Pocahontas Is Captured

Pocahontas was a daughter of Wahunsenacawh, the paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy, and as a girl she became the most famous Native American of the colonial era through her contact with the struggling settlers at Jamestown. The popular story of her saving Captain John Smith from execution in 1607—whether ritual, misunderstanding, or later embellishment—made her a legend, but her real importance lay in the role she played as an intermediary between two peoples warily circling one another.

In 1613, during a period of open warfare, the English lured Pocahontas aboard a ship and held her hostage to force concessions from her father. During her captivity she converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca, and in 1614 married the planter John Rolfe—a union that brought several years of fragile peace between the Powhatan and the colonists. In 1616 she traveled to England, where she was presented at court as a symbol of the colony's promise. She fell ill as she prepared to return home and died at Gravesend in 1617, still only in her early twenties.