Long Hair and a Fringed Dress

About this drawing

A Pocahontas portrait calls to mind a real young woman whose life is often swapped for a romantic myth. She was born around 1596 in what is now Virginia, a daughter of Wahunsenacawh, the paramount chief of the Powhatan people. Her names were Amonute and Matoaka, and Pocahontas was a childhood nickname that likely meant something like playful one.

English colonists arrived and founded Jamestown in 1607, when she was about eleven. Captain John Smith later claimed she saved his life by throwing herself over him before an execution. Many historians are skeptical, partly because Smith told the story years later and Native accounts tell it differently. A love affair between them is pure fiction, since she was still a child.

The real events are harder. In 1613, colonists kidnapped her to bargain with her father. While held captive, she converted to Christianity and took the name Rebecca, and in 1614 she married tobacco planter John Rolfe. They had a son named Thomas, and the marriage brought a few years of peace.

In 1616, the Virginia Company took the family to England to promote the colony. She fell ill as the ship set off for home and died at Gravesend in 1617, at about twenty-one. The Pamunkey, Mattaponi and other Virginia tribes are still here today, and their oral histories remind us she was a person long before she was a legend.

• american history
• native american history
• virginia
• historical figures