The Marriage of Pocahontas

On the anniversary of the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, I found myself considering what has become of the woman that we've made into a Native American princess. I think it's safe to say that most anyone who's watched Dances with Wolves or any of the hundreds of Hollywood movies which feature Native American protagonists can see we have a habit of romanticizing and mythologizing the peoples we brutally displaced while carving out our nation. I  tend to think of this as a kind of national survivor's guilt. We're still here and we rewrite our history to create a soft-lit, glowing version of the past. This not only lets us avoid focusing on the horrible, racist truth, but it also flattens the complex nature of Native Americans into a convenient, 2D image of the noble savage that we can carry around with us. The unwieldy truth is that Native Americans like Pocahontas were complex, conflicted characters who were just as often at odds with one another as with the invaders who were striving to take their lands and extinguish their cultures.

Seeking the truth we can easily shed the Disney princess version of Pocahontas. Disney simply manufactured another branded, Technicolor princess who could easily be merchandised to little girls so they'd beg mom and dad to buy the Pocahontas t-shirt, lunch box, and McDonald's kid's meal and thereby fill the corporate coffers. What's known is that Pocahontas was born the daughter of Powhatan, chief of a group of tribes in the Tidewater region of Virginia. Stories out of the Virginia settlements would have us believe Pocahontas saved the captive John Smith in 1607, putting herself in the way of her father's war club to stay Smith's execution. Whether or not this intervention really took place is debatable, what can be said for certain is that in 1613 the English took Pocahontas hostage, holding her for ransom, and during this time she converted to Christianity and took on the Anglicized name of Rebecca.

On April 5th, 1614 Rebecca married tobacco planter John Rolfe, bearing him a son the following January (Thomas Rolfe). In 1616 she traveled to London with her husband, but her adoption of an English name and religion didn't make her English. John paraded his wife in front of English society, presenting her as an example of a "civilized" savage in hopes of encouraging investment in the new Jamestown settlement. Her tour of London could be considered a success, Rebecca Rolfe became a celebrity of sorts, the subject of talk throughout the British capital, and even was invited to attend a masque at Whitehall Palace.

In 1617 John and Rebecca departed for Virginia but they never made it past Gravesend. Rebecca had been ill when she boarded the ship and the unknown illness worsened as they traveled. She supposedly died in John's arms while disembarking and was buried in a church in Gravesend. Today the exact location of her grave is unknown, but this hasn't stopped numerous Americans demanding the return of her remains to Virginia.

According to church records, Rebecca was buried under the floor of the old Gravesend church, however this church burned in 1727 leaving doubt as to the exact location of the body. In 1923 Edward Page Gaston obtained permission from Canon Gedge of St. George's church to dig on the location of the old Gravesend church, but his efforts failed. In more recent times Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton got on the Pocahontas repatriation bandwagon, failing just like his predecessors and proving that celebrity doesn't ensure success.

Where do I stand? Well, on the side of history, I like to think. Pocahontas recreated herself as Rebecca Rolfe, a Christian Englishwoman and wife of John Rolfe. She died in Gravesend and was buried there in accordance with the tenants of her adopted religion. There's no more point in repatriating her to the land she so thoroughly left behind than there would be in repatriating the remains of every settler born in England to the land of their birth. In the end, we aren't what we were born into, we are what be grow to become.

For those of us who like to opinionate on "historically significant" figures like Pocahontas I would offer this word of caution. Some day you will be in your grave and everything you wrote, thought, and said will be nothing but dust - when that happens who will decide what's right for you and what right do they have to make those decisions in your irreversible absence?