Pocahontas
Monelyssa Montehermoso
History 101, Section 1008
Dr. Casas
December 13 th
, 2011

Montehermoso 1
Throughout world history, women of the eastern hemisphere were viewed subservient to men. The concept of being weak and fragile led to the inclination that women were supposed to be confined to household work and raise children. It was this popular belief that clouded the first
British men to view all Native Americans as too free and, eventually, as savages . Despite these dominant prejudices, the first colonists would not have survived (without food and without
English finance) and the United States would not have begun its history here without the
Powhatan princess, Pocahontas. She is one of the most famous women who changed American history because of how she was raised in Native American society. Pocahontas had broken all of the English views upon Native Americans simultaneously as being able to subtly initiate a change in the perception of all women down the road of today.
In European, Arab, and Asian societies, women were virtually oppressed than the more egalitarian culture of Native Americans. Gender roles differed from one another based on the general presumption of difference of mind and body (Anderson, 1996, p. 18). Men believed that women were incapable of being level-headed in decisions and believed that they were more apt to succumbing to sin and evil, supported by religious texts. Monotheistic texts supported and justified patriarchal society; the most prime example is the story of Adam and Eve (Freedman,
2002, p. 20). Eve was seduced to the snake’s evil in taking the fruit of knowledge, an apple, and giving it to Adam; rather than remaining in the Garden of Eden, suffering on earth was punishment. Thus, men held power in politics, society, religion, and the house; and, women held little to no power as followers of men. The only place where a woman had more range in their little power was home life due to mind and bodily differences mentioned previously. Overall, women belonged to the men; however, because of the knowledge gained of a new world,
Europeans were able to catch a glimpse of a different role for women.

Montehermoso 2
Native American societies were matrilineal. Children belonged to the mother, and newer generations lived with the mother’s family instead of the father’s. Women were allowed to divorce their husbands freely and engage in premarital sex if they wished. There was no true difference between gender other than reproductive abilities and physical capabilities; they were spiritually the same within nature unlike the seen split in the eastern hemisphere. Women had autonomy and were able to control the property they owned and labored for (Anderson, 1996, p.
18). They made clothing, farmed, built their houses, did household chores, collected wood, and cooked. Meanwhile, men were usually in charge of hunting and warfare because their bodies were more capable of the work. Both men and women were able to cross gender roles, nevertheless. The Native American culture was far different than that of the Europeans who viewed the Natives as “too free” and “devil worshippers” because of the large societal role of women.
The first Englishmen who landed in North America were Christians and viewed the natives as followers of the devil. They perceived the men to be lazy as they fished for food, seeing how it was a leisure activity in Europe, and the women did more labor than the men. They believed in natural inequality, or a hierarchy, in social life that only some fellows had rights and others privileges based on gender and the amount of property they had. When the Europeans landed and saw that the Natives did not have a monotheistic religion, had no true form of governmental structure, own or cultivate the land, and were matriarchal, they believed the natives were not as civilized as the Europeans were. This was chaos in European eyes. Despite the Catholic Spaniards converting the Aztecs in the south through disease, baptism, and miscegenation, Christian Englishmen did not due to their perception that Native Americans were foreign, violent, hostile savages, and, most importantly, not Christian. However, it was not the

Montehermoso 3 case when Pocahontas and the Powhatans came into contact with the Virginia Company colonists. After trading and surviving the first two years in contact, the settlers viewed the Native
Americans in a friendlier way for trading until hostile events arose and Chief Powhatan’s brother, Opechancanough, attacked the settlers in 1622. Therefore, the importance of
Pocahontas’s life in early North American history is what caused a breakthrough for a successful
English colony, a change of Native American relationships, and a change of view of women.
Pocahontas was the favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan. Out of many biographical sources on Pocahontas, Captain John Smith’s written account gives no particular reason why she was her father’s “most [dear] and beloved daughter”; so, many authors do not provide a reason in their biographies. However, one can speculate his favoritism in Pocahontas because her mother had probably died when she was a toddler, or it was tradition that offspring of the Chief be raised by him and his numerous wives after a certain young age. Pocahontas was pampered and was taught good social graces and manners to befit a princess, making her a favorite of her father as well (Sullivan, 2001, p. 16). And, even though Pocahontas’s first name is “Matoaka,” both her names contributed to her personality. Matoaka means “Little Snow Feather” and her nickname,
Pocahontas, means “playful little girl.” She was as graceful as a princess and she was still a playful child which made her character appealing and favorable. Thus, her father’s favoritism eventually allowed Pocahontas to be a messenger between her father and Captain John Smith.
When the Powhatan and the Virginia Company settlers met, Chief Powhatan was wary of the settlers’ purpose. The famous ritual when Pocahontas allegedly saved Captain John Smith was used as a way to adopt him into their culture and begin mutual trading (Turner, 2009, p. 46); if John Smith was to show any reaction to his coming death, Chief Powhatan would have deemed the settlers unworthy and their future would have been dismissed. However, the

Montehermoso 4 possibility that the ceremony was more of a covert plan in understanding why the settlers were on the native land is more suggestive than if they were to trust the foreigners initially. Through this way, Pocahontas was used to relay messages and bring food between her people and the settlers during their stay. She enjoyed her time playing around and learning from Smith and the settlers that she became well-known. This had made her more valuable, for she was a linkage to both societies. Trading proved mutually beneficial for a while; Native Americans appreciated the metals traded and the new jewelry given—it gave them the convenience of easier and faster way of cooking, fighting, and accessorizing; settlers appreciated the food that granted them longer lives after starving numerous times. However, when Chief Powhatan kept requesting additional guns, swords, and other metals in exchange of native foods to the settlers, John Smith tried cheating Powhatan by giving worthless trinkets and refusing to spare their weapons; especially after Co-Captain Newport’s extreme generosity that started Powhatan’s high demands. John
Smith caught on to the Powhatan’s subtle purpose of driving the settlers out because they seemed to be living for permanence. This caused rising tensions between the two parties that will eventually unleash future problems. No side fully launched attacks in fear of the other.
Powhatan had a plan after many times he and John Smith argued about the trading of the weapons. When Powhatan invited him, again, to his longhouse, Pocahontas secretly told Smith that her father was planning to kill him (Turner, 2009, p. 47). Pocahontas had saved John Smith again and his men but made the settlers wide open to the Starving Time as the Natives and the settlers ceased trading for a while until raids and captivities became often. Eventually, more
English people landed and formed new colonies resulting trade to pause. Soon, John Smith’s gunshot accident required him to leave and led Pocahontas to stop visiting the settlers. She was moved away to one of her uncle’s tribe, the Patawamakes, in 1613, as her father did not want her

Montehermoso 5 to have any connection with a settler. Without John Smith and Pocahontas—the “two who had been responsible for the earlier peace and success”—more massacres occurred because they were without their links of each other’s world (Turner, 2009, p. 48). And, knowing that the Powhatans still had one more English captive, Captain Samuel Argall sought to kidnap and ransom
Pocahontas for the captive and some previously traded supplies that Chief Powhatan did not fulfill entirely. Instead of attacking, Argall still feared the Native American’s violent stereotype.
Under captivity, Pocahontas was treated nothing less but a guest of honor. When she had known that her father did not fulfill the ransom for her, she was moved to Henrico, another
English colony, where she learned Christianity, adopted British culture, and fell in love with
John Rolfe, a tobacco farmer. The only way that the two could marry was her baptism. This event became the most significant in Pocahontas’s life and the Native Americans towards the
Englishmen. It symbolized that uncivilized people can become civilized. After her baptism, and adopting “Rebecca” as a Christian name, intermarriages and miscegenation seemed acceptable now if Natives were to convert and be under law and order, integrating them in English society.
No longer would Englishmen perceive the Native Americans as worshippers of the devil’s chaos because of their freeness . When England had waning interest in financing growth in the colonies, like building Christian schools and growing tobacco, Rolfe brought Pocahontas and many
Powhatans to show to the King and Queen of England as persuasion in the continuation of colonizing North America and supporting growth in the colonies (Sullivan, 2001, p. 102). The
Natives’ visit worked because having Pocahontas and the other natives proved to be a beforeand-after image of what colonialism could bring to those they “deemed primitive” (Freedman,
2002, p. 38).

Montehermoso 6
When John Rolfe and Pocahontas married, and later, birthed a son, Thomas, Governor
Thomas Dale and Chief Powhatan approved of the intermarriage. Chief Powhatan viewed this as a sign of peace and “friendship” among the Native Americans and the colonists because he was aging and wanted to die in a peaceful air (Sullivan, 2001, p. 100). This time of calmness is known to be the “Peace of Pocahontas,” for it was the bridging of two worlds together and it entrusted the title of “Peacemaker” to Pocahontas. However, after eight years of this peace, Chief
Powhatan’s brother, Opechancanough, launched a futile attack to rid the settlers in 1622. This caused all of Pocahontas’s tying of two cultures together snap, making the newly English view of
Native Americans as “noble creatures” back into nothing more than true savages, and, “no longer were the colonists to try to ‘civilize’ them” (Sullivan, 2001, p. 113).
Because of Opechancanough’s actions, the King and the rest of the English had lost their interest in Native Americans. They remained connected to the stereotype of being uncivilized, savages, and it changed their way of life. There were to be no longer any trade, converting, or mingling with each other at all. The English took revenge and kept the Powhatans and other tribes under pressure in case they tried anything. The settlers were, especially, given the capacity to “beat the [Savages] out of the country” (Sullivan, 2001, p. 114); soon, it was later justified as a way “to protect Indians from white exploitation [of the lands]” (Anderson, 1996, p. 26). In the life of Pocahontas, natives were able to trade with settlers for material goods, ranging from useful to useless. Natives valued the metal pots and pans that enabled faster and healthier cooking; weapons allowed natives to learn and sometimes adapt to new warfare technology; and trinkets were more as accessories. They were once an unmaterialistic society, but since the trading with settlers, natives were used to the convenience of the goods. Now, without the Peace of Pocahontas, Native Americans were pushed away and deprived of everything.

Montehermoso 7
The later concept of reservation lands was used as a way to “end the Indians’ considerable resistance to [the] assault on their land, livelihood, and cultures,” and the passing of
Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 later tried enforcing construction of “a nuclear family system”
(Anderson, 1996, p. 227). This further shows the colonists’ disapproval of the Natives’ culture that caused them to be savages. Assimilation was focused on civilizing the women in order to fix their society; however, the “Gender-based acculturation” was many times resisted and sometimes accepted. Nevertheless, the diverse cultures affected the later view of women roles by existing apart from English custom. In a broader prospective, “Colonialism transported many ideas about gender that both reinforced existing inequalities and introduced new ones” (Freedman, 2001, p.
39). Only through the Age of Enlightenment did the different ideas of gender roles initiate a spark into the centuries of expanding women’s rights from being confined to the home to demanding more education, property rights, suffrage, and civil rights. Thus, women views were changed in a later perspective.
Therefore, the importance of Pocahontas and her life as a Native American, who adopted
English culture, is significant in the roots of American history. Without her, the English settlers would not have survived in the Virginian wilderness. Without her baptism and visit to England, the King of England would not have financed the colonization and growth in North America.
Without her, Native Americans would have maintained the stereotype of being violent and hostile peoples without ever having the opportunity to show otherwise. Additionally, without
Pocahontas’s background as a Native American, women would still be considered subservient to men.

Montehermoso 8
References
1. Anderson, Karen. (1996). Changing Woman: A History of Racial Ethnic Women in Modern
America . New York, NY: Oxford UP.
2. Freedman, Estelle B. (2002). No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of
Women . New York, The Random House Group.
3. Sullivan, George. (2001). In Their Own Worlds: Pocahontas . Scholastic.
4. Turner, Erin. (Ed.). (2009). Wise Women: From Pocahontas to Sara Winnemucca,
Remarkable Stories of Native American Trailblazers . Morris Book, LLC.