In the oval, under the portrait:
"Aetatis suae 21 A.
1616"
Below:
"Matoaks als Rebecka daughter to the mighty Prince Powhatan
Emprour of Attanoughkomouck als virginia converted and baptized in
the Christian faith, and wife to the worth Mr. job Rolff.
i: Pass: sculp. Compton Holland excud."
Camden in his "History of Gravesend" says that everybody paid this
young lady all imaginable respect, and it was believed she would have
sufficiently acknowledged those favors, had she lived to return to
her own country, by bringing the Indians to a kinder disposition
toward the English; " and that she died, "giving testimony all the
time she lay sick, of her being a very good Christian."
The Lady Rebecka, as she was called in London, died on shipboard at
Gravesend after a brief illness, said to be of only three days,
probably on the 21st of March, 1617. I have seen somewhere a
statement, which I cannot confirm, that her disease was smallpox.
St. George's Church, where she was buried, was destroyed by fire in
1727. The register of that church has this record:
"1616, May 2j Rebecca Wrothe
Wyff of Thomas Wroth gent
A Virginia lady borne, here was buried
in ye chaunncle."
Yet there is no doubt, according to a record in the Calendar of State
Papers, dated "1617 29 March, London," that her death occurred March
21, 1617.
John Rolfe was made Secretary of Virginia when Captain Argall became
Governor, and seems to have been associated in the schemes of that
unscrupulous person and to have forfeited the good opinion of the
company. August 23, 1618, the company wrote to Argall: "We cannot
imagine why you should give us warning that Opechankano and the
natives have given the country to Mr. Rolfe's child, and that they
reserve it from all others till he comes of years except as we
suppose as some do here report it be a device of your own, to some
special purpose for yourself." It appears also by the minutes of the
company in 1621 that Lady Delaware had trouble to recover goods of
hers left in Rolfe's hands in Virginia, and desired a commission
directed to Sir Thomas Wyatt and Mr. George Sandys to examine what
goods of the late "Lord Deleware had come into Rolfe's possession and
get satisfaction of him." This George Sandys is the famous traveler
who made a journey through the Turkish Empire in 1610, and who wrote,
while living in Virginia, the first book written in the New World,
the completion of his translation of Ovid's "Metamorphosis."
John Rolfe died in Virginia in 1622, leaving a wife and children.
This is supposed to be his third wife, though there is no note of his
marriage to her nor of the death of his first. October 7, 1622, his
brother Henry Rolfe petitioned that the estate of John should be
converted to the support of his relict wife and children and to his
own indemnity for having brought up John's child by Powhatan's
daughter.
This child, named Thomas Rolfe, was given after the death of
Pocahontas to the keeping of Sir Lewis Stukely of Plymouth, who fell
into evil practices, and the boy was transferred to the guardianship
of his uncle Henry Rolfe, and educated in London. When he was grown
up he returned to Virginia, and was probably there married. There is
on record his application to the Virginia authorities in 1641 for
leave to go into the Indian country and visit Cleopatra, his mother's
sister. He left an only daughter who was married, says Stith (1753),
"to Col. John Bolling; by whom she left an only son, the late Major
John Bolling, who was father to the present Col. John Bolling, and
several daughters, married to Col. Richard Randolph, Col. John
Fleming, Dr. William Gay, Mr. Thomas Eldridge, and Mr. James Murray."
Campbell in his "History of Virginia" says that the first Randolph
that came to the James River was an esteemed and industrious
mechanic, and that one of his sons, Richard, grandfather of the
celebrated John Randolph, married Jane Bolling, the great
granddaughter of Pocahontas.
In 1618 died the great Powhatan, full of years and satiated with
fighting and the savage delights of life. He had many names and
titles; his own people sometimes called him Ottaniack, sometimes
Mamauatonick, and usually in his presence Wahunsenasawk. He ruled,
by inheritance and conquest, with many chiefs under him, over a large
territory with not defined borders, lying on the James, the York, the
Rappahannock, the Potomac, and the Pawtuxet Rivers. He had several
seats, at which he alternately lived with his many wives and guard of
bowmen, the chief of which at the arrival of the English was
Werowomocomo, on the Pamunkey (York) River. His state has been
sufficiently described. He is said to have had a hundred wives, and
generally a dozen--the youngest--personally attending him. When he
had a mind to add to his harem he seems to have had the ancient
oriental custom of sending into all his dominions for the fairest
maidens to be brought from whom to select. And he gave the wives of
whom he was tired to his favorites.
Strachey makes a striking description of him as he appeared about
1610: "He is a goodly old man not yet shrincking, though well beaten
with cold and stormeye winters, in which he hath been patient of many
necessityes and attempts of his fortune to make his name and famely
great. He is supposed to be little lesse than eighty yeares old, I
dare not saye how much more; others saye he is of a tall stature and
cleane lymbes, of a sad aspect, rownd fatt visaged, with graie
haires, but plaine and thin, hanging upon his broad showlders; some
few haires upon his chin, and so on his upper lippe: he hath been a
strong and able salvadge, synowye, vigilant, ambitious, subtile to
enlarge his dominions:.... cruell he hath been, and quarellous as
well with his own wcrowanccs for trifles, and that to strike a
terrour and awe into them of his power and condicion, as also with
his neighbors in his younger days, though now delighted in security
and pleasure, and therefore stands upon reasonable conditions of
peace with all the great and absolute werowances about him, and is
likewise more quietly settled amongst his own."
It was at this advanced age that he had the twelve favorite young
wives whom Strachey names. All his people obeyed him with fear and
adoration, presenting anything he ordered at his feet, and trembling
if he frowned. His punishments were cruel; offenders were beaten to
death before him, or tied to trees and dismembered joint by joint, or
broiled to death on burning coals. Strachey wondered how such a
barbarous prince should put on such ostentation of majesty, yet he
accounted for it as belonging to the necessary divinity that doth
hedge in a king: "Such is (I believe) the impression of the divine
nature, and however these (as other heathens forsaken by the true
light) have not that porcion of the knowing blessed Christian
spiritt, yet I am perswaded there is an infused kind of divinities
and extraordinary (appointed that it shall be so by the King of
kings) to such as are his ymedyate instruments on earth."
Here is perhaps as good a place as any to say a word or two about the
appearance and habits of Powhatan's subjects, as they were observed
by Strachey and Smith. A sort of religion they had, with priests or
conjurors, and houses set apart as temples, wherein images were kept
and conjurations performed, but the ceremonies seem not worship, but
propitiations against evil, and there seems to have been no
conception of an overruling power or of an immortal life. Smith
describes a ceremony of sacrifice of children to their deity; but
this is doubtful, although Parson Whittaker, who calls the Indians
"naked slaves of the devil," also says they sacrificed sometimes
themselves and sometimes their own children. An image of their god
which he sent to England "was painted upon one side of a toadstool,
much like unto a deformed monster." And he adds: "Their priests,
whom they call Quockosoughs, are no other but such as our English
witches are." This notion I believe also pertained among the New
England colonists. There was a belief that the Indian conjurors had
some power over the elements, but not a well-regulated power, and in
time the Indians came to a belief in the better effect of the
invocations of the whites. In "Winslow's Relation," quoted by
Alexander Young in his " Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers," under
date of July, 1623, we read that on account of a great drought a fast
day was appointed. When the assembly met the sky was clear. The
exercise lasted eight or nine hours. Before they broke up, owing to
prayers the weather was overcast. Next day began a long gentle rain.
This the Indians seeing, admired the goodness of our God: "showing
the difference between their conjuration and our invocation in the
name of God for rain; theirs being mixed with such storms and
tempests, as sometimes, instead of doing them good, it layeth the
corn flat on the ground; but ours in so gentle and seasonable a
manner, as they never observed the like."
It was a common opinion of the early settlers in Virginia, as it was
of those in New England, that the Indians were born white, but that
they got a brown or tawny color by the use of red ointments, made of
earth and the juice of roots, with which they besmear themselves
either according to the custom of the country or as a defense against
the stinging of mosquitoes. The women are of the same hue as the
men, says Strachey; "howbeit, it is supposed neither of them
naturally borne so discolored; for Captain Smith (lyving sometymes
amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white,
but as the men, so doe the women," "dye and disguise themselves into
this tawny cowler, esteeming it the best beauty to be nearest such a
kind of murrey as a sodden quince is of," as the Greek women colored
their faces and the ancient Britain women dyed themselves with red;
"howbeit [Strachey slyly adds] he or she that hath obtained the
perfected art in the tempering of this collour with any better kind
of earth, yearb or root preserves it not yet so secrett and precious
unto herself as doe our great ladyes their oyle of talchum, or other
painting white and red, but they frindly communicate the secret and
teach it one another."
Thomas Lechford in his "Plain Dealing; or Newes from New England,"
London, 1642, says: "They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their
children are borne white, but they bedawbe them with oyle and colors
presently."
The men are described as tall, straight, and of comely proportions;
no beards; hair black, coarse, and thick; noses broad, flat, and full
at the end; with big lips and wide mouths', yet nothing so unsightly
as the Moors; and the women as having "handsome limbs, slender arms,
pretty hands, and when they sing they have a pleasant tange in their
voices. The men shaved their hair on the right side, the women
acting as barbers, and left the hair full length on the left side,
with a lock an ell long." A Puritan divine--"New England's
Plantation, 1630"--says of the Indians about him, "their hair is
generally black, and cut before like our gentlewomen, and one lock
longer than the rest, much like to our gentlemen, which fashion I
think came from hence into England."
Their love of ornaments is sufficiently illustrated by an extract
from Strachey, which is in substance what Smith writes:
"Their eares they boare with wyde holes, commonly two or three, and
in the same they doe hang chaines of stayned pearle braceletts, of
white bone or shreeds of copper, beaten thinne and bright, and wounde
up hollowe, and with a grate pride, certaine fowles' legges, eagles,
hawkes, turkeys, etc., with beasts clawes, bears, arrahacounes,
squirrells, etc. The clawes thrust through they let hang upon the
cheeke to the full view, and some of their men there be who will
weare in these holes a small greene and yellow-couloured live snake,
neere half a yard in length, which crawling and lapping himself about
his neck oftentymes familiarly, he suffreeth to kisse his lippes.
Others weare a dead ratt tyed by the tayle, and such like
conundrums."
This is the earliest use I find of our word "conundrum," and the
sense it bears here may aid in discovering its origin.
Powhatan is a very large figure in early Virginia history, and
deserves his prominence. He was an able and crafty savage, and made
a good fight against the encroachments of the whites, but he was no
match for the crafty Smith, nor the double-dealing of the Christians.
There is something pathetic about the close of his life, his sorrow
for the death of his daughter in a strange land, when he saw his
territories overrun by the invaders, from whom he only asked peace,
and the poor privilege of moving further away from them into the
wilderness if they denied him peace.
In the midst of this savagery Pocahontas blooms like a sweet, wild
rose. She was, like the Douglas, "tender and true." Wanting
apparently the cruel nature of her race generally, her heroic
qualities were all of the heart. No one of all the contemporary
writers has anything but gentle words for her. Barbarous and
untaught she was like her comrades, but of a gentle nature. Stripped
of all the fictions which Captain Smith has woven into her story, and
all the romantic suggestions which later writers have indulged in,
she appears, in the light of the few facts that industry is able to
gather concerning her, as a pleasing and unrestrained Indian girl,
probablv not different from her savage sisters in her habits, but
bright and gentle; struck with admiration at the appearance of the
white men, and easily moved to pity them, and so inclined to a
growing and lasting friendship for them; tractable and apt to learn
refinements; accepting the new religion through love for those who
taught it, and finally becoming in her maturity a well-balanced,
sensible, dignified Christian woman.
According to the long-accepted story of Pocahontas, she did something
more than interfere to save from barbarous torture and death a
stranger and a captive, who had forfeited his life by shooting those
who opposed his invasion. In all times, among the most savage tribes
and in civilized society, women have been moved to heavenly pity by
the sight of a prisoner, and risked life to save him--the impulse was
as natural to a Highland lass as to an African maid. Pocahontas went
further than efforts to make peace between the superior race and her
own. When the whites forced the Indians to contribute from their
scanty stores to the support of the invaders, and burned their
dwellings and shot them on sight if they refused, the Indian maid
sympathized with the exposed whites and warned them of stratagems
against them; captured herself by a base violation of the laws of
hospitality, she was easily reconciled to her situation, adopted the
habits of the foreigners, married one of her captors, and in peace
and in war cast in her lot with the strangers. History has not
preserved for us the Indian view of her conduct.
It was no doubt fortunate for her, though perhaps not for the colony,
that her romantic career ended by an early death, so that she always
remains in history in the bloom of youth. She did not live to be
pained by the contrast, to which her eyes were opened, between her
own and her adopted people, nor to learn what things could be done in
the Christian name she loved, nor to see her husband in a less
honorable light than she left him, nor to be involved in any way in
the frightful massacre of 1622. If she had remained in England after
the novelty was over, she might have been subject to slights and
mortifying neglect. The struggles of the fighting colony could have
brought her little but pain. Dying when she did, she rounded out one
of the prettiest romances of all history, and secured for her name
the affection of a great nation, whose empire has spared little that
belonged to her childhood and race, except the remembrance of her
friendship for those who destroyed her people.