Haupt, Joe. "John Rolfe Tobacco." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified February 16, 2021. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13445/john-rolfe-tobacco/
Who was John Rolfe, the Englishman who would be Matoaka’s second husband?
He was from a middle-class merchant family in England, and his goal was to make his fortune by joining the Virginia Company as a trader. Tobacco was one of the many resources the Spanish reaped from their Caribbean conquests and sold throughout their empire. Rolfe, like many Englishmen, sought to create a competitive English trade. He and his recently married wife joined the ship that wrecked in the Caribbean with Sir Thomas Dale and arrived with him to find Jamestown in ruins. They were among the dismayed colonists who decided to return to England, only to be turned back by the arrival of Lord De La Warre and his reinforcements. Rolfe’s pregnant wife (name unknown) gave birth to a daughter in Bermuda. The child, named after the island on which the colonists had found refuge from the storm, did not survive. Not long after settling in Jamestown, Rolfe’s wife died as well. The cause was not recorded, but the ordeal of her pregnancy at sea and miscarriage on a small island, had likely left her too weak to survive the hardships of life in the colony.
In addition to his agricultural work, Rolfe became the colony’s secretary, and assisted the Reverend Alex Whitaker in teaching Matoaka English and the bible. The letter wherein he revealed his love for Matoaka and requested permission to marry her from the colony’s new governor, Thomas Dale, is the main primary source that mentions their relationship. It was largely a defense of his feelings for a non-Christian woman wherein he sought to refute any assumption that he acted from lust, and declared that his motivation was for the good of Matoaka’s soul and the prosperity of the colony.
We have no such documentary evidence from Matoaka herself. Some scholars have argued that she was awed by English civilization and rushed to embrace it, while others have claimed she was simply forced to convert and marry an Englishman by the colony’s governors for their own ends. Modern readers truly interested in the answer can only read the sources and retellings and speculate for themselves what may have happened.
Most indigenous women throughout the Americas were raised with knowledge that they might be targeted by other tribes for kidnapping and could possibly have to resign themselves to an “adoption.” Matoaka’s situation was no different. Her “willingness” to learn the language, religion, and customs of her captors were measures of survival. She may have hoped to contribute to peace between her people and the English, or she may simply have been making the best of her own circumstances.
In 1614, Thomas Dale resolved to confront Wahunseneca and force the Paramount Werowance into recognizing the English as an independent regional power and renewing tribute in corn from Powhatan villages. The region had suffered a drought and the English were finding it harder and harder to coerce food out of their neighbors, by both trade and force. There were simply not enough resources to meet the demand. Argall ferried Dale and an armed force up the river again, taking Matoaka and John Rolfe along. The Mattaponi Oral History claimed that the expedition was largely designed to convince Matoaka that her father had abandoned her in favor of keeping English weapons and continuing his policy of starving the colonists out.
Argall’s ship was heckled throughout its journey by Native warriors eager for a fight. Matoaka witnessed the burning of several villages. At the town of Matchut, Dale sent a message demanding the unreasonable amount of corn, any remaining English prisoners and arms, as well as Rolfe’s marriage proposal. Rolfe himself, along with translator Rob Sparkes, carried the message to Wahunseca’s brother Opechancanough, who consented to the marriage on his brother’s behalf. He also committed to delivering the demanded corn and any remaining arms. Any English prisoners, he reported, had either died or ran away. Declaring themselves victorious, the English sailed back down the river to Jamestown.
Wahunsenaca agreed to the union, but did not attend the wedding himself, believing the English intended to take him prisoner as well. Instead he sent several of Matoaka’s uncles to represent him.
In the legend of Pocahontas, she was dismayed that her father would not pay the ransom and came to love the English even more. In reality she likely knew the ransom was impossible to meet. It is telling that Matoaka did not convert to Christianity until after the truce between her people and the English was reached, despite having been a prisoner at Henrico, receiving instruction from Reverend Whitaker for over a year. Far from being awed by English religion and technology, she may have been seeking to play her part in binding the English to her people, either independently, or in concert with her father.
There are several primary sources that record colonial governors and their messengers conducting business with the Paramount Werowance after this point, wherein he mentions that his “dearest daughter” lives with the English. They also record Thomas Dale’s request to marry another of his daughters, Wahunseneca’s refusal, along with his displeasure that the English refused to meet unarmed or to leave any Englishmen in his village as they had in the past. These exchanges depict one side of diplomatic discussions and do not provide any insight into Wahunseneca’s thinking, but they do imply a tense and fragile peace very different from the sunny reports most of the colonists sent back to England. Did he genuinely hope Matoaka’s marriage to a colonist would create a lasting peace? Was he simply buying time? Or was he crushed by indecision, seeing no way to secure his daughter’s release, or his people’s position in the region in the long run as the colonists’ numbers grew?
The Mattaponi Oral History recorded Matoaka’s captivity and marriage very differently. Again, this information was derived from the testimony of her sister Mattachanna. Early in her captivity, Matoaka became so depressed that Gates requested Wahunsenaca send a few of her relatives to comfort her. When her sister arrived, Matoaka told her she had been raped and that she believed she was pregnant.
The Oral History contends that Rolfe was likely not the father at all, and that Matoaka was sent to Henrico where there were no Native people, unlike Jamestown where many Native women lived with Englishmen, in order to hide her pregnancy while her conversion and marriage were arranged.
The name of her attacker was either not revealed, or not shared in the 2007 transcription of the oral history. But the fact that her mixed-race son was named Thomas has led some to speculate that Thomas Dale, Gate’s right hand man who ruled Jamestown under martial law when Matoaka was imprisoned there, may have been the boy’s biological father.
Matoaka was renamed Rebecca after her baptism, a name likely suggested by the Reverend Whitaker, referring to a biblical story wherein a woman gives birth to twin sons of different “nations,” ultimately favoring the fairer-skinned child. Rolfe’s tobacco venture was eventually successful, almost certainly as a direct result of his marriage to Matoaka, after gaining knowledge in curing the plant from her or her relatives. Once his product could compete with Spanish tobacco, the colony could make a credible claim to its investors that their money was sure to earn dividends. Predictably, colonists raced to plant their own and get in on the profits. The governing council mandated that they plant food for their own sustenance before the new cash crop. The tobacco trade flourished in Virginia, but due to the toll it took on farmland, it produced as many losers as winners in its economic boom. Nevertheless, the Virginia Company now had a product to ensure its future growth throughout Tsenacomoco.
Sources:
John Rolfe- Historic Jamestown
Pocahontas’ Marriage and Death- Henricus Historical Park