For several years after the marriage, the couple lived together at Rolfe's plantation, Varina Farms, which was located across the James River from the new community of Henricus.
Pocahontas' own feelings about Rolfe and the marriage are unknown. In a long letter to the governor requesting permission to wed her, he expressed both his love for her, and his belief that he would be saving her soul: he claimed he was not motivated by: "the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God, for my own salvation … namely, Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was even a-wearied to unwind myself thereout." He was a pious man who agonized over the potential moral repercussions of marrying a heathen. Rolfe, whose English-born wife had died, had successfully cultivated a new strain of tobacco in Virginia and spent much of his time there tending to his crop. John Gadsby Chapman, The Baptism of Pocahontas (1840)ĭuring her stay in Henricus, Pocahontas met John Rolfe, who fell in love with her. However, according to the deputy governor, Thomas Dale, Pocahontas rebuked her absent father for valuing her "less than old swords, pieces, or axes" and told them that she preferred to live with the English. The English permitted Pocahontas to talk to her countrymen. At the Powhatan town of Matchcot, the English encountered a group that included some of the senior Powhatan leaders (but not Chief Powhatan himself, who was away). In March, 1614, the standoff built to a violent confrontation between hundreds of English and Powhatan men on the Pamunkey River. After she was baptized, her name was changed to Rebecca. Little is known about her life there although colonist Ralph Hamor wrote that she received "extraordinary courteous usage." An English minister, Alexander Whitaker, taught her about Christianity and helped to improve her English. Powhatan returned the prisoners, but failed to satisfy the colonists with the amount of weapons and tools he returned, and a long standoff ensued.ĭuring the year-long wait, Pocahontas was kept at Henricus, in modern-day Chesterfield County. Their purpose, as they explained in a letter, was to ransom her for some English prisoners held by Chief Powhatan, along with various weapons and tools that the Powhatans had stolen. With the help of Japazaws, they tricked Pocahontas into captivity. When two English colonists began trading with the Patawomec, they discovered Pocahontas' presence. Smith writes in his Generall Historie that she had been in the care of the Patawomec chief, Japazaws, since 1611 or 1612. In March, 1613, Pocahontas was residing at Passapatanzy, a village of the Patawomec people, clients of the Powhatan who lived on the Potomac River near Fredericksburg, about a hundred miles from Werowocomoco. The English told the natives that Smith was dead, and Pocahontas believed this until she arrived in England several years later. Due to this warning, the English stayed on their guard, and the attack never came.Īn injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England in 1609. Smith and some other colonists were invited to Werowocomoco by Chief Powhatan on friendly terms, but Pocahontas came to the hut where the English were staying and warned them that Powhatan was planning to kill them. In 1608, Pocahontas is said to have saved Smith a second time. As the colonists expanded further, however, some of the Native Americans felt that their lands were threatened, and conflicts started.
During a time when the colonists were starving, Pocahontas with her attendants brought Smith provisions that saved many of their lives.
Whatever really happened, this encounter initiated a friendly relationship with Smith and the Jamestown colony, and Pocahontas would often come to the settlement and play games. It has been suggested that, although Smith believed he had been rescued, he had in fact been involved in a ritual intended to symbolize his death and rebirth as a member of the tribe. According to John Smith's 1624 Generall Historie of Virginia, he was laid across a stone and was about to be executed, when Pocahontas threw herself across his body. One of the leading colonists, John Smith, was captured by a group of Powhatan hunters and brought to Werowocomoco, one of the chief villages of the Powhatan Empire. In 1607, when the English colonists arrived in Virginia and began building settlements, Pocahontas-known to her family as "Matoaka"-was about 10 or 12 years old, and her father was the powerful leader of the Powhatan Confederacy. A Pocahontas statue, by William Ordway Partridge, was erected in Jamestown, Virginia in 1922