Who the Hell was Rebecca Rolfe?

Good evening, people.  Let's burst a Disney bubble.  How 'bout it?

Ya know, the wide world over, people still talk about the princess Pocahontas and her romance with handsome John Smith.  Well, though her father was a Powhatan chief, she was never considered a princess.  The Algonquin did not use such terms or make these distinctions.  And as for Smith, doubtless a more notorious liar never walked the planet.  In his autobiography, he claimed to have beheaded three Turks with one quick slash of his sword.  Oh he was good--at storytelling.  There is little evidence that he was any more than acquainted with Pocahontas, who, by the way, was decades his junior.  Nor was he, even by the standards of his day, more than average (I'll cut him some slack) in appearance.  Van Dyke beard, anyone?

At any rate, "Pocahontas" was a nickname bestowed upon the young girl, born circa 1595, because of her playful nature.  It loosely translates to mischievous, for that she was.  After the English settled Jamestown, she became very curious about them and developed the habit of skirting the barricades, turning cartwheels and whistling.  While this fascinated the colonists, it didn't work out so well for her.

When Pocahontas was approximately 15 years old, the English took her captive, believing she was the perfect bargaining chip.  The natives were holding some European trespassers, and here was the plan for a trade.  But fighting took precedence over negotiating, so the girl found herself in a foreign environ, where she was viewed as a political pawn above all else.

The people of Virginia baptized her "Rebecca" and arranged a marriage with John Rolfe, the man who developed a hybrid tobacco which ensured the success of most newcomers.  These things were not done of love, but, as her husband himself admitted, they were motivated by desperation.  The need to end the war between settlers and natives was predominant in the minds of Rolfe and his friends.  So they married.

A year later, the couple went on a PR tour of England to promote settlement in America.  In 1615, their son Thomas was born, and they settled in Middlesex for a while.  At one gathering, they met Smith, but it does not seem to have turned Pocohontas' world upside down--for obvious reasons.  Then, in 1617, while sailing down the Thames headed for home, the young woman contracted a fever, courtesy of the bugs her neighbors willingly shared, and died at Gravesend, though her burial site there was lost long ago.

Moral of the story?  Things are not always what they seem.  The man behind the curtain here is greed.  Smith used Pocahontas to sell books and garner attention.  The entire Virginia Colony enlisted Rolfe and religion to turn her into something she was not--a Christian, loving, "civilized" wife.  She was never unloving or a shrew to be tamed in the first place.  In her transformation from happy child to political pawn, was she allowed to keep her dignity and sense of self?

You decide.  Remember, she was still just a girl at her death.  And yes, her descendants are still out there.  At any rate, she had no reason to feel shame.  Being used is not a choice or an option; instead, it is most often a situation into which one is thrust.

Bless Pocahontas, the girl who lay under a stone that bore the name Rebecca Rolfe.  The marker has disappeared, the location is unknown, but she lives on and on and on. 

It is National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month.  Honor them.

VK