Who is pocahontas

In published accounts, Smith claimed that as he was about to be executed, Pocahontas raced in and lay her head next to his, where it was about to be smashed on some rocks. Nonetheless, Pocahontas developed a friendship with him and other settlers. She delivered messages from her father and accompanied Indian men delivering gifts of food to the starving colonists.

However, the peace ended when colonists demanded more food, and Powhatan — facing shortages and drought in and — declined.

Colonists burned Indian villages and threatened violence, and from then on, Pocahontas ceased visiting Jamestown.

In , Pocahontas married Kocoum, likely a member of the Patawomecks, and they settled in the Potomac region. In , however, she was taken captive when Captain Samuel Argall invited her to visit his ship Treasurer. She was then transported to Jamestown. As ransom, English settlers demanded corn, the return of prisoners and stolen items, and a peace treaty. Some demands were met immediately; others Powhatan agreed to negotiate.

Pocahontas was moved from Jamestown to the Henrico settlement near present-day Richmond and, in July , met John Rolfe. After a year of captivity, Sir Thomas Dale took Pocahontas and armed men to Powhatan, demanding the remainder of the ransom.

A skirmish occurred, and Englishmen burned villages and killed Indian men. During this event, Pocahontas told her father that she wished to marry Rolfe.

Rolfe helped save the Virginia colony by promoting tobacco cultivation, and was likely aided in some part by his wife. Pocahontas bore a son named Thomas and, in , the Rolfes traveled to England, spending time in London and Norfolk, where the extended Rolfe family lived. While there, Pocahontas dressed in the Elizabethan style pictured in her famous portrait. Considered an Indian princess by the English, she was granted an audience with King James I and the royal family.

Shortly after the Rolfes set sail for their return to Virginia in , Pocahontas became gravely ill from tuberculosis or pneumonia. She died shortly thereafter at the age of 22 and was buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, England. MLA - Michals, Debra. National Women's History Museum, W e all think we know Pocahontas, but her real story is very different from the popular image. Pocahontas was an extremely talented and lively year-old girl when Jamestown was founded in She was the daughter of the Great Powhatan, who ruled over numerous client tribes in the Chesapeake, the region the Powhatans called Tsenacomaca, and he selected her for a special role because of her intelligence and personality.

He was brought before the Great Powhatan, where he encountered men with clubs ready, he thought, to beat out his brains. Suddenly Pocahontas intervened and put her head on his. In his Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, Smith wrote that she risked her own life to save his, but modern scholars think she was probably playing a scripted role in some kind of adoption ceremony.

Afterward, Powhatan called Smith his son. After this episode, she began visiting Jamestown. The English learned, many years later, that Pocahontas was only a nickname. Her real name, Matoaka, had been concealed for fear the English could do her harm if they knew it. During this early period, when Powhatan was getting tools and weapons from the colony in exchange for badly needed food, colonial leaders presented Powhatan with a newly-arrived boy, year-old Thomas Savage, and Powhatan gave a young man named Namontack in return.

Pocahontas was there to help Thomas adjust to his new life. Virginia was deep in the worst drought in years, and food was scarce. At the beginning of , Smith led a party to visit Powhatan, and things seemed to be going well. Powhatan moved his capital farther west to a location much harder for the English to reach, and Pocahontas quit visiting the fort.

Thomas Savage moved with the Powhatans, and was soon joined by another boy, year-old Henry Spelman. Henry absconded to join a friendlier chief on the Potomac and Pocahontas intervened to save his life when her father sent men to bring him back. Pocahontas later married a colonist, changed her name to Rebecca Rolfe and died while visiting England in Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the leader of an alliance of about 30 Algonquian-speaking groups and petty chiefdoms in Tidewater Virginia known as Tsenacommacah.

Like many Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians of the period, Pocahontas probably had several names, to be used in various contexts.

She was named Amonute at birth and went by the name Matoaka. She also earned the nickname "Pocahontas," which means " playful one ," because of her cheery and inquisitive nature. Even Smith is inconsistent on the question of her age, however. Although English narratives would remember Pocahontas as a princess, her childhood was probably fairly typical for a girl in Tsenacommacah.

Like most young females, she learned how to forage for food and firewood, farm and building thatched houses. Pocahontas was primarily linked to the English colonists through Captain Smith, who arrived in Virginia with more than other settlers in April The Englishmen had numerous encounters over the next several months with the Tsenacommacah Indians. While exploring on the Chickahominy River in December of that year, Smith was captured by a hunting party led by Powhatan's close relative Opechancanough and brought to Powhatan's home at Werowocomoco.

In his account, Smith described a large feast followed by a talk with Powhatan. In this account, he does not meet Pocahontas for the first time until a few months later. In , however, Smith revised his story in a letter to Queen Anne, who was anticipating the arrival of Pocahontas with her husband, John Rolfe.

Historians have long expressed doubts that the story of Pocahontas saving Smith occurred as told in these later accounts. Smith may have exaggerated or invented the account to enhance Pocahontas's standing. Another theory suggests that Smith may have misunderstood what had happened to him in Powhatan's longhouse. Rather than the near victim of execution, he may have been subject to a tribal ritual intended to symbolize his death and rebirth as a member of the tribe. It is possible that Powhatan had political motivations for bringing Smith into his chiefdom.

Early histories establish that Pocahontas befriended Smith and assisted the Jamestown colony. Pocahontas often visited the settlement. When the colonists were starving, "every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought him [Smith] so much provision that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger. In late , John Smith returned to England for medical care.

The English told the Indians that Smith was dead. According to the colonist William Strachey, Pocahontas married a warrior called Kocoum at some point before Nothing more is known about this marriage, which may have dissolved when Pocahontas was captured by the English the following year.