![]() John Smith had been wounded during his capture. She once was said to have warned the colonists about a surprise attack by the Indians. She brought them corn when they were starving. But most experts agree that Pocahontas helped the colonists. She may not have really saved John Smith's life. Historians say the Indian chief wanted to make the English colonists his allies.Īfter Captain Smith's capture, the Indians and the colonists agreed to a truce. The ceremony was meant to show that Powhatan accepted Smith as part of his tribe. They say that what Captain Smith thought was to be his execution was really an Indian ceremony. Some historians do not believe that John Smith's life was in danger. That event involved a captured Spanish explorer, an Indian chief and the chief's daughter. Some believe that Captain Smith invented the story after reading about a similar event that took place in Florida. ![]() Most historians, however, do not believe that Pocahontas saved the life of John Smith. This is what most people know about Pocahontas. This story has been repeated for hundreds of years. He wrote that Pocahontas saved him from being executed by Powhatan. Captain Smith wrote about this incident in a book that was published in sixteen twenty-four. He was captured in sixteen-oh-seven by followers of Powhatan. John Smith was an explorer, soldier and a leader of the Jamestown colony. The misunderstandings led to hostile incidents between the colonists and the Indians. The two groups did not understand each other. The Indians' culture was very different from that of the English settlers. She became an important link between the colonists and her father, Powhatan. The young Pocahontas often visited Jamestown during the colony's first months. Both men and women wore earrings and other objects made of shells, pearls and copper. They made clothing of animal skins and containers of clay. Women of the tribes controlled the houses and the fields. They created a strong political system, led by powerful chiefs like Powhatan. They grew beans, corn, squash and melons. The Powhatans had lived in the area for almost one thousand years. They were part of a large group of American tribes who spoke the Algonquian language. The Powhatan Indians lived in the area where the English colonists landed. The English colonists did not know that the area already was settled by Indians. He named the new colony Jamestown, Virginia. ![]() He claimed the land for King James of England. The leader of the English settlers was John Ratcliffe. In sixteen-oh-seven, the Virginia company in England sent colonists to settle the land that later became the United States of America. Powhatan ruled a group of more than twenty Indian tribes in territory that is now the eastern state of Virginia. She was one of twenty children of Chief Powhatan. Pocahontas was born in fifteen ninety-five. Today, we tell about Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indian tribe. She was the first Native American to marry a white person. She lived four hundred years ago in what became the American state of Virginia. PEOPLE IN AMERICA, a program in Special English on the Voice of America. Learn more.Pocahontas, 1595-1617: An Important Player in Early Jamestownĭownload MP3 (Right-click or option-click the link.) The VMHC Education team offers programs about Pocahontas. Pocahontas and Rolfe were awarded funds to return to the colony to establish a college to Christianize the Powhatan Indians, but on beginning the trip home she died “unexpectedly,” in March 1617, at Gravesend, England, where she is buried. In the spring of 1616 the three Rolfes departed for England, where Pocahontas met King James I. In 1614 she married the Englishman John Rolfe the couple had a child, Thomas. In 1613 she was kidnapped by Englishmen, and eventually was baptized into Christianity. In 1610 she married an Indian named Kocoum. Then Pocahontas warned Smith of another plot to kill him. Thereafter, John Smith and Pocahontas had a special, father-daughter relationship.īeginning in early 1608 Pocahontas led delegations of Indians who brought food to the near-starving Jamestown settlers. ![]() Soon after, she befriended the captured English captain John Smith and probably pleaded with her father to spare his life. These are the facts about Pocahontas that are known for sure.Īs a child in 1607, she played with the Jamestown settlers’ children in the streets of Jamestown. She appears stiff in Jacobean court attire, but the costume probably hid tattooing and provided the chaste image wanted by the Virginia Company, which sponsored her trip and probably commissioned the print. The only life portrait of Pocahontas (1595–1617) and the only credible image of her, was engraved by Simon Van de Passe in 1616 while she was in England, and was published in John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia in 1624. ![]()
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