For about a year, Pocahontas was a prisoner of the English. He tricked Pocahontas into visiting his ship and refused to let her leave. Capitol The famous painting of Pocahontas’s baptism leaves out the fact that she was held captive beforehand.Īrgall carried out his plan. Captain Samuel Argall plotted to kidnap Pocahontas and hold her for ransom.
Tragically, Pocahontas became a bargaining chip for the English in the midst of their conflict with the Powhatan. But she was also still known as the chief’s favorite daughter. She had married a warrior named Kocoum - with whom she may have had a child. The once-friendly relationship between the English and the Powhatan had begun to sour when the English demanded more supplies from the Powhatan, even during droughts that left the nation vulnerable.īy 1613, Pocahontas was a wife. Instead, it was her kidnapping - which was done by Smith’s fellow colonists. The major event of Pocahontas’s life was not saving John Smith. The Kidnapping And Captivity Of Pocahontas In 1609, Smith returned to England for medical care - but Pocahontas and her family were told by the settlers that he was dead. And after that day, Chief Powhatan referred to Smith as his son.Īs for the relationship between Pocahontas and Smith, evidence shows that the chief’s daughter befriended Smith and brought supplies to the starving Jamestown settlers. A symbolic death and rebirth transformed Smith into a chief. Instead, they performed a tribal ritual to formalize Smith’s place among the Powhatan. Yet the oral traditions passed down by the Powhatan tell a different story.Īccording to the oral history, the Powhatan never tried to execute John Smith. Unknown/Houghton Library An engraving of John Smith from his 1624 book, where he wrote about Pocahontas saving his life. And when he wrote his book, Smith transformed the brief tale into something even more dramatic. Pocahontas only appeared as the heroine of the story years later, when Smith wrote to Queen Anne. In his 1608 account, Smith didn’t meet the chief’s daughter until months after he met other members of the tribal nation. “At the minute of my execution,” Smith wrote in 1616, “ hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine and not only that but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown.”īut even Smith told this story inconsistently. But then, the chief’s brave daughter intervened to save his life at the last moment. In John Smith’s narrative - the story that made Pocahontas famous - the Powhatan tribe captured him and threatened to kill him. However, his stories may have been far from truthful. In fact, Smith’s tales of Pocahontas were the reason why she became famous. In fact, Pocahontas was just 11 years old when she met him.ĭespite the fact that their real relationship differed greatly from the movie, Smith did portray Pocahontas in an extremely favorable light to the English.
Though Smith is portrayed as Pocahontas’s love interest in the famous Disney movie, there’s no evidence of any real-life romance between the two of them. One of these colonists was a man named Captain John Smith. Elmer Boyd Smith/Wikimedia Commons A 1906 depiction of the moment English ships appeared on the horizons of Virginia.īut life for the Powhatan would change forever in 1607 when about 100 English settlers landed in Virginia to establish Jamestown.
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