Jessica Crabtree

June 12, 1616: Pocahontas, her husband John Rolfe, and their infant son Thomas arrive at the port of Plymouth, England.

Why Visit England?

John Rolfe was a young English colonist whose claim to fame was obtaining tobacco seeds of a marketable variety that would grow in the cooler mid-Atlantic colonies. At the time, England and Spain were locked in a power struggle for domination of trade and colonial expansion, and Spain’s rigid monopoly on the booming tobacco industry gave it a valuable edge. Rolfe’s tobacco enterprise in Virginia offered the English colonies a lucrative advantage, and his marriage to the daughter of the region’s most powerful sachem represented an alliance between colonists and Native Americans – a relationship that had already proven vital to the existence of the colony. So in a word, a visit to England with his wife and son (as well as around a dozen Powhatan emissaries) was a well-calculated move in a public relations strategy.

Reception

Pocahontas was received at the court of King James with all the pomp of a visiting dignitary. Her presence was widely acclaimed throughout London and she appeared at numerous high-profile social functions, where according to contemporaries she distinguished herself by her poise and dignity. Her meteoric career as a media darling was short-lived, however; she fell ill and died unexpectedly while preparing to embark on the return voyage to the American colony in 1617. But her legend continued to enthrall Europeans for centuries, as implied by the long tradition of paintings, songs, and literature she inspired.

Left: A hypothetical reenactment showing Pocahontas in Jacobean dress. (I’m not sure of the source of this photo but it’s a very interesting attempt at a historical reconstruction.)

It is arguable that the sensation caused by Pocahontas’s presence in England helped to spawn the legend of the “Indian princess” that subsequently became so entrenched in the American ethos. As European colonists emigrated to the Americas by the thousands, they desired to connect with their new homeland and forge a unique identity, and before long nearly every colonial family could trace back to some “prominent Indian maiden.” Even today this vestigial “Indian princess” ancestor still reflects the desire of white Americans to try to incorporate their national past onto a personal level.

Behind the Scenes

Still, Pocahontas’s celebrity image stood in stark contrast to the reality in which most Continental Europeans associated with the American Indian. By this point, Native Americans made up a significant, although lesser-known component of the European slave trade. Since the 1500s, European slavers plied the Atlantic seaboard, taking captive thousands of Indian men, women, and children, who were then shipped to England, Spain, and other countries and sold at slave markets. (A prime example is the story of Squanto, the well-known Pawtuxet who was sold into slavery in Spain before escaping to England.) Even more were enslaved elsewhere in the colonies on plantations, and later on, in colonial communities as a primary labor source. As part of European expansion in the colonies, Native Americans from New England, and from Pocahontas’s own homeland in the mid-Atlantic regions, were a major part of the slave trade well into the 18th century.

In this way, Pocahontas’s image both past and present has reflected the discrepancies in white perceptions and portrayals of Native culture, particularly in its interactions with European colonialism.

“Sedgeford Portrait”

See also:
More on the Sedgeford portrait, the Rolfe family, and portrayals of Pocahontas through the ages -
This Day in History: Birth of Thomas Rolfe

In an interesting footnote, a relic of Pocahontas’s visit to England may have survived. A pair of earrings shown in the so-called “Sedgeford Portrait” (which supposedly portrays Pocahontas with a somewhat older Thomas) has been passed down through the Rolfe family and now belong to the Association for Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. The earrings are made from a very rare and valuable variety of shell, in English silver settings. According to George Percy, a Virginia settler and author of a history of the colony, the earrings were set in England by his brother the Duke of Northumberland during Pocahontas’s 1616 visit. The earrings were on display at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and the Jamestown Exhibition of 1907.

General Links

National Geographic Interactive: Jamestown and the Powhatan

Historic Jamestowne: Official Website

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Partial transcription of a 1935 article on the history of the Sedgeford portrait and Pocahontas’s earrings

A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: The First Century by Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Ph.D. (An e-book provided by the National Park Service)

Smithsonian Magazine: “Picturing Pocahontas”