Father Patrick O’Malley

Role Plays: Pocahontas, Matoaka, Amonute, Rebecca: Chief Powhatan’s Daughter, John Rolfe's Wife

NOTE: This teaching exercise allows the teacher to employ role playing as a way to engage students in the learning process. Suggestions are included in the sections on “Casting Instructions.” Teachers may designate monologues, two or more student participants, or student to class exchanges. Teachers are also free to depart from these suggestions and use the historical material as they wish to create their own learning strategies.

NAME: Pocahontas
TITLE: Chief Powhatan's Daughter

INFORMATION TO BE SHARED WITH ALL PLAYERS

Pocahontas was the favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan who created an alliance of about 30 Indian tribes in Tidewater Virginia. Countless romantic novels, movies, paintings, sculptures, even songs, have created indomitable legends of her saving John Smith from execution and the beginnings of a romantic relationship. Historians from Henry Adams to the present have debunked these as myths largely created by John Smith himself. Despite what Elvis Presley said in “Fever,” or the most recent version in the Walt Disney animated feature Pocahontas (1995) and the Terrence Malick film The New World (2005), all of which emphasize an unlikely romance between the young girl and Smith, there is no credible evidence of such a relationship. She did meet Smith several times and served Powhatan as an intermediary in his dealings with the colonists. In 1610, she married an Indian named Kocum, but the marriage was invalidated by custom after the English captured her three years later and held her for ransom at Jamestown. She was sent to Fort Henricus (near present day Richmond) where Reverend Alexander Whitaker instructed her in Christianity. After her conversion, she was baptized, named Rebecca, and married John Rolfe on 5 April 1614. Her secret personal Indian name Matoaka was given to her at birth and she was also known by another Indian name as Amonute. Powhatan approved the marriage to Rolfe to end a period of conflict known as the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609-1614). On several occasions, she intervened to aid the colonists, imploring her father to aid them and alerting them to a planned attack on the fort. It may be going too far, as some historians have said, to call her a princess or diplomat, but she was no less valuable in being the eyes and ears of activities and plans inside the fort and in Werowocomoco. In 1616, she along with Rolfe and their one-year old son, Thomas, traveled to London at the request and expense of the Virginia Company of London who saw the visit as a means of encouraging more immigrants to come to Virginia. There she impressed both King James I and the bishop of London and reunited briefly with John Smith who had left the Virginia colony in 1609. Soon after beginning her return voyage to Virginia, she became gravely ill, died at Gravesend in March 1617 and was buried at St. George’s Church. Many elite Virginians have claimed descent from her, causing the “Pocahontas exception” to a Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The Act was passed during a time of heightened racial tensions and sought to declare all Virginians, including Indian descendants, as either colored or white: “except those who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons."

BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE (Bracketed Annotations, hypertext links, and Additions to the Timeline, Encyclopedia of Virginia History)

December 1607 - Late in the month, John Smith is brought before Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco. He later tells of his life being saved by Pocahontas; in fact, Powhatan likely puts Smith through a mock execution in order to adopt him as a weroance, or chief.
Spring 1608 - Pocahontas travels to Jamestown as part of a delegation charged with negotiating the release of several Indian captives. The captives are released to Pocahontas, although an adult male Indian, Rawhunt, performs the actual negotiation.
October 1609 - John Smith leaves Virginia. The Jamestown colony's new leadership is less competent, and the Starving Time follows that winter.
1610 - Sometime this year, Pocahontas begins to menstruate, making her eligible to marry. Soon after, she weds an Indian warrior named Kocoum. [NOTE: William Strachey’s Historie of Travell suggests another woman of the same name, not this Pocahontas, married Kocoum]
[NOTE: August, 1610 – George Percy leads a force of 40 men, guided by a captive Indian, to the town of Paspahegh, seven miles north of James Fort. Angry over the refusal of the tribe to give them corn, they burn the village, destroy the cornfields, and kill most of the men, women, and children. It is likely that Pocahontas, through her father, learned of the atrocity].
December 1610 - Samuel Argall is dispatched by the Virginia authorities to the Potomac River to procure maize and furs there from Iopassus (Japazaws), the weroance of Passapatanzy, a Patawomeck town. [NOTE: Later, in April, Iopassus and his wife engage in a plot to have Pocahontas board Argall’s ship where she is captured and held for ransom].
September 1611 - Sir Thomas Dale marches against Indians farther up the James River from Jamestown and establishes a settlement on a bluff that he calls the City of Henrico, or Henricus, in honor of his patron Prince Henry.
April 1613 - Powhatan's favorite daughter, Pocahontas, is captured and held hostage by the English, bringing a truce in the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The fight goes out of Powhatan, and during his apathy over the next year, his daughter is converted by the English.[NOTE: Powhatan’s unwillingness to respond immediately to set his daughter free but instead dicker over her terms of release likely angered Pocahontas].
April 1613 - Samuel Argall uses his extensive knowledge of the Potomac River–northern Chesapeake area and its Indian population to kidnap Pocahontas while she is with the Patawomeck—an event that ultimately helps to bring the devastating First Anglo-Powhatan War to a conclusion in 1614.
April 5, 1614 - On or about this day, Pocahontas and John Rolfe marry in a ceremony performed by Richard Bucke and assented to by Sir Thomas Dale and Powhatan, who sends one of her uncles to witness the ceremony. Powhatan also rescinds a standing order to attack the English wherever and whenever possible, ending the First Anglo-Powhatan War.
1615 - Ralph Hamor meets Powhatan at his residence in Matchcot in an attempt to arrange a marriage between a younger sister of Pocahontas and Deputy Governor Sir Thomas Dale. Powhatan expresses contempt for Dale and says a single marriage between his people and the English is sufficient guarantee of alliance.
1615–1617 - Sometime during this time, either in Virginia or in England, Thomas Rolfe is born to Rebecca (née Pocahontas) and John Rolfe.
Spring 1616 - The Virginia Company of London sponsors a voyage to England. Led by Sir Thomas Dale, other passengers include Pocahontas, her husband John Rolfe, their son Thomas, a retinue of young Indian women (some of whom will remain in England), and the priest Uttamatomakkin, a brother-in-law of Pocahontas's father Powhatan. Samuel Argall commands the ship.
September 1616 - Pocahontas and her traveling party land in Plymouth, England, and then travel overland to London. Their goal is to raise funds on behalf of the Virginia Company of London.
January 6, 1617 - Pocahontas, accompanied by the priest Uttamatomakkin, attends King James I's Twelfth Night masque, a formal costume ball held every year on the last night of the Christmas season. The two are "well placed" by the king and view The Vision of Delight by Ben Jonson, performed during the ball.
March 1617 - After two months of delay due to bad weather, Pocahontas, her husband John Rolfe, Uttamatomakkin, and the rest of their traveling party embark from England on the Virginia-boundGeorge. Pocahontas soon takes ill, however, and is taken ashore at Gravesend, where she dies.
March 21, 1617 - Pocahontas is interred under the chancel of St. George's Church in Gravesend, England.
1624 - John Smith's The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, which emphasizes treacherous natives, a heroic Smith, and the one "good" Indian, "Princess Pocahontas," is published. Historians have since questioned its reliability.
1635 - After remaining in England upon the death of his mother, Pocahontas, Thomas Rolfe sails for Virginia.
1727 - St. George's Church in Gravesend, England, burns and the bones of Pocahontas are reinterred in a mass grave in the churchyard.
1920s - Attempts to identify Pocahontas's bones from a mass grave at Gravesend, England, are unsuccessful.
March 20, 1924 - The General Assembly passes "An act to Preserve Racial Integrity," a law aimed at protecting whiteness on the state level. It prohibits interracial marriage, defines a white person as someone who has no discernible nonwhite ancestry, and requires that birth and marriage certificates indicate people's races.

PERSONALITY

Pocahontas nature can only be surmised from her reactions to events going on around her together with a few scattered comments in English records. Her first encounter with the English, as an eleven-year old, revealed her to be playful -- fascinated by the sight of strangely dressed men with unfamiliar habits-- who frolicked with the boys in James Fort. Of course, her behavior and attitude mature over time, especially the more she saw and got to know the English as dishonest and at times cruel invaders. The most intriguing, elusive, and underappreciated figures in the history of Atlantic World colonization are those individuals we might designate as Algonquian brokers. These were men and women who served as the interface between two worlds. At times suspected by both and usually trusted by neither, they served in a variety of capacities. Liminals could speak English (or Spanish or French), were familiar with the ways of the invaders, understood how to deal with fellow Algonquians, and were thoroughly familiar with local geography. They were usually forced into the brokerage role. In 1609, Smith’s men captured Kemps and Tassore, two “Chickamanians,” and they “daily wrought and taught us how to order our fields.” Sometimes brokers were exchanged. Examples of this type are Namontack who traveled with Christopher Newport back to England in 1608. Thomas Savage, an English boy, was left with Powhatan in exchange for Namontack. Uttamatommakin (also known as Tomocomo or Tomakin) went with Pocahontas to England in 1616 and 1617 as Powhatan’s envoy and “reporter.” The most famous liminal at Jamestown, Pocahontas was abducted, sent to the English fort near Richmond where Rev. Alexander Whitaker instructed her in Christianity. Later, she was baptized in a public ceremony and grew into the brokerage role, as she moved from playing innocent games with English boys as a child and morphed as an adult into the most effective and influential broker in the Virginia colony. Her time spent with Reverend Whitaker and marriage to John Rolfe made her more familiar with English language, religion, and culture. Powhatan forced her into the role of negotiator and diplomat, but she seems to have acted on her own persuasion and understanding. She comes across as a strong and independent woman. The Simon van de Passe portrait reveals, beneath the English dress and royal fashion, the gaze of a strong, self-confident woman. Variously, she saved the boy Henry Spelman when the Indians attacked, on her own volition warned the Jamestown colony of an impending attack which had Powhatan known he would have “surely slaine her,” and married John Rolfe, not because she was forced to but because she loved him. Some historians have challenged her monikers as a “princess” and “diplomat.” What comes through in most accounts, according to one historian, was that she was “energetic and fun-loving, open and interested, adventuresome and smart.” (Camilla Townsend) She even managed to convince Rolfe that the Indians had a just and lawful title to their lands. These actions do not support a blank slate persona. They do support the role she played in helping the English survive and build a nation.

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION AND CASTING INSTRUCTIONS

Let’s pretend that a teacher has given a student an assignment to find images, movie trailers, sculptures, music, or anything that depicts Pocahontas. The role-playing will then involve a dialogue between what this student has found and what you, as Pocahontas know about the real figure. In this myth and reality exchange, you should stress the following:

the only known likeness of her taken during her lifetime is the Simon van de Passe portrait
Choose a John White watercolor of an Algonquian woman to point out what Pocahontas might have looked like in native dress.
John Smith’s claim of being saved by Pocahontas cannot be verified. Instead, evidence points to the incident as an attempt by Powhatan to incorporate the English into his paramount chiefdom. Here is the exchange where Powhatan makes the promise.
The real love affair was between John Rolfe and Pocahontas. Here is Rolfe’s letter explaining why he wanted to marry Pocahontas.
The reasons historians doubt John Smith’s account of Pocahontas rescue are his failure to mention it in his early writings and not until 1624; his habit of claiming to be saved by beautiful women on four separate occasions; his frequent absences from Jamestown with little time to build a romantic relationship; quite simply because there is no evidence to validate the claim.
Emphasize the contributions of Pocahontas to the survival of the colony, such as her warnings about potential attacks, her language and diplomatic skills, her appeals to Powhatan to supply corn to the starving settlers
Her marriage to John Rolfe, the birth of their child Thomas, and life together for a couple of years as a family.
Finally, you might point out how the false images appeal to popular culture and its needs at certain historical moments.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

www.virtualjamestown.org

Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2004)

Encyclopedia of Virginia History

Historic Jamestowne

Wiki

Pocahontas images; Terrence Malick’s, The New World; Disney, Pocahontas