. In early 1617, Smith met the couple at a social gathering and wrote that, 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," saying, "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 that Smith had called Powhatan "father" when he was a stranger in Virginia, "and by the same reason so must I do you". Smith did not accept this form of address because, he wrote, Pocahontas outranked him as "a King's daughter". Pocahontas then said, "with a well-set countenance": Finally, Pocahontas told Smith that she and her tribe had thought him dead, but her father had told Tomocomo to seek him "because your countrymen will lie much". ==Death==