Pocahontas (Part 2) & John Rolfe

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, Hello, welcome back to the show. Oh I'm
so stuffed from all the giving so much. Thanks. Um.
What what are you grateful for this year? Oh? That's nice? Um, well,
I mean obviously this show. I mean say, this is
life changing. All are amazing fans that have been uh

(00:24):
so dedicated to keeping in touch with us and and
sharing our episodes and and giving us amazing feedback and suggestions.
I mean, not not to sound cheesy, but I am
genuinely very grateful for this show in the community around it. Yeah, yeah,
I agree. It's it's both gratifying and flattering when people
are like, first of all, I'm listening to your show,

(00:44):
which just like that, right, and then to be like
and I'm engaging with it in a variety of ways.
It's like wise that is truly awesome. Yeah, I'm very
grateful for that as well. Yes, I'm very grateful to
be vaccinated, able to like go out again. Curiously, do
stuff feel a little less weird about it? And uh yeah,

(01:08):
I don't know. I'm grateful for normal ship too. Just
we have a house we can't afford and sure not
out in the cold. All very important things to be
grateful for. I mean, especially with these episodes, as we're
talking about some intense privations and so this these this
history has definitely made me very grateful for having multiple

(01:30):
hoodies and cantry full of food. I mean, it's a
it's a weird time to be alive, but well it
could be a lot worse. There were weirder times. Yeah,
for sure. I hope everybody had some tasty food and
some great friends and family that they were around, or
did your thing and said screw it, I don't like

(01:52):
Thanksgiving and I'm I'm taking this day to myself. That's
awesome too. Or if you had a contentious Thanksgiving with
some family members, I hope you one the fights. Yeah,
I hope everyone had time to reflect on their you know,
many things to be grateful for. And uh, I hope
that you spent most of the dinner telling all your relatives,

(02:14):
your neighbors, your uncles and aunts. I know you saw
about ridiculous romance and are and Are part one Pocahontas
story about Pocahontas and John Smith and got them all
excited for part two, which we're going to do down.
I kind of hope, especially that you quoted all the
gross things that the colonists ate during the starving time
while you were seating, seating yourselves for your delicious meal,

(02:37):
like this one guy ate his own pregnant wife past
the gravy. Oh time makes it funny, right or something
like that. Sometimes distance plus time equals jokes. So I
think that's the math too soon. I didn't take I
didn't take a lot of math classes, to be fair.
What's it? I think mel Brooks said. Tragedy is me

(03:01):
cutting my finger? Comedy is you falling down an open sewer? Great? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which is hilarious. That's hilarious. So true. Well, I'll tell
you what isn't true. Story about Pocahonis and John Smith
getting it on at some point in the sixts that

(03:23):
never happened. Okay, And in part one of our Pocahonists
two parter, we debunked that popular myth about her being
in love with John Smith and saving his life and
all that crap. In actuality, pocahont was just a child.
She only met John Smith a few times at most,
and it's not certain that his life was ever in
danger from the Powhattan tribes in the first place. But

(03:46):
the story doesn't end there. Pokeahon Is marries twice, once
to a fellow native coco Um and once to the
colonists John Rolf. So what happened to Cocoa? How come
John Rolph isn't part of the myth of Pocahonis. I mean,
what actually happened here? Let's find out. Yeah, let's go,
Hey their French come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got

(04:07):
some stories to tell. There's no match making, a romantic tips.
It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be
any type of person at all, and abstract cons at
are a concrete ball. But if there's a story where
the second glance ridiculous roles a production of I Heart Radio. Okay,

(04:27):
So remember we mentioned in part one, but just to
reiterate that where we got this story came from a
variety of sources um and pretty much the only indigenous
source out there that we can find from the native people,
uh is a book called The True Story of Pocahontas,
The Other Side of History, and that was by Dr
Lynwood Little Bear Coustallo and Angela L. Daniel silver Star UM.

(04:52):
And this story is an oral tradition passed down from
Pocahonta's own relatives. Um. So it is a skewed and
disputed version of the story. Um. But when you're weighing
it against what the English wrote down at the time,
you realize that kind of both of them have told
their own versions. Yeah. Um, and you've got to kind

(05:14):
of give a lot of credit to the people who
are actually going through this. Yeah. Yeah. It just feels
wrong to be like, oh, well, since it doesn't match
the written records, will say it's a lie when who
wrote down the written record? The guys are trying to
make themselves look good and and and the oral history

(05:35):
like fills in a lot of holes at times too,
and answers questions that the that the English version doesn't,
So that they're both uh you know, historically valuable takes um.
Both worthy of a grain of salt um, but both
very necessary I think, to to tell this story properly.
Yeah yeah, And when we you know, as we try to,

(05:56):
we will make sure to tell you when the story
is super different, urgent and you know, expressed both sides
of it and you can talk it out. It's kind
of our favorite part. So when last we left the colonists,
George Percy's ship leadership had whittled them down from five
hundred settlers to only sixty. Unbelievable in less than a year. Two.

(06:20):
I mean, this guy sucked. And one day a supply
ship that had been stuck in Bermuda for ten months
finally arrived in Virginia. On board was a man named
John Rolfe, who was determined to get into the tobacco industry.
I guess back then it was I don't know, it's
so weird to read about tobacco back then, because they were,

(06:41):
like some people really thought it was a medicinal, had
a lot of medicinal properties. And this one guy who
wrote a lot about how it it's like fixed every
problem eventually died of nose cancer. Anyway, it's just really
fascinating to see what people were. Kind of how people
viewed tobacco at this time. That sounds a lot like
how we view marijuana now. I hope it doesn't meet

(07:03):
the same fate. It's almost like we should legalize it
so they can be studied for real. But anyway, if
only John rolf had boarded the ship the Sea Venture
in England carrying precious tobacco seeds from Trinidad, and no
one knows how he got his hands on him, because
at the time Spain had a monopoly on the tobacco

(07:24):
industry and they had made it punishable by death to
sell tobacco seeds to anyone but Spanish people. So speculation station.
I'd love to see John Rolf like walking up to
with someone in Trinidad being like, um when when its
tall days, Mi amigoes Um, I am definitely Spanish from Spain.

(07:47):
How do you any tobacco seeds? Poor favoury grassy saw
that smashing if you had any lying about um, just
take him off your hands. But people in Trinidad like,
well he I don't know, he said me, Ami goes
that sounds right, and they're like he's white, they're white. Whatever?

(08:07):
Giving me money here yea. But this ship, the Sea Venture,
had been shipwrecked in Bermuda, and for ten months the
settlers scraped by on the islands as they broke up
their leaky as big ship to make two smaller ones
to carry them the rest of the way to Virginia.

(08:28):
Some of these settlers, however, had died, maybe from harsh
tropical conditions or from low supplies for various other reasons,
and two of the people who tragically died here were
John Rolf's wife, Sarah and their infant daughter. So when
Rolf arrived in the New World, he was a widower.
There's this guy on board who was named Lord de Loire,

(08:51):
and he, by the way, is the guy they named
Delaware after Lord Delaware. That's true, um, and he was
there to be the new president of the Colony of Virginia.
As we mentioned in part one, when these ships arrived,
there were sixty crazed, half starved colonists running around in
this rundown fort, and Lord de Laire was like, uh no,

(09:15):
absolutely not, We're going back to England. Goodbye to this mass.
I imagine he's like Donald Glover in that meme from
Community where he walks in and everything's on fire and
people are running around screaming and the pizzas like never mind.
So they had back on the ship, but all of
a sudden, this new ship showed up with a hundred

(09:37):
and fifty extra settlers and a year's worth of provisions.
So Delaware is like, never mind, all ashore, who's going ashore?
And by the way, everyone's going ashore, So let's get
back to it. We're gonna give this the old College try.
And I think this is like round four of them
trying to make this work. Yeah, many rounds have happened,

(09:58):
English or nothing, if not Persist didn't. It's amazing. I
mean hearing their story in part one about how bad
they were, especially had John Smith not shown up and
saved their asses. That I can't believe the English did anything,
let alone were the largest empire in the world around
this time. It's shocking. And they literally like persistence win surprised.

(10:18):
If you can throw enough bodies at any situation, is
true theodies, and they have a lot of bodies. But
I mean, god, it's like we can't handle intense sunlight,
and we took over like half the equator. Uh, we
can't handle any diseases, and we would going to all
new places getting sick and dying left and right. We
don't know how to far we're bringing perfumers into farm.

(10:40):
It's incredible that they were able to do this horrible
and horrible. Yes, and Lord de la Wire had brought
a change of policy with him as well, because we
mentioned in Part one that the Virginia Company had sent
all these settlers with a pretty strong like don't offend

(11:00):
the natives sort of idea. Like they were like, whatever
you can do to avoid a skirmish with them, please do.
But at this point, the angle of p how hot
and war had broke out. Violence between the natives and
the settlers was escalating, and the Virginia Company was sick
of all this chaos. It was really making them look
bad around the drawing rooms of London. I mean actually that. Yeah,

(11:22):
the British did not like hearing about natives being badly
treated by there. It made him look bad, it really did.
They were like, we don't want to hear about that.
It's quiet. It's quiet if I hear about our behavior.
I wanted to be all above board and honorable. And plus,
they were in the New World to make money. Damn it,
shouldn't we make some fine al We've been spending and

(11:46):
supplying and spending and supplying, and all we get our
dead bodies. So they decided that now it was a
okay with them to let Laura de Laire ruthlessly suppressed
by whatever means he saw necessary, any internal descent or
external threats, and that meant life got a lot more

(12:06):
brutal for the colonists and the tribes. So wait, so
the Virginia Company was like, first we said, don't treat
the native people badly, and you did, and that made
us look bad. So what we're going to change is
we're not going to say don't treat them badly anymore.
That way, that's unbelievable. Again, the decision making is a

(12:27):
real question mark for me. I don't understand how any
of these folks, for me, really fixing the wrong problem here.
And like, life was already so brutal for the colonists,
particularly already they were already in fighting, they're already starving,
they're already diseased. I mean, they already had so many problems,
and then they were just like creating more within themselves.

(12:47):
So it's really weird. Within Jamestown, martial law was introduced.
De l o. Wire would whip colonists for any infraction
like missing church Heaven forbid, literally yeah right. A second
defense of blasphemy was punished by having a lancet thrust
through the tongue. O good lord, you know, and these

(13:11):
are the guys that are calling everyone else savages, you know,
just like colonists who deserted or who rubbed the storehouse
were hanged, burned, broken upon wheels, and bound to trees
until they starved. Even stealing flowers from another colonist garden
became a capital offense. And again, I mean, like we're saying,

(13:33):
it just seems so weird to be like, okay, you
know what, too many people are dying. Let's make everything
an offense where you get executed. Like everything you do
you could get killed for it. That that'll fix it.
Oh my god. And of course they were even crueler
to the native tribes. They had previously engaged in skirmishes
with these tribes, of course, but usually on both sides.

(13:54):
They would they had their rules, you know, they would
leave the women and children alone. Or they often took
prisoners rather than brutalizing and killing everyone. Prisoners were more
valuable than corpses after all, right, Yeah, you can trade
them for things. Their negotiation and you know, negotiating tactics
or whatever. I mean. I remember in part one we
talked about the prisoners taught them how to farm and

(14:14):
and yeah, and they wouldn't negotiate, you know, they had
some So then Powhatan was like, here, I'll give you
some ship if you give me the guys back, and
vice versa. They were really was more valuable to not
kill someone than it was to kill them. But now
the English were done with all that, they attacked a
neighboring tribe and they killed everyone there, and they burned
down their houses and their crops. George Percy, who was

(14:37):
in charge of this raid, tried to spare the queen
and her children by taking them prisoner, but Lord de
Laire was like, no, the only good native is a
dead native. Percy wrote that they threw the children into
the river and then blew their brains out, just charming
way to put it. But when he was ordered to
burn the queen alive, Percy stood his ground. He said, new,

(15:01):
I will not do that. I have seen enough floodshed
for today. So instead he had some of his men
take her to the woods and kill her with swords. Yeah,
he's like I said, I've seen enough floodshed for today.
But someone else can see it. These chaps haven't seen enough.
Let them see a little, them, see a little George

(15:24):
Percy Villain of the week, except Dolore is worse. So
it's like, I guess England is the villain of the
week in this story. You know, it's I gotta say
we we I don't know how it is over in
the UK, and maybe some of y'all can enlighten me,
but we of course have a lot of uh, we

(15:47):
have a lot of discussion and conversation and and you know,
a certain degree of guilt about how American colonists treated
the indigenous people when they came here. Do y'all talk
about that in England? Because that was you you know,
I don't know if that's something. I mean, obviously we
are the descendants of those direct people, but England has

(16:09):
the descendants of all the people who were ordering it
mostly to happen. So were you all talking about that?
And who profited off of all that land being and everything.
I'll go ahead and start an international incident here. Maybe
England owes some reparations to the native tribes of America.
Anybody ever suggests that, because honestly, in England owes some reparations,

(16:31):
I think, you know, you want to get on that list,
you'll be in at the bottom of a very long list.
Maybe that's why England like backed off the Empire thing,
and they're like, oh, now, we're a real small country. Sorry,
we can't pay anybody back everything we took. But look
at these beautiful jewels the queen is wearing. Oh, by

(16:52):
the way, we still have all your stuff in our museum.
We're not going to give it away anyway. I'm just
saying it's I mean, it's a very good point. I
I kind of thought that too, because you know, you're
you're studying colonial America. It's Native Americans and it's English.
There's no Americans as we know them. Yeah, as we
are yet Americans pretty soon, but like actual United States

(17:15):
of America citizens treated a whole other class of people horribly,
like monsters and the natives, and the natives can't discount
that pretty much. Everyone do continue to have our anyway. Yeah,
but we I guess you could say that we started
as we meant to go on was pretty horrible. Yeah,

(17:36):
and then we went on with it. So yeah, hey,
there's some great things. There's Yeah, we got this is
a comedy show, you're right, so moving I think of
something funny and we'll move on. So yeah, okay, Because

(17:58):
Delaware showed up at this clear change and how they
were going to be behaving toward the natives. The tribes
were all being way more cautious around the English, especially Pocahonas.
Rumors persisted that the English were hoping to kidnap her
and keep her hostage because they knew how much pow
Hotton cared about her, so they were like, this might

(18:19):
be our linchpin of our victory. Basically, she would be
a very valuable hostage. So when Poconas came of age
in sixteen ten, her ceremony was much quieter than it
normally would have been. If there had not been in
English around, she would have had a bigger kincanera, you fox.
This ceremony, called a huskan off for boys and a

(18:41):
huskana squaw for girls, happened once kids hit puberty, so
anywhere from twelve to fourteen, and it was a signal
that they were grown now and ready for courtship and marriage.
And since pocahonas mother was dead, her older sister Matta
Chana oversaw the ceremony. The boys rituals seemed to be

(19:02):
much more intense and elaborate than the women's. They had
to like run a gauntlet, They had to lay like
they were dead while everyone else feasted around them, and right,
because it's after they run the gauntlet, so they're already hungry,
and then they're like probably smelling all this good food,
and everybody's laughing and chilling, and they're like laying like corpses.

(19:22):
The people were patient, they were used to it. And
then also the boys would go live in the woods
for nine months with some elders, and so then when
they came back, there was this big gap between the
boy that left and the man who came home. So
now he's seen as a warrior, you know, he's a
man now. And also their allegiance had changed from family

(19:45):
to the whole tribe um. So it was a really
non symbolic way, I guess, of of just showing again
that that gap of like this a boy left and
here comes a man, you know, and he had nine
months to prove that he could live in the it's
to deal with some crazy shit. For women, I can
find very little of the process. I'm just I'm assuming,

(20:07):
you know, they mostly talked about like what Pocahonat wore
and stuff like that, so I'm kind of assuming that
it was mostly about looking cute, and then they would
do some ritual dancing and feasting and praying that kind
of thing. Um less of a gauntlet, less of running
off for a nine month not not as much of
that going on. Yeah, their life is going to be
a gauntlet there. They're curing the meat and weaving the

(20:29):
rugs and building the fires and building the houses. Like
you're nine months of childbirth comes later, They're nine months
comes first. But they did also have a ritual name change,
So they had their childhood name and then they had
their name as a woman, and they got to choose
that name. And this is when pocahont chose the name
Poconti is for herself, after her mother, which was what

(20:50):
her father had already called her, you know, because he
loved her mother so much, so she already had some
attachment at that name. For sure. I'm sure they were
not surprised when she was like, let's just go ahead
make an official. Yeah. Now, after this ceremony, the oral
history this book states quote, there was a big pow
wow held in celebration and thanks Giving. Hey, Thanksgiving, everybody.

(21:13):
I knew there's a tie in somewhere. So one of
the big moments of this pow wow is the courtship
dance that allowed single male warriors to search for a mate,
and our girl, Pocahonas was approached by a warrior named Cocoum.
The other side of History says that quote. The fact
he was not a chief and thus not high in status,

(21:35):
suggests that Pocahontas may have married for love. But pow Hatton,
her dad, the head Hancho here, was also into this pairing.
He was like, yes, good choice. I like this. I'm standing.
I'm shipping Pocahonas and coco Um here. We stand because

(21:56):
first of all, Cocoum was the brother of one of
Potton's close ist friends, chief Japazaw. So you can imagine
you can imagine, uh how hot and and Japazaw like
trying to get the trying to match make right. I believe,
Oh my god, would it be so cute if my

(22:16):
daughter and your brother, Oh my god, they're perfect. Okay,
somebody go tell someone to make sure they sit together
during dinner. Okay, try and make sure they get the
same spaghetti noodle. And then when they do, they're both

(22:37):
like sitting in the corner together, like watching like it happened.
He's looking at her, she's looking at it. Adorable, but
even better than this fact that he was related to
this friend of his, is that it's possible Cocoum was
one of pou Hotton's bodyguard, which consisted of fifty of
the best warriors that all the tribes had to offer.

(22:59):
I remember, they're getting increasingly worried that the colonials would
try to take Pocahona's hostage. So pow Hotton was certainly
glad that she was going to marry someone who could
protect her. One of the best warriors there is, right.
He was like, what if you hadn't picked him, I
probably would have picked this selection of warriors for you.
But they also took the precaution of sending the newlyweds

(23:22):
to live with Kocoum's family and the PoTA Womack tribe
village Passapatanzi, which is also where Chief Japazol lived, and
it was in a remote area. It's kind of like
northern Virginia. There was no English hanging around there yet,
and pow Hotton figured that with both coco Um and
japaz all looking out for her, Pocahonas would be safe

(23:42):
and then he could get on with the pow Hotton
part of the Anglo pow hotten war, right, and for
a while it seems everything was, you know, turning out fine. Well,
let's just stop there and happy ending. They lived happily
ever after the end. Can we just cut it off there, guess,

(24:03):
but it would be a pretty shitty EPI. Um. Yeah.
While she was living with the PoTA Womack, the other
side of history says she gave birth to a son.
Other places say they had a daughter, so I'm not
exactly sure, but anyway, they had a kid and they
were really happy about it, all right, and that's what Matt,
You're right, Let's include that, and then let's cut off

(24:23):
the end of the story happily ever after with either
a son or a daughter who knows? Right. Uh, well,
we're gonna we're gonna take a commercial break, and then
I guess we'll have to come back with the rest
of the story. Stay tuned because it's thrilling. Welcome back

(24:45):
to the show. So when we left off, of course,
Pocahonas had married Cocum and went to go live in
his village where Chief Chapazaw was going to look out
for them, and everything's good. Meanwhile, the war is going
strong the land along the rivers is extremely fertile, having
been well cared for by the Powhattan nation. Hello, take

(25:08):
a lesson English. And the English were doing everything they
could to steal that good agricultural land away. They had
already taken control of the entire James River, and they
were always looking for a way to snatch up Pocahontas
because they figured holding her hostage would be a great
way to end the hostilities but still get whatever they wanted,
so valuable bargaining chip. They knew how much pow Hotton

(25:32):
cared for his daughter, So one day in six Captain
Samuel Argall learned where Pocahontas and her family were hiding out,
and he decided to quote possess myself of her by
any stratagem strut. According to this book The Other Side
of History. He went to Chief Japazaw and threatened to

(25:55):
attack the entire village if he didn't hand over his
sister in Pocahona's Japisa knew that they couldn't hold off
an English attack all by themselves, and they wouldn't have
time for backup to arrive from pow Hotton, so he
made our Gall promise not to harm Pokehontas and then
reluctantly made his wife go get her and bring her

(26:17):
aboard our Gall's ship. As soon as she was a board,
our Gall handed them a copper kettle, implicating them in
the betrayal, basically saying, look, we gave you something for it,
so now you've officially traded her for this kettle. And
she saw it so that she could tell how Hotton Oh,
they must have traded me for a cop kettle. And
before sailing away he had coco Um killed. Unfortunately, their

(26:42):
son was with a relative and was spared, but pretty dark.
And that that is the oral history from Pocahona's people
passed down. That's the way the story goes. But the
English story is different. They say the PoTA Womack tribe
was not always loyal to pow hotton Um. For example,

(27:03):
they were still trading with the English even though it
was technically forbidden during this war. And that's how Captain
Argyll had a contact among their Poto Womack tribe to
know that Pokehon that Pokeontas was there. So Captain Argyll
actually went to Japazaw and offered to ally with the
Poto Womac against pow Hotton if they would hand over

(27:25):
pokehonas So the English are like they were ready to
turn against their all, and that's how come it worked out, okay,
you know. And then Japazaw tricked pokehon Is aboard. Together
they held her for ransom and demanded the release of
English prisoners and the return of weapons from pow Hotton.
And according to the Matta Pony, he immediately paid the ransom,

(27:48):
but then the English demanded a second payment. According to
the English, pow Hotton only paid part of the ransom
and they had to hold out for the full amount.
So there's a breakdown here. So the the Matta ponies say,
we gave you the thousand bucks you asked for, and
then the English said, yes, but you forgult about the

(28:10):
second payments, you know. But the English say, we asked
you for two thousand in the first place, and you
only gave us half. So again it's and this is
a hard one because there's you would have to be
there to know, right, you you what, I'm inclined to
side with who I sympathize with, right, I'm inclined to

(28:31):
be like, well, the oral history of the Mattapony. I
want to take their side because they were the ones
being subjected here. Um. But but you know, I don't know.
I cannot say that neither of us can um. And
again you're looking at what was written down by people
who very much wanted to make themselves look good and

(28:51):
what was kind of a game of telephone for a
few generations before it was written down. So neither is
necessarily a huge, a reliable account or the whole story. Yeah, um,
but but which at which point in history? Usually we
just kind of have to decide for ourselves what we
believe or that we don't really believe anything. I think

(29:12):
is where I land with it, And like, I know
that I'm not getting the full story, and I know
the story doesn't exist. There's some things we cannot know,
and that's kind of hard to reconcile with. Sometimes too,
it's true, and then other times you just have the
cultural differences that just misunderstanding. How Harton was like, well,
if I make a deal with John Smith, then I've
made a deal with all of y'all, right, because that's
how it would work for us. If you made a

(29:33):
deal with my one of my were a wances he
wouldn't be able to make it without my permission, and therefore,
if I got somebody took over for me, they would
probably honor that agreement. Whereas the English didn't see it
that way at all. They were like, that's just some guy,
that's he don't he don't represent all of us or
the gift giving or any of that stuff. It might
have just been enough that the cultural difference was not

(29:55):
respected by enough by either side maybe to fully know
what conversation they were actually having. Does that make sense?
And in either case, what what we do know is
true in between these two stories is there was a
woman being traded around who didn't really fall to understand
what was going on, and she was being used by

(30:17):
many people in this as a token in this in
this war that was going on. And then also just
to talk about coco Um. Yeah, the English accounts don't
really have much written about him, and they say no
one knows what happened to him, and that he just
wasn't He's just not part of their story at all. Interesting,

(30:38):
So there's no record of him being killed on purpose
by Samuel Argyll, although I have to wonder if Samuel
Argo would have known Cocum, you know, I would have
just been like, yeah, we there's some warriors and we
killed him. I don't know who he's married to. I
don't care, I don't know, but but anyway, so it's
he might have been killed or not. We didn't know
what happened to coco Um for you and his story,

(31:00):
it's not it's it's a grab bag of truths, and
it's good to remember as contemporary things are happening around us,
how much things are being framed and sold in a package.
And it might look like, well, I'm here now, so
I clearly know the whole story, and you don't. You

(31:22):
never know it, not really anyway now, of course, whatever
the truth here is this this back and forth issue,
this issue of them taking Pocahontas, whoever's idea it was,
whoever was okay with it. This created a tense standoff
that lasted for a whole year. Pocahontas was held in

(31:42):
Jamestown for a few months and then taken to a
Virginian city called Henricus, which had been established in sixteen
eleven away from the swampy Jamestown peninsula. This is also
where John Rolf remember him u. He had established the
Verena farms, plantation, and was exp remending with his tobacco strain,
which was called Orinocco. Thank you. I don't know how

(32:14):
many of our listeners are and your fans. I've come
from my castle in Ireland. But Orinoco Flow is a
very important song in the nineties. So John Rolf's experiments
uh in tobacco farming and mixing these strains and everything
they had turned Virginia into a profitable colony. Finally, in
sixteen twelve, he wanted to let the Orinoco flow all

(32:38):
through Virginia, but of course there were some obstacles. King
James hated tobacco, so he discouraged it. He was I
will catch you smoking in my colonies, young mad as
long as you're living under my rule, no tobacco. He
called it a vile weed too, so it is kind

(32:59):
of well, it's like marijuana in its own time. Also,
the Virginia Company thought colonists would plant tobacco instead of corn,
which they desperately needed to become a self sufficient colony,
so they discouraged tobacco planting too. And then finally there
just wasn't enough labor to handle cultivating a cash crop

(33:19):
like tobacco as well as cultivating food to feed the colony. Um.
So if you're you might be thinking around this point
as I was, and I was reading this, boy, how
did the Americans deal with the fact that they didn't
have enough labor to farm tobacco and food at the
same time. Well, the Library of Congress website rites quote.

(33:42):
The ultimate answer to the labor problem was ominously foreshadowed
in a little noticed event that Rolfe described in sixteen nineteen,
the arrival of a dutch Man of war carrying a
group of captive Africans. For by the end of the century,
African slave labor would become the colony's economic and social foundation.

(34:02):
So really wild to see these early steps. Honestly, in
a large part John rolf himself deciding no, I'm going
to make tobacco work, and that being just you know,
an early domino in what eventually led to, you know,
the enslavement of an entire race of people in this

(34:23):
country for generation generation, generation that we're still dealing with
the repercussions of today. Wow. John Rolfe, not to put
all that on your shoulders, but not all of it.
But he's just trying to make some money. He's just
like nobody else is doing tobacco. I think it's a
great idea, guys, know right, turns out it's addictive. Anyone
knew that. But yeah, But at this point in our story,

(34:46):
it's six thirteen, so this has not happened yet. Everything
is pure and great. Pocahonas is around fifteen or sixteen
at this point, and she's taken to Henricast for safekeeping
and put in the care of Reverend Alexander Whittaker to
learn more of the English language, to learn their religion

(35:07):
and their way of life. Because the Virginia Company also
had a goal to convert Native Americans to Christianity. It
was like a big major colonization goal of theirs, so
they probably figured Pocahontas was a great place to start
with all that, and according to the colonist Ralph Hammer,
Pocahonas received quote extraordinary courteous usage among her captors. But

(35:30):
according to the other side of history, Pocahonas fell into
a deep depression while she was being held hostage. The
English constantly told her that because her father wouldn't pay
the ransom, he must not love her enough, and he
must not love her anymore, and if he did, he
would pay it and she would could leave. She could
leave right now if he would just pay it. But
I guess he just doesn't love you like they're just

(35:52):
every day like drilling her with this horrible list of
So she had a nerve is breakdown, unsurprising, and the
English asked if her sister would be allowed to visit,
so they made an arrangement, and when Matachana showed up
with her husband, Pocahonas told her that she had been
raped and thought that she was pregnant. And the Mattapony

(36:14):
oral history says the reason they moved her to Henry
Kiss in the first place from Jamestown was to hide
this pregnancy, and it also says that she gave birth
to a son called Thomas before she converted to Christianity,
before she ever married John Role for any of that,
but it's it's sticky because, as we mentioned in the
first episode, this history is disputed somewhat. Some historians, like

(36:39):
Helen Rountree, who writes for the Encyclopedia Virginia, believe that
no oral history exists at all, but also that treating
pocahon Is badly would have gone against English interests. They
had a truce going during negotiations, and they were still
outnumbered by the Native people and they feared retaliation. So
this is really the biggest divergence in the two stories

(37:00):
so far, and it definitely deserves, you know, some conversation, Yeah,
because on one hand, you know, it's not like this
is an unusual scenario for a girl from one of
the native tribes, Yeah, to be raped and stuff. It's
not hard to believe that they would have treated a
girl like this because they did that. In fact, I

(37:20):
just saw yesterday that Deb Hayland, the Interior Secretary, has
added squaw to the list of slurs, because that is
a word that the English used specifically to describe young
Native children that they want to have sex with. Like
I don't know if that meant young like prepubescent, or

(37:43):
if it meant young like they're eleven, they're twelve to
fourteen and have undergone their puberty dance or not. Either way,
either way, it's really gross. Yeah, I just want to
throw that in there because youth is just such a
different word to us today than it was to the commonist.
I just like to really point that out now. It's interesting,
but it's very interesting, So yeah, don't say that. But

(38:03):
then again, like as we said in part one, it
kind of doesn't feel fair to reject the tribal oral
history out of hand just because it doesn't align with
the written records at the time. I mean, this is
what we've been saying, right, because of course the written
records of the time were written by the English, who
were not trying to write down like yeah, and then
I raped a prisoner. Uh, you know, obviously they're gonna

(38:23):
make it as clean and uh and positive to themselves
as they can. I mean, plus, they're out here being
like we're Christian. Were these men of God trying to
spread this wonderful word of God? And why would they
write down? And we did that by raping this young
girl doing all this crazy ship. But I do want
to point out that this story could also sort of

(38:46):
be propaganda by the tribe itself in a way, the
kind of the way the English account is somewhat propaganda
for them. Yeah, in terms of just like trying to
earn sympathies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't mean it
in a bad way, like, but but it's kind of like, listen,
know this this is something that happened to a lot
of Native women. They were raped and impregnated and killed

(39:06):
by englishmen. But it seems like white people don't really
care about any Native besides poccons. So okay, why don't
we put that experience on that character that you care
about and it will make you care about the actual
Native people that have happened to She's like, you're your
avatar for Native people you give a funk about. So
if that's what it takes, then here, now do you care?

(39:29):
You pissed? What are you gonna do? You know? I
mean that could be true too, So Avatar challenging choice
of words because of course the movie Avatar was such
a poor representation of Western colonization of Native people's But no, yeah, yeah,

(39:49):
it's it's it's interesting to kind of pick it apart
like that. Again, just going back to the idea that
you've got an oral history that's been told over and
over again and down through generations that will inevitably have changed,
because that's what happens with I mean, that's been happening
in all storytelling throughout history, written or not. Um and

(40:11):
but then but then you've got the written history is
some people who are trying to make themselves look good,
So where's the truth? Um? I can't even say it
somewhere in between because it might be on either end. Um,
all we know is the situation as it stands today
and the documented history that we do have. Um and uh,
I think that for most saying conscientious people can can

(40:35):
go ahead and align your sympathies where they ought to be. Yeah,
but I mean that that might be what what I
was saying might be kind of why some historians don't
want to comment, yeah, because they're like, first of all,
it's an oral tradition, So how am I supposed to
come in and tell you you haven't been telling this
story for generations, Like that's not for me to do.
But also like, again, it's the facts as they occurred

(40:57):
to Pocahonist might not be true, but they certainly are
true facts. Does that make sense? And so it's sort
of like I don't want to be like that's a
whole bunch of hogwash because it has a lot of
truth in it, even if it didn't happen to that character.
She's the representative character of the experience as a whole.
So it might be like, yeah, Okay, I mean, I
wouldn't say Pocahonas, I'd say somebody else, but nobody cares

(41:20):
about anybody else, So I you know, I'm just wondering
if that's that's my own speculation stage. I mean, we
do that today in stories. I mean, you know, it
will do a you know, do a movie about somebody
riding the Oregon Trail and like that character becomes iconic
and everything that happened to them is what happened to
people on the Oregon Trail. But we're centralizing it on

(41:41):
one character. That's very common in storytelling for sure. Yeah.
So Pocahonas did live among the English for about a
year while she was waiting to be released. In March
of sixteen fourteen, standoff culminated in this violent clash along
the Pamunkey River, and Pocahonas was allowed to go ashore
to speak with some of her relatives, and she told them,

(42:02):
according to the English record that quote, if her father
had loved her, he would not value her less than
old swords, guns or axes, wherefore she would still dwell
with the english Men who loved her. I believe the
Matta Pony history has a similar quote from her, but
of course, in their history she's been told that he
don't love her, whereas in the English history he you know,

(42:24):
they feel like he doesn't. He really doesn't. I mean
they're framing it as if he really doesn't, and that
she came to that conclusion herself right, And as Tony
Horowitz relates in a Voyage Long and Strange, one Englishman
certainly did love her, Enya enthusiast John Rolfe, who wrote
to the colonies governor asking for permission to marry her.

(42:45):
He wrote that his feelings for her quote have a
long time been so entangled and enthralled, and so intricate
a labyrinth that I was even a wearied to unwind myself.
They're out. Apparently this confession was a little risky because
the English didn't look kindly on marriage with Heathens, and
rolf wrote that he knew quote the heavy displeasure which

(43:09):
Almighty God conceived against the sons of Levi and Israel
for marrying strange wives God, strange wives like, And he
knew the other settlers might quote tax or taunt me.
But even so Ralph was too in love to care.
He could barely endure the many passions and sufferings which

(43:30):
I have daily, hourly, yea, and in my sleep endured.
But it wasn't about sex. It's about sex, it's not
definitely I don't want to just have sex with her.
He was very quick to assure the governor it was
not just about colonel you know, pleasures or whatever. It
was definitely because he could save her soul and his
own through their union. Um, she wanted to become Christian,

(43:54):
he told the Governor, and quote gave a great appearance
of love to me. And Tony concludes this by saying,
we have only Rolf's words as evidence of her affection,
so that's very important to keep in mind. Pocahon is
never wrote down like Mrs john Roll for anything in
her diary. Like she we don't know how she felt

(44:14):
about him, hearts. Mrs Poconta, the other side of history,
says that likely she just wanted to do the best
she could for her people. She thought this would be
a great way to handle it. She had a half
white child, so she was probably like fine, whatever. They

(44:36):
also think that Rolf wanted to marry her, not necessarily
because he was in love with her, but he wanted
Potton's tobacco guys to like give him some guidance on
his crops or whatever. So kind of of a cold
way of looking at their union. I guess I prefer
to believe his letter to the governor that he was

(44:56):
burning with passion and hopefully she felt the same. That
would be a nicer story, certainly. I'm it's given me
just tiny little flashes of Karl Tandler, who wrote in
his book about you know, the love he shared with
Elena Dayos and you know we looked back in an
hour like she had no interest in him at all,

(45:17):
but he was the only one writing it down. So again,
don't know if that's true for these two are not
um again, just have to just have to kind of
choose how you want to look at it, I guess
in a way kind of because nobody can tell you
what's true. Not uncommon though, even if we're going to
the oral history tradition for women even in the tribes,

(45:40):
to marry for sensible reasons, for for unification reasons, So
that entirely possible, right. And they pointed out to of course,
that being taken hostage was also very normal amongst the tribes.
It was very normal to Okay, I got a hostage.
You're going to be treated well for as long as
I need to keep you. So it wasn't anything like
her being held hostage by the English would have been fine,

(46:03):
except that she fell into this depression and that's why
they think she was mistreated. But look, everyone gave permission
for this wedding, including pow Hotton. So maybe this was
the answer, right, Maybe that's all worked out. Marriages, Like
we said, they bring together warring nations all the time.
Both the pow Hotton nation and the English settlers were
trying to find a way to end these hostilities without

(46:25):
feeling like they lost. So in April of six fourteen,
Pocahontas was baptized and she took the name Rebecca. Oh
my God, Becky, I love your hair. Tony Horwitz writes
that she was named Rebecca quote after Isaac's biblical bride,
whom God told two nations are in thy womb, one

(46:48):
mightier than the other. It's a bit of a loaded name,
all right. I'm like, did she pick it or did
they pick it? Because if they picked it, that's a
real message. We don't have any evidence to suggest that
she knows the name Rebecca. I mean, I guess she's
learned the Bible. They would have been probably teaching her
English by reading her the Bible, I imagine, And I
mean they wanted to convert her, so she didn't. She

(47:10):
was like scrolling through Instagram like Rebecca, Jessica now mackenzie
maybe yeah, she had that chalkboards like Klin McCarty, Josh Lynn.
They were all crossed down. She's like Rebecca. Rebecca married
John Rolfe with her uncle and two brothers in attendance.
Her father couldn't come, obviously, because it was Paal Hotton.

(47:33):
He would have been killed or captured likely, but he
did send a necklace of huge pearls as a gift,
and he also gifted them hundreds of acres of land.
So he's very supportive of this union. And this was
the beginning of what became known as the Piece of Pocahontas.
Ralph Hamer wrote quote, ever since we have had friendly

(47:54):
commerce and trade, not only with Paal Hotton himself, but
also with his subjects round about us. So as now
I see no reason why the colony should not thrive apace,
and it did partly because of Ralph's or no co flow.
Tony Horwitz writes, quote, within a few years, settlers were
growing tobacco to the exclusion of other crops and exporting

(48:17):
it by the ton at tremendous profit. Tobacco was the
gold that Europeans had so long sought in North America
and never found. Well, that sounds once again like everything's
going great for everyone, and I feel like we should
just stop the story right there and not here anymore. Right,

(48:37):
we got everybody's making everybody's married and happy. It's like
the end of a Shakespeare play. And now all these settlers,
they're finally making all this cash just profit profit profit, right, Yeah, yeah,
they made a lot of profit, probably because they didn't
have to pay the people who were harvesting the tobacco.
I think that really helps your profit margin. Just something
I learned history. But anyway, speaking of profit, let's go

(49:01):
to a commercial break, all right, welcome back to part
three of part two story. Yeah, I kind of got
lost in a second part. Does that make it part six?

(49:21):
Did it? By anyway? Welcome back to the show's not
getting into that. So yeah, so things are going well
and Henry Kiss and Jamestown and other settlements and it's
generally agreed that in sixteen fifteen, Pocahontas now known as
Rebecca rolf gave birth to Thomas Rolfe. Like we said,
the oral history is pretty firm that she gave birth

(49:43):
to Thomas before she married John. But I don't know,
it seems a little weird to hide a baby for
a year and then jump out being like, here's my
newborn one year old. I mean, this isn't a sitcom.
Came out like a toddler and be like, oh, you
have fresh out of the delivery room. Yeah, oh yeah,

(50:05):
she's still recovering and the kids walking, so yeah. I mean,
you know, I don't like to cast doubt on the
roral history or anything like that. That that one just
doesn't quite play for me. I'm not really seeing them
being able to hide a baby for a year and
then popping out like this is a new baby. I
was like, I guess it's possible that she maybe had
another baby that they named Thomas, and they put the

(50:27):
first Thomas somewhere else and then they were like, here's
this Thomas. But that seems weird too, Like, I don't know,
that one just doesn't play out for me quite right,
it feels discordant um. But again we don't know, so
we do not. But according to the English history, she
had a newborn child in sixteen fifteen, and then the

(50:48):
Virginia Company decided they wanted John and Rebecca to come
to England and show off how great the Virginia Company
was doing it establishing settlements and converting natives to Christianity.
So it kind of wanted like a walking billboard for
their efforts in the New World. So she and Rolph
went to England in sixteen sixteen, and they weren't alone

(51:08):
in this voyage. They were accompanied by their son Thomas,
and eleven pow Hottons, including Pocahontas. Older sister Matta China
and her husband came along as well, as well as
a priest called Tomacomo. Toma Coomo was going to be
pow Hotton's eyes and ears in England's finally his chance
to get a look at this famed country that all

(51:29):
the white people were showing up from talking such a
big deal. Oh we have all these you know, horrible
smelling streets and rickety carriages, and at whom I controlled bath. Yeah,
and then apparently you've got like a bunch of people
starving all the time. To an earlier native visitor to
England had only seen London in the Times and reported

(51:52):
that there were no trees in England, which explained what
brought the colonists to Santa Comaco. But how Hotton asked
to Macomo to go find out about the English god
and the English King, and also to find out what
really happened to John Smith, because remember he hadn't believed
the story they told him back in six nine that
Smith had died on his way back to England. Tomacomo

(52:15):
was also supposed to count as many Englishmen as he
could by cutting notches into a stick, but as Tony writes,
he quote had to quickly abandon this census and was
likewise stunned by England's abundant crops and trees. So he
must have seen more than just the city of London,
because he's like, there's actually a but ton of people here,

(52:35):
and there's a whole there's so much land. What are
they doing over here? What got all the kinds of
trees and rivers and ship? Yeah? No, they went they
went about like they went to Norfolk and then into
like a couple different so he got to see the countryside,
and yeah, I was stunned because he was just like, well,
we thought that's what you were over at our spot for.
You got plenty of it. You've got plenty and Helen

(52:57):
round Tree, writing for Encyclopedia Virginia, says quote his encounters
with evangelistic clergyman would turn his sympathies forever against the English.
I mean, wouldn't be hard. Honestly, imagine the first guy
to come up to me like, please come give confession
for your sins, my son, excuse me? I bet they

(53:19):
were like, because he's also a priest, right, so they
were like, let's have a little priestly beating and talk
about priestly somethings, and the you know, Tomacomo was like, well,
we you know, we smoked this pipe and we have
these visions and we talk and we you know, we're
part of the council with whatever. And the clergyman were like, yeah,
as well. We tell women they're going to hell if

(53:45):
they don't have sons. That's what we do. So when
Tommacomo got back to Virginia, he started advising open Chankina.
How Hotton's brother who would eventually plan the attack that
started the second Anglo how Hotan war So and saying
that Temacomo got back, and he's like, listen, open chink
and eyelas. You don't know, I love these guys over here,
and open chink. And I was like, you know what,

(54:06):
I never liked these When it's my turn, let's get
some action going. And Pocahonas was presented as a princess
while she was in England's This is sort of like
one of the you know the first time we're starting
to hear this royalty kind of moniker I guess being
bestowed on her, but she actually was not one. According

(54:28):
to pow Hotton tradition, their lineage is matrilineal so pow
Hotton's brothers or his sister's eldest sons were the ones
in line. It's all about who the mom was. But
it was just kind of a way to like let
everyone know what kind of treatment pocahon Is should get
while she's in town. You know, they were like, she's
not just a brown woman whom you treat badly. She

(54:49):
is a royal brown woman, so treated nicely. Again, I
think they were they were really trying to show a
good time in England to all of the nat of
tribes that they would then say, oh, well then yes,
we'll take your way of life, that's what we would prefer.
They were really trying to sell the tribes on England

(55:11):
via Pocahontas. Yeah, John Smith even wrote in a letter
to Queen Anne that they should treat her like a
royal guest because it would help maintain their good will
with the pow Hutton's and it seems like she was
pretty well received. Um. She and John Rolfe went to
plays on parties, they were seated with lords and ladies,
and once Pocahontas and Tomacomo were seated with King James,

(55:34):
and apparently he was just so unprepossessing that they didn't
know it was him until someone told him later, which
I think must have been an interesting cultural, just weird
moment for them, because like we said when in part one,
when John Smith met Powe Hotton, they had really rolled
it out like he was like seated on this day
as he was dressed up for it, like they wanted

(55:55):
to show off. And then she's meeting their king and
he's like, I guess we're in a like a beige
suit or something. He's just chilling in the corner, and
they were just like that didn't look like a king
to me, you know. Picturing also like how I imagine
they probably dressed her over there in Englishes, right, So

(56:15):
I'm just juxtaposing in my mind this twelve year old
girl back in tribal America doing cartwheels in the village. Uh,
you know, now like getting her corset tied up, you know,
being put into this British bundage and told like, see,
isn't this life better? Right with like a rough and
like her hair all piled up and all this weird stuff. Yeah.

(56:36):
I feel like if it were me, I'd be like
not really going to go back to like having a
good time, you know, right, and we were doing fine.
It does seem that they were pretty interested in some
of it. Like there was at one point John Smith
like sent some builders to Powhattan to build him an
English style house. There was like, you know, there were
some things that they were like, I'm interested in that

(56:56):
I'd like to know. But it's almost more of an
indictment to me of the of the English, because the
natives were like, there's things about your culture that I like,
and i'd be interested in, whereas the English were like,
and your culture is nonsense and savage and they're all
going to hell and I have to save you. Right,
totally weird, completely different way of looking at the world

(57:17):
around you. Yeah, because of course, like you know, we
don't want to say that the tribes weren't happy to
receive guns for hunting or comforts. You know that that
that the English were so obsessed with. You know that.
I'm sure you show up and you're like, hey, try this,
try this comforter I've made. You're like, oh, damn, this
is a lot better than what I've been making here.

(57:38):
But then you get into like, well how did you
make it? Well? Yeah, it takes a lot of you know,
if you ever heard of capitalism, um, because it's kind
of like that, it's great, you're gonna love it. But yeah.
Their homes were also really mobile, because they were telling
show with mats on the floor that they wove so
they could pick up and go where. Moved the whole

(57:59):
capital city away from Jamestown. Yeah, I know, a big deal.
And so maybe the English style house, I mean, that
could have been even him trying to be like I'm
also permanent. You know, it might have been just like
if I build a house, like you build a house,
maybe you'll see this as my property. Yeah, who knows,
but yeah. Pocahont, while she was in England, also spent

(58:20):
some time with Rolf's family, so she got to meet
her in laws. That's nice, I guess, depending on how
they were. She was introduced to society under their sponsorship,
so she probably went to lots of parties and events.
And she also sat for an English portrait, as you say,
fully dressed in very very English garbs. She's looks like

(58:41):
Queen Elizabeth as Whollo, except that she's not obviously now.
It wasn't long after they arrived that Pocahont learned that
John Smith was still alive. She's like that old that
old man when I was a kid also and so
used to teach me English. But it would be months
before he called to see her. In his account, he

(59:01):
said he was just busy. But it seems like everyone
thinks that this was hell a rude of him not
to come see her. Right, Historians and contemporaries like believe
that like this was a dick move, right, I mean
they're like, if you have a friend in town. You
go call on him, like what do you wait too long?
And it's incredibly impolite. It's like you don't want to
talk to him for some reason. I mean, could that

(59:21):
be according to you? This girl saved your life. You
know a couple of times, wouldn't you want to go
stay high? Think so? Or yeah? What he is? He like,
she's going to call me out that it never happened.
And eventually they did meet, and it was an awkward meeting.
John Smith wrote that when she saw him, pocahon Is

(59:44):
quote without any word, turned about, obscured her face as
not seeming well contented. Then she reminded him of all
the promises he had made to Powhatan. What was yours
should be his? She said, you called him fove or
being in his land a stranger. But instead Smith had
dipped out and his English friends told pow Hotton that

(01:00:07):
he was dead, and none of them ever believed that,
And in fact, Pocahonas told John Smith that the pow
Hoptons that came to England with her had made sure
to ask about him when they got to England, quote
because your countrymen will lie much. So She's like, we're
used to you guys lying you know, the idea that

(01:00:27):
John Smith was dead. Of course we didn't believe that,
so go check in on that guy. Yeah. She was like,
not only that, but we were like, is the first
thing we're gonna do. Yeah, and we're gonna find out, oh,
you lie. The prize. First thing we do is going
to find out that you lie. Right, Because again paw
Hotton like would rather have been dealing with John Smith
this whole time. And no, guys, it wasn't so much.
I think that they were mad that John Smith was there.

(01:00:49):
They were mad that the English had told him that
John Smith was dead, when in fact, I I speculation
station wonder if pow Hotton might not have told the
English if he knew John Smith was alive, Well, then
you get him back here. I want to talk to
John Smith maybe if we're gonna we're gonna go through this.
I liked talking to him, and I don't like you.
That might have been why they told him, like he

(01:01:10):
might have been like, I'm sorry, but I made a
deal with your were of once John Smith and they
were like, well John Smith ain't our chief, first of all,
and secondly he's dead. So now you're dealing with me
George Percy, who sucks and like, and then Lord de Lawire,
who sucks even more apparently. Um so, yeah, that's probably true.
And I think they were still pretty pissed at John
Smith though, because you know, I guess he hadn't really

(01:01:34):
made it very clear how it worked, or had promised
them ship that he never could delivers very possible too,
because he was, you know, kind of a brag got braggert,
so he might have been like, oh, yeah, no problem,
like this is gonna be great forever now and whatever.
And then I didn't even try to keep the piece
after he left maybe or something. So anyway, I don't

(01:01:56):
think she was happy with him. Is short of that. Yeah. Absolutely.
In March sixteen seventeen, they all boarded a ship to
go back to Virginia. They had done their propaganda tour
for the Virginia Company and it was time to go home.
But suddenly Pocahonas got really sick, and after only a
few miles down river, they stopped to take her ashore.

(01:02:17):
That's where she passed away, telling her husband all must die.
She was interred on March one, sixteen seventeen. John Wolfe
wrote that she was quote much lamented, and she was
only twenty one years old. Much like a lot of
this story. There are several theories about how Pocahonas died

(01:02:39):
um In the other side of history. They say that
pow Hotton was told Pocahonas was poisoned. They say that
she was in perfect health before they got on the
boat back to Virginia, Um, and then she suddenly got
sick after a meal and that's when she died. So
the timing is real awkward, and they she probably got
poisoned in voyage long and strange. Tony Horwitz says some

(01:03:03):
of her contemporaries wrote that she was bothered by the
smokey environments of the you know, area of London that
they were living in, So maybe she had like tuberculosis
or some kind of respiratory complaints. But Helen Roundtree in
the Encyclopedia Virginia says that's not very likely because Pocahonas
would be very used to smoky native homes. They had

(01:03:24):
like a fire in the middle of their tents, so
they would have been very common to have a smoky
house and that wouldn't have bothered her at all. Um.
She also said that John Rolfe had been given a
huge grant to start a mission church in Virginia, and
she writes that quote Pocohonis would have been expected to
serve the dual roles of interpreter and house mother, which
would have been a strenuous assignment for someone who is

(01:03:46):
ill or dying. So she doesn't see the tuberculosis argument
because that, you know, you kind of have that for
a minute before you get killed by it. Um. However,
she says that the ships that brought John Rolfe, Tomacomo,
and the other colonists back to Virginia after Pocahonas died
also brought an epidemic of hemorrhagic dysentery that they called

(01:04:08):
bloody flux with them. So maybe Pocahonas just got the
bloody flux while she was on board and that's what
killed her. That sounds like a bloody fluxing bad time
for real, horrible and honestly, that explanation makes the most
sense to me personally, Um, simply because her son Thomas,

(01:04:28):
who was you know, a toddler at this point, was
also very sick at the same time that Pocahonas was,
and when she was dying She told John Rolfe that
she was happy to die if it meant that her
son could could live, and he was like telling her
that looks like Thomas is going to recover. And so
she was able to die at peace with that. So

(01:04:50):
that lends a lot to me to say, there's something
going on this ship. Why would they poison a toddler? Well,
and it's unlikely he would have survived and she would,
you know, and why poison her at all? Well, yeah,
I don't really understand. I mean, you know, there's assholes everywhere,
and it could have just been some rando. It's just
odd to be like, Okay, we got everything we wanted
out of this native woman. She's converted. She's out here

(01:05:11):
making us look good. Now she's going to go back
to Virginia make us look good even more with her
her people. Let's kill her on the way. Well no,
but I mean in terms of government conspiracy, I don't
believe it. But some random pure blood asshole, you know
who's just like I don't like that John rolf married
one of these tribal women. Like you know, you're you're

(01:05:33):
posing as an English person, but you're not, Like I
could see some racist dick bag. You know, the poison
story doesn't necessarily flesh out, but you know, and not
to say that someone wouldn't do it just out of malice.
I mean, it's always out of malice when you're poisoned someone.
But you know what I mean, you know what I mean.
But that's a good point. It's a good point. I

(01:05:55):
do have a tendency to be like, there's no logic
in that, forgetting that humans don't always act from logical
That's true too anyway, because Thomas the Toddler was really
sick and John rolf had to get back to the
New World and open his church and everything, he ended
up reluctantly having to leave Thomas in England to be
cared for by his brother Um expecting, I think to

(01:06:17):
see him, you know, have him to be sent to
Virginia at some point, but he actually would never see
him again. Thomas would not sail to Virginia until sixteen
thirty five, which is thirteen years after John Rolfe died,
so he kind of lost both his parents that day.
And paw Hatton fell into a deep depression when he
found out about Pocahon's death, and this had been his

(01:06:40):
favorite daughter, you know, for her whole life. She'd been
such a an important part of this story. And pow
Hatton's like, what's in his seventies at this point, she's
only twenty one. I mean, he probably definitely expected her
to live a lot long. Absolutely, the English got word
of his death in April of sixteen eighteen, and he

(01:07:00):
was succeeded first by a brother who proved ineffectual, and
then by his brother Opechankanaw, the last great pow Hotton leader.
And remember Opa Chackinaw had gotten all that shitty feedback
about anything from Toma Como being like, these guys aren't cool.
And Helen Rowntree writes in a stunning throwback to our

(01:07:21):
Carl Tandler episode again second reference to that that quote.
If his funeral followed custom, then paw Hotton's body was flayed,
his flesh removed from the bones and dried, his skeleton rearticulated,
and his abdomen filled with valuables, and the whole covered
with the preserved skin to achieve a semblance of the

(01:07:43):
living form. Uh. You know, hey, that's a cultural tradition,
and in its own way, it's beautiful. In my way,
it's not because I'm a little terrified of skin being
taken off and then put back on again. But you know,
that was that their thing. But this was this was
not strange. This was a very normal tradition. Um and uh.

(01:08:07):
And to them, it wasn't one of the most horrifying
things they've ever heard. And that's okay. We've ever We
grow up with different ideas, That's okay. John Rolph ended
up back in Virginia, as we know, with his or
no co flow. He married a third time, and he
died in sixteen twenty two. But though his marriage and

(01:08:30):
his tobacco enterprise was critical to the success of the colony,
he was, as Tony Wrights quote, gradually airbrushed from American memory.
But why you know, I'm like John rolf It seems
like a cool American hero. He like smuggled these seeds
over and had a whole business concern he was trying

(01:08:51):
to start. And he's the reason this whole colony started
turning a profit. We loved turning a profit. That's true.
You'd think we'd learn more about him well. To the
reason is because by the time we started to celebrate
Jamestown as a country most states had banned marriage between
Native Americans and white people, and that, of course made
John rolf and Poconi's story a little awkward. But also

(01:09:16):
people in Virginia became super obsessed with being able to
tie their lineage to Pocahonist and John Rolfe. I guess
it's like old money New York being like myle until
it just came over the Bay Flower. You know, it's
like that in Virginia. To be like that great grandmother
was Poconta's right. So in when Virginia passed its Act

(01:09:41):
to Preserve Racial Integrity that segregated anyone with any trace
of a non Caucasian heritage, they made sure to include
a clause exempting white Virginians with quote one sixteenth or
less of Indian heritage and quote no other non Caucasic blood.
And this became known as the Pocahontas Clause. I'm sorry,

(01:10:04):
Virginia did what I mean in nineteen twenty four, just
a decade before, we were causing a real fuss about
a whole other group of people being stodgy about racial purity. Yeah,
we we had just come off of it. We have
we were dealing with it. Ourselves right over here. Yeah,
act to preserve racial integrity. Gross, incredibly gross. And then

(01:10:28):
that that they were also like, but let's count how
many generations from Pocahona And that's this as much as
you can have heard blood specifically. Wow. And it's okay
because it makes us look good to have people here
from the colonists date. I don't know, it's very weird.
I don't know anyone who cares about anything as much

(01:10:50):
as racists care about race, you know, like the the
bonkers lengths they go to. It's blowing my momd and
and every day you learn more about it, and it's like, what,
holy shit, what is wrong in your brain? A lot,

(01:11:10):
a lot, well, at least one big thing. But then
John Smith was the perfect American hero, Tony writes, quote
a man of action and dash, self made, individualistic, iconoclastic,
a braggart, a con man, an escape artist, an accomplished killer,

(01:11:30):
scornful of rank, and ceaseless in his salesmanship. Like, that's
that's who we want to tell stories about. So of
course John Smith became the favored figure in this in
this tall tale, and of course creating this story of
the quote good Indian who was attracted to Christianity and

(01:11:50):
English customs and society, who fell in love with a
white man and preferred his way of life to her own,
who foiled her own people's plans and preference for white
people that softened the story of the brutal English subjugation
of the natives. So that's so basically all in all,
we can see why the story of Pocahonis and John

(01:12:12):
Smith is the one we've been hearing all these years,
and not not John Rolf or not the whole real
story of all three of them and everyone else involved. Yeah, seriously,
and it's you know, and just you can see why
it kind of feels like Pocahonis is barely a person
anymore because she's been so propagandized by each and every

(01:12:36):
side of the story where whatever they were trying to do,
with whatever they were trying to do, they made her
story work for it. And so it's it's just incredibly
difficult to parse out who this woman was. I wish
I had a little more information about her likes and
dislikes or what her personality was beyond she was a
playful woman, a playful one as a kid, and like

(01:12:59):
to turn cartwheels, and I guess had, you know, sort
of an optimistic, cheerful, loving outlook about things at least
at least yeah, when she was nine, or at least
when she's ten or eleven or whatever, when they were
actually writing about her as a person. And when they
stopped doing that, it's no one knows. I mean, there's
just it's and it's really sad because again, this is

(01:13:21):
a real person who really lived in breathe, and she
had her own desires and her own goals for her
life and for her family and had two to three
children and didn't get to raise any of them. And
it's just frustrating. It's just frustrating. It makes me want
to keep a diary, you know what I mean, Like,
I don't want nobody till somebody what I was thinking.

(01:13:41):
I'll tell you what I was thinking. Don't worry, I'll
tell them all what you were thinking. She thought I
was great, Well that's true. Oh see, I got it right.
That's all I know about her. She thought I was great,
Well I need to know the end. Yeah. It is
really fascinating to break this down, to see all these

(01:14:04):
different sides of it. You know, sometimes I think you
can you go into these like real stories and you're like, oh, well,
you know, there there's some balance here between these these
two factions that we're fighting over this land and uh.
And they were always trying to see common ground. And
it wasn't all Percy's. There were some john Smith's who

(01:14:24):
were like trying to negotiate and make things work out
for everyone's in everyone's favor. Um. But underneath all that,
you kind of can't forget that they never should have
been here in the first place, claiming it as their own,
because this was a place people already lived. You know,
you want to show up in a new country and
say like, hey, we've been over here. Do you guys

(01:14:45):
want to talk? Do you want to open some lines
of trade? You wanta you wanna? Maybe you guys some
if y'all want to come live over in our land,
you can, and maybe some of us can live over here,
like that's build an embassy or normal inter continental trade
and open communication. Awesome. I love it showing up and saying, hey,

(01:15:06):
this is cool, it's mine now, by the way, right,
and I know you're a king, but actually you're a
subject of my king, even though you never fucking heard
of him, like what very weird. It's difficult, so happy
Thanksgiving anyway, I don't really understand. And then I will say, like,
another reason I really like the book A Voyage Long

(01:15:26):
and Strange, which we used quite a lot for these
episodes as well, is because Tony Horwitz he he follows
the trail of the Vikings or the conquistadors or the
colonists in history, and then he goes in person today
to see and follows the trail today and kind of
tells you like, Okay, I'm talking to natives now today

(01:15:47):
how they are feeling about this. Or I'm talking to
white people now today who trace their lineage to Pocahonus,
Or I'm talking New Swedes who live in Kansas City
and I don't know how they got there, but but
you're going to tell me, you know. And it's really
very interesting, and a lot of the natives that he
spoke to, particularly about Pokeahonas, we're just kind of like,
you know. Another thing that really bothers me about the

(01:16:08):
story of Pocahonas is that it takes away everything about
our our people beyond they were either stoic and kind
and had their arms wide open, and we're mowed down
quickly and gone forever, or they were these brutal, you know,
worrying nations and you know, came at them with sticks

(01:16:30):
and got mowed down and that was it. And they're like,
you kind of were taking away all of our pomp
and our dumbness and all our stupid ship that we are.
We're also people, you know, natives are also people. So
they had plenty of of their own ideas about taking
over property or or being in charge, or falling in
love or what you know, all that, and you it

(01:16:51):
does kind of get obscured with like, well, anyway, unfortunately
those traditions are gone because we mowed over a bunch
of those people. And um so now it's just this
very narrow view of this whole really rich culture. Um So, anyway,
just another plug for that book. You should read it.
That's cool, That's very cool. And I guess in the

(01:17:14):
interest of Thanksgiving to like I do think it's important
to we've been critical in this episode of American colonists
and and all our descendants and you know America today
and England and what they were doing here and across
the world. Um And that's important, And that doesn't mean Uh,
you know, I hate living here so much and everything

(01:17:35):
about it's horrible. Like, it's just important to recognize this
so that as you're moving forward, to what degree you
can of make amends you do and um, to what
degree you cannot let these things happen in the future
you do. It's it just matters, and you can and
both of those viewpoints can exist at the same time.

(01:17:56):
You can be like you can look you can look
critically at the racial history of this country in theory, um.
And I think that's uh, that's really important for us
to kind of just keep in our standardized and personal educations,

(01:18:19):
you know, because we also have to keep teaching ourselves
because as we have learned, history is only so much
and you know, to to public schools credit there's only
so much time in a school year, and history keeps
getting longer, right, so you you can't you don't. There's
literally not time in twelve years of school to look
at every angle. Um. So it's I think it's important

(01:18:40):
to I mean, Jesus, we're just doing it out of
necessity for for this job. But it's so cool that
we get to go dig up all these other sources
and really makes me want to spend my free time
doing that more. Um, so you know, your personal education
and analysis is just as important. And hopefully some of

(01:19:01):
y'all are listening to this show as your education actually
scares me, but I kind of it would also be awesome,
So we are we are, But yeah, we would love
to hear your thoughts on both parts of this story.
And maybe I mean I'd love to hear what you
thought was true before you listened, because I know some

(01:19:22):
people have really educated themselves about the real truth of
John Smith and many people maybe and I think schools
have even changed how they're teaching that story somewhat putting
a question mark there because I don't know for sure,
probably depends on the school. Um, but yeah, I'm very
curious to see, like what people thought the story was

(01:19:42):
and what they thought was untrue and true about it
or whatever. You know, just any of your I'll go
ahead and set the barlow. I knew nothing. I mean
I literally like I knew that the Disney movie was
wrong and that's all I knew. Yeah, Um, I knew
that she was a lot younger. That's that's pretty much
where I came into this from. Like pocahonas Yeah, she
married a different guy, and I think she was like

(01:20:04):
twelves at first. Um, and that's that's it. That's that's
pretty good, pretty much all I knew. So, Um, we
didn't talk about it in school. I don't think this
one came up in our American history class. No. I
only remember that, like the one time I didn't do
my homework. I always did my homework as a very
nerdy nerd, and I liked my homework. I did my homework,

(01:20:27):
but mostly this one time I did not do it.
And the next day we had like a pop quiz
and one of the questions was about the story of
Pocahonas and I was straight up like, I guess I'll
take the Disney movie out of my brain and put
it on here and said, no, she loved John Smith
or whatever. And of course did not get that question.
A raccoon and a hummingbird, yea, they were talking, they

(01:20:48):
didn't talk. Gibson was in it, Christian Bale. But yeah,
so I like that that red X lives forever in
my memory. So I knew it wasn't true as a kid,
but I'm not sure I ever looked into it, you
know what I mean. Yeah, I love that the one
time you didn't do your homework there was a pop
quiz the next day. And to this day you get

(01:21:08):
anxiety if your work's not done by the end of
the day, probably just because of that. I'm like, it's
going to be the one time I didn't prepare that
it matters. It's always the one time you didn't prepare
that it matters, by the way, not in my experience,
that's what it feels. I was one of those B
minus students because I never My homework average was zero.

(01:21:31):
But I came in and I rocked those quizzes and tests.
Now as an a student, but I'm not a teacher's pet.
I'll say that I didn't know how to be a
teacher's pet. English teacher Mrs Waters, and I lover and
I'll ever forget her, called me aside one day at
the end of the semester and she said, Eli, you
are a square peg in the round hole of the
public education system, but you have to do it. You're

(01:21:52):
smarter than this. And I did a little bit more
for a while than that fizzled a way. She she
try your academic career all right, now, look at you.
You're you're given history lessons. Well, I'll just marry a
smart girl. Oh, marry an a students and yeah, we'll
both find out that it doesn't actually matter later on

(01:22:13):
in life. Kind of same position. Well, yes, please, okay,
please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you, especially,
I mean, do you have a connection to this story
or are you one six related to Polcahuntas okay, or
if you're from any of these tries, especially if you
have any opinion on the Mattapony oral history or any
of that. Definitely would love to hear. I would love

(01:22:35):
to hear. Please get back to us. You can reach
us through email at Romance, at iHeart media dot com,
or on social media Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite
Boom and I'm at oh Great, It's Eli and the
show is at ridic Romance. We are so happy to
hear from you all the time. We hope you had
a lovely Thanksgiving week and then we're moving into this
holiday season everybody's having, you know, joy and cheer and

(01:22:57):
all that good stuff. Yes, and we are so just
very thankful for you spending your wonderful free time with us.
We are or your multitasking time or whatever it is
you do while your listeners chat. We just really appreciate
you choosing us. We are and were thankful for your neighbors,
your uncle's, your aunts who listen as well. And please

(01:23:18):
share this episode and any others around whatever way you can. Well,
thanks everyone, We'll catch on the next one. Can't wait
so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening
to our show. Tell your friends, neighbors, uncle's in dance
to listen to a show ridiculous, Well NaNs

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