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Pocahontas (d. 1617)


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Pocahontas (d. 1617)

 

 

Contributed by Helen C. Rountree

 

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Pocahontas the Virginia Historical Society

 

 

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, paramount chief of an alliance of Virginia Indians in Tidewater Virginia. An iconic figure in American history, Pocahontas is largely known for saving the life of the Jamestown colonist John Smith and then romancing him—although both events are unlikely to be true. She did meet Smith several times, sometimes serving as Powhatan's silent figurehead and a symbolic liaison between the chief and the English colonists; she was not, however, a "princess" or a diplomat in any modern sense. Sometime around 1610, she married an Indian named Kocoum, and in 1613 she was captured by the English and confined at Jamestown, where she converted to Christianity and married the colonist John Rolfe. The marriage, approved by Powhatan, brought an end to the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614) and set the stage for Pocahontas's visit to London in 1616. At the request of the Virginia Company of London, she met both King James I and the bishop of London, after which she reunited briefly with Smith. Early in her return voyage to Virginia, she became ill and died at Gravesend in March 1617. In the centuries since, Pocahontas's life has slipped into myth, serving to represent Virginia's early claim to be the foundation-place of America. Many elite Virginians, meanwhile, have tenuously claimed her as a relative, even leading to a "Pocahontas clause" in theScissors-32x32.pnghttp://encyclopediavirginia.org/Pocahontas_d_1617#start_entry

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Vol. I. The Transplanting of Culture: 1607–1650

Captain John Smith

 

 

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH was born at Willoughby in Lincolnshire, in January, 1579. He died at London on the 21st of June, 1632. Yet that part of his life to which he owes distinction was passed in America, and it is his account of it that gives him his place here. The son of a tenant farmer, apprenticed to trade at fifteen, he ran away to serve under Lord Willoughby in the Netherlands and afterward in Hungary and Transylvania, against the Turks. He was captured, enslaved, escaped to Russia, returned to England in 1605, and the next year accompanied Newport’s expedition to Virginia, apparently not without conflict with the authorities. Their opposition was overcome by his energy in exploration and his success in obtaining supplies. While exploring the James River in 1607, he was captured by Indians, brought before their chief, Powhatan, saved as he claimed from death by the intervention of that “Numpareil of Virginia,” Pocahontas, and sent back to Jamestown after six weeks’ captivity. Later he explored the Chesapeake, was for a time Colonial President, returned to England in 1609, and in 1614 explored the coast of New England from Penobscot to Cape Cod. A third expedition in 1616 resulted in his capture by the French. Scissors-32x32.png

http://www.bartleby.com/163/101.html

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