Everything changed while they were at Orapax, Powhatan’s new capital. Thomas Savage moved with the Powhatans, and was soon joined by another boy, 14-year-old Henry Spelman. Powhatan moved his capital farther west to a location much harder for the English to reach, and Pocahontas quit visiting the fort. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Smith tried to reward her with “such things as she delighted in,” but with “tears running down her cheeks,” she said if she were seen with English presents, “she were but dead.” We can’t know if she was again acting on her father’s instructions or if she did indeed risk her life to warn them. But in the middle of the night, as the English slept, Pocahontas, Powhatan’s “dearest jewel and daughter, in that dark night came through the irksome woods” to warn Smith of a plot to kill them. At the beginning of 1609, Smith led a party to visit Powhatan, and things seemed to be going well. Virginia was deep in the worst drought in 770 years, and food was scarce. Pocahontas was there to help Thomas adjust to his new life.īut soon the Englishmen’s constant demands for food became too much. Such exchanges were common in relationships in the region the boys could learn the other side’s language and customs and serve as go-betweens in the future. During this early period, when Powhatan was getting tools and weapons from the colony in exchange for badly needed food, colonial leaders presented Powhatan with a newly-arrived boy, 13-year-old Thomas Savage, and Powhatan gave a young man named Namontack in return. Her real name, Matoaka, had been concealed for fear the English could do her harm if they knew it. The English learned, many years later, that Pocahontas was only a nickname. She never just wandered in - she always came with a group of Powhatan’s envoys, and her presence signaled that they came in peace. The interesting thing is that Powhatan had chosen Pocahontas, a girl of 10, to do this.Īfter this episode, she began visiting Jamestown. Afterward, Powhatan called Smith his son. In his 1624 Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, Smith wrote that she risked her own life to save his, but modern scholars think she was probably playing a scripted role in some kind of adoption ceremony. Suddenly Pocahontas intervened and put her head on his. He was brought before the Great Powhatan, where he encountered men with clubs ready, he thought, to beat out his brains. Smith first met Pocahontas when he was captured a few weeks after the first colonists’ arrival in the area. Captain John Smith said her “wit, and spirit” made her stand out. She was the daughter of the Great Powhatan, who ruled over numerous client tribes in the Chesapeake, the region the Powhatans called Tsenacomaca, and he selected her for a special role because of her intelligence and personality. Pocahontas was an extremely talented and lively 10-year-old girl when Jamestown was founded in 1607.
We all think we know Pocahontas, but her real story is very different from the popular image.