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- [00:02]
Beckett
Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental. Hello and welcome to the show.
- [00:11]
Susan
It's Thanksgiving time in America and here, while I would say 97% of us are eating at least most of the same meal, Susan and I traditionally take a little break. So Susan can make her turkey and I can make my cranberry sauce with booze in it because Chris crammed the chef makes the turkey in our house. Traditionally we bring you Pocahontas episode from 2017. On this holiday weekend, it is also.
- [00:43]
Beckett
National Native American Heritage Month here in the United States. In the notes for the show, we'll put a link to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a part of the United States Department of the Interior. They have information and things to do with kids. For National Native American Heritage Month, the theme this year is weaving together our past, present and future.
- [01:06]
Susan
And now, without further ado, on with the show. A quick note. Due to a cascading series of technical difficulties, Susan has disappeared from the first section. We will rejoin her again in section two, but for the beginning it is only me. And here's your 30 second summary. Once there was a story about an 11 year old girl who saved the life of an explorer from her father's wrath. She did save the lives of his people, but not the way you've been told. The end.
- [01:41]
Beckett
Let's talk about Pocahontas. But first let's drop her into history. In 1607, Galileo invented an early version of the thermometer called the thermoscope and he was deep into his studies of motion. Shakespeare's new plays, King Lear and Macbeth were both being perform except during the months between July and November when the plague closed all the theaters. China was in the Ming dynasty. Philip III was king of Spain and Portugal. Vasily IV was Tsar of Russia. Queen Elizabeth I had died four years earlier, but her nephew, King James I, was still trying to fill her shoes. Former subjects, Queen Nzinga and Artemisia Gentileschi were both young women. And in 1607, three British ships full of men arrived to establish the North American Jamestown colony and in doing so would propel a young Poetan girl into history.
- [02:36]
Susan
Matoa of the Powhatan people was born in 1595 or 1596 to the Powhatan high chief Wahon Seneco, who history knows as simply Powhatan, and an unknown mother, likely in the village of Werwacomico in present day Gloucester county in eastern Virginia. Disclaimer all these words I've written down phonetically so I think I'm doing a pretty good job. Her family situation is unique among all the subjects we've covered so far and is going to require some serious explanation. Her father, known to history as Chief Powhatan, by the time Pocahontas was born, was the Mama Natowik, or high chief, over 30 tribes in an area that the English called the Powhatan Confederation, but the Powhatan people called Sunakamaka. It's an area about 100 miles square that's right on the James River, Potomac river and Chesapeake Bay, and it's now known as the Tidewater area of Virginia. So what would happen is Pon would take a wife in any one of the 30 villages, and when she had a child, she and the child were sent back to her people and provided for. And when the child was of an age to not need, you know, breastfeeding or basic civilizing or three or four, you know, that child would come back to live in papa's compound. The mother didn't typically come back. He may have had up to 100 wives. And it's estimated that Pocahontas had at least 30 and maybe even 50 brothers and sisters. Now, Powhatan oral traditions, which kind of run parallel to this, and really, as primary source material, I have to say that a lot of times you have to regard those, since they were on the spot, as true stories of history. Powhatan oral tradition states that Pocahontas mother had died in childbirth, and therefore, rather than being taken away way to another village, she may have grown up from birth in the father's home village. Of all the children, Pocahontas was indeed his favorite, his little mascot, kind of. We've seen this in history before, a couple of decades before this, Philip II of Spain, if you remember him from our Elizabeth the First and Queen Mary podcasts, he traveled everywhere with his little daughter, Infanta Isabella, also King Monkhood of Anna and the King of Siam fame. Although, you know, he was famous as a king in his own right. He had his favorite daughter, Faying, who is his special pet. And these little girls were allowed to go places that their siblings weren't, be present for things their siblings weren't. They accompanied their father almost everywhere. Now, she wasn't a princess in the European sense, though, because Powhatan society is matrilineal, which means a family of siblings rules. Oldest to youngest boy, then oldest to youngest girl, and then the children of the oldest sister take over. Oldest to youngest boy, oldest to youngest girl. So if you think about It Pocahontas, as the child of one of the brothers, was in no line for any rule, no matter how many siblings she had. Dynastically unimportant, not personally unimportant, just not in play as a pawn the way that European daughters of kings might be. Also, I think in the interest of clarity, we're going to need to simply refer to her as Pocahontas, her public name. For the majority of her life. It was common for her people to have several names for different purposes. So her secret birth name was Matoica, which means bright stream between the hills. She may have had another everyday name, Amanut, which might be associated with some kind of mystical or spiritual ritual within the tribe, but her day to day nickname was Pocahontas, which means something, something like playful one or mischievous one, a name given to her by her family, obviously, based on her personality. And I thought this seemed complicated until I looked at, you know, my own name. My husband calls me Mrs. Graham. The whole family calls me Book or Aunt Book. Work people call me Beezy. The history chicks, people call me Beckett. So your secret birth name was thought to have magic in it, and you never told it to anyone, lest they have some sort of power over you, like revealing your middle name, maybe? I don't mean to make light of it. It was taken very seriously. Pocahontas, in fact, did not reveal her birth name to the English until much, much later in her story. So here the Powhatan people are, living as they had for countless generations. They were currently in a period of mostly peace, after all of the conquering and king of the hill stuff that Papa had accomplished right before Pocahontas was born, he did inherit the chiefdom of a tribe, but he set about conquering neighboring tribes. Oh, did he ever. And by the time Pocahontas was born, there were about 30 other tribes loosely organized under him in a confederation. Now, it reminded Susan a lot of the little German principalities that we always talk about. They have their own princes and kings, but they're kind of nominally under a larger umbrella of, you know, Holy Roman Emperor. So that's a lot like this. It wasn't to say that they couldn't act independently, and all of their customs were pretty well respected. But the fact is, you had to send tribute to the high chief and you had to send wives for the. For the chief and his enemies equal your enemies. And you were expected to go to war on his side. I don't want you to get this idea that it was always this Peaceful around here. Like, you get this picture of everybody living in harmony with nature. And it was not like that at all. We just happened to be opening the window right when there's a relative time of peace. Well, their houses were made of grass mats that were layered on top of these bentwood frames. And, you know, Virginia is not that warm. I guess they layered them up and they knew what they were doing. And usually there was a central fire, sometimes more than one, and then this tall, spiky fence called a palisade all the way around. Now, the chief's house was bigger, of course, and there was also a long house for communal activities. This was a very, very organized society. They had a pretty traditional division of labor, but everyone participated, Even the king. And men fished and hunted and made boats, and women were the foragers for wild food and firewood and water carrying and clothes making and cooking and cleaning and childcare. You've got all those traditional duties. Women were actually the ones that made the grass mats for the house. And the men, I guess, because they're stronger, were the ones that made the bentwood frames. So that was an all skate. Well, they grew what was called the three sisters, beans, squash, and corn. And my grandpa used to do this. You'd plant the corn with fish heads for fertilizer. That might be literally the only quote Indian thing we all learned in school. Then a little afterward, when the corn got to about a foot and a half tall, you'd plant the other crops right next to the corn. So the beans would climb up the corn stalk and fill the vertical space. And then the squash would fill all the horizontal space. And those big giant squash leaves would block weeds from growing, and their spiky stems would prevent pests from climbing up to the beans in the corn. It is a very efficient technique of farming. And if you have a Sacagawea dollar coin, the 2009 design has the cultivation of the three sisters on the back of it. Kids in this culture learned by doing, by watching the adults, and they were able to explore and play in the woods. And you'd forage while you were doing that, or fish while you were on the river or learn how to row a boat with the men was considered just part of their education. Learning by doing, that's how children have learned throughout history. Now, I'm not sure how this worked, because Virginia is still awful cold in the winter, but children did not really wear any clothes until puberty. You know, beaded jewelry. Yes. And moccasins while they were running around in the woods because a scratch getting infected. What are you going to do? There's no antibiotics, but otherwise, just like we talked about in the Cleopatra episode, the village is full of naked children. And so it went, day after day, year after year, largely during this time of peace, uncomplicated. But when Pocahontas was about 10 or 11, what has just come sailing into the Chesapeake Bay? It's three ships. The Godspeed, the Discovery and the Susan Constant, or Sarah Constant. I've seen it both ways. Up the river they went, a river that the white men aboard the ships just renamed the James river after their King James I, who had given them permission to start a self governing colony in the New World. Now, the Powhatan had seen both ships and white men by now, and it never ended up good. The Spanish in particular had come over and over and over again. And in 1560 they had abducted a boy, taken him away to first Cuba and then Spain, educated him, renamed him Don Luis de Velasco, and then they returned him thinking, oh ho, he's going to be on our side. But in fact he, he remembered his heritage and he, quote, turned on the Spanish and helped kill every single last one of them. Well, except for one who did escape to tell the tale. And that kind of scared the Spanish off for a little while. And they stuck to their southern colonies in Florida, St. Augustine in particular, the English had come a couple times. The one that you might have heard of, the Roanoke settlement, one of the most famous mysteries of history. Where did the Roanoke settlement end up? Since I have learned that these Englishmen might have burned some native villages, I'm thinking there's a principle in logic called Occam's Razor, where if there's a very, very complicated solution to a problem and a very simple one, you probably should go with the simple one. And I just think after all of these bad interactions with Spanish and English settlers, I wouldn't be surprised. I have no proof of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Roanoke colony was just the subject of mass slaughter, I'm sorry to say. So these dudes, these new dudes just built a fort on Powhatan's land, Jamestown they called it, because they are so full of imagination, name wise. So they built a big tree trunk palisade with these little houses inside. And some of the locals were not very happy with this. They decided they would fire warning arrows at them, like, get out. Justifiable, I would say. And like I said, all of the tribes did not have to do what Powhatan said they took it upon themselves to kind of keep them in their place by shooting arrows. But Powhatan himself took sort of a wait and see approach because these guys had already proved to be sort of domalecs. They were in a place that was low lying. There was a swamp nearby. It was going to be covered in mosquitoes all summer. The water that they were trying to use was this brackish, kind of half salt water. Why do you think we didn't live there in the first place? Right. They weren't good at farming or a food gathering. What was their deal? Even? So he traded with the settlers, maybe a little recon. The white men. These were all men. No women had come yet. They did have metal hatchets and guns that would make work easier. And they traded game and corn for those. And also blue beads, which is something I was surprised by. Blue glass beads were so valuable and rare that they brought a good price. Even 300 years later, when people brought those to Hawaii, a blue glass bead was considered very valuable. Now there's blue all over, nature in the sky, but not a lot of things to make blue beads out of. And so those were very rare and very sought after. And only the highest ranking people could have them. The colonists, most of them had been upper class people back in Europe. They did bring a chaplain and they brought some carpenters and that kind of thing. But most of the people were kind of like, didn't want have servants to farm and, you know, make food happen because they were there to find gold. That was the whole reason the king had signed off on this whole adventure in the first place. Hunting. Okay, fine, these are the guys for hunting. That would have been okay except for the fact that they kept getting shot every time they were in the woods. And By September, about 50 of the colonists were dead. Powhatan's shaking his head like, okay, these fools cannot find food when it is everywhere around them. And now winter's coming and this is all going to be a mass extinction over there. And so he sent a delegation, including his daughter Pocahontas, with corn, not just once, but over and over during the next few months. And how different would history have been if he had just let them be? But Pocahontas obviously became a known and quite welcome figure around Jamestown. Well, by December, the food stores were running low again, and a delegation hadn't come. And so a member of the colony named Captain John Smith set out to try to find Chief Powhatan to trade or negotiate for more food. This guy, he had actually showed up to his new life in the new world in chains because he'd been accused of fomenting a mutiny on board. And he was kind of a adventurer. He had been a soldier in Turkey, a mercenary, some might even say. And my goodness, he was a character. His goal, I think, was to make himself a rich man with a good story behind him and no worries. So we'll see how that goes for him. Because right away, he did have a major worry. He had set out to try to find Powhatan, but along his journey, he was captured by one of Powhatan's younger brothers, an under chief, a vice president, if you will, who had never been okay with these interlopers in the first place, and took John Smith as his prisoner. It's Pocahontas Uncle Opechacana. And this did not look good for John Smith. And now it's time to take a little break. And when we come back, we will talk about the most famous episode in Pocahontas life. Hello, friends. Though we appreciate your presence every day, today we're asking for your monetary help and support for the History Chicks podcast. By donating just $12, just a dollar a month, you can keep us in books and electricity for another year. Not to mention gin and stockings. To donate, just go to our website, thehistorychicks.com and press the tasteful donate button on the right hand side. It's right under the search bar. Thank you for being here for us throughout the years and more acutely over this holiday season. You help us change the world each and every day. Thank you. And we are back. Old Apachonica has a hold of John Smith, and I wonder if the uncle was going to go ahead and make his case for finally exterminating the colony. Well, he had to check with his boss. And so off Captain Smith was hauled through several villages, paraded as a captive for a little pr. Finally, they ended up at Warwick Hamiko, where Powhatan was waiting for them. Maybe with Pocahontas, I'm not sure.
- [18:28]
Beckett
The chances of her actually being part of any political or religious ceremony, even though she was his favorite child, is pretty slim. Kids just weren't part of it in their culture. All those other stories, we'll you that, but honestly, it's not known. There's two different versions of what happened, and the version that he told shortly after is part of a letter. John Smith recounted one story, and then years later, he told an entirely different version of it with a whole lot more drama. The first version that he Told was that he was taken to Wahoo, Seneca. He was treated very well by everyone that he was assumed that he was the person in power by them. They gave him a nice meal, he chatted with them, he got some information, he made an alliance with them. And then four guys brought him back to Jamestown. The end.
- [19:25]
Susan
That sounds reasonable, right? But here's how events unfolded according to the latter story, which has percolated into the common consciousness. There was a giant feast in the longhouse, and for dessert, he was grabbed a hold of. They put his head on a stone and raised some clubs to beat his brains out. And out of nowhere, like magic, Pocahontas leaped over there and got between the executioners and the captain, her head between his and those clubs. So she protected him and she saved his life.
- [20:02]
Beckett
Wow, that is dramatic. They could make a movie out of that. But there's so many holes in this story, it's not even funny. Let's just start with the dinner. Why would they feed somebody to kill them? At this point, there's a three year drought going on. Their crops were not as plentiful as they could have been. And so why would they feed him just to kill him? Secondly, the way they were killing him, clubbing was a punishment that they used within their tribe. If a member of the tribe had committed some grave sin, that's how they got rid of him. But these white people, they tortured them. They made it so painful because they didn't want anybody else to do what they were doing. They wanted to use them as an example. So that doesn't fly either.
- [20:43]
Susan
And the thing is, any of this would be more believable if old John Smith hadn't told that story in other contexts. I mean, evidently he had been saved in a very similar way by a beautiful Turkish princess, among others. So there are also opinions out there that if this happened at all, this was just a show of force, a test perhaps, to see what the chief was dealing with here in this white man named John Smith. Or perhaps that Captain Smith totally misunderstood an adoption ceremony. I'm just saying that's out there. Or the most likely of all these, that the whole episode was a work of fiction.
- [21:25]
Beckett
He has a history of doing that too. See that episode in Turkey that you just talked about? He is going to tell whatever story he needs to to get whatever it is that he wants, right? So depending on his audience, he's going to tell a different version of the story.
- [21:41]
Susan
So regardless of what happened then, Powhatan asked John Smith, after all this time, I guess because this is the first time they've officially met, although they've both been running parallel in this story. What are you doing here, Number One? And then, is this permanent? Are you planning to stay here? And John Smith lied. Lied. Oh, no, no. Our ship is broken. That's the ticket. Okay. Yes, there's one ship left. The other two have left on a supply mission. That could be true. While waiting for another ship to take us back to England. We're just trying to survive. No, it's too difficult here. That's true. And Powhatan let him go back to the English settlement with the understanding that they were going to depart when the new ship came.
- [22:24]
Beckett
Right. And that would make a really good reason why Powhatan would treat them well and share things with them, which is what they did. And this is where Pocahontas actually did, you know, go between the village and the Jamestown fort. But she wasn't going. Like, in a lot of versions, they'll tell you that she's just, like, running back and forth randomly. She's never going anywhere unsupervised. She is always with someone watching over her. And as the daughter of the chief, she's probably got extra someones watching over her because these know what the white people could do to them.
- [22:58]
Susan
Well, one thing is for certain. John Smith and Pocahontas never fell in love. There was no romantic story involving colors of the wind and if I never knew you, Disney, it is just not happening. Pocahontas was only 11 years old that year. She was still considered enough of a child that she still didn't wear clothes most of the time. In fact, she was known for her, quote, naked cartwheels.
- [23:24]
Beckett
At this point in time, there was some kids that were at the fort. They had brought some more people over, so they were just delighted. But when she would come by, because she was so much fun, she always.
- [23:33]
Susan
Brought the food for one thing, and security for another thing. Her papa, if he still lets her come over here, is not planning to kill us. Well, so she did teach John Smith some words in her Algonquin language. I'm sure there was reciprocity. And he taught her. He had written back some phonetically spelled letters in the Algonquin language. Now, sure enough, a new ship had come, but it wasn't a relief ship. Get out of Dodge ship. Like he had said it, in fact, had a hundred more settlers on it and food and ammunition. Not good. As far as the Powhatans were concerned, John Smith had lied about leaving. And it was Pocahontas that brought papa the news and he was justifiably mad, like, okay, so now there are squatters here that I had helped against my own best interests, most likely. And so now, my friends, if you want food, you have to trade me weapons, which is evidently what I need now. No way. Said the colonists with self preservation instincts fully intact. So the locals just began stealing them. And in retaliation, the colonists started stealing Powhatan children for translators, you know, which seems like a real escalation of hostilities. And they started setting fire to villages. So Powhatan just cut off contact. Nobody go over there. This includes you. Pocahontas and Jamestown was starving to death for a year after this boycott. Unbelievably to me, many of these colonists still refused to do farm work and build things, even though it would keep them alive. I mean, obviously there was no pioneer questionnaire back in England. There actually had to be a rule that if you didn't work, you didn't eat. And there was even grumbling about that.
- [25:25]
Beckett
I'm sorry, they so entitled the quote, gentlemen. That's how they were listed on the roster. The gentleman.
- [25:32]
Susan
So the next January, Captain Smith had to swallow his pride a little bit and go humbly to beg Powhatan for corn, who refused. They're at the end of a three year drought. And in the local culture, just like in nature when it's a lean year, you walk around, lean deers are not fat. If there hasn't been enough food, well, neither are the people. And that's just how it is. There's not this endless supply of corn for everybody. And we've been laying it up all year while you have been laying on your butts. And we are not supporting you anymore.
- [26:06]
Beckett
It seems fair as far as I'm concerned.
- [26:09]
Susan
I don't know what they were thinking. They just came here and expected the people living here to support them fully. I just don't. I don't get it. Well, allegedly Pocahontas sneaked back in and warned Captain Smith of an assassination attempt that was to be carried out against him personally so that he could take precautions.
- [26:29]
Beckett
Yeah, I think that story is just false because she's, like I said before, she's not running wild. You know, I don't think she even would have run to tell them this if she could, which I don't think she could.
- [26:40]
Susan
But later in the year, during a sort of general attack, he was gravely wounded. It's listed as a gunpowder injury. So a burn injury. It's pretty painful. Well, when he, he recovered he was fired as the leader of the colony. He went back to England. As far as everyone in the Virginia area was concerned, he had died. That's what everyone was told. So Pocahontas about now steps back into the midst of history. She has become a grown woman according to her society. And it's likely that around 14 or 15 years old she married a man named Kokum whose tribe lived north of the village where she grew up. And unlike the Kok of the Disney Pocahontas movie, the thought is that since he didn't have a high rank in the society that it might slash. Probably was somewhat of a love match. So that makes me feel a little bit happier.
- [27:36]
Beckett
It does. She wouldn't have because the royal blood wasn't running through her veins because her mother wasn't royal. She wouldn't have had to have some type of political alliance marriage at all. So she was free. Well, they were always free. But she could choose anybody she wanted and this is who she chose. So yeah, I agree. I think that they wanted to be together. Even if she had been going back and forth all the time. Just because John Smith was gone was no reason for her to stop doing that. But what was a reason was her first trip to the menstrual hut. At that point women would have been brought into like, just like in the British or the United States society of earlier days. They would have had a kind of a coming out ceremony and introduced to society. The same thing happens to the women and the Powhatan women. So she would have disappeared anyway from the narrative.
- [28:30]
Susan
Well, the hostilities escalated, if you can believe that's possible, between the Powhatan and the settlers and the population of Jamestown fell from around 230 to 60 people. There is no more corn coming from any place. They had eaten all the farm animals and then the pets and then the rats. Would you eat the rats, then the pets? I just don't know. I can't decide.
- [28:54]
Beckett
I, you know, I think I go rats first maybe. I don't know. It depends how much I like the pets. They would have been eating a lot of food though. The pets would have.
- [29:02]
Susan
Oh, that's true. I guess one less thing. Well, even darker recent evidence has pointed to the fact that the Jamestown residents resorted at one point to cannibalism. The remains of a 14 year old girl have been found and evidence on her skeleton marks. Etc, she was, I don't even know any nice way to say this, butchered for meat. Now I don't know if she was murdered and then eaten. Or died of natural causes. And then eaten. It's still notable to say that people who were too fine of gentlemen and ladies to put their hands in the dirt have now resorted to eating other people. So that is the desperate situation that they are in. So new colonists arrived in the spring to find a burnt out city of, I guess, walking skeletons. Not this gold mining fort they'd signed up for. Like, forget this. And they tried to retreat. They turned their action around and were headed back. But they were turned back to shore by the new governor and his three ships. And I'd be all like, like, catch me later, dude, see you at the Tower of London. You know, fine.
- [30:05]
Beckett
But they. Okay, I know, I know, I know. Can you just see, like the cartoon version is these women and children and they're all fresh and fed and they scamper to shore and they take one look and they turn around and they hightail it back. Yeah.
- [30:18]
Susan
Well, this governor, just notable for his name. Delaware. Gave his name to Delaware. He began to rebuild Jamestown. He did only last a year, but his replacement actually started a second inland settlement with better water supply, better able to be defended. It was called either Henrico or Henricus. Accounts differ, but the main factor is that it was further away from Chief Powhatan.
- [30:46]
Beckett
It was. And it had a way better view of anybody coming in. It was built on a higher elevation. They were much safer up the river.
- [30:54]
Susan
The new governor brought so many people with him. From an all time low of our famous 60 people, we are now up to 700 people. Families, women and children now needing to be fed. Oh, no. The old classic problem. And the nearby poetans wouldn't give them the time of day, much less corn. And so the new governor had to explore further afield to find someone, anyone, that would deal with him. There was a village about 50 miles upriver, a tribe called the Potawomek, where the captain made a discovery. Whose daughter did you say that is?
- [31:29]
Beckett
Pocahontas had gone to live with them. Yeah, that's the tribe of her husband. And when that was discovered, it was like, oh my gosh, there's our meal ticket. The golden cow. Golden goose, golden something. She's going to be able to help us get what we need from Powhatan. But the only way we can do it is if we kidnap her.
- [31:50]
Susan
From the English perspective, there was a married couple, her brother and his wife, and they were to pretend to want to go see the inside of an English ship and ask Pocahontas to accompany them. So she did reluctantly, it is said, and they made it onto the boat and due to some trickery and some paying off of these relatives. Now again, this is the English perspective, they departed the boat and Pocahontas was left trapped as it left shore.
- [32:21]
Beckett
Okay, from the Powhatan perspective, according to their oral histories, the man in that situation was actually Pocahontas brother in law and his wife. And they were given no other option. These people had weapons and they knew what was going to happen to them if they refused this situation. They were going to be attacked and they couldn't defend themselves. So they agreed to the scheme as long as Pocahontas was released. Just do it for show. Just make them call your bluff because it's not going to happen. So it's just soon as you make your point, you're going to let her go. Right? And they didn't. According to the English version, they were bought off by a copper kettle. In the Powhatan version, they were stunned that this had happened. I mean, they were totally hoodwinked. Here the copper kettle was just given to them to make it look like they were being bought off. But in reality they were horrified about what happened.
- [33:17]
Susan
Pretty dirty trickery. Well, however it happened, the 17 or 18 year old Pocahontas was now a hostage of the English. So you can forget what I said earlier about not being a pawn in the man's big game because she now, just like her European counterparts, is hard in the game. Now she is a pawn for sure. And I'm sorry to say that she may have been treated very, very poorly aboard ship.
- [33:43]
Beckett
Yeah, according to the Powhatan traditions, again, she was raped. I mean, they are clear about this, that she was raped on the ship. Now women being taken captive by the white people at this point was something they lived with. It was a fear that they had because it had been happening. And when these women were kidnapped, they were raped. And same thing happened to Pocahontas. According to that tradition, she was pregnant from one of these rapes.
- [34:12]
Susan
Now once she got to Henrico, it seems like she was not treated poorly at all. We have been talking over in the recap podcast about, about English people's inner respect for rank and it goes way back. And Pocahontas was the daughter of a king. Now that doesn't mean what they think it means as she is not in line for any kind of throne. But I say take it if, if there's a misconception you can use or whatever. She went to live with the pastor and his family. The Whitakers. And he was a Puritan. And just like when people came to the islands of Hawaii and saw all that exposed skin, it burned his eyes. It burned his eyes. And he wouldn't let her wear her regular clothes anymore. It was too scandalous. Also, I want to just say Pocahontas, if she followed Algonquin customs, likely had tattoos on her body once she became a woman. And maybe even on her face, which no one ever depicts in pictures, do they? They do not, no.
- [35:13]
Beckett
But they would have been hidden by those heavy, you know, dresses that they were wearing. The heavy wool dresses and all the pet petticoats and the stiff bodices and shoes, British shoes at the time. She had been running barefoot or in moccasins her whole life. And now her feet are just getting shoved into these really tight shoes.
- [35:35]
Susan
So Mr. Whitaker, with patience and teaching skills, offered to teach Pocahontas to read English and also improve her speaking of it. And like so much of our history anywhere, really, the one book anyone seems to have had was the Bible. And that what they studied, discussed, analyzed for well over a year. And he had a great opinion of her abilities. He actually wrote, let us not think that these men are so simple as some have supposed them. For they are of body lusty, strong and very nimble. They are of a very understanding generation, quick of apprehension, sudden in their dispatches, subtle in their dealings, exquisite in their inventions, and industrious in their labor. He also had a very poor opinion of the people he had surrounded himself with in the colony, calling them miserable, covetous men, sold over to usury, extortion and oppression. Many of the men sent hither have been murderers, thieves, adulterers and idle persons. God hateth, even from his very soul.
- [36:40]
Beckett
It would be really nice if Whitaker's perspective had made it down into the history books, because then all of this wouldn't have been a misunderstanding like it has been.
- [36:50]
Susan
And it makes it a little more clear about what probably happened on the boat. Like, the respectable people, for the most part, are not sailors. Right.
- [36:58]
Beckett
Can I just point out one more thing throughout the. Again, I'm gonna keep bringing this up, the Powhatan version. You have to remember, she was still being held prisoner. You know, he was very nice, and he fed her and he clothed her and he educated her. And of course, he's trying to convert her, right? But that he feels that's his mission, so. Okay, but she's also a prisoner here. She's treated well, but she can't go back to her own Home.
- [37:24]
Susan
I know, it's very sad. Well, time passed and Powhatan had called their bluff. He was not coughing up any goods, even though the English had kidnapped his daughter and set fire to at least one Powhatan village, which is never a good negotiating tactic anyway. The governor actually decided that he was going to take her to a Powhatan village where he thought her father was to just this out, this whole deal. We need to wrap this up. And though Hokahantis did go ashore, she didn't really talk to anyone except to a couple of her brothers. I guess half brothers, cuz we're a whole family of only children. But she wanted them to pass a message to her father that if he had loved her, he would value her more than a load of old swords and axes. So she was going to stay with the English who loved her. If this is a true statement, I really feel good that she literally took her own life in her hands right here.
- [38:24]
Beckett
If it's not, it sure sounds like something she would have been told to say. You know, the whole time they've been saying, you know, if your people aren't coming for you, they must not really care, but we care for you.
- [38:35]
Susan
Things were so strange back in the colony. Specifically and secretly, one of the citizens had fallen in love with her. And John rolled wanted to marry Pocahontas. This is why he said so. To whom my heart and best thoughts are and have for a long time been so entangled and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was unable to unwind myself. Well, yay. Hooray. John Rolfe was a man who ultimately changed the fortunes of the colony. He had brought some tobacco seeds from the West Indies. You know, tobacco in Virginia, that is a cash crop. And once he could figure out how to grow those, that's not going to be able to be beat. He could have an ulterior motive because the only people that really 100% knew how to make tobacco grow well in this climate were in fact the pelotons.
- [39:32]
Beckett
And tobacco in their culture was used for religious ceremonies. They're not even sharing their corn. They're certainly not going to share the information on how to grow this sacred plant, that's for sure. Although we know it now, looking back, that the seeds that John Rolfe brought were for a very sweet tobacco with a high nicotine content versus the Powhatan tobacco, which was very bitter tasting. It wasn't pleasant to the English at all. But this new stuff, this was gonna be good tobacco. He just needed to Know how to, you know, grow it here. Marrying Pocahontas would get him that information. She might have it or she has access to the people who have it.
- [40:12]
Susan
And I want to say from her side. When women were taken captive, even between tribes, this goes way back. Their best hope, other than rescue, which, you know, might never come, was to become someone's wife rather than to be a servant and beloved of no one. So your goal was to perhaps marry one of your captors and therefore have a bit of status and security and safety. And so from her perspective, this actually may not be love, but it might be like, he's a good man. I need to hitch my wagon to his star.
- [40:48]
Beckett
Right, Right. So, hey, it's a win, I guess if you're being held prisoner, you might as well, you know, decide who's whose cell you share, I guess.
- [40:58]
Susan
Well, John Rolfe was so nervous, though, because a marriage like this, a white man and a Native American woman, was unheard of. He was worri, well, being punished legally, would his goods be seized and what was going to happen. The governor was a hair trigger, bad Alec kind of guy. And he was also worried about maybe being a laughingstock because even if you're a good man, you're also a man of your time. And prejudice can't necessarily be wiped out immediately. Also, they'd been warned specifically against, and I quote, strange brides. And that doesn't mean mean crazy people. That means Native women specific warning. So he was too nervous to even ask in person. He wrote him a letter and gave it to the guy's assistant. That's always smart. Secretaries and assistants always know better than you how to get in the door. Like, give this to him when you think he's in a good mood. And the assistant handed the governor this letter asking for permission to marry Pocahontas right after she told the Pons, forget you and came back on.
- [42:07]
Beckett
So that was probably a very good time for him to get that letter because he agreed. From his point of view, it's a business deal. This woman has done what we wanted to happen here. We have brought her over to our culture, we've educated her, we've Anglicized her. Look how wonderful this is. If she marries one of our people, then that makes it our two tribes blending. Kind of it's a business deal. Kind of like those marriages of Powhatan earlier on, you know, to all the village women.
- [42:40]
Susan
Well, an intermarriage is the classic solution, even in Europe, you know, as far as the governor was concerned, thumbs up, let's give it a try. Now, I'm very cynical about what I would call conversion, but evidently Pocahontas decided to or was encouraged to, or forced to become a Christian. And I think this means, though, that they genuinely liked her. They genuinely wanted to save her. They believed she'd be lost without Christianity. So I don't think they came out this with any kind of violence.
- [43:12]
Beckett
We love you and here's our Bible, here's our God. Would you like to follow him?
- [43:17]
Susan
But it was good PR back home. Also, like an outcome. Oh, look, observe. We have done great things. I'm sure no one was thinking of that. Well, anyway, whatever happened, it was shortly before her baptism that Pocahontas revealed her birth name to the English, which says to me that she was fully invested in it. That's a pretty serious thing you're doing, telling someone your birth name. That's serious, I think.
- [43:43]
Beckett
Oh, yeah, definitely. Because that's something that they held very dear to them. So if they had that information, she must have given. Yeah, I agree with you on that point. I. I have a problem with the whole conversion, a little bit, bit in the timing. She had been there for a year, she'd been getting this information. She could have done it at any point. But she's deciding to do it right before she's going to get married and after she's done this thing that benefited the English. I don't know. She could have been doing it as an ambassador for her people. She could have thought of herself that way. And if she did, then all of this makes sense too, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's two sides of it. She could. Could have actually been converted and actually really wanted to change her name. Or she could have thought, well, this is what I'm going to do to be a good ambassador.
- [44:28]
Susan
Oh, I see, I see. Like, you know, you're the arch Duchess of Austria and you have to become the Queen of France.
- [44:36]
Beckett
Yes.
- [44:36]
Susan
For example, well, Pocahontas took the name of Rebecca at her baptism and the English never called her Pocahontas again, you see, an occasional reference to Rebecca born Matoa. But to them Pocahontas was gone. And usually when a subject changes her name, we just move forward with the new name. Sojourner Truth, for example. And in this case I really found it troublesome and it feels disrespectful to refer to her as Rebecca. But as I said before, it was her choice to reveal her birth name. So all I can assume, with no other evidence, is that it was genuinely her choice to change her name. So I guess Rebecca it is going forward.
- [45:19]
Beckett
You know, maybe that's like when you're in French class and you have to pick a French name.
- [45:24]
Susan
Oh, yeah.
- [45:25]
Beckett
Like, you still have your name, but in the class they call you whatever.
- [45:29]
Susan
Okay, so, yes, I'm accepting of Rebecca. I do have a little bit of a problem with that choice of name. And I think Mr. Whitaker was sort of playing dirty with his deep knowledge of the Bible, because Rebecca. Rebecca is a person in the Bible story of Abraham. He was trying to find a wife for his son Isaac. And Rebecca, by her generous nature, she was watering all the camels and being very hospitable, etcetera, Was chosen as the wife of his son Isaac. She ultimately gave birth to a set of twins. The first one being born was red in appearance. The younger one was white in appearance. And it was this younger son that she and Isaac were to favor greatly as the successor and the dominant force among their people. A man that would rule over the descendants of his brother, the red man, who had been there first.
- [46:28]
Beckett
Yeah, we give Whitaker a little credit back there, but I totally agree with you on this one.
- [46:35]
Susan
That's a little too on the nose and it bothers me greatly.
- [46:39]
Beckett
Yeah, no, I'm with you on that. It's also a pretty name. And there really aren't a lot of women's names in the Bible to pick from. Maybe there's already a lot of Ruth's, you know, and Henrico and a couple Esters, and they're like, oh, we need a name. Hey, how about Rebecca? Okay, it was probably a lot of.
- [46:55]
Susan
Mary's based on what we have seen everywhere else. Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary and Mary and Elizabeth and Mary.
- [47:02]
Beckett
This is probably a good time to take a break and when we come back, we'll find out how Rebecca far holiday season gift giving. I don't know about your family, but in mine we write wish lists. And this year on my son's girlfriend's wish list list was a History Chicks sweatshirt. She wanted a hoodie with the History Chicks logo on it. And I thought, well, I can take care of that. And then I thought, huh, I bet there's other people out there that want some History Chicks merchandise. Well, we do have a merch store. We've had it for years. We just aren't really great about talking about it. But since it's the holiday season and I have your ears right now, if you go to our website, thehistorychicks.com on the right Hand side, you'll see a button that's says shop. Our shop. Push that and you'll get to our teepublic shop. There you can find hoodies just like the one I'm going to get from my son's girlfriend. You can find T shirts and mugs and stickers, all kinds of things, not just with our logo. We have some other really fun women's history designs. Thank you so much for supporting the show and looking great while you do it.
- [48:42]
Susan
So we are back. Pocahontas is dead. Long live Rebecca. The marriage. What are we going to do? The Governor thought to himself, you know what? This might be exactly what we need to calm down all the tension around here. An intermarriage. The classic situation, right? As far as he was concerned, thumbs up. And those brothers of Rebecca's dutifully delivered the messages to Papa. You know, boy, did you let me down. And the governor's message to Powhatan, our citizen John Rolfe wishes to marry your daughter Atoaca, known as Rebecca. And people seemed surprised when Poetin agreed to this. Well, number one, they knew her secret name, right? So Rebecca must have told them it. They're not going to come up with it on their own. And number two, two, he was as hopeful as the governor, frankly, by now that this might actually stop the fighting. It was worth a try.
- [49:32]
Beckett
Yeah, it was. I mean, he was really getting up there. I think he was like 80 at this point. He himself didn't go to the marriage, although in the Powhatan tradition, the father generally does. But he was concerned for his safety, because why wouldn't he be? But he did send a couple uncles in his place. And according to Powhatan tradition, he sent also a pearl necklace for her. It's not recorded in any of the English versions, although the portrait that hung in the Virginia State House has her with a pearl necklace on, which could have been that particular item.
- [50:02]
Susan
So on April 5, 1614, when Pocahontas was about 19 and her groom was about 28, Rebecca became Mrs. John Rolf. A maternal uncle gave her away. That part of the ceremony being nearly the same in both cultures. And all the English ladies lent her the best things they had in their wardrobes to wear. And the community rallied around for three days of feasting. And we don't know exactly what happened, but probably they followed the English custom of the quote, putting to bed. We've seen depictions of it in a sort of, you know, the most vivid one that I remember is the Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola, where There's a room full of people. The new couple is put in bed. Well, in the English tradition of the time, they would sew the couple into their sheets. But the general consensus seems to be that John Rolfe had too much dignity to let that happen. What she might have done instead. This is the alternate is the bride pulls her stockings off under the covers and throws them on the ground and then everybody leaves. So whatever happened there, this all seemed to work so well as an institution that the governor sent a messenger to Palatin to ask for Rebecca's youngest sister as a wife for himself. Self not to say, huh. Because the governor sure enough had a wife in England already. Also that the sister was 12 years old. Yes. And Palatine's like, look, you don't need any more insurance. We're good. He, he chose to view it more like he wanted another tie to the community instead of what it was, which is dirt baggery. Well, you know what? Let us have peace also. I'm not giving you my 12 year old daughter.
- [51:47]
Beckett
That's right. Clearly the Rebecca. I can't even say it. The Rebecca and John Rolfe marriage was an alliance marriage, hopefully also in a marriage of love. But you know, maybe he's just trying to push his luck a little bit. Maybe.
- [52:03]
Susan
Well, behind this next, say eight to 10 years, a peaceful relationship actually did develop between the Palatins and the English. No one burnt anyone's anything, no one stole anyone's children or anything. And it was like a dream come true. I'm being sarcastic, like it's, you know, at least it was a little bit tamped down, you know, it was, it was called the Peace of Pocahontas. Now Pocahontas herself was not there for the entire piece of Pocahontas because very soon after her marriage, the governor had the bright idea of taking this civilized, which I read as Christianized native woman back to England as a walking, talking billboard for the Virginia Company, the operation that was behind all these expeditions in the first place. So you could get a buzz going, some new investors, show the old investors, here's what your cash had brought about. You know, this, look at this. And the king, King James had become kind of bored with the whole thing. Like there's been no gold. This could fix it, right? Like yes, yes, that'll be good. But he had to wait because Rebecca was pregnant and she had a healthy little child, a boy that they named Thomas Rolf. So at last the governor did get his way and 20ish year old Rebecca, her husband and her little Child, joined by maybe a dozen other Pons, journeyed to England, and they landed at Plymouth, and they set out across land by coach so they could get a good picture of the landscape and the cultivation and all this. I guess a previous captive had come to England, and they took him right to London. And he reported back to his people that the reason the white people were coming is there were no more trees in their land. He misinterpreted what he saw completely. So they made a sure to take these people through the countryside for a while. And one of the Palatine men had another task. Chief Powhatan had told him, get a stick and make a notch or a mark for every person you see and bring that back to me. And of course, he had to just give up. They got to London, population, what, 200,000, which blew all of the Powhatan's minds. You know, it was stinky and dirty and the air is just polluted with coal dust, and it was noisy. And this was. Wow, a whole new world.
- [54:14]
Beckett
Oh. Oh, very good, because now that song is in my head. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Now, they might not have been able to bring the gold to King James, but they did bring the tobacco. Because by this point, John Rolfe had learned the secrets of the Powhatans as far as how to grow the tobacco, how to put the fish by the plants, how to plant it in the southern exposure. So when they came back to England, they also brought with them some of this tobacco, which really sets fire to the economy back in Virginia.
- [54:47]
Susan
But someone at the Virginia colony had arranged lodgings for them at a tavern. These people are so full of comedy called the Belle Sauvage or the Belle Savage, the beautiful Savage. You are comedians. But Rebecca had a secret, able assist from someone she had been told was long dead. John Smith was alive. His assorted endeavors, unsuccessful adventures in the New World had kind of. I mean, they'd made him into a published author, so that's good, but not so much this rich, powerful lord of all he surveyed that he had hoped for. Exactly. But he knew the Virginia Company and he knew that they were going to cheap out bad, because that was their M.O. right? They were going to put him in this tavern and, like, really not treat them very well. And he wrote a letter to Queen Anne giving Rebecca the credit for saving his life twice. And he even said, this is part of the letter. At the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating of her own brains to save mine. And his goal was to convince the Queen that England should receive Rebecca Rolf as the courageous daughter of a king, that the Virginia Company's inevitable low treatment of her was going to get back to her father and then unravel all that peace that her marriage had created back home. It was a very bad political move to let the Virginia Company be in charge of her reception in England. England. Well, Queen Anne took this to heart. And so Rebecca was formally introduced to the queen by Lady Delaware. Remember her? Delaware from way back and then Rebecca Rolf was received everywhere in high society as a princess of another country, you know, looking from the English perspective, not as a circus attraction. She spoke good English. She carried herself with pride. She made quite a good impression. Balls and dinners and theaters and parties and masks. You know, the kind of season that a highborn lady would enjoy. I guess she even re encountered John Smith. And I would love to tell you that they fell right into conversation and, like, hugged and blah, blah, blah. And it was just super awkward. I don't know how to explain it. Well, it's not good.
- [57:00]
Beckett
She told him off. She told him that he had betrayed her people. She laid it all on the line about how unhappy she was with the whole thing. And even in his letters at the time, time, which wouldn't have had any purpose other than to document what happened, he admits that she was very angry.
- [57:17]
Susan
Right.
- [57:17]
Beckett
So it wasn't a nice, happy meeting like in some. In some interpretations of the story.
- [57:24]
Susan
Well, according to the English retelling of her story, Rebecca Rolf wanted to stay in England, though not in London proper. In fact, the polluted air had given her grief, and they had moved to the country just outside it so she could breathe. But it was so exciting. Kind of, you know, lady friends, everything new. This is her new world. You know, she is an explorer. Everyone's friendly, I guess, but, you know, they're very rank conscious. And if she's the daughter of a king, you know. Yeah, but Mr. Rolf's own future was in his new world, in what we now call America. His tobacco, his land interests were there. That was the place he could make his own fortune. Doors in England. England were largely close to people. I mean, you're not gonna. They're not making any more land, right? And he had land, but it was far away. And she was reluctant to go. But of course, she had to do what her husband said. Every wife had to do what their husband said at this time period. And after some welcome weather delays, they had to set off again back toward Virginia. And she had begun coughing before they left. And Mr. Rolf assumed it was that old pollution thing. And the sea air is just going to fix you right up, because that's the purest air there is, you know. But they hadn't made it very far when it was clear she was very, very sick. And they came back and put in at port at Gravesend, which is only about 26 or so miles from London, and moved their operation to an inn where she almost immediately died. Tuberculosis, some say, or pneumonia, or some.
- [59:02]
Beckett
Say she was poisoned. On the ship, she had gone to a dinner, and after that dinner, she suddenly got very ill, according to, again, the Powhatan version, and that she was poisoned and murdered. I mean, they use that word, murdered. Regardless, she's still dead.
- [59:18]
Susan
Well, and it could have been, you know, honestly, given the state of food storage, maybe it was food poisoning also. Do you know what I'm saying? It could be, like, unintentionally poisoned, too.
- [59:27]
Beckett
Oh, that's true. Absolutely.
- [59:29]
Susan
Yeah. Her last words to her husband were said to have been, all must die. It is enough that the child lives. Grains of salt to be taken. Nobody was in the room but Mr. Rolf, so who's to say? So the end. And her funeral was held the same day, her body laid to rest at the St. George's parish church, though no one now knows exactly where she is because there have been renovations through the centuries, and so that's kind of sad. Although she is memorialized in one of their stained glass windows, her portrait is in the lower right hand corner of one of their stained glass windows at that church.
- [60:05]
Beckett
Cool.
- [60:05]
Susan
And you're like, what about Pocahontas 2, the movie? I'm not getting this. Like, there aren't a lot of matching plot points. I'm sorry to destroy childhood illusions, but we're going to talk about that a tiny bit later. So that's that. Now, baby Thomas was sick, too. So sick that his papa, Rolf, left him with a friend and left for America. And they never saw each other again.
- [60:28]
Beckett
I mean, that is so sad, right? They never see each other. His wife's dead, he's leaving his kid behind. But he's got those crops that are, you know, worth quite a bit across the ocean.
- [60:39]
Susan
Well, there's a little epilogue here. The quote piece of Pocahontas lived on beyond her death for five or so years. Her father died, and his brother, the one who'd never been into the settler's arrival in the first place, broke the peace later and killed hundreds of settlers. His problem is, reinforcements kept arriving, and it was the beginning of the end for the Powhatan Confederation. Now Little Thomas, at 20 years old, came to Virginia where he discovered that he had inherited his father's land. Of course, and there is a tradition that Powhatan himself may have left land holdings to him. Rumor and tradition, there's no hard proof, but that's. The oral tradition is that Powhatan had left him some things too. But he became a tobacco farmer, just like his papa and, weirdly, leader of a fort. And he often worked against his mother's people to further establish the English colonies. Well, he had been raised in England.
- [61:34]
Beckett
Yeah, that's how he identified.
- [61:36]
Susan
And by the mid-1700s, the original Jamestown colony was really just a memory. But Pocahontas's name lives on. Of course, she's most famous for something she might slash, probably didn't even do. Yes, she saved lives, but by her marriage, not likely. Her act of bravery at the age of 11. So moving seamlessly, I think, into movies because I honestly guarantee you that's the first time we encountered her. Really. Her legacy has been twisted in art and literature, you know, since she lived. Not the least of which is, of course, Disney's Pocahontas of 1995 and its follow up, the straight to video Pocahontas II of 1998.
- [62:23]
Beckett
Okay, I have to say, I had a dog shortly after Pocahontas 1 was released. And I saw Pocahontas 1 in the theaters. And I hated it so much that she was 18 before she saw it at somebody else's house. Oh, I didn't want it in this house. There was one good song, and even then I knew that the story wasn't real. And it was just. It was just. I don't know, there was just too much stereotyping. The plot line didn't go very fast enough for me. There was nothing good about it. I was so excited for it because here's a woman of color that's gonna be in this Disney movie. And it was so watered down, I. I didn't like it. So I did ask her what she felt about it, and she said she liked it when she saw it. She said it had a good message about nature respecting others and getting past differences to find commonality. And she said that it summed up early American history in one line. These are dangerous.
- [63:25]
Susan
Well, that's true enough.
- [63:27]
Beckett
I know. Like, okay, good. So I said, what do you think about Pocahontas 2? Honestly, I got it from the library. I watched 20 minutes of it, and then I fast forwarded with no sound through the rest of the whole rest of it because it was just. I couldn't. It was painful. Did you watch it?
- [63:44]
Susan
Well, once you know the real story, it's a little bit like. Well, I have to try to regard this as. As just a random story that doesn't involve historical figures. I guess they do better animating than I do. So if you regard it as a story that has nothing to do with Pocahontas and is some other Pocahontas, then. Okay, still a little bit deaf as to cultural sensitivity.
- [64:09]
Beckett
Yes.
- [64:10]
Susan
As a retelling of Rebecca Rolf's story, I would say thumbs down.
- [64:15]
Beckett
Yeah. Well, as did my own daughter, whose name is Rebecca. She said one word. It was unnecessary. The other big movie that you'll see out there is called the New World. It was from 2005 with Colin Farrell as John Smith and Christopher Plummer as Captain Newport, which was. I was very excited. Pocahontas was played by an actress who later played Princess Kalani in a movie by the Same Name, episode 97 of Queen Lilu Kalani. You can hear a little bit more about her. So I was really excited about it and it had very high production value. It was lovely to watch. Had a lot of realism. There's things in there like when she gets put into the English clothing. It looked very realistic. It's probably how it happened where they lived. It was probably very realistic. But it had this whole romantic storyline running through it between John Smith and Pocahontas. It was super, super, super gushy. And I just couldn't take it. I couldn't take it. Even though the rest of the movie had a lot of qualities that I.
- [65:17]
Susan
Admired, I think the only review I really wrote on this was that I like this one, except to their ins that she was in love with John Smith, which I don't know why people cannot let go of. That one can be watched. Except for, keep in mind, we didn't want to smooch on the John Smith.
- [65:37]
Beckett
And that's such a huge part of.
- [65:39]
Susan
The storyline, though I know it's not as. It's not as like as Disney's Pocahontas. That's feign praise, isn't it? And now let's turn to books. I am whittling mine down too. Three balanced ones. And, you know, the further back you go. I was actually quite enjoying reading about the Spanish landing in Virginia and all the things. And then I encountered words like savages and a whole bunch of very condescending attitudes that I really didn't enjoy putting into my brain. So I had to go through all these Books and kind of order them by year of publication. All right, so what I ended up with is this. After all that winnowing down and having to go through. Okay, I really liked Love and Hate in Jane Jamestown, John Smith. Pocahontas and the Heart of a New Nation by David A. Price. I loved that one. And then Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma by Camilla Townsend.
- [66:35]
Beckett
That one's on my stack.
- [66:37]
Susan
And then there is a, ya, I would say, middle school in the American biographies series, Pocahontas by the author Gail Fay. Lots of sidebars and illustrations and trivia so that I liked for the younger set. And then there's a book that, hmm, I am not a very spiritual type of person. If you have been listening to the history chicks, you know this about me. But I was intrigued simultaneously could not get through this book. But if you are of a spiritual nature, you might actually enjoy this. It was called Pocahontas Medicine Woman, Spy, Interpreter and Diplomat by Paula Gunn Allen. And it goes into a lot of the practices of the Powhatan and how that impacted her story. So I didn't like it, but could see how people would.
- [67:25]
Beckett
The books that I have that are different than the ones that Beckett had. Okay, this is the biggie. The True Story of Pocahontas the Other side of history by Dr. Linwood Little Bear Custalo and Angela L. Daniel Silverstar. This is the written oral histories of the Powhatan people. I think it's so important to read it. Of course, the truth is gonna lie in the middle of things. You're gonna have one side of the story and then you're gonna. But the Powhatan story hadn't really been told or taught. So I think it's super important to get that perspective, especially when you're dealing with Pocahontas.
- [68:02]
Susan
Very good.
- [68:03]
Beckett
And my other book I have. And I know you didn't like this word, but it's in the title, I have to say it. It's Savage The True story of Jamestown, 1607 and the settlement of America by Benjamin Woolley. It is a lengthy. There's pictures, but it's a really good history of Jamestown itself, which, you know, obviously is really important to Pocahontas story.
- [68:29]
Susan
And as to links, I promised you a link to that Jamestown cannibalism over on the SmithsonianMag.com also early life in Jamestown over at history.com a link to the Jamestown Living History Museum.
- [68:42]
Beckett
There is a National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian in Washington. And another Branch in New York City. It looks really cool online. I've never been, but if you do, please take a picture and hashtag it historychicksfieldtrip and put it on Instagram so people like me can live vicariously because that one looked like a really cool museum. The other thing I'm going to link you up to, it's a video done by the Virginia Department of Education. I'm going to give it a very heavy, cheesy disclaimer. It is very cheesy, but it's kids telling you about. About the 11 recognized tribes in Virginia now. So there's, like, interspersed. No, there's. There's video. You can see how the tribes are living now. If you ever wondered what happened to Those tribes, there's 11 of them are recognized in Virginia, and this little video will tell you about them. I thought it was good for kids, you know, because kids love to hear information being told to them by other kids, right?
- [69:47]
Susan
Sure.
- [69:47]
Beckett
So, yeah, it's a cute little cheesy video, but it's on our website in the show notes.
- [69:52]
Susan
And I sure would like to link you up to the fabulous display they have at the National Women's History museum in Washington, D.C. about Pocahontas. But you know why I cannot? Because there's not one. I can't believe it any more than you can. But there is an organization working toward creating a national women's history museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. so we will link you to their website so you can find out how you can help them that become a reality. And to close out our links, I would like to give you a lovely video of the talented actress Melissa McCarthy and her rendition on the Jimmy Fallon show of Colors of the Wind. It deteriorates rapidly. That's all I'm saying about that.
- [70:36]
Beckett
I know that one. It's hysterical. Yeah, okay. Can't wait to put that on the show notes.
- [70:40]
Susan
So in closing, I would just like to leave you with a quote from Love and Hate in James Town. While Pocahontas's death was much lamented by her husband and her English friends, the fact remained that she served the same practical purposes in death as she had in life in Virginia, peace with the Powhatans held in England, Pocahontas remained the embodiment of the tractable Native, the presumed forerunner of the many who would eventually be won over by the colonist culture and their good intention, opening the way for unhindered English settlement and commerce. It is perhaps a legacy that she would not have welcomed. Thanks for listening.
- [71:22]
Beckett
Bye.
- [71:23]
Susan
If you liked what you heard today, hey, give us a little Christmas present and go over to Apple Podcasts and give us a review. It really helps other people to discover the history ticks. The Pinterest board is up and running with lots of rabbit holes to fall down. And don't forget to check out our website for links and photos@thehistorychicks.com thanks as always to James Harper of Harper Active for the music in the middle and the end song is Daughters of History by Morning spy courtesy of musically.com Take.
- [72:05]
Beckett
Back the daughters of history Take back.
- [72:14]
Susan
The soft edges of sin.
- [72:21]
Beckett
The fruit and the vine, the dangerous time. You can keep me honest, only you.
- [72:34]
Susan
Can keep me honest.
- [72:44]
Beckett
Make way for the daughters of history. Stand back for for all of their majesty. I'm not the one.
- [73:05]
Susan
Who'S having the fun.
- [73:09]
Beckett
You have kept me honest, only you have kept me honest.