Pocahontas, remembered
After 400 years, reality has begun to replace the lies
Four hundred and sixteen years ago on December 4 of this year, John Smith was captured by the Powhatan Confederacy while he was out searching for food on the Chickahominy River in the Tidewater area of Virginia. He was captured by Chief Powhatan’s brother and taken along a route through many Powhatan Confederacy towns before reaching Chief Powhatan. It was during this encounter that Smith interpreted his head on two stones as an imminent execution; and imagined that the Chief’s daughter, Pocahontas, risked her life to save him from certain death. But Algonquin culture would suggest this was not the case. This was more likely an adoption ritual and Chief Powhatan made John Smith an honorary werowance or leader, seeing him as a kind of leader from the colonists.1
One of the most well-known stories about the relationship between colonists and Native Americans is the story of Pocahontas, John Smith and John Rolfe —mostly believed to be fabricated. But it has taken almost four hundred years to reach a point where most serious scholars no longer take John Smith’s story as fact. But it was also due to a lack of understanding of Algonquin culture that would have immediately highlighted the fallacy of John Smith’s claims.
What motive did John Smith have for making up this story?
Photo credit: “PAINTING DEPICTING POCAHONTAS “SAVING” JOHN SMITH’S LIFE, AT THE RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, COURT ANNEX. (CR EDIT: BUYENLARGE/GETTY IMAGES)”2
John Smith was returned to Jamestown a month later in January 1609. By April 1609, John Smith had written his first account of his encounter.3 The colonists of Jamestown who knew him best, called him a “liar”. He had a history of exaggerating the truth. He had bragged about being saved in the same manner as the Pocahontas story by several other women, which added to his lack of credibility. Meanwhile, he had been convicted of mutiny on the way over to Jamestown and that was hanging over his head. After arriving, he had been sentenced to hang for a separate incident. In 1609 he suffered from a gunpowder accident which required him to return to England for treatment.4 Making himself a key player in diplomatic relations between Jamestown and the Powhatan Confederacy would be a great stay for his impending execution.
A parody was written in 1631 (the year that John Smith died) that parodied John Smith’s tales called, “The Legend of Captain Jones,” 5 which was a capstone to the ridicule he had endured during the remainder of his life.
The kidnapping
Pocahontas or Makotoa (her actual Powhatan name) was only 10-11 years old when she met John Smith, so the tales of romance were just tales. In 1613 Samuel Argyle, kidnapped Pocahontas for ransom. The colonists proceeded to convert her to Christianity with a baptism and then she was “married” to John Rolfe. By 1616, the leaders of Jamestown decided to take their captive to England to promote the Virginia Colony, and it was negotiated that an entourage of other Powhatans would accompany her to England. Argyle was rewarded by being given commissions to work with the Powhatan Confederacy, a further insult to the Native American leadership.
The oral history of the Mattaponi say that one of the women who accompanied Pocahontas to England was told by Pocahontas that she had been raped by John Rolfe.6
Suspicions of the Powhatan Confederacy
When Pocahontas was finally leaving to return to Jamestown in 1619, she was taken ill on the way out of the harbor, and suddenly died. Speculation about why she died has included tuberculosis to plague, both respiratory diseases. However, the description of her state of wellness upon leaving for the trip home, and dying before they had left the mouth of the Thames River, is not consistent with the course of plague or tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a chronic disease that lingers for years; plague can kill quickly but it is preceded by days of debilitating sickness. Native American oral history, however has a more likely theory. Pocahontas’s death has been considered highly suspicious by the Powhatan Confederacy and has survived in oral history, among the Mattaponi Nation, one of the Nation’s of the Powhatan Confederacy.7 The motive for poisoning Pocahontas before returning to Jamestown was out of fear that once she disclosed she had been raped and other aspects of her treatment, they would be attacked by the Powhatan Confederacy.
Her father, Chief Powhatan was stricken with grief upon learning of his daughter’s death, and the Mattaponi believe that he died within the year from this grief.
The Society of Pocahontas
It became very popular (and still is) to be a part of the Society of Pocahontas and claim decendancy from her only son, John Rolfe who was raised in England and then returned to American in his early twenties. It was so important in colonial through ante-bellum Virginia that a special “Pocahontas exception” was made to the prohibtion against interracial marriage to the 1/16 degree for interracial Native American marriages. The law designed to protect descendants of Pocahontas from illegal marriages read:
“. . . but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons.”8
Pocahontas was spoken of in legendary terms and almost canonized as the symbol of Native America and the colonists’ diplomatic relations. In a surreal display of a dual perception of the American people, Pocahontas was regarded as saintly while U.S. Indian policy was focused on removing Native Americans from their homelands to reservations in Indian Country. Meanwhile in territories like Arizona, it was still being encouraged for anyone to shoot and kill any Native American as late as 1870s.9 Yet, Pocahontas remained highly regarded.
It is also important to add, that Pocahontas was married to Kocoum, a member of her own Powhatan Confederacy with whom she had at least one child.10 Descendants of this marriage are not considered legitimate descendants of Pocahontas by the “society” of Pocahontas and would not have been allowed to marry legally in Virginia during the time of the Racial Integrity Act!
Gravesend
The resting place of Pocahontas remains in Gravesend, England. The Church of St. George where she was buried was rebuilt and the exact location of her remains have been lost. It is speculated that her remains are somewhere under the foundation of the new church.11 The Mattaponi Nation has officially requested that her remains be returned.12 The federal statute, The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act that requires the repatriation of human remains of Native Americans to their respective tribal nations, does not reach outside the jurisdiction of the U.S., and depends upon diplomatic relations to effect such repatriations. In the U.K., permission of the church is required to begin removing remains to find those of Pocahontas, and it is said that this is not likely.13
So as you reflect on the holiday season, you might remember Pocahontas and how dramatically her short life was changed with the capture and detainment of Capt. John Smith over the holiday season, a historic figure now revealed for his duplicity, but a Native American woman still admired.
https://www.history.com/news/5-myths-about-pocahontas
https://www.history.com/news/5-myths-about-pocahontas
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/a-true-relation-of-such-occurrences-and-accidents-of-note-as-hath-hapned-at-virginia-since-the-first-planting-of-that-collony-by-john-smith-1608/
https://www.history.com/news/5-myths-about-pocahontas
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/the-legend-of-captaine-jones-by-david-lloyd-1631/
https://www.amazon.com/True-Story-Pocahontas-Other-History/dp/1555916325
https://www.amazon.com/True-Story-Pocahontas-Other-History/dp/1555916325
5099a (5) The Code of Virginia, as Amended to Adjournment of General Assembly 1924 (Charlottesville: The Michie Company, 1924), 1259 at https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/preservation-of-racial-integrity-1924/
See The Court Martial of Apache Kid (2021) at https://www.amazon.com/Court-Martial-Apache-Kid-transcript/dp/0996818642
https://www.pallasweb.com/blog/am-i-descended-from-pocahontas.html
https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/pocahontas-400-anniversary
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-apr-12-cl-18515-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-apr-12-cl-18515-story.html