21 March: Pocahontas

Pocahontas. Nobody knows the exact date of her birth or death, but 21 March 1617 was the date of her funeral. Here are some more facts about her:

1. Pocahontas was presented to people in Britain as a princess. That wasn't strictly true. While she was a favourite daughter of a paramount chief, Powhatan, who ruled over a number of chiefdoms, She was not in line to inherit his title as traditionally, the chief's siblings stood to take over after his death.
2. We don't know who her mother was. We do know it was customary for the paramount chief to take many wives from the various villages in his domain. Once they'd given him a child they would be sent home and supported by the chief until they could marry again. Pocahontas's mother would have been one of these. It has been suggested she may have died in childbirth, but no-one actually knows.
3. It was also customary for Native Americans of her lineage to have several names, given at different times and frequently changed. They would also have secret names that only a few people close to them would know. Hence Pocahontas probably wasn't the name given to her at birth. We know Pocahontas had a secret name - Matoaka, meaning "Bright Stream Between the Hills" and was also known as Amonute, a name which has no direct translation. Pocahontas was likely a childhood nickname which meant "little wanton", or "playful one".
4. She is best known for saving the life of a colonist, John Smith, who'd been taken captive by her brothers. Smith was kept captive by Powhatan for some time - he claims he didn't meet Pocahontas until several months later. The motivation for capturing and holding him was probably an attempt by Powhatan to make the English settlement part of his chiefdom. Pocahontas certainly befriended him, and would take food to him when the colonists were starving. It was according to Smith's account that Pocahontas intervened when her father's men were about to beat his brains out. However, Smith also told a tale about being similarly saved by a young girl after he was captured by Turks in Hungary. There was a moral tale known at the time with a Christian hero is threatened by heathens and keeps his faith, and only survives because of the intervention of a young girl; so it's possible he made the story up, or embroidered it, to impress Queen Anne and others so they'd believe he was a good Christian.
5. Later on, a war broke out between the settlers and the Native Americans. The Native Americans had taken prisoners and stolen tools and weapons, so the settlers kidnapped Pocahontas by luring her onto one of their ships. She was held hostage for some time, as her father returned the prisoners but kept the weapons and tools. It is said her captors treated her well. There are rumours that they raped her, but treating her badly would not have helped their negotiations with her father. In the end, when allowed to speak to her father, Pocahontas rebuked him for valuing her less than a pile of old weapons and tools, and told him that she would rather stay with the English who loved her.
6. It is possible that Pocahontas had a husband and daughter when she was captured. According to Native American versions of her story, she was married to a man named Kocoum and had a daughter called Ka-Okee. Kocoum was killed by the English and the child was raised by the tribe.
7. During her captivity, Pocahontas learned English, and became a Christian, whereupon she changed her name again, to Rebecca, after the mother of Jacob and Esau, possibly because she saw herself as "a mother of two nations" like the original Rebecca. She also met John Rolfe, a pious tobacco farmer whose wife had died. He fell in love with her, and after agonising about the possible consequences of marrying a heathen, and eventually justified it as a means of saving her soul. We're not told whether she loved him or not, but they married on 5th April 1614 and their son Thomas was born the following January.
8. One of the goals of the settlers had been to convert Native Americans to Christianity. John Rolfe brought his family to England so that his wife could be shown off as evidence that this was possible. They had just started their journey home again when Pocahontas became ill. She was taken ashore at Gravesend, where she died. She was only about 21 years old. The cause of her death isn't known but theories include pneumonia, smallpox, tuberculosis and poisoning. It's not known exactly where her grave is, but it's thought to be under the chancel of Saint George's, Gravesend, a church which burned down in 1727. There is a statue of her at the current St. George's church.
9. Edith Bolling Galt Wilson (Woodrow Wilson's wife), actor Glenn Strange, astronomer and mathematician Percival Lowell, fashion designer and socialite Pauline de Rothschild, and Nancy Reagan are all thought to be either descendants of Pocahontas or at least her distant cousins.
10. In 1907, Pocahontas became the first Native American to appear on a US stamp. She also has an Asteroid named after her - 4487 Pocahontas.

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