Following the Branch AGM Christoph Bull told us the non-Disney story of Pocahontas.
Pocahontas was born c1597, a daughter of Wahunsenacawh, otherwise known by his title Powhatan, the paramount chief of the Powhatan people who were Algonquian speaking Native American who lived in and around what became Jamestown in Virginia. Although the name Pocahontas, which means mischievous child, has stuck her formal name was Matoaka
Jamestown, named after the English King James, was founded in 1607 by John Smith, a soldier/explorer who became Colonial Governor of the earliest successful colony in New England although the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts founded by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 is often cited as the earliest. Jamestown was in Virginia; a Confederate state during the American civil war; Plymouth in Massachusetts was in one of the victorious Union states. Hence the reason why the story of Pocahontas and Jamestown was almost lost to history.
John Smith and his associates stole land from the Alonquian peoples and gave it away to the early English settlers who grew mainly tobacco and insufficient food. In 1607 Smith was captured and taken to Powhatan who was about to have him executed when the young Pocahontas threw herself on top of him and thus saved his life. However the only written account of this if from John Smith himself and may have been exaggerated.
It appears that Pocahontas, even as a child, was interested in the white settlers and their ways and often associated with them. In 1613 she was taken hostage aboard a colonial ship and held ransom for the release of white colonial prisoners. Powhatan released the prisoners but Pocahontas remained captive for another year and it was during this time that she converted to Christianity and took the Christian name of Rebecca. On 5th April 1614 Rebecca was married to widower John Rolfe and their son Thomas was born in January 1615.
In 1616 the Rolfes along with several others from the Powhatan tribe sailed for England as guests of the Virginia Company to promote colonisation and investment in Virginia.and Rebecca/Pocahontas was presented as a high born native American. In 1617 the Rolfes set sail from London Virginia but Rebecca became ill, probably from a European infectious disease for which she had no acquired immunity, and the ship made port at Gravesend where Rebecca died and was buried. The burial register of Gravesend St George incorrectly records her as the wife of Thomas; Thomas was her baby son, her husband was John
21 March 1616/1617, 'Rebecca Wroth wyffe of Thomas Wroth gent, a Virginia Lady borne, was buried/ in the Chauncell.
Alas, no-one now knows exactly where she is buried as just ten years later a fire swept through that part of Gravesend destroying the church and more than a hundred houses. A new church was built in 1731.
The terms king and princess were not used by the Alonquian speakers. Those titles were ascribed to Chief Powhatan and his daughter during the Victorian era and promulgated by Disney in the 1990s.
By 1699 the settlement at Jamestown had been abandoned and the Alonquian culture almost wiped out, but archaeology has rediscovered the foundations of the church where john Rolfe and Rebecca were married.
There are many people today who claim descent from Pocahontas through her son Thomas who grew up in England with his Uncle Henry Rolfe but returned to Virginia as an adult. Thomas’s daughter married into the Bolling family who were very prolific. There are many more who are descended from Chief Powhatan who would have had several wives and many children.
There is one further Kentish connection to the Powhatan tribe. The ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan was acquired by John Tradescant the Younger who was born in Meopham in 1608, and is now in the Ashmolian Museum, Oxford.
Report by Brenda Paternoster