The Real Story of Pocahontas

I don't think it's a stretch to say that most of you are familiar with the story of Pocahontas, the Native American woman so famous in the story of American colonization. Yet I wonder how many of you have heard the story the way that I'm going to tell it? The way that Pocahontas' people probably wanted it to be told. But let's first start the story off in August of 1609, when the people dwelling in the fort at Jamestown, Virginia were in a state of utter panic. You see these settlers' history is inextricably linked with the story of Pocahontas and if you stick with me, I'll show you how.

So just a couple of years earlier, these roughly 100 people settled a small patch of land bordering the Chesapeake Bay under the banner of the Virginia Company and King James of England. It was the first English settlement in what will be known as America. These small group of settlers had traveled nearly 4,000 miles over ocean. Then almost immediately suffered tremendously from diseases that we probably take for granted today, right? We have modern medicine. So we don't think about things like dysentery, fever, typhoid. All contracted by drinking untreated swamp water.

Then there was the famine. This extreme hunger. There's no other way to put it. But in many ways, the colonists had brought this on themselves. You see, many of them were wealthy businessmen and most wealthy businessmen don't get wealthy by working. So they had no real practical survival skills. Instead of hunting and planting, they did what any good businessmen would do when they prospected for gold. This refusal to work, or plant crops, or to dig fresh water wells, which would sustain them, brought them crippling famine. The situation was so grave in fact, so desperate by winter, they resorted to the whore that has followed a great deal of famine since forever, cannibalism.

The word itself was taboo, forbidden. I can't imagine what it feels like to starve. I've fasted a few times in my life. After 24 hours, I was eating like a wolf, but I can't begin to understand being so hungry that I'd consider eating the flesh of my own species. It just doesn't cross my mind. Or to be driven mad with the all consuming thought of just a bite of food, hunger pangs that cripple you. I can't imagine any of this. It's easy for us to say we wouldn't do this from the comfort of our chairs or the grocery store up the street, but just remember throughout history a higher percentage of people have resorted to cannibalism than you would like to imagine. And in this Jamestown colony, a 14 year old girl was murdered and eaten.

Anthropologist Doug Owsley says, "by the butcher marks on her skull and shin bone, the assailants were clearly interested in the cheek meat muscles of the face, tongue, and brain." Now not to start this show off on a morbid note but this builds a picture of the condition of the settlers Pocahontas and her tribe would come in contact with. These were settlers that were starving for food. They were ravenous for gold and they had a pig-like appetite for more and more land. And not only this but they also had Guns, Germs and Steel, nod to Jared Diamond for that wonderful book.

So with this backdrop, you could literally know nothing about Native American history and put two and two together and see how this story is about to play out. I can't spoil it for you. You already know how the story turns out for the Native Americans unfortunately. Historians estimate that there were 50,000 natives living in what is now the Commonwealth of Virginia. The group that Pocahontas was part of and the colonists encountered first were the Powhatan nation. They didn't call the land Virginia. It was Tsenacommacah. Pocahontas' father, who the settlers called Chief Powhatan, his native name was Wahunsenaca.

But he ruled over 15,000 people or 30 tribes in his powerful kingdom and at times the Powhatan dealt with the English with hospitality and goodwill. They traded and they brought them food. And other times they raided and murdered the settlers when they wandered off too far. And the question I wondered was had they heard about the Spanish conquest of their neighbors to the South? If so, of course they wanted to keep the English contained. If not, murder, atrocity, brutality and all those things that come along with colonization would befall them. So Pocahontas will find herself born in a point in history where the 10,000 year old history of her people would come to an end.

Her story is not only an individual tale of survival and heroism, but the story of a wholesale plundering and robbery of Native American land and resources. It reminds us that America did not start as a democracy but as an aggressive capitalist empire. A sad reminder, a painful reminder, but a reminder, nonetheless. And it also reminds us that if it weren't for the goodwill, the wisdom and the knowledge of the first people otherwise known in America as the Native Americans, there would be no democracy.

Welcome to The Humanity Archive where we dig through history to find our best in our worst examples, all in an attempt to answer that most fundamental and basic question. What does it mean to be human? I'm your gracious host Jermaine Fowler and I'm very excited to be here and bring this show to you today. You heard a little bit in the introduction about the figure that we'll be talking about. Her name was Pocahontas. When I decided to do this show, I didn't know that it would be largely shaped by a single source because I always consult many books, many sources, and try to be thorough in my research and scholarship for the shows and the articles that I write.

When I found this one book, I realized that in nearly 400 years, not a single book about the life of Pocahontas was written by a Native American. I couldn't help but see the significance in this. This would be like the life of cheetahs being only written by lions, some similarities, but you don't get the perspective of the cheetah. Similarly with Pocahontas, the life of her and her Native American people were only written from the perspective of the colonists. And even though this happened later, it is very significant to me that a Native American finally was able to lead the charge in some scholarship in a book about Pocahontas.

This book was by Paula Gunn and it's called Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat. Now I became highly interested in sharing this alternate perspective. Something different than the mainstream story that you're probably used to. It's not uncommon for legitimate revisions to happen in history. Think of a detective who revisits evidence and then he draws a different conclusion than the one that previously was stated based on the new evidence that's found. Now Gunn centers her story of Pocahontas within the Native American Powhatan culture in a way that I think aligned with the truth far more than the popular narratives.

If you look at a lot of the other books that give a sense that this was some hero story on the account of the colonists. Their books, for instance, entitled Jamestown Adventure or Pocahontas: American Princess with all these misnomers and falsities right in the title even. And I really don't think they capture the real essence of what really happened there in Jamestown, Virginia, back in the 17th century. And I gotta say it's difficult to talk about Pocahontas without talking about the Disney cartoon movie from 1995 and there I think lies a big, huge problem because the real history is so intertwined with a mostly fiction cartoon musical.

Now some may say that it's just a movie, but if they named it after the real Pocahontas, this was a real life. I think these historically inaccurate movies do more harm than good. Presenting a painful past in a sing songy, family-friendly, stereotypey, non-factual fantasy. It's a cartoon that whitewashes and hides a horrific past. Psychologists have long recognized that the images we see affect the way we view ourselves. Far from romanticizing European and native relations like the movie, Gunn and some other historians like Helen C. Rountree strip out all of this romanticism and they want you to see the dark nature of the Native and English encounters.

Their aim is to show you Pocahontas through a Native American viewpoint and I think that's profoundly important. As I read the work of Gunn, I was curious how was she able to reconstruct this different viewpoint? Because the sources that have been out from the Europeans they've been out since around the time that all of this happened. I mean Captain John Smith, he wrote his account soon after he was in Jamestown or when he was in Jamestown. So these things have been available for centuries. Where did she get this new information from? And she revisited the oral history of the Mattaponi tribe. Now this is one of the 30 tribes incorporated into the Powhatan nation.

They have passed down these stories from generation to generation to generation about Pocahontas. They are the surviving tribe most closely associated with the Powhatan and who have maintained this history throughout the centuries. So they also had a story to tell. One that I think commands respect. It's a story that passed down like a blazing torch year after year and generation after generation. America I think has been slow to appreciate, understand or acknowledge oral traditions. Not quick to include these in the historic record, yet Gunn's book is a recognition of the Native American scholars and the elders who passed down the story for over 400 years.

And it's a recognition of the sturdiness of human memory. It's a recognition that the oral story still needs to be told. I came across a quote from a geneticist named Wes Jackson that really speaks to this point about oral history. And he says, "a necessary part of our intelligence is on the line as the oral tradition becomes less and less important. There was a time throughout our land when it was common for stories to be told and retold. A most valuable exercise. For the story retold, reexamined over and over again at different levels of intellectual and emotional growth." So he's saying that as we retell our stories, review them from different maturity levels, and if you look at civilization as having a life span like a human you mature as you grow older and you may put a different wisdom on the story as you retell.

It is not static just sitting in a book. It's being reformed based on the new knowledge and a new position that you're in or the community is in or tribe is in or any civilization is in. So he's saying, we should not lose this. This is highly important. Now in Gunn's book, there's this beautiful timeline that she laid out with significant dates in Pocahontas' life. This is all based on the oral history. So this is what I used as the format for today's program. Blending the oral history with some of the accounts of the English and other historians who put a premium on the Powhatan side of the story. I just wanted to make that clear.

This is from the Powhatan perspective as closely as I can find it. If we look back further to 1595, we can see more about the Powhatan also called Wahunsenaca, and I'll further refer to them as the Powhatan at risk of totally mutilating that word, which I'm sure is beautiful as said then in its native tongue. Powhatan, he was the Native American leader and father of Pocahontas and he presided over the Powhatan empire, so named after him. He was a powerful chief. He presided over at least 30 Algonquin speaking tribes.

The Mattaponi again whose oral history we're using is one of them. He is estimated to have ruled between 13,000 and 34,000 people. In regards to his military ability, if you wanted to know about that, we're told he could call about 1,500 soldiers into the field. Now this is an important fact given that they would be clashing so much with the English here soon. So Powhatan gains power and status and wealth through the usual means that we're familiar with. Through inheritance, intimidation, and marriage. With this, his realm stretched about 6,000 square miles from modern-day Alexandria, Virginia all the way to the North Carolina border.

The Algonquin-speaking Powhatan called their land, Senacumocco meaning densely inhabited land. Just giving you an idea that there were a lot of people here. Now I think we always like to think of the Native Americans as nomadic, but those like the Powhatan were settled farmers. They practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, planting everything from small plants all the way up to tall trees. They had small plots. They grew maize, beans, squash and corn. And there were towns and there were temples and canoes for transportation and they had a government. Powhatan was the chief of many chiefs. Now one person who writes beautifully about the history of the Powhatan, highly recommend her story, is Helen C.

Rountree. She spent her whole life writing about and researching the history of the Powhatan and their descendants, and she has a fascinating book called Pocahontas' People and what she says, "chiefs called werowances could be male or female and were creatures set apart. They kept in travel with large retinues. They received elaborate welcomes when they reached their destinations. The welcomes included feasting, dancing, oratory and for the men, young female bedmates at night. Chiefs had the power to punish disobedience with quick death by knocking out the brains.

They presided over the execution of thieves and murderers were bound and thrown into a fire to burn to death. Werowances knew how to procure their own food but they normally had huntsmen to bring in game and whole towns to plant crops especially for them. They also collected tribute, which consisted of tan deer skin, pearls, and maize. When they died they received special burials. Werowances acquired their positions through a matrilineal inheritance. So the chiefs were afforded all of the accouterment powers of governor or a head of state or king. We tend to, and most definitely the earlier Europeans, view the Powhatan through their differences and not their similarities. Their religions, temples, class systems, marriage, customs, and raising of children."

Their culture wasn't perfect. Very draconian laws it seems as far as if you're guilty of murder, how you would be executed, but at the same time, they developed in a way that was no more or less brutal or otherwise than any other civilization throughout history. In 1596 Matoaka was born. This was one of Pocahontas' other names. Powhatan fathers this daughter and he names her Amonute. And then she goes by Matoaka. Many accounts call her a spirited young girl who liked to do cartwheels. She's given the childhood nickname of Pocahontas or playful one.

And if you are like me, you'll notice that Pocahontas again had many names, but that's the one that stuck. And I wondered how would I feel if I was forever called by my childhood nickname throughout history. Like I died and I was this famous person and nobody called me Jermaine, they called me by Baby J. That's what my parents called me when I was a kid. I think I would have a problem with that. But Pocahontas is what sticks, so we call her by her childhood nickname. At any rate the Mattaponi history relates that Pocahontas was given a dream vision in 1603. They say that she sees ships with white sails, the villages of her peoples vanishing, piles of rugged bones and strange bearded white men come ashore from the ocean.

One thing I think many indigenous people have in common is the dream vision. This belief in the ability to tap into the unconscious and foresee future events. And I was once looking through an old encyclopedia article, this was published way back in 1907 in a book titled The Handbook of American Indians. It says, "the general belief concerning dreams and visions seems to have been that mental images seen with closed eyes, were not fancies, but actual glimpses of the unseen world. Or dwelt the generic types of all things and where all the events that were to take place in the visible world were determined and prefigured." So this encyclopedia is saying that when an indigenous culture who believes in the dream vision and relates that as part of their being, they close their eyes and they see a thing.

This is a premonition of something that may or may not happen in the real world. They don't disconnect the two. And I think a lot of people will be quick to write off this trust in the supernatural and the unseen. This idea that unseen forces or spiritual forces are at work and guide us and they warn us and they protect us. Until you snap out of it and realize that 2.1 billion Christians believe in the supernatural and the unseen. 1.8 billion Muslims believe in the supernatural and the unseen. As a matter of fact, the larger part of humanity believes in the supernatural and the unseen. So let's not be so quick to write off the dream vision of the indigenous peoples in the Native Americans.

But moving on to 1608 enters Captain John Smith. We're told he's taken captive by the Powhatan tribe. Captain John Smith being that English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, Admiral of New England, and author that you've heard so much about in the story. He's the one depicted in the movie as being saved by Pocahontas and they fall in love. He's probably the most well-known person in the story aside from Pocahontas herself. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, but I'm not going to spend much time on him because his accounts are so well-known. But a lot of times they're largely refuted as arrogant embellishments of the truth.

Embellishments of his encounters with the Powhatan. Pocahontas then becomes a translator, exchanging the English and Algonquin languages and she meets Smith as a kid. Powhatan builds a trusting relationship with Smith and offers him the title of werowance or Chief of the English within the Powhatan nation. At this point it seems that Powhatans still looked at the English as possible allies. And he still looked at them as subordinates and why not? Because to him they couldn't even feed themselves. They hadn't proven themselves. They were starving. Can we really blame him for looking at them as people who didn't pose much of a threat? So as a further act of peace, he offers Smith and the English a more habitable place to live within the Powhatan nation than on Jamestown Island.

And they start sending them food and resources at regular intervals. And this is where we really see that the Powhatan saved the English experiment, thus saving the American experiment. Colonist George Percy writes, "our men were destroyed with cruel diseases, but for the most part, they died of mere famine. Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distress. It please God after a while to send the Virginia Indians, which were our mortal enemies, to relieve us with bread, corn, fish and flesh in great plenty, which was the setting up of our weak and starving men otherwise we had all perished. Also we were frequented by many kings in the country bringing the supplies to our great comfort."

So here's where Pocahontas really comes into the picture in a big way. There are firsthand accounts that described her as about 12 years old here, and they say she used to come and play and do cartwheels at the fort. Once she attended a diplomatic venture to the fort accompanied by her guide named Rawhun, where they negotiated the release of some prisoners and you can look at the relations between the settlers and the natives like an ocean tide at this point, ebbing and flowing back and forth. Sometimes giving, sometimes taking. The settlers push in a little bit sometimes and they're pushed back by the gravity of the Native Americans, but eventually the settlers will grow stronger in weapons and resources as more people start to come in from England.

They also grow audacity and they begin to start pounding at the Native American surfer shoreline, literally covering more and more land. This is how they advance and this is how they spread and this is how they start taking over the land of the Powhatan and the other Native American tribes. So with all this, in 1610 Pocahontas married a man named Kocoum and life kind of goes on in many regards. The oral history tells Pocahontas of marrying this tribal warrior and this fact I thought that was curiously left out of the popular narrative. It's corroborated in the English sources and William Strachey, a secretary of Jamestown, listed him as among the favorites of Powhatan so you definitely have different sources talking about this marriage.

Why isn't this included in the popular narrative? Is it by accident or is it a sort of lying by omission? In the popular story the only way Pocahontas is humanized is through the so-called positive relations with the Europeans and not through her pain. Excuse me for thinking this is purposeful. An example of history being not used, but abused. And it is here that Pocahontas gives birth to her first son. We don't know his name. It's lost to history but most never fathom Pocahontas had a first son at all. This adds a level of depth and tragedy to her story. Now think about this. Pocahontas was a person with a life and a family outside of contact with colonists.

She had a life separate from them that we don't even get told about. She had a life and family outside of contact with colonists. A family and a life she would soon be forced from. If this were one of the movies that were made, how would that change things? Now the English were still bent on expansion and were putting up stubborn resistance to the Powhatan and the other tribes on the fringes of the empire, slowly pushing further in. With the combination of trade and diplomacy and persistent military campaigns they pushed forward. Then the unthinkable happened. After a skirmish, they killed some women and children and Powhatan then declares all out war.

All assistance stops. This is called the first Anglo-Powhatan war. Yet one might wonder why does Powhatan never launch a large scale military campaign against Jamestown and try to crush it? Like amass all of his forces, 1,500, ultimately just crush Jamestown? And it makes me wonder if Powhatan took this category five hurricane level threat that was the Europeans like a thunderstorm. When you prepare for a thunderstorm, you're preparing for a bother and for inconvenience but not the real catastrophic threat that you would for a category five hurricane.

This was a catastrophic threat to the Powhatan way of life and culture. But I wonder if he could have amassed a great army to go on the offensive. Had he done so, could this have rippled through America for a grand Native American resistance? We'll never know. But at this point Powhatan was getting old and it is said that he "delighted in security and pleasure." Doesn't seem like the innovative warrior state of mind needed to stand a chance against a European threat. So Powhatan was not the leader to do it. And if he was, we have to wonder if he was even capable of doing it.

At this point in the story enters a Captain named Samuel Argall. He's a recent arrival to Jamestown and he'd heard about Pocahontas. And then he hashes a diabolical plot to take her as a hostage, to kidnap her. After he hears of the Anglo-Powhatan war he reasoned that he could use her to checkmate the tribe into English demands. And in this act of betrayal to Powhatan one of his subordinate tribes assists in the capture of her. We see this over and over again. I always see this in warfare. The seeds of dissent are sown amongst two different tribes or two different factions. So the dominant power will pit two different factions who may have had a loose alliance against each other.

Religious studies professor Charles Lippy puts it this way, "everywhere European settled was encroachment on tribal lands. For much a tribal culture was intimately linked to the land. So every movement of tribal people from ancestral lands whittled away at the integrity of tribal society with its deep religious dimension. As Europeans sought alliances with tribal people, with their own contest for a colonial empire, those alliances also undermine the fabric of Native life. These arrangements not only pitted the tribe against tribe but lured the Natives into thinking the colonial power they favored would assure their survival of tribal life."

So even though Powhatan was over many tribes, the central government was not strong enough to withstand the undercutting tactics and maneuvers of the English. And we can only imagine a young Pocahontas, now 17 at this point, full of fear and full of tragic depression. Kidnapped and now a prisoner of war. Not knowing what would happen to her. Devastated by immense loss. Her husband, her son, her tribe, her father. The Mattaponi history makes no mistake about her depression state and they also tell us of some other grim realities of physical and psychological despair.

We cannot hide from the fact that sexual violence was entrenched in a European colonists behavior. The history states she was also raped. And this was followed by religious indoctrination and forced assimilation. All, again, deeply tied to European colonization. Maybe this is why the real story of Pocahontas isn't told because real stories are often painful. This history shows Pocahontas is a real life example of the inhumanity deep within the beginning of the American empire.

And then next the English accounts report that her and the settler named John Rolfe fell in love. But I wondered how exactly can a prisoner fall in love with their captor? Pocahontas' anglicization was complete in 1613. Now imagine this for a moment. You're wrenched away from your family, your religion, your political systems, your core beliefs, customs, and culture. You have to give up all these things that make you distinctively you. Even your birthday, your family, your music, your favorite songs that you like to listen to, your clothes, your way of speaking, and even your birth name. Again, this is exactly what happened to Pocahontas and thousands of other Native Americans in this process called anglicization.

The process of taking and remaking something just a little bit more European. And Pocahontas, she's given the English identity and this English name, renamed Lady Rebecca. And it's very hard not to think of Pocahontas' life as a series of catastrophes. The catastrophe of her culture and way of life. The catastrophe of her loved ones killed. The catastrophe of her womanhood under male domination. The catastrophe of her family. It goes on and on and on.

And again, in 1614, she marries John Rolfe and this is often packaged as a good thing, but he was under financial pressure. He was also twice her age. And again, he was part of her group of captors. How much in love could they have been? A strong theory is that Rolfe acted to assure the British crown that relations were positive between the Powhatan and the Jamestown colony. The crown wouldn't really support a risky investment so he hoped that marriage would get him the support he needed for his new tobacco enterprise. Follow the money. The English story portrays Pocahontas and Rolfe marrying in this love, this state of bliss.

But I find this unlikely. And again, if true, it's disturbing. A case of a victim coming to sympathize with her captor. What is portrayed as love would have been survival, would have been a survival instinct, a sort of Stockholm syndrome on the count of Pocahontas. A prisoner cannot fall in love with a warden, can they? Now this marriage does cause an uneasy peace though. Yet it isn't an easier or a romantic peace. It's kind of like the peace two nations have when they have a nuclear warhead still aimed at one another. Europeans were still expanding. Natives were still raiding. Yet there was also trade and the exchange of some goods and knowledge during this time.

This peace of Pocahontas as it's sometimes called. Some of the Europeans even ran off to live in the native villages, preferring their way of life. You see some English teaching the Natives how to use firearms. The Natives teaching the English how to plant. But this peace wouldn't last. It's a flimsy peace based on a kidnapping, remember? And then partly because the discovery of tobacco was this cash crop filled up the gas tank of greed and the English snapped out of it and realized they were there for an imperialist, capitalistic expansion, not to get buddy buddy with the Native American tribes.

And the English during this time they remind me of the Greek myth of Midas. The Greek myth highlights consequences of excessive greed. King Midas so worshiped gold that when granted a wish by the God Dionysus he asked that every single thing he touched turned to gold. Midas' wish was granted and everything Midas touched did turn to gold. He became very wealthy in fact. But since everything he touched turned to gold there was some unexpected consequences of his greed. The food he loved to taste turned to gold. The people he loved turned to gold. His best friends turned to gold. He couldn't enjoy anything because it all turned to gold.

We learn from the King Midas story that greed is not good. Think about the English lust for gold and stuff ruined what could have been a far better experiment in human relations in history. One that favored the common interest instead of a singular interest. One that favored humanity rather than inhumanity and cooperation instead of war and retaliation. English colonists had the King Midas syndrome. Now in 1615 Pocahontas births a child who is named Thomas Rolfe. The oral tradition makes it a point to say that Thomas Rolfe was born out of wedlock. A birth from her rape and not the blood child of John Rolfe.

Undoubtedly Pocahontas was victimized and she wouldn't have had any recourse or redress. A year later in 1616, Lady Rebecca or Pocahontas as we're calling her, is introduced to the highest society of England. She's taken from Jamestown to England and presented as Lady Rebecca. Oral historians theorized that this was equal parts charade and parade. She was presented as the princess of the great Powhatan, married to Captain John Rolfe and she was presented as this living proof of these excellent diplomatic relations and peace between the two communities. And this would have settled the fears of the crown and appeased them to continue funding the American experiment. In this way, John Rolfe, amassed a tobacco empire.

And then in 1617 Pocahontas dies. The Mattaponi think that Pocahontas was murdered possibly, by Rolfe and other conspirators. She would never return to her American homeland again. Never see her family again. Never participate in her way of life again. She was laid to rest in England, not even on her sacred land. She will forever be known as America's first tragic heroine.