The Great Chief Wahunsenacah sat in the middle of a mighty oblong building, surrounded by family members and tribal elders. The rest of the tribe, several hundred people, stood in two rows. Painted on their bodies and dressed in special ceremonial garments, they watched the action tensely. Two large flat stones were placed in front of the chief. Then a captive, a white man of large stature and boldness, was brought into the room and placed on the stones. He was perfectly still. A few warriors came before him with huge sticks in their hands and, at a signal from the chief, raised them high in the air. But just at that moment a lovely girl came running out of the crowd, took the prisoner’s face in her hands and put her own on it. The mighty Wahunsenacah smiled and waved his hand. The robbers dropped their weapons.
The year was 1608 and the place was Werowocomoco, the capital of the Powhatan Indian alliance in what is now Virginia, not far from Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. A little girl called Pocahontas, or ‘naughty girl’, was the chief’s favourite daughter, and her actions saved the life of one of the first white settlers, Captain John Smith.
The story of Smith’s dramatic rescue is the most mythologised and widespread narrative of the birth of the new colony that led to the creation of the United States of America. According to this narrative, Pocahontas and Smith share the credit for the survival and success of the colony, for which they are recorded in the history books as pioneers of a new civilisation and stars of the birth of America. To top it all off, in some versions, they became romantically involved.
But history is not so simple and straightforward. Even Smith’s fateful encounter with the real Pocahontas, barely ten years old, and the original relations between the indigenous Indians and the white colonisers cannot be summed up in a few words. Above all, it is necessary to set aside the legends and the romanticised tales that have obscured the truth thanks to Hollywood films and Disney blockbusters, books and works of art.
John Smith himself, one of the more successful founding fathers of the new colony and a lifelong adventurer, but also overly prone to self-aggrandisement, had a lot to do with this. He described his adventures in detail and published several works on the early settlers’ experiences and relations with the natives in the New World.
While these writings are of great ethnographic value, his personal experiences are largely dubious and embellished, and their protagonist is, of course, a hero among heroes. The story of how Pocahontas rescued him just before his skull was smashed was first described by him many years after the event, when Pocahontas was already known on both sides of the Atlantic.
It was almost certainly ‘only’ a special rite of ‘adoption’ and not of execution, adapted in cases where the captives were important members of the enemy’s people. But Smith’s implausible claims are still dismissed by historians today for lack of credible sources. Unfortunately, they have survived in the form of widespread popular history.
The meeting with Smith and their subsequent friendship were just two episodes in the fascinating life of young Pocahontas. The fact is that she had close relations with newcomers from an early age and later married John Rolfe, a prosperous planter, and had a young son, Thomas. This was the first officially recognised marriage between an Englishman and a native, and Thomas the first mixed child.
Pocahontas converted to Protestantism and became Rebecca Rolfe by marriage. This was the English way of justifying colonisation and proving that it was possible to civilise the natives and assimilate them into English culture. Religion was an important tool and a pretext for the expansion of the British Empire, since Christianisation was supposedly dictated by God. Pocahontas, the enlightened savage, must of course have been grateful for her new-found privileges.
In her short lifetime, she became such an important symbol of reconciliation between the Old and New Worlds that she was brought to London and paraded as Lady Rebecca with great pomp and honour. She was a sensation, welcomed even at court. In reality, however, she was merely used for propaganda purposes and as proof of the success of the Virginia Charter Company, which financed investment in the settlements and was constantly recruiting new settlers. Pocahontas witnessed the friendly reception given to the natives.
She was only about 20 years old when she died at the beginning of her journey from England to her homeland and was buried on English soil. She is still credited by many with building the bridges of civilisation, and her story also rests on the romantic myths of the Indians.
But no one has written down her thoughts and feelings. There are no written Indian sources from this period, but there is an important oral tradition, which differs in many ways from the dominant narrative. Pocahontas was a tragic victim of colonization, abducted and torn from her community, in all likelihood forcibly separated from her first husband and child, raped, forced to marry a white man and adopt a new religion, and ultimately exploited for the purposes of extermination and persecution of the Indians from their territories.
Jamestown
At the beginning of the 17th century, England had no prospect of ever becoming an imperial power. It was far behind its neighbours, Spain, France and Portugal, which were steadily spreading their tentacles of conquest around the world. The Spanish, in particular, were a thorn in her side, having made a fortune from the colonisation of Central and South America, where they found inexhaustible supplies of gold and silver.
The battle for territorial domination was joined by a religious one, as the Spanish steadily converted all the native peoples they encountered to the Catholic faith. The Protestant English feared Catholic superiority both on European soil and on the world stage. They increasingly looked to North America, hoping that gold awaited them there too, while at the same time searching for the famous northern passage to the Pacific that would lead them to the exotic scents of south-east Asia. The Spanish had already settled in Florida in 1565 and, with occasional forays into the interior, they were convinced that there was no glamour in a wilderness controlled by hostile Indians.
In 1585 and 1587, English settlers tried unsuccessfully to establish two colonies on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina. The first was abandoned due to hardship, while the disappearance of the second remains one of the great unexplained mysteries of modern history.
The unambitious King James I of England was not overly bothered by these setbacks, but the country was still full of daredevils and adventurers eager for fame and fortune. Nor were there any shortage of ordinary people willing to make the perilous journey across the Atlantic to escape the poverty, disease and filth that then plagued England.
In 1606, the Virginia Company, a limited liability company, was created by royal charter and granted the right to settle and exploit the territory between the 34th and 41st parallels of the east coast of America. The investment was financed by wealthy investors and not by the State. English America was therefore first a company and only later a colony in the true sense of the word.
Investors blindly believed that there must be gold somewhere and that the Spanish had simply failed to find it. But before the risky venture turned profitable – and not because there was no gold, there really was none – it was on the brink of collapse for years. The question is how many people would have made the journey in the first place, had they realised the slim chances of survival. The decimated colony was saved from extinction several times by a series of happy coincidences.
The first crew of 105 – all men – set sail on the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery in December 1606. Expecting a quick profit, they swore unconditional loyalty to the company for seven years, free labour and obedience to a pre-appointed seven-member governing council headed by a president, in return for a share of it. The names of the members were contained in a carefully sealed envelope, which travellers were only allowed to open once they arrived in the New World.
The crew included many members of the upper classes and even nobility, but few were experienced loners, used to this kind of adventure and survival in difficult circumstances. One of the latter was Captain John Smith, a short and stocky 27-year-old adventurer with a colourful CV who soon proved decisive in preserving the colony.
Among other things, he fought on the side of the Dutch against the Spanish in the War of Dutch Independence, and was captured and enslaved while fighting against the Turks. Resourceful and able, he escaped slavery and, during his years of warfare, acquired many useful skills for life in an unknown and unexplored world.
Smith quickly realised that most of his fellow travellers lacked such skills, as well as the will to work and learn, and indeed the first conflicts and tensions arose during the journey. Because Smith was just an ordinary man who dared to contradict and advise his superior, he was imprisoned on board.
After four months of sailing, the feuding and fed-up men just dropped anchor in what is now Virginia in May 1607 and set about finding a suitable place to base themselves. Before that, the ship’s captains opened the envelope containing the company’s instructions and discovered to their horror that John Smith had been appointed to the ruling council. The prisoner was released, as they needed every pair of hands, but was not initially given a place on the council.
The immigrants did not think too long about where to build their settlement, but the choice turned out to be the first major misjudgement. On the face of it, the foundations of Jamestown, named after an English king, were laid in a suitable location, well protected and accessible only by a narrow strip of land. Moreover, the James River was deep enough nearby for ships to anchor there.
At the same time, the river gave them constant access to drinking water. But in summer, the proximity of the Chesapeake Bay to the sea turned it into a salty, dirty mudflat, and the whole area was swampy and full of mosquitoes.
Most of the settlers initially threw themselves into the work, exploring the area as their London bosses instructed them to do in writing. These included instructions on the need to immediately seek a water route to the Pacific, to find mineral wealth and to make friends and trade with the natives.
Returning to England was forbidden except with the express permission of the President of the colony, as was sending any bad news that might deter future settlers or investors.
There was no reason to worry at first, the fort was growing, the river was full of fish, the forests were full of game and the locals rarely showed up, and even then out of curiosity. Or so it seemed. The naive English wanted to make their friendly intentions clear and did not put a fence around the settlement. The eagerness to work had eased in the warmer months and the worry about food supplies did not interrupt their sleep.
Starving colony
The first summer in the new country was deadly. Food was scarce, they couldn’t grow anything themselves, and suddenly the river water was no longer drinkable. Visits from the locals were no longer so innocent either. Quite a few Englishmen who had strayed too far from the fort fell under their arrows. Starving, the settlers nevertheless built a fence around Jamestown with the last of their strength.
Then, weakened, they began to die. The harrowing testimonies survive: “On the sixth of August John Asbie died of dysentery, on the 9th of August George Flower of flatulence, on the 10th of August William Brister of a wound from a native arrow /…/”, on the 14th of August three of them breathed their last, and then the record goes on recording the deaths every day thereafter.
Most people died of starvation, and most of the survivors were so sick and weak that they struggled to guard the fort and forage for food. Apathy reigned. John Smith, however, gathered enough strength to make his way up the estuary with a few companions to establish closer relations with the locals and to beg food from them. He realised that only they could save them.
Jamestown was in the Tsenacommacah area, the homeland of an alliance of Indian tribes that encompassed present-day eastern Virginia from the south bank of the Potomac River to the Virginia-North Carolina border. Indians have lived in the territory, which is crisscrossed by numerous rivers, streams and lakes, for at least ten to twelve thousand years.
The alliance of about thirty tribes and between 15,000 and 20,000 people was called Powhatan, and all of them swore allegiance to a paramount chief who also bore the title Powhatan. Each tribe had its own chief, called a weroance. The chief at that time, Wahunsenacah, was Pocahontas’s father.
Wahunsenacah was an able chief, having inherited only six tribes and then subdued more than twenty more. He collected tribute from them in the form of grain, fish, furs and pearls, in return for which he and his elite warriors offered them protection from hostile neighbouring tribes, the Spanish and later the English.
Each tribe had its own name, mostly after the rivers they lived along (Appomattoc, Mattaponi, Pamunkey, Chesapeake, Nansemond, Kecoughtan, etc.), and their languages belonged to the Algonquian language group. Most of the tribes are now extinct, while the Pamunkey are one of the few tribes that have managed to survive and were recognised as an official tribe at US federal level in 2015.
The Powhatan Alliance was a complex self-sufficient society, organised as a kind of kingdom. According to detailed drawings published in Smith’s works, it consisted of more than 160 hamlets of various sizes. The society was matrilineal, i.e. power was passed down through the female line, although the tribal leaders were male. Thus, when a chief died, his younger brother, not his son, took over, followed by his sister’s son.
The Powhatan villages were located along rivers and waterways, so the men fished and hunted, while the women worked the fields of corn, tobacco, beans and squash. The English were not the first white people they had to deal with, as the Spanish had invaded their territory on several occasions. They were much more aggressive than the English, so the Indians initially saw the latter as potential allies against the Spanish and were ready to help them. They were also tempted by their metal objects, especially tools and weapons, and were willing to trade food for swords, knives, guns and even copper utensils. But they were increasingly worried that they intended to stay on their own soil.
So John Smith went to the heart of their homeland to try to save a starving and rapidly collapsing colony. Of course, the born explorer and seasoned soldier was also driven by a sense of adventure and, as one of the few Englishmen, he was convinced that a detailed knowledge of the area, the local people, their culture and their language was the key to survival.
A fateful encounter with Pocahontas
The narrative that follows is largely based on Smith’s notes, which he has spent a lifetime adapting and adding exciting details to. Smith’s evidential journey along the James River basin with a handful of camp companions ends when he becomes the prisoner of Powhatan’s cousin or brother, named Openacanough.
By then, the expedition had already witnessed its first bloodthirsty spectacle. A hostile tribe had sent a group of young girls as bait to the river bank where the English were resting. When the men, who had not been in female company for months, approached them, the Indians attacked them. All but one of them managed to escape.
The poor man was tied naked to a stake behind which a fire was lit, his fingers were cut off with sharp shell shells, and then the skin was slowly removed from his body and face, strip by strip. He gasped in agony only when he was disemboweled and thrown into the fire. Finally, the mangled corpse was set on fire. The whites soon became accustomed to such disgusting scenes, as the Indians often executed their enemies in a similarly long-suffering manner.
When Smith fell into an Indian trap shortly afterwards, he was convinced that his last hour was approaching. But Openacanough believed that Smith held an important position among his people and could be useful. For weeks he was taken from tribe to tribe and shown around. Because he had been overfed, he believed that he would end up on the altar of sacrifice, as the Aztecs had done.
Finally, he was brought to the Powhatan capital, Werowocomoco, before the great chief Wahunsenacah, whom no white man had ever seen before. Smith had proved brave and fearless during his weeks of captivity, and the Indians were convinced that he was the Weroance of his people.
But in his version of the story, the Indians were preparing to finally execute him. He vividly described the preparations for the ceremony, the appearance and clothing, the painted and tattooed bodies of the large audience, the ritual sounds and voices. He too was prepared, washed and given a hearty meal, the last before his death, according to Smith.
He also had the honour of being received by the Great Chief, who was to enquire about the intentions of the English. Smith lied to him that the English were hiding from the Spanish and had no intention of settling permanently. How they communicated and whether Smith could speak and understand Powhatan at that time is unknown.
In the next chapter of the story, Smith introduces the real heroine of the story, the tiny Pocahontas, the ten-year-old favourite daughter of the great chief. The bright and vivacious girl, “with whom no one could compare either in wit or looks”, is said to have saved his life. A long friendship began.
Pocahontas may indeed have been present during the ritual and may have played a more prominent role as the daughter of the chief. But the Indians did not intend to kill Smith, but to take him in as a friend through the so-called ritual of adoption. They hoped to form a formal alliance with the English.
Smith may not have realised it at the time, but after years of living in the colony, getting to know the folk traditions of the natives and even learning their language, their true intentions should have been clear to him. But he often liked to spice up his stories with exciting twists to make them more sensational, readable and successful.
It was also not the first time he was saved from the clutches of death by a beautiful young woman. This is also said to have happened during his enslavement by the Turks. In general, captivity stories were a popular literary genre during the period of the great European discoveries and the clash of civilisations. They were particularly widespread during the settlement of North America, when the English used them to show the differences in civilisation with the natives, to portray them as inferior savages and thus to justify colonisation.
Explorers and travellers like John Smith competed to present the most thrilling and incredible story. It is also suspicious that in his earliest writings, Smith did not even mention this story. The first time he did so was in 1616, when he wrote to the Queen of England about the arrival of Pocahontas in England, and in 1624 he added new details to the story.
In any case, Pocahontas still played an important role in the relations between the Indians and the first Englishmen on their land, and also in the development and preservation of Jamestown. The girl, probably born around 1595 or 1596, was actually named Matoaka, but was also called Amonute. Pocahontas, or ‘mischievous one’, was just a nickname she earned because of her mischievous nature, and according to Native American sources, it was the name of her mother, who died during childbirth. Pocahontas was her father’s favourite precisely because he had lost her mother. She must have been a charismatic and attractive girl, because wherever she appeared she left a lasting impression.
After the ceremony, Smith was escorted by the Indians to Jamestown, twenty kilometres away, where he expected to receive a gun and a whetstone in exchange for a fresh friendship and a sack full of corn.
Pocahontas helps settlers
Golden times have begun for the colony. Although only a third of the first arrivals survived, new arrivals soon began to arrive from England. Smith’s miraculous return, and above all his friendship with the Indians, earned him respect and prestige. The English traded the worthless copper objects for food, especially corn, which kept them alive.
To better understand each other, they have also introduced a kind of cultural-diplomatic exchange of teenage boys. The Indian boys lived with the English for a while, and the English boys lived with the Indians. Later, they could serve as interpreters, and the more astute ones as spies. There was never complete trust between the peoples.
Pocahontas became a regular visitor to Jamestown, bringing food to the English. It is certainly not true that the young daughter of a great chief could slip away from home unnoticed and come alone, for the road between Werowocomoco and Jamestown was also full of pitfalls. Among other things, they were separated by a raging river. It is more likely that Wahunsenacah sent her in a safe escort as a sign of trust in the English.
She and Smith are said to have developed a friendly relationship, although there was a gap of almost 20 years between them. Whether the man, who had by then risen to the very position of President of the colony, viewed the girl any differently from a sympathetic child is anyone’s guess.
Numerous accounts of Jamestown from this period mention a young Pocahontas running almost naked through the village with the English boys and overturning bicycles. This means that she was undoubtedly not yet pubescent, as much stricter rules of behaviour and dress were then being applied to Indian girls. When Pocahontas began to change from a girl into a woman, her visits stopped.
At first, the Indians were really decisive in helping the English, teaching them how to work the land and other skills. Patronizing foreigners, however, were already contemplating mass conversions to Protestantism and sending home optimistic predictions.
They even considered making Powhatan a subject of the King of England. But as more and more settlers arrived in Jamestown, the locals began to fear their numerical dominance. What if Smith had lied to them, and their real intentions were to stay and push them out of their territory?
The locals were becoming suspicious and relations were fraying. They still came on reconnaissance missions, but increasingly they were stealing and ambushing the English outside the base. In Smith’s writings, it is possible to read how Pocahontas again came to the colonists’ aid when she warned them of her father’s preparations for an invasion. They stopped trading and bringing food, with disastrous consequences.
Settlers were also squabbling among themselves for supremacy, and investors in England were losing patience. Profits were still scarce, and the colony tried its hand at glass and silk making, wood processing, resin and tar, to no avail. The colony’s charter was therefore amended, a new governor was sent and both the presidency and the governing council were abolished.
John Smith’s term of office was coming to an end, so he decided to set up his own plantation with his followers on land given to him by an Indian chief. But on the way there, the gunpowder in the pouch on his belt accidentally exploded and burned him badly all over.
His life was hanging by a thread, and with no doctor in the colony, he was sent to England for treatment in October 1609. It was a miracle that he survived the arduous journey, wounded as he was. The sad news reached Pocahontas that her friend had died.
After Smith’s departure, Jamestown faced the worst period in its history, known as the Famine. Not only were the Indians no longer helping them, they were attacked more and more frequently. The settlers were still unable to grow their own food, the resourceful Smith was gone and the new President was an incompetent aristocrat.
Ships with large supplies were lost on their way from England. The cousins who dared to reach into the warehouse without permission to pick up the pitiful rotten supplies were executed. First the people ate all the domestic animals, horses, cats and dogs, then the rats and mice, followed by the soles of leather shoes and boots. If anyone wandered outside the settlement in search of edible roots and snakes, they would fall to the Indians’ arrows.
Bodies found centuries later by archaeologists show signs of cannibalism. One Henry Collins dismembered his pregnant wife and ate her, throwing the unborn child into a river. Those who retained the moral compass to resist cannibalism died a slow death. Many dug their own graves and waited for the end. The mortality rate was 80% in the six months after Smith’s departure, and there were only 60 surviving souls.
The decision was made to leave the colony and head for home. But not long after setting sail, they came across two boats full of happy and excited faces.
John and Rebecca Rolfe, alias Pocahontas
These were the castaways from the Sea Venture, which was expected in Jamestown months earlier but was lost in the terrible hurricane. Completely wrecked and with its bottom punctured, it miraculously landed in beautiful Bermuda with all 150 crew members alive.
The incident inspired William Shakespeare to write one of his last works, the romantic comedy The Tempest. The survivors spent ten months in Bermuda recovering and, once they had recovered, they built two smaller ships from the wreckage and set sail for their original destination.
John Rolfe and his wife were on board, and the couple were mourning the loss of their newborn baby girl in Bermuda. Shortly after arriving in Jamestown, Rolfe’s wife died, and he turned his attention to his work rather than his grief. Rolfe soon became the most successful tobacco planter in North America.
But first, he and his fellow passengers looked in horror at the living skeletons trying to escape from the hellish Jamestown. But since the new Governor Thomas Dale was among the new arrivals, the fugitives had to return with them. He imposed a strict regime and discipline, and compulsory work from morning till night. Laziness was punished by flogging, theft by starvation and escape attempts by death.
Dale also had a new small settlement, Henrico, built on a more suitable site. There, Rolfe set up his first plantation and began experimenting with blending different types of tobacco. The colony finally emerged from its difficulties and made good progress.
Disputes with the numerous Powhatan tribes escalated into a full-scale war between 1610 and 1613. One of the neighbouring tribes, the Patawomeck, who lived outside the Powhatan alliance, was befriended by the English. Soon word spread that Pocahontas, the girl who had once run joyously through Jamestown, was visiting them. She remained a fond memory for many of the survivors, and interesting stories were circulated about her, which were spread by John Smith.
Pocahontas was now a girl of about fifteen. She was married to Kocoum, a relative of one of her father’s best friends, and was already the mother of a little boy.
The English have devised a cunning plan. They persuaded the chief of the Patawomecks, Japazeus, to lure the unsuspecting Pocahontas and his wife to see an English ship. In return, Japazeus was given some worthless copper vessels and Pocahontas was taken hostage.
Hostage-taking was not uncommon, but most were soon released or exchanged. For his daughter’s freedom, Wahunsenacah was to free the English hostages, return the weapons and agree to peace negotiations. Despite trying to comply with all demands, the girl was not released. She was too valuable to be returned easily and they soon had even more depraved intentions for her.
Pocahontas lived in Jamestown for at least a year and was forced to undergo a process of cultural and religious transformation. She changed the way she dressed, learned English and was taken in by a local priest who taught her the basics of Protestantism.
Many people took a fancy to her, but above all she caused heart problems for the widower Rolf, who literally suffered from her depression. Unable to escape her charms, he wrote to the Governor asking for his consent to marry her. Rather than love, he cited the good of the colony as the main motive, which such a marriage would endear to the Powhatans. The marriage would also “save her heathen soul”.
What Pocahontas thought and felt about all this, no one knows. According to Indian folklore, she was raped by the Governor himself, moved to Henrico early in her pregnancy and forced into a quick marriage with Rolf.
Before her marriage, Pocahontas converted to Protestantism and, after her baptism, was named Rebecca, after one of the most important women of the Old Testament. Her half-brothers and uncles were also present at the wedding in April 1614, and her older sister Mattachanna and her husband even moved in with her and Rolf.
The following January, a baby boy, Thomas, was born. John was already a successful planter and had developed a new blend of local tobacco with Caribbean and South American tobacco that was milder and more pleasant to smoke than Indian tobacco. Above all, it was much more profitable. In all likelihood, his young wife also helped him to grow tobacco, bringing to the marriage her knowledge of local nature and farming methods.
But the Act also proved to be an excellent political tool, and the English and Powhatans were once again at peace for many years.
Pocahontas in England
The news from the colony was indeed encouraging, but it was still not rich. It needed new investment and more hands to work the tobacco plantations and build settlements. Virginia’s propaganda brochures lured people in with romantic images of smiling natives and fertile fields.
But there was no better advertisement than a ‘civilised’ flesh-and-blood Indian. In 1608, a Powhatan boy named Namontack had already made a good impression in England and convinced investors that the colony was worth maintaining. Governor Dale thought that a Powhatan princess, the first Indian to marry an Englishman, a Christian convert and the mother of a mixed-race child, was sure to be a sensation in London and would raise the profile of the Virginia colony. Rolfe was equally enthusiastic about the idea, intending to advertise his tobacco and expand his business there.
So in May 1616, Pocahontas, her son, her husband and at least ten of her tribesmen boarded a ship bound for England. Ironically, the ship’s captain was Samuel Argall, the man who had kidnapped her a few years before.
For the Powhatans, this was also an important diplomatic expedition, but above all, their Great Chief was counting on finally learning first-hand the true intentions of the King of England.
And indeed, the arrival of Pocahontas, which was already cleverly advertised in advance, immediately attracted a lot of attention. Everyone was talking about the exotic princess and inviting her from one banquet to another. In honour of her noble origins, she was called Lady Rebecca, she was entertained by bishops and nobles alike, and even invited to court.
But her brother-in-law and her father’s senior advisor, Uttamatomakkin, was appalled by the lack of courtly gifts. In Indian culture, lavish gifts to distinguished guests were a basic sign of mutual respect. The Indians were also shocked by the filth and pollution on the one hand and the unimaginable wealth on the other. It was certainly not an egalitarian society like theirs.
Dressed in the finest European clothes, Pocahontas was paraded like a well-mannered little child and was impressed by “her regal bearing and Christian zeal”. Crowds awaited her at every turn and newspaper articles described living proof of the success of England’s attempts to civilise the ‘savages’.
The Church was delighted with the spread of the faith and the many new potential believers. The official royal engraver produced the only portrait based on the real appearance of a young woman – dozens of other works of art show only a fictional image of her.
John Smith, who had learned of the expedition’s arrival earlier, wrote to the Queen, introducing Pocahontas as the first of her people to become a Christian, the first to learn English and the first to have a child with an Englishman.
But Pocahontas still didn’t know Smith was alive, and he delayed his visit for months. When he did pluck up the courage to visit her, he said she was shocked at the sight of him and found it hard to compose herself.
Overall, the visit was a great success, stimulating interest in the colony and filling its coffers. It was time to leave, and Rolf in particular had a lot of work to do on the plantation, and he had also become the colony’s secretary. Pocahontas, it was rumoured, did not want to return, but this was probably again a rumour for propaganda purposes.
After 10 months in England, the group boarded the ship again. But not long after setting sail, Pocahontas fell so seriously ill that they had to dock in the Thames harbour at Gravesend. In March 1617, she died unexpectedly on the threshold of her twenties.
It has never shown any signs of disease, but it is true that 17th century England was a hotbed of pathogens such as plague, dysentery and tuberculosis, and Pocahontas, which had never been exposed to them before and was therefore more susceptible to them, was probably one of the most lethal.
Her last words are said to have been “They must all die. It is enough for the child to live.” She was buried in St George’s Church in Gravesend, which subsequently burned down and so her remains are lost forever.
Rolf was still in a hurry to get back to the plantation, leaving his little son Thomas in the care of his brother in England. He did not mourn long and married for a third time. He became rich in tobacco, which became the young colony’s biggest export.
Father and son never saw each other again. Thomas later returned to the land of his birth, where he inherited a considerable amount of land from his father and became a successful landowner himself. He started a family, and it is interesting to note that even today many Americans, including famous ones, proudly claim to be descendants of Pocahontas.
Peace between the natives and the English did not last long and was completely shattered after the death of Pocahontas’ father in 1618. Settlers kept arriving in ever-increasing numbers, populating the eastern shores of what is now the USA, pushing inland and driving the Indians off their land. In 1622, the Powhatans massacred a quarter of Jamestown’s population in a bloodthirsty massacre.
Pocahontas’ story has been idealized for too long, but fortunately it has recently taken on important nuances that shed much more light on the truth than simplistic Hollywood blockbusters or Smith’s exaggerated autobiographical narratives. Pocahontas certainly remains an important part of the birth of the United States. But not as a romantic symbol of bridge-building and style between civilizations, but as a tragic and silent victim of forced cultural and religious assimilation.
