HiS 2213 Learning Unit Six Lecture

1. Learning Unit #06 Lecture
“Were Pocahontas & John Smith Lovers?”

2. Part One:
Jamestown
2

3. Jamestown Colony
Capt. John Smith was a soldier-of-
fortune employed by the Virginia Co.,
a private, for-profit, joint-stock
company that had rights to settle land
from NC to VT. People migrated to
VA for diverse motives:
– Younger aristocratic sons seeking fortunes
– Surplus population evicted by landowners
– Criminals who had no choice
– Dissenters fearful about religion in England
They arrived in May 1607--105 men,
1/3 of them “gentlemen.” There was
“gold fever” but no gold. Smith was a
disciplinarian during rough times. He John Smith,
also forged a valuable relationship Author of The General
with the local Indian leader, History of Virginia, New England,
and the Summer Isles (1624)
Powhatan, and his daughter,

4. The English hoped Jamestown would become a profitable trading post and
perhaps a base
from which to
raid Spanish
shipping. Many
Indians lived
inside the
English fort.
Spanish spies
reported 50
Englishmen
cohabitating
with Indian
women. Yet
Smith and
Pocahontas
were likely not
among these
interracial
couples. What
explains our
longstanding fascination with this romance that likely never occurred? While
we ignore how common ‘out-of-wedlock’ interracial relationships were at
Jamestown!

5. “Before a fire upon a seat
like a bedstead, he sat
covered with a great robe,
made of raccoon skins
and all the tails hanging
by. On either hand did sit
a young wench of 16 or 18
years, and along on each
side of the house, two
rows of men, and behind
them as many women,
with all their heads and
shoulders painted red,
many of their heads
bedecked with the white
down of birds….” – John
Smith describing his first
meeting with Powhatan

7. General Pattern of Indian-White Relations
in Early America
• Indians accepted European settlements until
these encroached on them & their resources.
• Indians desired from Europeans:
– Trade (guns, alcohol, cloth & especially metal
items—knives, axes, iron and copper kettles, fish
hooks, etc.). To Indians, trade created a spiritual bond
between giver and receiver.
– Military allies
• Europeans wanted from Indians:
– Food
– Furs
– Land (which Indians regarded as a living being, not
something to be owned).
– Converts for Christianity (not a priority for the
Dutch)

8. Part Two:
Pocahontas, John Smith, and
John Rolfe
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9. Were John Smith and Pocahontas lovers?
At the time they met in 1607, John
Smith was 28 and Pocahontas was
about 12. Although this age
difference does not rule out a
romantic involvement, the tradition
that theirs is a love story is a pop-
culture invention and has little if any
basis in fact. Smith did not publish
the famous story of Pocahontas
saving his life until 1624. He
probably mistook the whole
episode--if it happened--for an Actors Farrell & Kilcher as Smith
adoption/initiation ritual, whereby & Pocahontas in the 2004 movie
The New World, which took great
he was symbolically being made a pains to accurately portray the
“son” of Powhatan and, therefore, details of Indian life but
fictionalized much of the
Pocahontas’ “brother.” rest of the story.

10. Like the romance, the dramatic rescue at the heart of the story of
Pocahontas & John Smith most likely never happened either.

11. Pocahontas’ Life after Smith &
before Rolfe
• In 1609, John Smith left Jamestown permanently
after being badly burned by gunpowder;
Pocahontas was told Smith had died.
• Upon reaching puberty c. 1610, Pocahontas was
married to a sub-chief’s son called Kocoum.
• In 1613, Thomas Argyll, deputy gov. of Virginia,
kidnapped Pocahontas & made her a hostage,
insuring that her father would not risk an attack
on the English settlement out of fear harm would
come to his favorite daughter.
• The fate of Kocoum is unclear, though Native
American oral tradition maintains the English
murdered him.

12. Wedding of Pocahontas and John Rolfe
Good will between settlers and Indians is on-again, off-again, and Pocahontas
proves an effective go-between. She also brings food in dire times. She
eventually is kidnapped by the English. Powhatan paid her ransom, but the
English tricked her into believing he balked at their demands. So she remained
with the English, converted to Christianity, married John Rolfe (the tobacco
innovator), and bore a son—all within the first year of her captivity.

13. What Were John Rolfe’s Motives for
Marrying Pocahontas?
In a famous letter to Rolfe strongly denies having carnal, lustful feelings
John Rolfe & for Pocahontas, so much so that one suspects such
Gov. Thomas Dale, desires were in fact on his mind.
Pocahontas
Rolfe states his
reasons for wanting to
marry Pocahontas: “…
for the good of this
plantation [Virginia
Colony], for the honor
of our country, for the
glory of God, for my
own salvation, and for
the converting to the
true knowledge of God
and Jesus Christ, an
unbelieving creature,
namely Pocahontas.” While it was common for Englishmen in Virginia to
engage in unofficial “Indian marriages,” even if they had
English wives back home, the marriage of Rolfe &
Pocahontas marked the first officially sanctioned union.

14. Rolfe’s Motives (cont’d)
Peace between the Powhatans and English had largely been
achieved because the latter were holding Pocahontas hostage. What
did Rolfe mean when he said he wanted to marry Pocahontas “for the
good of this plantation (the Virginia Colony)?”
– Native-American oral history maintains that one reason Rolfe married
Pocahontas was to learn from her kinsmen how to cure tobacco, the crop
that ultimately made the colony profitable.
– Furthermore, there was a belief among the English (who did not fully
understand Indian attitudes about land ‘ownership’) that they could
legitimately claim land in the ‘New World’ by intermarrying with Native
American women. This belief persisted long after the time of Rolfe &
Pocahontas, as shown by this 1738 quotation from William Byrd:
» “Besides, the poor Indians would have had less
reason to complain that the English took away their
land, if they had received it by way of portion with
their daughters. Had such affinities been contracted
in the beginning, how much bloodshed had been
prevented, and how populous the country would
have been, and consequently, how considerable? Nor
would the shade of the skin have been any reproach
at this day; for if a [black] Moor may be washed white
in three Generations, Surely an Indian might have
been blanched in two.”

15. In 1616, Pocahontas visits
England where she is used
as a living advertisement to
promote colonization by the
desperate Virginia Company.
She saw John Smith, whom
she believed dead, for the
first time since his evacuation
8 years earlier for severe
burns from a gunpowder
accident. She died in
England probably of smallpox
in 1617.
This image was used to promote her visit to
England, and therefore it was publicity for the
Virginia Company.

16. The Sedgeford portrait of
Pocahontas (a.k.a. Rebecca Rolfe) Pocahontas has historically
and her son Thomas Rolfe. been celebrated by white
Americans because she
exemplifies the "good Indian" or
"noble savage”; she sacrificed
herself and severed her ties to
her own people in order that
white/European settlement
might succeed.
Some Native Americans might
view her legacy differently. Yet,
among the present-day
descendants of her own people,
she is regarded as someone
who was brainwashed by the
English and submitted to her
captors because she believed
her compliance would ensure a
fragile peace.

17. Tobacco boomed
as more and more
The Jamestown
English settlers Massacre (1622)
were attracted to
Virginia. But the
population
increase coupled
with the land
required for the
new cash crop put
pressure on the
Indians, who
were killed for
their land. After
the deaths of
Pocahontas &
Powhatan, their
relatives,
Opechancanough
& Nantequas, led
the Powhatan
Indians in an
attack that killed almost 400 but failed to ruin the colony. For years to come, the
massacre would be used by the English to justify their taking more land by force.