Pocahontas

Pocahontas (c. 1595/1596–1617), favorite daughter of Powhatan—his people's paramount chieftain—and friend to the Jamestown colonists.Her clan name was Matoaka; Pocahontas, her public name, means “playful.” The Virginia colonist and adventurer John Smith claimed that she saved his life when Powhatan was about to execute him; her performance was more likely part of a ritual adopting Smith into the tribe. Some scholars question whether this incident actually occurred, although the most exhaustive study, J.A. Leo Lemay's Did Pocahontas Save Captain John Smith? (1992), affirms its historicity. Pocahontas held Smith in special esteem, on one occasion warning that Powhatan planned to ambush him, but there are no grounds for thinking their relationship amorous.

In 1613, during the first Anglo‐Powhatan War, Captain Samuel Argall abducted her to leverage the return of captives and materiél held by the Powhatans. The next year she entered the Church of England, taking the baptismal name Rebecca, and married John Rolfe, one of her tutors. The marriage stabilized relations between the English and Powhatans until after her death. The Virginia Company brought her to England in 1616 to publicize the plantation; she charmed London society but soon died of natural causes. As an individual Pocahontas performed numerous kindnesses for the English settlers in Virginia, but she had little influence on the diplomatic policies conducted by the weroances (chieftains). Virtually forgotten for two centuries, she became a favorite subject for nineteenth‐century authors romanticizing “noble savages” and glorifying “founders” of the United States, attaining a mythic status that survives to the present.
See also Colonial Era; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Indian History and Culture: The Indian in Popular Culture; Indian Wars.

Bibliography

Philip L. Barbour , Pocahontas and Her World, 1970.
Frances Mossiker , Pocahontas: The Life and Legend, 1976.
Gregory Evans Dowd , A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815, 1992.

Charles L. Cohen