The real Pocahontas was far different from the all American hero she is portrayed as today, but nothing in her early years offered any kind of indication that she would become an American folk hero. When the first European settlers arrived on Powhatan land to begin the colony of Jamestown, Pocahontas became embroiled in a series of bitter events that erupted into all-out war. Far from being the heroic symbol of America’s colonial roots, Pocahontas was kidnapped and forced to abandon her indigenous heritage, setting in motion one of the most horrific acts of genocide the world has ever seen. She was at the epicentre of the birth of a nation born from blood and war, her story since embellished with American pride but the truth is far different. This is the real story of Pocahontas…
Prologue
1597. The daughter of the powerful Chief Powhatan, the ruler of the Powhatan indigenous tribe of the Americas, Pocahontas was at the heart of this empire, nowadays, Virginia. But this was not her real name, no, her birth name was Amonute but she went by the name Matoaka. She was a happy child, extremely inquisitive and playful, the life and soul of her father’s peaceful world. ‘Pocahontas’, meaning ‘playful one’, suited her as a nickname, but her father the Chief did not go easy on her.
She was expected to learn how to farm, cook, collect herbs, build a home, make clothes, butcher meat and tan hides. She was talented and lively, but the world of indigenous peoples was soon to be rocked by the arrival of the Europeans.
Chief Powhatan ruled over numerous tribes and he was keen, as were all indigenous peoples, to meet with the European settlers. As such, the Chief gave his daughter a special role in negotiating with the newest arrivals on their land. He cited Pocahontas’s intelligence and warm personality as being ideal to greet these new people and to ascertain just what they were doing here. This was 1607 and the settlers had founded Jamestown. Its leader, one Captain John Smith.
At first, the Captain was smitten with Pocahontas, her incredibly friendly nature endearing the settlers to the natives. He said her ‘wit and spirit’ made her stand out. But this was not a peaceful meeting and soon, it would set into motion horrific events…
The Misunderstanding
Pocahontas was only 10 when she met with the Europeans and, naturally, the natives were suspicious of them. The Chief ordered the capture of the Captain and he was captured, brought to the Chief. There, he was greeted by several tribesmen armed with clubs. In the Captain’s words, his head was placed on two stones and a ‘warrior’ prepared to ‘smash his head with a club to kill him’. The Europeans were a threat. At the time, one could have considered the actions of the Chief inflammatory, but considering what the Europeans would go on to do…
Pocahontas did not want war, even at 10 she could see this was not good. She raced over to the Captain and placed her head on his, to protect him. She risked her own life to save a European. This incredible act of compassion undoubtedly saved the Captain’s life. Or at least that is what he wrote in his journal and to this very day, this is what American schoolchildren are taught. The truth, it seems, might not be so cut and dry.
To a European, natives armed with clubs would indeed seem aggressive and the entire ordeal of the Captain’s head being placed on the rock would seem a certainty that death was coming, but in truth, none of this happened, not like this. The Captain’s capture was a ritual ceremony, not a kidnapping, the clubs were part of an adoption ceremony, and Pocahontas’s actions were, undeniably, scripted. This was a welcome party. Albeit a strange one and one that scared the Captain and led to his conclusions of the native peoples being aggressive. But these conclusions could not have been more wrong and more damaging.
In the immediate aftermath of this ceremony, the Chief started calling the Captain his son, which is proof that the ceremony was indeed harmless. He sent the Captain on his way but the Captain was traumatised. He felt hurt and betrayed, now he was ‘certain’ of who these native people were and what they were capable of. He didn’t understand the Powhatan ceremonial customs and from his perspective, he was terrified.
Pocahontas was now all that stood in the way of a war…
The Jamestown Arrival
Pocahontas, still only 10, was desperate to avoid a war or a clash, eager to keep the peace as best as she could. As a show of good faith, she began visiting Jamestown, always with her father’s envoys by her side, in their customs, a sign of peace. The Europeans did not understand the new land they found themselves in and they were going hungry. They reached out to the Chief for food and in exchange, he was given tools and weapons by the Europeans.
One day, the colonists gave the Chief a 13-year-old boy named Thomas Savage and in exchange, the Chief gave the colonists a young man named Namontack. This was common. It allowed an exchange of ideas and language, of customs and the way of the land. Pocahontas was there, every step of the way, to help Thomas adjust. She would prove to be a valuable emissary.
Still a young girl, she made regular trips with food and drink for the desperate colonists, but they were growing suspicious of the natives. They didn’t understand them. Or their way of life. And they wanted more land, to which the natives would never agree to. Tensions became strained but young Pocahontas did her best to keep the peace. She even negotiated the release of Powhatan prisoners in 1608 at the age of just 11, but it wasn’t enough.
In 1609, the English colonists attacked…
The Real Aggressors
The colonists took advantage of the native peoples, demanding more and more food. Virginia was deep in the worst drought in 770 years. Food was running out and tensions were mounting. The English had a plan. In 1609, the Captain led a party to visit the Chief, a meeting of peace to solve the desperate situation. But, in the middle of that night, as the English slept, Pocahontas came through a dark wood to warn the Captain of a plot to kill them. This time, did she really save the Captain’s life? He wrote:
‘I shall reward her with such things as she delighted in… with tears running down her cheeks she said if she was seen with English presents she were but dead.’
All this seems very strange. Once again, many have wondered if this account is true, as the earlier account has since been proven false. Today, many suspect that Pocahontas did not betray her father but, instead, was acting on his instruction. Why? We’re not sure. We know that, at this point in history, the Chief was planning to move his tribe farther west to be out of the reach of the pesky English so maybe in doing so the English would believe the natives were frightened of them and were running away, hoping to be left alone. If the English were decent and honest, they would do just that. But they weren’t.
This was 1610. And where the Chief had move his tribe was in a far harder place for the colonists to reach. Pocahontas, the jewel in the eye of the Chief, stopped visiting Jamestown. And Thomas Savage moved with the tribe, soon joined by 14-year-old Henry Spelman. Their new tribal capital was Orapax and even now, Pocahontas continued to show tremendous bravery and wisdom beyond her years. When Henry absconded to another tribe, the Chief ordered him to be brought back where, it’s likely, he wouldn’t have lived for much longer. Once again, Pocahontas intervened and saved his life. She liked doing that.
The Chief now knew that his little girl was not a little girl anymore and he decided it was time for her to become a woman. And so she married a man named Kocoum. Henry had been sent back to Jamestown in an act of compassion and soon after the marriage, Thomas was sent back, too. This severed the last of the ties with the pesky colonists.
Little was heard of from Orapax for quite a while, but, toward the end of 1612, Captain Samuel Argall, from Jamestown, was hungry. And once more, they needed the native’s help. They knew, those of Jamestown, of the compassion of Pocahontas. But her tribe just wanted to be left alone. Samuel would not stand for that. He wrote:
‘I had made up my mind to possess myself of her by any stratagem that I could use.’
Yes, the Europeans of Jamestown were about to kidnap Pocahontas…
The Capture
Samuel’s plan was to trade Pocahontas for the English men held by Powhatan. She was just 16 was she was kidnapped and taken to Jamestown as a prisoner. They soon discarded their intentions to use her for prisoner exchange and instead now saw her as the key to their success in conquering America and taking it from the native peoples…
Pocahontas had been nothing but kind to the colonists but now she was at their mercy. It triggered the first Anglo-Powhatan War, Samuel making his demands clear. If you want your daughter back, alive, return the prisoners, return the stolen weapons and send us food. The Chief refused. And Pocahontas was dismayed.
In Jamestown, the colonists set to work ‘converting the savage to an English lady’, in their words, by teaching her about Christianity and why it was better to abandon your native ways and adopt the English ways. They taught her English and changed her name to Rebecca, baptising her in the process. Today, she’s remembered only as an American hero but make no bones about it… she wanted none of this and wanted to return home.
The colonists married her off to John Rolfe, who, shortly after their marriage, wrote that he was ‘starting to fall in love with her’. Starting! Starting? Isn’t that supposed to be a prerequisite of marriage? In 1614, Pocahontas renounced her tribe and openly confessed her Christian faith. The British used her as an example of, in their words, how to ‘tame a savage’. Indeed, it brought a season of peace to the region. But was it genuine? Did Pocahontas really abandon everything? No. It’s certain she had no choice in anything she did or said. She was a prisoner and now being used to further the English aggression in America.
Sadly, her words, albeit coerced, meant that her ties with her tribe had been severed and with it, her life was over. She had signed her own death warrant…
The Journey to England
The Virginia Company decided to bring Pocahontas to London to ‘show her off’. Look! Look what we did to a native! It’s possible to make them like us! The English’s cultural insensitivity and genocide conveniently not mentioned or brought to the attention of the wider audience. This was the spring of 1616. Pocahontas was presented as ‘visiting royalty’. The strange curio from a far off land. An object to be gawped at. Poor Pocahontas. She really did want none of this.
She was received in the Royal Court in an elaborate ceremony by the Bishop of London, but Pocahontas was struggling. England was badly polluted, both the air and the water. She fell very ill. Taking her from her homeland to England was a dreadful decision. Not that the English cared a great deal about her wellbeing.
The Virginia Company financed the Jamestown colony and they were keen for the ‘Pocahontas experiment’ to be a success, but the fact that she was incredibly unwell wasn’t helping matters. The Virginia Company’s mission was to convert the indigenous peoples of the Americas to Christianity, to make them like the English. The language was horrible but time and time again, they labelled this horrific act of cultural and often literal genocide ‘taming the savages’. They really did. Pocahontas was being used.
By her 18th birthday, she had given birth to a son, one her ‘husband’ had named Thomas. She was paraded around London as ‘Lady Rebecca Wolfe’, forced to attend plays and balls. In London, she met Captain Smith, overcome with emotion upon seeing him. She called him ‘father’. And publicly, she denounced him and the English for what they had done.
Well, that wasn’t in the script…
Epilogue
The Virginia Company bought Pocahontas expensive clothes and made her wear them for a portrait they commissioned of her, the only image we have of her. In 1617, she headed home, moving down the Thames River, but Pocahontas collapsed, her illness getting worse and worse. The pollution had contaminated her. And it overcame her. She was rushed to hospital at Gravesend, just outside London. In the March of 1617, Pocahontas succumbed to her illness and passed away. She was only 20-years-old. The English had killed her.
We think the conditions of England, a country to which she explicitly stated she did not want to visit, led to her contracting a disease she had not encountered in America. Whether tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery or even smallpox, we’re not sure. Some even believe she was poisoned. On her deathbed she said:
All must die. But ‘tis enough that my child liveth.
She was buried in St. George’s Church in Gravesend on March 21st. Thomas Jr. did survive but he stayed with relatives in England, returning to Virginia 20 years later. He became a successful gentleman tobacco farmer. The Chief was devastated on learning of the death of his daughter. He died a year later, a broken man, and shortly after, tensions between the native peoples and the colonists declined rapidly and soon, war after war, fought bravely by the indigenous peoples, led to their demise and their conquest.
Why is Pocahontas revered today as an American hero? Racism. Next question. She wasn’t. None of what happened to her she wanted. And much of what is taught of her in American schools was proven false many years ago, so the lie of her ‘heroism’ perpetuates, because the true heroism she displayed was in her compassion to the new visitors in her land and her efforts to maintain peace and order against the true savages. The colonists.
Her life was brief yet significant. She was a key figure in the early history of the European colonists in America, taken from her land and used to further the colonist’s interests, colonists who eventually won. She maintained the relations between her father and the Jamestown colonists, remembered as a courageous, strong woman, who left an indelible impression on the early days of America. Whilst she is a hero, she is not a hero for the reasons that we are told she is a hero. She’s a hero because of the awesome person she was and all she did to keep the peace. Whilst it may not have worked, she remains hugely inspirational to this very day as a symbol of the rewards of a few kind words and gestures can bring and how we must always, as she did, strive for peace and tolerance toward all.
My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain… there was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.
– Chief Seattle.
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Image: 1) The statue of Pocahontas outside St. George's Church in Gravesend; Pocahontas herself is buried inside the church, under the chancel, to this very day.
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