Matoaka's Story/Part 9 Matoaka and Pocahontas

The Mattaponi River, upstream of its confluence with the South River. Antepenultimate, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mattaponi_River_20170218.jpg

Everyone knows the name Pocahontas, but her story is usually remembered in pieces. Most people will guess that Pocahontas saved John Smith from being executed by her father and that they were married, bringing peace between the English and the Powhatan Nation. This is the residue of a more detailed myth, that Pocahontas recognized the superiority of the English society and enthusiastically chose to marry an Englishman, convert to Christianity, and renounce her own people. This legend was created to glorify one culture, and justify the conquest of another. 

As the English colonies that would become the United States grew, they created laws that helped them control Native, Black, and mixed-race people. These laws excluded them from voting, from juries, from owning property, and above all, from socializing with or marrying White people. It is darkly ironic then that the descendents of John Rolfe would long celebrate their relation to Pocahontas, the “Indian Princess.” As wealthy Virginia elites, they were immune to the stigma of Indian blood that marked so many in their community as outsiders and subhumans. 

The true story of Matoaka is short and tragic.

Matoaka’s father, Wahunsenaca, made Captain John Smith a werowance in an attempt to assimilate the English into the Powhatan Nation. She was a frequent visitor to Jamestown when she was between 10-13, accompanying delegations that brought food to the colonists. She learned English from Smith and others, probably most from the English boys left with her people to learn their language and customs. As relations between the Powhatan and the English soured, she became a target for abduction. She married a young Patawomeck man named Kakoum and lived with his people in the north of Tsenacomoco. They had a son together. In 1613 she was kidnapped by Captain Samuel Argall. 

Argall coerced the Patawomeck werowance into helping him and demanded as her ransom, the return of all English weapons and prisoners from Wahunsenaca, as well as large amounts of corn to feed the fort. Though Wahunsenaca agreed to these terms, the colony’s governor, Thomas Gates found excuses to claim it was not paid and kept Matoaka prisoner. After an initial captivity in Jamestown, Matoaka was sent to Henrico where the Reverend Alex Whitaker instructed her in Christianity and urged her to convert. The tobacco planter John Rolfe assisted Whitaker with teaching her English here. Rolfe claimed to have fallen in love with Matoaka and proposed to marry her. The colony’s governors forwarded his proposal to her father, while also threatening war with him if their demands for a regular supply of food were not met. Wahunsenaca consented to the marriage, hoping to secure his daughter’s safety and a beneficial peace with the English. Matoaka and John Rolfe had a son named Thomas. Most sources claim the child was Rolfe’s, conceived soon after their marriage. However the Mattaponi Oral History records that Matoaka revealed to her sister she was raped soon after being taken hostage. The Mattaponi therefore suspect that Thomas Rolfe was not John Rolfe’s biological son, and that his marriage to Matoaka may have been orchestrated by the colony’s governors. 

Once the tentative peace had been agreed to, Matoaka converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca, and married Rolfe. Hostilities continued to erupt. Colonists raided for food in lean times, and took land Native people had cleared for crops along the riverbanks as opportunities arose. Those who strayed from the forts were often robbed and murdered. Outright war, though, was averted. 

In 1616, the Virginia Company sent Matoaka and Rolfe to England to publicize the colony and present an image of peaceful relations with “civilizable” Indians. Matoaka and her entourage became minor celebrities in London. She was entertained in the homes of English elites, met King James I and Queen Anne, attended a Royal Masque, and had a last meeting with Captain John Smith, who she scolded for breaking the bond he had entered into with her Father in 1607 when he was made werowance of the English.

As the party prepared to set sail back to Virginia, Matoaka became ill. Most sources note only that Matoaka began feeling ill, some say it was only her, others that all of the Powhatans were suffering from sickness. The Mattaponi Oral History records that Matoaka told her sister that she believed she was poisoned while dining with Rolfe and Captain Argall, and that she died on the ship. Most sources claim she died at an inn in the town of Gravesend, where the ship stopped. All agree she was buried at St. George’s church nearby.

It is tempting, especially this far removed from the events, to rewrite Matoaka’s story yet again. To cast her as a shrewd victim of circumstance, who attempted to sacrifice herself to bring peace between her people and an invading tribe. However, no one can know Matoaka’s thoughts, or her motivations. The little documentation we have of her life comes from other, mostly European, sources. Filling the empty spaces in that story with drama and speculation without acknowledging the lies and uncertainties does her memory further disservice. 

Camille Townsend ends her book, “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma,” with a sobering thesis that I believe avoids the common overreaches of most histories: 

“The destruction of Virginia’s Indian tribes was not a question of miscommunication and missed opportunities. White settlers wanted the Indians’ land and had the strength to take it; the Indians could not live without their land. It is unfair to imply that somehow Pocahontas, or Queen Cockacoeske, or others like them could have done more, could have played their cards differently, and so have saved their people. The gambling game they were forced to play was a dangerous one, and they had one hand, even two, tied behind their backs at all times. It is important to do them the honor of believing that they did their best. They all made decisions as well as they could, managing in what were often nearly unbearable situations. There is nothing they could have done that would have dramatically changed the outcome: a new nation was going to be built on their people’s destruction– a destruction that would be either partial or complete. They did not fail. On the contrary, theirs is a story of heroism as it exists in the real world, not in epic tales. Their dwindling people did survive, against all odds.”

Sources:

Images of a Legend - PBS
Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend- National Parks Service

Matoaka’s Story 

Bibliography

Custalow, Linwood “Little Bear” and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star.” The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History. Downloadable ebook. Chicago: Fulcrum Publishing, 2007.

Downs, Kristina. “Mirrored Archetypes: The Contrasting Cultural Roles of La Malinche and Pocahontas.” Western Folklore 67, no. 4 (2008): 397–414.

Freund, Virginia, and Louis B. Wright. The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612), by William Strachey, Gent. Hakluyt Society, Second Series, v. 103. London: Taylor and Francis, 2011.

Gilliam, Charles Edgar. “His Dearest Daughter’s Names.” The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 21, no. 3 (1941): 239–42.

Hamor, Ralph, Thomas Harriot, George Percy, and John Rolf. Virginia; Four Personal Narratives. Research Library of Colonial Americana. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Heuvel, Lisa. “The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History. By Linwood ‘Little Bear’ Custalow and Angela L. Daniel ‘Silver Star.’” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 31, no. 3 (June 1, 2007). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pq8q3m8.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught between Cultures in Early Virginia. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, and Karen O. Kupperman. Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia Ser. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

LeMaster, Michelle. “Pocahontas: (De)Constructing an American Myth.” Edited by Camilla Townsend, Helen C. Rountree, Paula Gunn Allen, and David A. Price. The William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 4 (2005): 774–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/3491451.

Lopenzina, Drew. “The Wedding of Pocahontas and John Rolfe: How to Keep the Thrill Alive after Four Hundred Years of Marriage.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 26, no. 4 (2014): 59–77. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.26.4.0059.

Rountree, Helen C. “Powhatan Indian Women: The People Captain John Smith Barely Saw.” Ethnohistory 45, no. 1 (1998): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/483170.

Strachey, William, Silvester Jourdain, Louis B. Wright, and Alden T. Vaughan. A Voyage to Virginia in 1609: Two Narratives. 2nd ed. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.

“The True Story of Pocahontas-C-SPAN.Org.” Accessed February 8, 2024. https://www.c-span.org/video/?202747-2/the-true-story-pocahontas.

Townsend, Camilla. “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma.” New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

Wood, Karenne. “Prisoners of History: Pocahontas, Mary Jemison, and the Poetics of an American Myth.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 28, no. 1 (2016): 73–82. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.28.1.0073.

Working, Lauren. Review of Review of Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught between Cultures in Early Virginia, by Karen Ordahl Kupperman. The William and Mary Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2020): 138–43.

Matoaka's Story/Part 8 The Powhatan Wars and the End of tsenacomoco

“The manner of their attire and painting them selves when they goe to their generall huntings or at theire solemne feasts.” Watercolor. John White. 1585. Public Domain.

John Rolfe returned to Jamestown a widower for the second time. He soon remarried and became a leading figure in the colony. He is one of the sources who wrote about the first enslaved Africans brought to an English colony in North America in 1619. They were seized from a Portuguese slave ship by Dutch privateers and sold as indentured servants in Jamestown. Rolfe died in 1622 but the cause is unknown. It is possible he was killed in what became known as the “Indian Massacre” of the same year, but that has never been verified.

Wahunsenca abdicated the role of Paramount Werowance soon after learning of Matoaka’s death. The Mattaponi Oral History records that her abduction had thrown him into a deep depression that left him increasingly indecisive about how to proceed against the English. He could no longer lead and died in April of 1618, roughly a year after his daughter. His brother Opitcham became the official Paramount Werowance, but Opechancanough (O-pee-ken’-can-oo), the Powhatan War Werowance, began to take a larger role in the Powhatan Nation’s governance. He maintained the official peace with the English, though disputes over land and trade, as well as violent incidents, continued. But secretly, Opechancanough was planning a concerted assault on nearly all of the colonies. On March 22nd, 1622, multiple parties visited English settlements and forts as usual, but at an appointed time, began executing English men, women, and children. Jamestown itself was secured in time to stave off a direct assault thanks to Native people, some Powhatans, some of other tribes, who warned them just in time. 

The 1622 Massacre killed a quarter of the colonists in Tsenacomoco (350-400). Another 400 would die in the following year as food became increasingly scarce. One of the retaliatory tactics of the English was to burn Native crops and villages. Guerrilla warfare raged on and off for the next 10 years. Opechancanough sued for peace in 1632, citing starvation among the Powhatan. Hostilities officially ended, but Anglo-Native relations were much more tense and micromanaged afterward. Most colonists were forbidden from trading or socializing with the Natives. All communication was to be handled by the governing council and their agents. Native people were required to carry an official pass to travel through English territory.

In 1644, the now elderly Opechancanough launched another concerted offensive against English settlements. Though they inflicted more casualties than in 1622, there were so many more English colonists by this time that it had less of an impact. The fighting went on for a year until the War Werowance himself was captured and brought to Jamestown to be imprisoned in public. He was soon shot in the back by one of his guards. 

In the aftermath of this last war, The Powhatan Nation began to collapse. Famine and disease hastened the process as its member tribes struggled to adapt to a new reality. Some tribes died out altogether, their surviving members seeking refuge with neighbors. Some allied with the English, some maintained hostilities, but eventually all were subjugated to English rule. 

Thomas Rolfe, Matoaka’s son, returned to Tsenacomoco as a teenager in 1635 to take up his father’s lands. He requested permission to visit his Powhatan relatives, including Opechancanough. It is unknown if any such meeting took place. Ultimately, Thomas chose the side of the British. It was the only world he truly knew, and by this time the world of his mother’s people had suffered drastic decline. Thomas was assigned to man and lead Fort James in the Chickahominy territory and fought against various Native tribes. By 1646 he held the rank of lieutenant and was rewarded with more lands surrounding the fort that he spent his life cultivating. He married Jane Poythress and had several children, many who would count among the colony’s future elite. The circumstances of his death are unknown.

The history of the English and the peoples of Tsenacomoco is one of scattered, broken sources, myths, and distortions. It is very much like the history of most colonial encounters. Regardless of the smaller players' intentions and actions, the larger powers behind the colonists were attempting to administer a project of wealth creation that depended on appropriating the land and labor of others. While officially forbidding violence against the Native peoples, they explicitly instructed their colonial agents to aggressively negotiate the Natives’ land from them, make their political leaders vassals of their own monarchs, and subject them to unequal trade and labor relations. The idea that these programs would be implemented without resulting in violence was ludicrous. Once the Powhatan had attacked the English in their homes, outright warfare was authorized and the security of Native people throughout the region, regardless of affiliation, was critically jeopardized. 

Next week, we’ll conclude Matoaka’s Story with a look at the legacy and memory of this most famous Powhatan woman.

Sources:

22nd March 1622- History Pod

Primary Source: De Bry's "A weroan or great Lorde of Virginia"- Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation

Weroansquas and Four Centuries of Female Powhatan Leaders- Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation

Virginia Company- Virginia Encyclopedia

Matoaka's Story/Part 5 Captivity and Second Marriage

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

Matoaka's Story/Part 4 War and Peace in Tsenacomoco

The Abduction of Pocahontas, copper engraving by Johann Theodore de Bry, 1618. Public Domain.

Not everyone remembered John Smith as fondly as later generations. George Percy, Smith’s successor as president of the colony, described him as an “Ambityous unworthy and vayneglorious fellowe” who tried to “ingrose all authorety into his owne hands.” Percy’s report of his time in office, “A Trewe Relacyon of the Proceedings and Ocurrentes of Momente which have happened in Virginia from …1609, until…1612,” remains one of the most examined primary resources regarding the colony’s early years. In it he recounts some of the more macabre incidents of “the Starving Time” in Jamestown. 

Soon after Smith’s departure, the English found Werowocomoco deserted, just as Wahunsenaca had threatened. A succession of Virginia Company governors took a heavy handed approach in trying to restore communications. The Paramount Werowance did not take kindly to being treated as a subject by immigrants and made it clear that the English should either leave his country or confine themselves to Jamestown. He warned that any Englishmen found beyond the fort were not safe. This did not discourage the English from raiding and often confiscating the cleared fertile lands along the rivers, which in turn sparked more attacks from the Powhatan and other tribes. 

In 1609 George Percy sent Captain John Ratcliffe to trade for corn with the Powhatan. This incident is most often portrayed as a trap set by an invitation from Wahunseneca, however that is not entirely clear from Percy’s account, which also mentioned that Radcliffe had “Powhatans sonne and dowghter [no names mentioned] aboard his pinesse [small boat].” Percy commented that Radcliffe unwisely let these supposed hostages flee too early, resulting in the death of most of his company. Radcliffe himself was bound to a tree and tortured to death. This method was generally used to execute enemy warriors, giving them the opportunity to display their bravery before death. 

Battles with the Natives outside of the forts, and theft and murder within them, marked the next year of the colony’s existence. Percy’s report recorded several instances of cannibalism as well.

In 1610 Sir Thomas Gates arrived from Bermuda where he had been shipwrecked on his way to take over the governorship of the colony. Finding Jamestown’s population drastically reduced and the survivors malnourished, they resolved to abandon the colony and return to England. On their way down the river they were intercepted by a ship carrying Lord De La Warr, yet another new governor for the colony, as the Virginia Company had believed Gates dead. De La Warr brought enough new men and supplies to replenish the colony, so it was decided to reclaim Jamestown. The remainder of Percy’s “Relacyon” recounts numerous acts of revenge on neighboring villages led by Percy, Gates, and others. The English burned the crops and homes of any tribes they felt had wronged them. Native people who visited the fort under the guise of trade were subjected to closer scrutiny, the colonists suspecting them of being sent as spies. One Native man found guilty had his hand severed as a warning to others. 

Mattaponi Oral History recorded that the intention of the English to capture royal hostages became known to the Powhatan. For this reason, Matoaka’s marriage to a Patawomeck warrior named Kakoum was a far more discreet affair than it would have been normally. They had a son together and lived in a Patawomeck village. 

In 1612 Captain Samuel Argall, a Virginia Company rising star, discovered Matoaka was living in a Patawomeck village on one of his many trading expeditions. In his own words he recorded that he became committed to capturing her “by any stratagem.” 

Argall told the village werowance, Japazaw, that he knew “Pocahontas” was in his village and that he demanded his help in getting her on his ship. Japazaw refused initially, stating that such an act would incur the wrath of Wahunseneca and his people would be destroyed. Argall replied that that he and the English could protect him from Wahunsenaca, and furthermore, would destroy Japazaw’s people themselves if he refused again. Japazaw was resigned to play his part in the charade. He enlisted the aid of his wife, who pretended the next day to want to visit the English ship docked outside the village. She, Japazaw, and Matoaka all boarded and dined with Captain Argall. When Matoaka excused herself to leave, Argall informed her that she was his prisoner. 

Japazaw and his wife feigned surprise and Argall directed him to send a message to Wahunsenaca demanding the release of all English prisoners and arms, with a shipment of corn in return for his daughter. 

The Paramount Werowance responded that he would submit to the demands and invited Argall to bring his ship to the Pamunkey River to collect the ransom. Confident in having the upper hand, Argall instead sailed to Jamestown to deliver his prisoner to Thomas Gates. The Mattaponi Oral History recorded that Argall sent men to kill Matoaka’s husband and son before departing, and without her knowledge. 

When the ransom arrived, Gates still declined to release his hostage, sending her instead to the nearby colony of Henrico. Gates intended to keep her prisoner to wring concessions from the Powhatan, or at least stave off a full-on attack on the English colonies, which they continued establishing, largely by confiscating land the Natives had already cleared for their own crops. 

Numerous Virginia Company men reported to their superiors in England that Matoaka’s capture had secured a solid peace and that the colony had since flourished. This was only the first concern the colonists needed to lay to rest- they had still not found minerals or crops that could be cultivated to produce a profit for their investors.

Sources:

Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma- Kirkus Reviews

Powhatan War Clubs- Jamestown Yorktown Museum

Jamestown: Primary Source Set- Library of Congress

Matoaka's Story/Part 3 Captain John Smith (1607-1609)

Captain John Smith c. 1624. (Houghton Library, Harvard University; public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

John Smith is the Englishman most associated with the legend of Pocahontas. He was born into a middle-class English farming family. He worked at various trades as a teenager, but dreamed of a more adventurous life. At 16 he joined the French army of Henry IV that was assisting the Dutch forces fighting for independence from Spain. Later he attempted to make his way to eastern Europe to fight against the Ottomans. En route he became both a victim and ally of pirates. While fighting the Ottomans in Hungary, Smith was promoted to the rank of captain and awarded a coat of arms, making him an official gentleman by European custom. In 1602 he was captured by an Ottoman force and sold into slavery in Constantinople. He eventually escaped and made his way back to England. 

Smith became involved with the Virginia Company’s colonial project. Although his experience was valuable, and his military accomplishments had technically promoted him to a higher class in English society, most of his well born colleagues looked down on him. Smith’s confrontational demeanor only increased the tension. He was charged with plotting a mutiny before the Company’s ships made it to Virginia. Once the ships landed, it was revealed that the Virginia Company had included Smith on the governing council, so the charges were dropped, however his enemies in Jamestown continued to rally opposition to his leadership throughout the following years.

Smith was charged with exploring outside the fort and making contact with the local people. His early attempts at trade yielded limited success, leading him to brandish his pistol at local leaders and take food by force. Smith made contact with several tribes over these first few months, gathering food alternately by trade or force. He was eventually captured by a Powhatan hunting party while exploring their territory. His men were killed and he was paraded around local villages to allay any fears of the newcomers and their strange weapons. He was then taken to the Powhatans’ capital village, Werowcomoco, to be interrogated by Wahunsenaca himself. There, the Paramount Werowance (an Algonquien word for chief or leader) offered to make the English “tribe” a member of the Powhatan Nation. As part of this offer, Smith underwent a series of initiation ceremonies to make him the English werowance. 

Both the Mattiponi oral history and most non-Native historians cast serious doubt on the claim that Pocahontas intervened and saved his life, as children were not included in either the religious ceremonies to induct werowances, or the ritual killing of criminals (usually carried out by bludgeoning with a club). Smith’s early letters about the incident did not mention Matoaka being involved. She first appeared in this anecdote in Smith’s 1624 publication about his time in Virginia, 8 years after the Virginia Company made her a public figure in London to promote investment in the colony. Even generous biographers doubt there is much truth to the story, and argue it was a literary invention he used to make his book more enticing to English readers. 

It is possible Smith met Matoaka in Werowocomoco, but it is more likely he met her during one of her first visits to Jamestown, accompanying a party delivering Wahunseneca’s gifts of food. She may have been included as a symbol that the delegation came in peace, or at her own request. Matoaka is recorded in many sources, including Mattaponi Oral History, as having been outgoing, and curious to learn about the foreigners she believed to be her people’s new allies. Smith claims to have exchanged language with her at Jamestown and several sources document her playing with the English children, enticing them to cartwheel with her. 

Europeans arriving by ship were not unknown to indigenous North Americans. The Spanish had been inviting native people to trade and travel on their ships for decades, often kidnapping and enslaving them in the Caribbean or Europe. Some had even returned. Above all, Wahunsenaca was interested in maintaining his nation’s territory and defending it aggressive neighbors. He was wary of the Europeans, but also interested in gaining access to their weaponry and metal tools. To these ends he supplied the colonists with food and information that would help them survive. However he, and his subordinate werowances throughout the region were cautious in their acceptance of the invaders. 

After releasing Smith, Wahunseneca sent the colonists gifts of food every few days and frequently requested that Captain Newport, the man Smith had informed him was the colony’s true governor, to visit him at Werowocomoco. This took place in February of 1608. It was a tense visit and Wahunsenaca expressed his disapproval that there were always Englishmen under the Captain on guard ready to shoot. Despite this, Newport presented him with several gifts, including a greyhound dog. More interested in English arms, Wahunsenaca was able to secure a promise of “some swords.” The two also exchanged young boys they each hoped to use in the future as translators and informants. The English left Thomas Savage with the Powhatan and took a boy named Namontack. Captain Newport took Namontack back to London with him, leaving Smith to guide Jamestown in his absence. When he returned in the Summer of 1608 he sent word that Wahunsenaca should visit him at Jamestown to swear loyalty to King James and receive a crown. The Paramount Werowance insisted that Newport come to him. He did, accompanied by Smith, Namontack, and a detail of guards. Wahunsenaca accepted more gifts he had little interest in, and Smith had to “lean hard on his shoulders” in an attempt to compel him to kneel to receive his crown from Newport, who settled for a light stoop. 

The colonists’ failure to supplement the Powhatans’ gifts with their own sustenance led to more raids on Native villages and crops along the rivers. Wahunseneca summoned Smith back to his capital and chastised him for the violence, as well as his reluctance to trade firearms with the Powhatan. He warned Smith that if the violence did not cease that his people would retreat into the woods and leave the English to starve on their own. Smith also makes the claim that Matoaka saved his life a second time during his last visit with Wahunsenaca, by warning him that her father intended to kill the English party before they left. This story is not as fantastic as the first featuring Matoaka, but is still debated among historians. 

Smith always angled to get the upper hand over Wahunsenaca, but was conscious of the colony’s dependence on him. As a leader on the council he resisted calls to raid even more nearby villages and continued to require the colonists to earn their meals with work, giving his enemies on the council more ammunition in their efforts to remove him. Restraining the colonists became harder as drought and dissent increased. After suffering debilitating burns in a gunpowder accident while asleep in a boat in 1609, he returned to England, never to see Tsenacomoco again. The remaining colonists reported to Wahunseneca that Smith was dead. Soon after this the English found Werowocomoco deserted and violence between the colonists and the Powhatan escalated quickly.

Smith made several attempts to return to North America, first to Virginia, then to New England. Both efforts ultimately failed and he continued writing about his life, travels, and the “New World” from England. When Matoaka visited London in 1616, he made a point to call on her, receiving a lengthy rebuke. Unlike his account of their meetings in Virginia, there were English-speaking witnesses to this conversation, so it is likely his transcription of her words here was closer to the truth than some of his other accounts.

Smith died in England in 1631. Like Matoaka, his story has been embellished and retold countless times, more often to lionize the United States and European society, than Smith himself.

Sources:

‘Pocahontas And The English Boys’ Bridged 2 Wildly Different Cultures- Colorado Public Radio

Virginia’s First Peoples: Losing the Land- Dr. Helen Rountree, The Fairfax Network

Matoaka's Story/Part 2 The Powhatan Nation

Pocahontas’ real name was Matoaka (Mat-oh-ah-ka). She was the daughter of Wahunsenaca (Wah-hoon-sen’-ah-ca), the leader of a nation of indigenous Virginia tribes that the English came to call the Powhatan Confederacy or Powhatan Chieftainship. 

This alliance consisted of some 30 tribes. Each had a leader known as a werowance, who in turn pledged loyalty to the Paramount Werowance or Mamauatonick. Wahunsenaca was a young man when he inherited the leadership of the nation. It then consisted of 6 tribes: the Powhatan, the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, the Appamattuck, the Arrohateck, and the Youghtanund. Over the course of his life, Wahunseneca, a Pumunkey, expanded the Powhatan, through war and diplomacy, to over 30 tribes throughout eastern Virginia. Most scholars argue that Wahunseneca exercised ultimate authority over all his tributary tribes, making it more akin to an empire, than an alliance.

Little is known for certain about how Wahunseneca brought most of the Powhatan tribes under his rule, but some of the last, incorporated shortly before the arrival of the Jamestown colonists, were through warfare. He ordered the annihilation of the nearby Chesapeake tribe soon after making contact with the English. 

However, the traditional portrait of Powhatan as a fearsome chieftain concerned only with conquest may be overblown. The Mattaponi Oral History recorded that Wahunseneca ruled more through diplomacy, unlike his brother Opechancanough (O-pee-ken’-can-oo) who was considered a war leader. The Powhatan were far from the only tribal nation seeking to grow its network, there were others to the north, west, and south that they frequently came into conflict with. As the Paramount Werowance, Wahunseneca was responsible for organizing the defense of his country, as well as redistributing the wealth he collected as tribute, throughout it. These benefits of belonging to the Powhatan Nation, maintained through judicious leadership, likely brought many tribes into it voluntarily.  

Political and military leaders like Wahunseneca and Opechancanough were not the only type of leadership within Powhatan society. There were also “priests'' known as quiakros (kē-ah-krōs) that organized and taught the many cultural protocols that guided life within the Powhatan country they called Tsenacomoco (Sen-ah-cō-mō-cō). Ceremonies for war, agriculture, courtship, etc., were all necessary to maintain the favor of Ahone (the creator) and other deities. Like many indigenous societies, Powhatan religious beliefs were not usually distinct from the other parts of everyday life, such as work and war. In addition to religious knowledge, quiakros also maintained knowledge about labor, politics, and wealth, making them invaluable councilors to wereowances.  

Wahunseneca married a woman from every tribe within the nation, bearing children with them in order to foster kinship and unity. These wives would live with him temporarily before returning to their home villages where they were free to marry again. In this way Matoaka had many siblings throughout the Powhatan Nation. According to the Mattaponi Oral history, Matoaka’s mother, Pocahontas, married Wahunseneca for love, rather than to cement political kinship. 

Matoaka’s mother died giving birth to her. Her older sister, Mattachana, cared for her for much of her life. Her testimony informed much of the Mattaponi Oral History regarding Matoaka. She lived with Mataoka in Henrico where she was a prisoner, and later the wife of John Rolfe, and also accompanied her to London in 1616. Mattachanna’s husband, Uttamattamakin was a quiakro and councilor to Wahunseneca. 

There has always been confusion about Pocahontas’ other names. The Mattaponi Oral History claims that at birth, she was named Matoaka, which means “flower between two streams.” Matoaka has been recorded as revealing her birth name to English people both immediately before her baptism, and to a painter when she sat for a portrait in London. A few of the older primary resources mention that Pocahontas was a nickname, and that her proper name was Amonute. This is sometimes presented as her birth name, and sometimes as a separate name; it is unclear to me if some sources are indicating 3 names or if Amonute is a different version of Matoaka. The Mattaponi Oral History does not mention any other names besides Matoaka and Pocahontas. 

She is believed to have been between 10-12 in 1607 when the first colonists arrived in Jamestown. The several eye-witness accounts of her in these early years all describe her as naked, indicating a prepubescent child. Powhatan women were noted by early writers as wearing “aprons” about their waists and did not wish to be seen without them. There are several accounts of the young daughter of the Powhatan “chief” playing with English children in Jamestown, showing them how to do cartwheels. These are the years she would have known John Smith, making the possibility of a romance, or her presence at the ritual that inducted him into the Powhatan Nation, highly unlikely. 

After Smith departed and tensions between the Powhatan and the English rose, Matoaka did come of age, and married a Patawomeck (pat-ah-ow-mek) warrior named Kakoum. The Mattaponi Oral History recorded that they had a son and lived together in a Patawomeck village north of her father’s village, Werowocomoco (where-ō-wō-cō-mō-cō).

Sources:

Eastern Algonquian Social Structure in the 17th Centrury- Jamestown/Yorktown Museums

Paramount Chief Powhatan-  Jamestown/Yorktown Museums

Werowocomoco: A Powhatan Place of Power- National Park Service

Matoaka's Story/Part 1

Pocahontas’ real name was Matoaka (Mat-oh-ah-ka). She was the daughter of Wahunsenaca (Wah-hoon-sen’-ah-ca), the leader of a nation of indigenous Virginia tribes that the English came to call the Powhatan (Pow’-ah-tan) Confederacy or Powhatan Chieftainship.

Matoaka is believed to have been 10 or 11 in 1607 when the Virginia Company colonists established Jamestown. Her mother’s tribe was the Mattaponi (Mat-ah-pō-nī’). The Mattaponi Oral History recorded that Matoaka’s mother, Pocahontas, died in childbirth. That is why her people referred to her as Pocahontas, the name the English would make famous. According to the Oral History it means “Laughing and Joyous One.” It was most often translated by non-Native writers as “mischief,” “Little mischief,” and “little playful one.” 

The legend of Pocahontas claims that she saved an early colonial leader, John Smith, from execution because she instantly fell in love with him, and that she convinced her father to provide the colonists of Jamestown with food. Even with scarce historical sources, it is easy to see through such a fairytale. No child in any society would have wielded such influence over such a crucial decision. Europeans were not unknown to the Powhatan. Wahunsenaca offered the English colonists membership in the Powhatan Nation in order to access their weapons and contain their spread throughout his country. 

Matoaka frequently visited Jamestown along with the Powhatan delegations that brought food and other trade goods to Jamestown. Several primary sources recorded her as an outgoing child who was fond of playing with the English children she met there. John Smith wrote that he learned many Algonquian words from her and shared English ones in return. Smith continued as the colony’s representative in military and trade matters with the Native population for its first 2 years, but he had many enemies in Jamestown and struggled to maintain authority. After suffering serious burns in a gunpowder accident in 1609, he returned to England for treatment, never to see Virginia again. His fellow colonists told Wahunsenaca that Smith was dead.

From this point on, relations between the English and the Powhatan deteriorated. Although Smith had repeatedly acted outside of his agreements with Wahunsenaca by raiding for more food than the Powhatan had gifted, he had also tried to limit these excesses to maintain the alliance as long as he could. After he departed, the English colonists and his diplomatic successors tried to take a harder line with their hosts. Raids increased and fertile land along the river banks was taken by force. As a result, Wahunsenaca put an end to the gifts of food and attempted to starve the English out by moving Powhatan villages further inland. He sent word that the colonists should leave his country or confine themselves to Jamestown. He would no longer guarantee their safety beyond the fort.

The colonists of Jamestown experienced many struggles over the following years, but Matoaka did not reappear until she was kidnapped by Captain Samuel Argall in 1612. The Mattaponi Oral History recorded that before this she had married a Patawomeck (pat-ah-ow-mek) warrior named Kakoum and had a son. She was living with her family in a Patawomeck village when Argall found her. The colony’s governing council used her as leverage against Wahunsenaca to secure food, land, and stave off any direct attacks on their growing settlements. 

In 1614 Matoaka converted to Christianity, was renamed Rebecca, and married the colony’s secretary, a tobacco planter named John Rolfe. She gave birth to a son named Thomas soon after. In 1616, the Virginia Company brought Matoaka, her family, Captain Argall, and the colony’s governor to London in order to promote the venture and secure more investment. Matoaka’s sister, Mattachana, also accompanied her. It was Mattachanna’s testimony after her return from England that informed the Mattaponi Oral History about what happened there. Matoaka spent a year in England where she learned more about the English and their intentions in her country. In the spring of 1617 the party set sail to return to Virginia, but Matoaka became sick before they reached the sea. She died and was buried in Gravesend, England. 

Some European and American histories claim she fell ill days before setting sail, and others only after boarding the ship. The Mattaponi Oral History recorded that she only became sick after dining with her husband and Captain Argall on the ship, and that she told her sister that she believed “the English” had put something in her food.

In the following weeks I will explore these stories and sources in more detail. Why would Matoaka consent to marry an Englishman after being kidnapped? Was Wahunsenaca unwilling to attack Jamestown for fear of her safety, the English guns, or some other reason? Why would the Virginia Company want to murder Matoaka after having used her so successfully to wring concessions from her father and to present the image of a successful colonial project to the English public, royalty, and prospective investors?

There are no easy answers to any of these questions. I will explore them through several primary and secondary sources. The Mattaponi Oral History regarding Matoaka, published for the first time in 2007 as “The True Story of Pocahontas” is an invaluable resource that previous generations had no access to. It adds a much needed perspective from Matoaka’s own people to a story that has been told and retold by European and American authors with little or no regard for the woman behind the myth.

Sources:

The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History, From the Sacred History of the Mattaponi Reservation People.

Dr. Linwood “Little Bear” Custalow and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star.” Fulcrum Publishing: Golden, Colorado, 2007.

Video interview with Angela L. Daniel and Linwood Custalow- Book TV, C-Span

Book Review- The One Feather