An Old Timey Podcast - 34: Pocahontas Gets Kidnapped! (Part 4)
Episode Date: December 11, 2024In this episode, tensions rise and true crime abounds. And, like an old timey episode of Dateline, it starts off peachy keen! Pocahontas married a warrior. She had a child. She lived what seemed to be... a happy, normal life. But being the favorite daughter of Chief Wahunsenaca put a target on her back. It wasn’t long before English settlers decided to kidnap her.Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Norm pulled from: Custalow, Linwood, and Angela L. Daniel. The True Story of Pocahontas. Fulcrum Publishing, 2007.“History Timeline | Historic Jamestowne,” n.d. https://historicjamestowne.org/history/jamestown-timeline/.“Jane | Historic Jamestowne,” n.d. https://historicjamestowne.org/archaeology/jane/.“John Rolfe | Historic Jamestowne,” n.d.“Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend,” n.d. https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend.htm.Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemna. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.Woodward, Grace Steele. Pocahontas. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1969.Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.Thank you to our sponsor!Miracle Made. Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and save over 40% OFF. TryMiracle.com/OTP
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Norman Caruso.
And am I married to the elf on a shelf? Kristen Caruso!
Oh, don't think I didn't see those comments on Instagram.
You look just like him.
And on this episode, it's part four of my series on Pocahontas.
Norm, you're a pale white guy with brown hair and brown eyes.
Yes.
And sometimes you get into mischief, but it's all in good fun. It all adds up.
You look exactly like the elf on a shelf.
Well, you know, sometimes I like to sit in odd places in people's living rooms on the mantel, on the bookshelf.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
On the arm of the couch, not necessarily on the couch.
Hey, hey, listeners, I can tell you're getting a little alarmed.
Don't worry.
It's just a childless man in his late 30s who's watching your kids all the time.
Yeah, wearing an elf costume.
Yeah, what's...
It's for the holiday.
What's the big deal?
Yeah, yeah, it's for Santa.
Calm down.
Yeah.
Folks, welcome to an old-timey podcast.
We're joined by a special guest tonight, Mr. Owl.
We have an owl right outside our window, hooting and hollering.
We sure hope he gets what he's hoping for tonight.
Yeah, he's Christmas caroling.
Last Christmas, I gave you a hoot.
But the very next day, you gave me the boot.
You know what's even more exciting than the owl outside our recording studio?
Hoot hootin away.
What's that, Kristen?
I have a big surprise.
You and I are both really excited about this.
You're a little nervous because you've never done this before.
I'm talking, of course, about sex.
You'll actually, yeah, because I took the Dare Pledge of Virginity, Kristen.
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Oh, wait, I should have done a fun sound.
Yeah.
Hang on.
Don't you have like a woo-hoo?
Like a happy one?
Let's see.
I do feel like.
Can't kill.
There we go.
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Mm-hmm.
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That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, well done.
Okay, Kristen.
Yes.
Are you ready for part four of the Pocahontas series?
I am.
Mr. Owl, you out there?
Yes.
I only learn about Pocahontas in school, and so my education's really kind of spotty on this woman, and I'm really enjoying this series.
What school did you go to, Florida Atlantic?
Oh!
Wow, rude!
I think they're mascots the owl.
Oh, okay.
That's why I said it.
I thought you were just shitting on some random school.
Maybe, I think Rice University is the owls too.
Okay.
What other temple?
Temple owls.
There's a lot of owl mascots.
Okay.
I don't know anything about mascots because I feel like that's a sports thing.
If you're into watching sports, you know the mascots.
That's not just sports.
Yes.
What?
Then what?
Why else would you know the mascot?
To have pride in your school.
Yeah.
In your school.
I know that Simmons University, we were the sharks.
I know no other mascots.
Go sharks!
Don't laugh!
Why are all your shark merch, Kristen?
I...
Don't you have a shark fin head or a shark fin?
You can put on your arms and you flap around like you're a shark.
Have you ever seen a shark swim?
They don't flap around, sir.
You know, that's interesting.
Why don't they flap their little fins?
Yeah, for someone who grew up near the coast, you sure don't know much about marine life.
I didn't live under the sea, like aerial, okay?
It's not like I was seeing sharks?
24-7, just because I lived near the beach.
All right, all right.
We didn't want to see sharks.
That means we couldn't go to the beach.
Norm's saying that, but here's the truth about Norm.
Norm hates sand.
He hates sand so much.
I do.
This man, give him a mountain vacation any day.
Yeah, I'll take the mountains over the beach anytime.
Sand just gets everywhere.
Sure.
You go to the beach, you have sand all over yourself.
They have those little showers you can go in and wash off,
and you think, oh, that's great.
You never get it all out.
You're always finding sand in your crevices somewhere.
I went to the beach 10 years ago,
and you know what I found deep inside my butt crack the other day?
Sand.
No, actually, but that would have been a good joke.
Anyway, continue, Norm.
Wait, what's the joke?
That was a joke.
True story.
One time, my dad and my brother-in-law, Jay and I saw someone take a
full-ass shower at one of those beach things.
What does that mean, a full-ass shower?
What do you think a full-ass shower is?
He was naked?
Yeah.
Well, that's fine.
You can get naked in the beach shower.
Norman Caruso.
I'm not talking, I'm talking about just like we were in the parking lot of like a holiday inn.
Okay.
And we look in front of us out there in public in front of God and everybody.
This dude is fully nude, showering up.
There was no door to the shower?
No, it's, no.
It was like, it's basically a hose.
You're just supposed to hose the sand off yourself and be on your way.
He probably shouldn't have done that if there was no door.
Probably.
Norm, there were kids.
Exactly.
He probably shouldn't have done that.
In retrospect, I shouldn't have taken my penis out.
I can see that now, okay?
Everybody calm down.
We learn lessons every day, Kristen.
It's becoming a better person.
Now, I hope you told him what he was doing was wrong.
I actually did not interrupt.
Oh, see, how is he going to know if what he's doing is right or wrong?
I did a lot of giggling, okay, because I'm very mature.
Anyway, let's get into the episode.
I am so excited.
Yeah?
Yeah.
But you know what you have to do before we get into the story.
Hey, the voicing works today.
Yeah.
Kristen, we learned that Pocahontas, in fact, did not save John Smith from DeClub.
Instead, Pocahontas' father and the Paramount Chief of the Powhatan Nation, Chief Wahoon Seneca, adopted John Smith as his son.
He declared John Smith the tribal leader, aka the Warewance, of Jamestown.
The English colony was now part of the Powhatan Nation.
Well, at least Chief Wahoon Seneca thought so anyway.
The Powhatan Nation regularly sent food to Jamestown.
And boy, did those English folks need it.
In exchange, the English were to pay tribute with guns, swords, and metal.
But John Smith was never comfortable giving Chief Wahoon Seneca weapons.
So he did everything he could to sabotage their agreement.
And as a result, things got pretty tense between the two sides.
And since the Powhatans weren't getting their promised weapons, they started stealing them.
In response...
That's not stealing.
When you're promised something and the guy goes, sure,
Yeah, for a full bushel of corn.
Oh, I hit the mic because I'm getting mad already.
We're like two minutes deep into this episode.
That's not stealing.
That's, hey, that's repoing.
Oh, they repoed some weapons.
All right.
Okay, continue.
Fair enough, Kristen.
In response, the English took several Powhatan people hostage.
Chief Wahoon Seneca decided to end the standoff by sending an envoy to Jamestown to secure the release of the hostages.
And in this envoy was his daughter, Pocahontas.
She symbolized trust and peace.
And because of her negotiations, the English released all of the Powhatan hostages.
Pretty impressive considering Pocahontas was only 11 years old.
To compare, Kristen, when I was 11 years old, I was making a final fantasy fan page on Geocities.com.
My, how times have changed.
Indeed.
Pocahontas continued to visit Jamestown as a symbol of trust and peace.
She brought food to the settlement.
She taught the colonists her language.
She played with the English kids.
Pocahontas was smart, athletic, courageous, fun, curious, and adventurous.
And for most of the year of 1608, things seemed okay between the English and the Powhatan Nation.
But not all was well.
A severe drought that year meant that the harvest was.
not so plentiful. And because of this, local tribes were hesitant to trade their reserves to the English,
who were, once again, ill-prepared for the winter. So, what did the English do? They started taking
food by force. Chief Wahoon Seneca warned John Smith that if he continued to shake down his people,
they would simply flee into the woods. Then the English would have no one to trade with. Well,
John Smith must have thought he was bluffing because once again he forcefully demanded food from the Pamunki tribe.
And as a result, Chief Wahoon Seneca abandoned his capital village of Werrokoomiko, fleeing deep into the woods.
He would never meet with John Smith again.
Talk about a power move.
By the way, Norm, fun fact, taking food by force, that is stealing.
You're right.
Ah!
John Smith had learned a hard lesson.
For the rest of his time as the leader of Jamestown,
he would no longer go on these food expeditions.
Tough times lay ahead for everyone, including Pocahontas.
And that is where we will pick up this story today.
I'm excited.
Why?
Well, Norm, this series has been pretty humbling for me.
Humbling?
Yeah, it turns out I didn't know shit about Pocahontas.
I barely remembered the Disney movie, and it turns out that was just a big lie.
Devastating news.
Yeah, and we've got a lot to say about the Disney movie in this episode, too.
Oh, okay, okay.
Also, I hear this is a meaty boy you've prepared for us today.
This is pretty meaty, yeah.
I didn't think it was going to be, but, ooh, we got the meats today, folks.
Okay.
The meat sweats, as they say.
Well, get on in there.
Gross
Get on in there
Kristen
As John Smith stood in the abandoned Powatan village
Of Warwo Comico
Only one thought went through his mind
Uh oh
Things just got a lot harder
Around these parts
Hmm weird
It's weird how when someone's negotiating with you
And you refuse to hold up your end of the deal
And then you start stealing from them
And you're like
Oh you wanted weapons
How about this really stupid hat
And how about I force you to bow down to some king you've never heard of?
Yeah, weird how that doesn't work out for you.
Yeah.
Tragic.
Yeah.
It's like if you went to the store to buy a t-shirt and they gave you a thong.
I don't need this thong.
I want a T-shirt.
Norm, it's exactly like that.
Thank you.
That was beautifully part.
And Target said, sorry, this is what you're getting.
Sorry, we're only giving you a thong.
Target thongs.
And it's an extra small.
So good luck, buddy.
Ooh, that's never going to fit on me, Kristen.
Okay.
My big old caboose.
Okay.
Because Chief Wahoon Seneca did what he said he was going to do,
John Smith renewed his focus on making Jamestown as self-sufficient as possible.
Got to be less reliant on trade.
You know, they probably should have done that in the first damn place.
Well, yeah, you either try to rely less on trade or you actually trade.
Mm-hmm.
You don't steal from everyone around you as,
especially when everyone around you really knows the area and actually has a lot more power than you?
Kristen, they didn't want to give them weapons. They said, look, you can have these cool little beads.
You can have a fun little hat, but you can't have weapons. Uh-huh.
Meanwhile, in England, executives at the Virginia Company were getting a little frustrated, Kristen.
You want to guess why?
They thought this would be a huge payday for them, and they were ready for their payday.
and it hadn't happened.
They were just getting Snickers bars.
That was a candy bar joke.
Sorry.
Hungry?
Not for Snickers ever.
You don't like Snickers?
Keep your nuts to yourself, I say.
I don't think payday is a real candy bar.
Yes, it is.
No, it's like made up.
No, it's real.
I know it's real, but it doesn't feel like a candy bar.
You know what I mean?
No.
It doesn't feel like a candy bar.
It just feels like a bunch of peanuts slapped together with caramel.
I need like a chocolate.
You think they're pulling the wool over your eyes.
Yeah.
You think they're just giggling at the payday factory.
If the payday was wrapped in chocolate, now we're talking.
Now it's a candy bar.
Now it's a candy bar.
Okay.
Yeah, well, you're absolutely right, Kristen.
The Virginia company was not seeing any returns on their investment in this colony.
And so they wrote John Smith a strongly worded, per my last email type of letter.
Ooh, okay, let's hear it.
And it said, hey, what the hell is going on over in Jamestown?
we are hearing you are terrorizing the natives
trying to marry the Paramount Chief's daughter
flogging people for not working
and furthermore where the hell is all the gold
where's all the silver where are the horny women
well John Smith read that letter
and he was like
bitch let me tell you something
let me tell you something you shut the fuck up with your weak ass
I have to agree a little bit
like you don't know what we're dealing with over
here. Exactly. That was his point. So he was like, hey, Virginia company, how about instead of sending me
rich assholes who just want gold and horny indigenous women, maybe you could send me some skilled
laborers, some carpenters, blacksmiths, fishermen, farmers, masons, I need people who will work.
Things are very bad over here.
John Smith's letter was referred to in England as Smith's rude answer.
Now, I found that very funny, but just to clarify, by rude, they didn't mean, like, offensive.
It meant more like simple, plain and blunt.
Okay.
Like, here's what's going on.
Yeah.
Because, you know, a lot of their language was flowery back then.
Sure, but his was more of a come to Jesus.
Like, hey, we washed up on shore here.
Turns out there aren't gold bars everywhere for the taking.
Half of us are dead now.
Hope you don't miss Janet too much.
She died from diarrhea.
Janet Jackson?
No, Normant.
I realized I should have
I didn't know she was sick.
Should have picked a more old-timey name.
Yeah, Janet's not.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn.
Gwendolyn has passed away.
Gwendolyn pooped herself, as did
damn near everybody else.
A lot of people did in Jamestown.
Send help.
John Smith's leadership was rubbing some people the wrong way,
specifically those unskilled,
distinguished higher-up fart sniffers.
in Jamestown, Kristen.
A few of them had actually returned to England
and complained about John Smith,
saying his mismanagement was dooming the colony.
And now look at him with this strongly worded letter,
the nerve, the absolute nerve.
We all hate him.
So the Virginia company decided to make some chit-cha changes.
And the biggest one was,
there is no longer a council in Jamestown making decisions.
We are done with Representative Democcur.
folks. Oh, boy. Instead, Jamestown is going to be ruled by one authoritarian governor with a lifetime appointment.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Well, I guess England would come up with that. Okay.
Mm-hmm. So who's going to be, Kristen? Is it John Ratcliffe? Is it John Smith? Is it another white guy named John?
Yeah, I would guess. Well, the winner is...
John Ratcliffe.
Thomas West.
Who's he? He's Baron Delawar.
I don't even know what that means.
Well, he has the title of Baron.
Oh.
He's the Baron Delaware.
His real name is...
Delaware?
I'm about to get to my fun fact, and you ruined it.
I'm so sorry.
Pre-matured factulation.
You've done it again.
I will be quiet now.
Yeah.
Shut up.
Ah!
Listen to me.
Okay.
Baron Delawar was from a pretty distinguished family, Kristen.
His mom was the granddaughter of Mary Boleyn.
Oh.
Whose sister was Anne Boleyn.
who was the mother of Queen Elizabeth I first.
So they're basically like cousins in some way?
Sure, something.
Barron Delaware was the largest investor in the Virginia company, money-wise, not size-wise.
So he figured, hey, why don't I just make myself the lifetime governor of Jamestown?
Pay for play, baby.
Well, he can't declare himself.
Well, he did.
Oh, okay, I guess that's the way it works.
Well, they may have voted, but either way.
a lot of power and influence in the Virginia company. Okay. Okay. Gotcha.
Fun fact, which Kristen has already said.
Sorry.
The state of Delaware is named after him. Delaware, Delaware.
You know what? I'm sorry for being so smart and maybe a little psychic.
You've greatly offended the history hose who currently live in Delaware.
Sorry.
I have only driven through Delaware. I've never actually stopped.
It was always like a toll booth.
state, you know, driving, driving up.
Wow.
Wow.
You look very nice.
I kind of like that.
They call the Midwest the flyover states.
How about some of those smug northeastern states?
They can be the toll booth states.
You're on to something, Norm.
I like it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That was definitely my intention in saying that.
We're talking about you, Rhode Island.
Mm-hmm.
Well, Baron Delaware wasn't ready to leave England just yet.
You know, he's got to board his dogs.
He's got to find a cat sitter.
He has to get a new carriage driver's license.
Sure, sure.
He's going to get that real ID, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
He had things to do.
So until he arrived, the Jamestown Council could still run things.
Still, the colony was informed that this change was a happening.
Well, John Smith heard the news and was like, you know what?
F this.
He was not going to wait for Baron Delawar to arrive.
According to historian Grace Steele Woodward,
John Smith immediately resigned as the leader of Jamestown,
and he decided to leave the settlement and go live on his own.
He started making plans to build himself a house on a little plot of land,
and he was going to be...
Do you know what that means?
He's got his own house.
He's got his own carge.
I said barge.
Yep.
Well done.
Two jobs work hard.
He's a bad, bro.
So John Smith probably imagined himself deep in the woods, living alone, chopping firewood,
and perhaps years later, the colonists would find him and beg him to return, and Smith would reply.
I don't do that stuff no more.
You love saying that.
I do.
Because I always envisioned whenever I, like, officially quit YouTube chopping firewood in the,
in the woods alone.
Sure, sure.
With a nice flannel shirt.
And some video game nerd comes up to you and he's like,
we have to know the history of the N64 or whatever.
And you're like, Norman, we need the history of Pokemon.
Please, the people need it.
And I'd say, I don't do that stuff no more.
Anyway, John Smith wasn't too happy about this change in leadership.
But some colonists, particularly those distinguished gentlemen like former governor,
John Ratcliffe were thrilled about these changes. Good riddins. But the Virginia company did agree
with John Smith on one thing. James Town needed a lot of stuff, like really bad. What kind of stuff?
You know, things. More stupid hats and red silk outfits. No, no. They need food. They need
weapons. Yeah, yeah. So in June of 1609, the Virginia company sent out their largest supply fleet yet.
nine ships all loaded with supplies and 500 new settlers.
Wow.
Including those much-needed skilled laborers.
But the journey to Jamestown was not easy, Kristen.
For the first seven weeks, everything was smooth sailing.
But on July 23rd, 1609, the supply fleet sailed head on into a Caribbean hurricane.
Oh.
And whoo!
It was bad.
historian Camilla Townsend described it pretty vividly.
She wrote, quote,
The horror of attempting to come to terms with imminent death
when the body is so wracked by agonizing nausea
and the mind so disoriented that even the simplest of thought seems nearly impossible.
Oh.
Can you imagine?
No.
I never really thought about what it would be like to be on an old-timey ship in a hurricane.
It would be horrible.
And I have lived through some hurricanes, people.
It's true. North Carolina boy.
Mm-hmm.
Me and my dad hiding under the stairs.
Hurricane Isabel?
Yeah, Hurricane Isabel.
That was the big one.
How long did you hide under the stairs?
A whole day.
What'd you do?
I mean, I had my Game Boy and it wasn't that bad.
He just chilled under the stairs.
Okay.
My dad took naps.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
My mom and grandma, my grandma was visiting at the time.
They went to Raleigh, which was like three hours west,
and it really wasn't.
They were going to get some rain or whatever.
But, yeah, me and my dad stayed behind to kind of like make sure everything was okay.
We were going to pick up all the branches and stuff or whatever and make sure the house was okay.
So, yeah, just chilled under the stairs.
Did you suspect that you'd been left there to die?
You know, I haven't thought about that until now, Kristen.
Yeah, yeah.
I used to have a true crime podcast, so I'm kind of on to this stuff.
Yeah.
You're going to have to call my mom after this and just accuse her outright.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's the only way to do it.
If she says, what are you talking about?
Then you know that was the plan all along.
Yep, exactly.
Hearing about that hurricane, it makes me want to crawl into bed and have a restaurant impossible marathon.
Oh, my God.
What do you think, Kristen?
You're a little too into that show right now is what I think.
It's a real problem.
I watched three episodes in a row last night and poor Kristen.
Oh, she's devastated.
He was shocked when I fell asleep on the third one.
Yeah, that second episode was good, though.
The Italian restaurant where the sibling opened a competing restaurant across the street.
It's not a bad show.
It's just not something that I can do three episodes of in one evening.
Okay, that's fair enough because I can't watch three episodes of Survivor.
How dare you?
Also, to anyone who's new to this podcast, I know that watching Survivor is not remotely cool.
It's just something that has happened to me, and I'm sucked in, and I can't stop.
Anyhow, continue your story.
Speaking of Survivor, we're about to get to a real survivor story.
Oh.
So this devastating hurricane, it caused the supply fleet to scatter.
And one ship was lost forever.
And then another ship, which was named the Sea Venture, also got lost and was badly damaged.
And the crew soon discovered that there was five feet of water in the hold.
Oh.
And so they started panicking.
They're like, ah, where's the leak?
Where's the leak?
Bad news.
There was not a single leak.
The whole damn ship was leaking.
Oh.
And so for hours, every single dude on board was basically filling up buckets and dumping out the water.
Yeah.
And then they also threw supplies overboard.
They threw over barrels of oil and vinegar, you know, dressing for their side salads.
Burles of beer.
Thousands of copies of Katie Perry's new album.
Oh, no, you don't want to let go of that.
Have you heard that new album?
No, no one has.
That's the thing.
It's bad.
Okay.
But everything they did was futile.
They did have some lifeboats, but not enough for everybody.
And so the crew started discussing, okay, who's going to stay on the ship?
Any volunteers?
Any volunteers to die?
Are you kidding me?
But wait a minute, Kristen.
Land ho!
Thank goodness.
The Sea Venture just barely managed to reach an island in the Bermudas.
everyone deborded and started unloading the supplies onto the island and it was uninhabited
well except for some wild pigs that's from rocco's modern life oh god christin fun fact
wow i love this fact so there were only wild pigs on that island because the spanish
had put them there over 100 years ago when they were exploring the bermuda islands oh
Because they had planned to return to the island, and so they left some pigs there for future settlement.
But the Spanish never came back.
And so the island was just rampant with wild pigs everywhere.
By some miracle, every single person on board the sea venture survived the shipwreck.
But now they were stranded on an island.
How many people are we talking?
About 150.
Wow.
So, who all was there?
It's a who's who, Kristen.
You may remember some of these names.
We have Captain Christopher Newport, notable for his frequent supply runs to England.
We love him.
Mm-hmm.
The Powatan interpreter boy, Namuntak.
He's there, too.
And introducing new characters, a young couple looking to strike it big in the new world.
John Rolf and his pregnant wife, Sarah Rolf.
More on them later.
Mm-hmm.
The survivors got to work.
They built cabins.
They found fresh water.
They gathered fruits.
They caught fish.
And pretty soon, many of the survivors were like, hey, this place is pretty nice.
Yeah.
There's lots of food.
There's fresh water.
Great weather.
Hey, no one already lives here.
Yeah, let's just stay here.
What if we just like, you know, are we sure we want to go to Jamestown?
Yeah, you definitely don't.
Everyone's got diarrhea there.
Well, they didn't have a choice, Kristen.
Why not?
Those higher-ups who had invested money in the Virginia company, like Captain Christopher Newport, was like,
Yeah, we are going to James Town.
In fact, you are contractually obligated to go to James Town.
It'd be a shame if something happened to you, John.
Chris, what are you suggesting?
You know what I'm suggesting.
We've all read Lord of the Flies.
Okay.
They're on an island.
I mean...
Well, they didn't kill them, Kristen.
They actually started taking apart the Sea Venture ship,
and they began building two new smaller ships.
R-E-C-Y-C-L-E, Recycle.
C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E conserve
Don't you P-O-L-L-U-T-E,
pollute the river, Sky, R-C,
or else you're going to get what you deserve.
Get what you deserve?
Yeah.
All right.
Climate change.
Okay.
Another fun fact.
Wow.
Wow.
The wreck of the Sea Venture ship in Bermuda
became a huge story in England.
It even inspired a certain writer named William Shakespeare.
How did people find out about it?
They found out about it many months later.
Okay.
But William Shakespeare based part of his play, The Tempest, on the Sea Venture shipwreck.
Oh, okay.
Meanwhile, in Jamestown, in August of 1609, the remaining seven supply ships finally reached Jamestown in terrible condition.
They had about 300 men, women, and children, as well as supplies.
It wasn't the full resupply, but it would certainly help.
John Smith was continuing to work on his little cabin in the woods,
and in September of 1609, he was canoeing to Jamestown,
hoping to find some colonists to help him with construction.
When suddenly, a bag of gunpowder in John Smith's canoe
accidentally exploded, severely burning his arms.
John Smith wanted to stay in Jamestown,
but his burns were really, really bad, and they were not healing well.
And so a doctor advised him to return to England.
And so the next month, in October of 1609, John Smith left Virginia for good.
This was big news.
Yeah.
Word of John Smith leaving even reached Chief Wahoon Seneca and Pocahontas in their new capital village, Oropax.
But due to either a mistranslation or the effects of the telephone game,
they were told that John Smith was dead.
But now he's dead.
We aren't sure how Pocahontas felt about this news.
I mean, she certainly had a friendly relationship with John Smith.
He had interacted with the Powhatan Nation more than anyone,
but he was also the source of a lot of grief for her people.
He was the reason they all picked up and left.
In the Disney film, John Smith isn't injured from an accidental gunpowder explosion in a canoe.
instead, he takes a bullet for Chief Powhatan
when Governor Ratcliffe tries to shoot the Paramount Chief.
He dives in front of him.
No!
What a hero, Kristen.
That's slightly more heroic than, oops, I was canoeing with all my gunpowder,
and I got a real bad bun.
I actually teared up during the Disney movie when John Smith dove, you know.
So then in the movie,
John Smith asked Pocahontas to come back to England with him, but she can't.
Her people need her.
But she will be with him forever.
Yeah.
Then Chief Powhatan is like, oh, John Smith, thank you for saving my life.
You are always welcome among my people.
That damn movie, not real at all.
Yeah.
Who knew?
Okay, so we don't really know how Pocahontas felt about the whole John Smith thing.
but we do have an idea about how her father felt,
Chief Wahoon Seneca.
So it's true he did not get along with John Smith,
but there was some mutual respect there.
Sure.
And Chief Wohun Seneca understood that with John Smith gone,
the English would be much weaker without his leadership.
Oh.
And so he saw this as an opportunity to get rid of the English once and for all.
You seem excited over there.
I am.
I just, this is a version of the story that I do not know at all.
It's like I'm watching the movie Titanic and I have no idea that the ship sinks.
Well, God himself cannot sink this ship, as the guy said at the beginning of the movie.
So I don't know how this thing's going to end.
So I'm totally unprepared for how this love story ends.
Chief Wahoon Seneca tightened his grip on the Jamestown settlement.
There was zero trade.
He kept stealing weapons from the English.
And any English settler who left the walls of Jamestown faced violence.
It was basically a good old-fashioned medieval siege, Kristen.
The colonists at Jamestown were trapped.
In December of 1609, the Jamestown settlers got desperate.
They needed food real bad.
But they had no idea where Chief Wahoon Seneca was living now.
So they went looking for them.
A group of colonists led by former governor John Ratcliffe set out on a boat looking for the new Powhatan capital village, Orapax.
and eventually they found it.
Oh, wow.
And so the English split up into small groups, and they started going up to all the Ye-Hay-Kins, and they were knocking, hey, you got any food? We could use some food.
Well, Chief Wahoon-S-N-Ceneca heard about the English food expedition, and...
He is P-I-S-E-D.
P-I-S-E-D? He was piced, Kristen.
Oh, I'm piced just thinking about it.
It was time to send a message that these food expeditions were no longer tolerated.
Chief Wahoon Seneca had all of the Englishmen captured and killed.
Shut up.
Even the Ratcliffe guy?
Former Governor John Ratcliffe received perhaps the most gruesome death.
Oh, God.
He was tied to a stake, inflayed to death with muscle shells.
What?
How do you even do that?
That would take so much time.
That's fucked up.
His torn off skin was thrown into a fire in front of him as he watched in agony.
Holy shit.
That sure is different from the Disney movie, where John Ratcliffe is basically arrested and sent back to England.
You know what, though?
I'm glad they didn't include that in the Disney film.
I think it's just a little too much, little too much.
Did you ever see that animated film Watership Down about the rabbits?
No.
Pretty gruesome, disturbing animated film.
Not for children.
It doesn't sound like anything I would ever watch.
Great book, though.
They used muscle shells to slowly kill him so he could watch himself die over a fire.
You know, we went out to dinner with my family in Michigan, and my mom ordered muscles.
And I was just thinking about, oh, man, yeah, that would really hurt if you were flayed with muscle shells.
Well, yeah.
Those things are sharp.
Just ask John.
Oh, wait, you can't.
Because he died in little chunks.
Because he's dead.
Because he's dead.
Kristen, this gruesome incident was the beginning of the Anglo-Powatan wars, a series of conflicts between the English and the Powhatan that would last almost 40 years.
Okay, I am sorry.
But at what point do you just say, I'm going back to England?
You win.
I heard what you did with the muscle shells.
Never even thought about that.
Never even knew that was a possibility.
I'm over here with a gun and I don't feel safe.
I'm just, you know.
So the muscle shells have done it for you.
You're done.
The creativity is too much for me.
I'm packing up going back to England.
You got to respect the muscle shell flame.
Yes.
So there is no official declaration of war or anything, but shit was now real, you know?
Yes.
The Jamestown colonists had little food.
They faced violent attacks from the Powhatan.
and they were trapped inside of Jamestown
and that made the winter of 1609 through 1610
absolutely brutal.
They refer to this period as the starving time.
The colonists ate whatever they could.
Horses, snakes, rats, cats, dogs,
freaking leather.
It's so chewy.
Some colonists...
Y'all got any ketchup?
There's no ketchup at Jamestown.
Remember, those oil and vinegar
barrels were thrown overboard.
No dressing for your salads.
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
You're just raw dog in the salad, okay?
Okay.
Some colonists even resorted to cannibalism.
That's really brutal.
Cannibalism, dear God.
How do we know that they did this?
Well, plaque alert.
There's a plaque?
Or should I say skull alert is more like it.
In 2012, archaeologists uncovered a human skull buried in a pit of animal bones, dating to the starving time.
And they determined the skull belonged to a 14-year-old girl, who they named Jane.
Through a CT scan and 3D modeling, they were even able to reconstruct what Jane might have looked like.
It's pretty amazing.
Highly suggest you Google this.
But the biggest discovery was marks on her skull.
evidence that someone was trying to crack her skull open.
Signs of cannibalism.
Not signs of murder?
Can we just...
No, because it was multiple, multiple ones.
Like you're trying to crack it open and get the brain out.
Okay.
It was signs of cannibalism.
Say no more. Say no more.
In conclusion, the appropriately named starving time sucked major butthole, Kristen.
Jamestown was under siege.
Did they consider just eating ass?
Thank you.
Empty calories, Kristen.
Should we be bad and split an ass?
Let's be bad at Outback and split an ass.
So James Town's under siege.
It's freezing cold.
People are starving and apparently eating each other.
But meanwhile, in beautiful Bermuda.
Okay, well, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows in Bermuda either.
Several people had died, including the interpreter boy, Namantak.
He apparently went on a hunting expedition and was never seen again.
Oh.
Kind of a mystery would happen to him.
Some people say he was murdered, but others say that he just like ran off.
Why would he be murdered?
It's weird.
It's like he had a disagreement with another Powhatan interpreter that was there and they killed the other guy.
Who knows?
Who knows?
Yeah.
And then in February of 1610, the young couple, John and Sarah Rolf, had a baby girl that they named Bermuda.
and sadly she passed away a few days later,
and they buried her on the island.
But in the spring, things were looking up
because the islanders had finished building their new boats,
and they named them patience and deliverance.
Guess what, folks?
We can finally leave this beautiful tropical island
and go to Jamestown.
Hooray!
Oh, terrible.
So on May 10th, 1610, they set sail.
and two weeks later on May 21st, they had finally arrived.
It had been almost a year since they had left England.
And once they arrived and saw the conditions,
a lot of them were probably wishing they had stayed in Bermuda.
Yes. You know what this reminds me of?
What?
Do you remember the time we were in Branson for like a little family vacation?
Yes.
And we were out and we met a couple who said,
that they lived in Colorado, like in the mountains,
but they were vacationing in Branson.
Yeah, that was absolutely bonkers to me.
And we were all so perplexed.
Like, you live in one of the most beautiful areas,
and you are vacationing in Branson?
Hmm.
It wasn't their first time either.
No, they were regulars to Branson.
I mean, this is the ultimate.
it. Well, maybe they're big Yakov-Smirnoff fans, Kristen. It's the only explanation.
They love outlet malls, Yakov-Smirnoff, and the Titanic Museum.
Sure. Sure. James Town was a disaster. They found, quote, palisades torn down, ports open, gates off the hinges, empty houses burned.
Chief Wahun-Senica's siege of the settlement had almost completely wiped out the place. During the starving time, James
town's population dropped from 490 to 60.
Oh, holy shit.
It was shocking to say the least.
And it was at this point that the governing council got together and they said,
That's it.
I've had it with this dump.
We got food.
We got no jobs.
Our pets heads are falling off.
Yeah, because we're eating them.
That's right, Kristen.
So yeah, they were like, maybe it's time we call it quits.
So guess what they did?
Went to Bermuda.
They slunked out.
Sure.
The colonists loaded up their ships and headed back to England.
Absolutely.
Chief Wahoon Seneca was thrilled about this news.
Finally, the English are leaving.
The Jamestown experiment is over.
Yeah.
Or was it?
Right as those ships reached the mouth of the river, they were intercepted by more English ships.
No.
Guess who it was, Kristen.
Who?
Baron Delaware!
He had finally found that cat sitter and decided to make his way to Jamestown.
Their new authoritarian governor had arrived.
Baron Delawar had 150 more colonists plus a ton of supplies.
And when he saw all those ships leaving, he was like, um, excuse me, where do you think you're going?
We've got a colony to run.
And he managed to convince everyone to turn around.
They were going to make Jamestown work.
Chief Wahoon Seneca was like, when he saw those ships turn around and come back.
That'd be devastating.
You've been trying for, what, three years to get rid of them?
And they finally decide to leave.
And if they had left an hour earlier.
Oh, my God.
Who knows?
Well, but those new fuckers would have just shown up.
You don't know, though.
If Barron Delaware showed up and there was no one there, he may have been like, ooh, I guess they're gone.
And maybe he would have fucked off too.
Yeah, maybe.
Okay.
We don't know.
Maybe.
We wouldn't even have a Delaware.
We may not.
Where would we stop and pay our tolls?
We do not know.
So anyway, Baron Delaware is the new authoritarian ruler of Jamestown.
Supposedly, when he walked into the Jamestown fort, he fell to his knees and thanked God that he had arrived just in time to save the colony.
Was he cute?
Baron Delawar?
Yeah, was he cute?
It just looks like an old English guy.
All right.
Well, that didn't really answer the question at all, but okay.
You know what?
let's just say he was sexy.
I'm, no, I'm not wanting you to make something up.
I just wondered, you know, if I'm starving to death and some hotties, like, don't worry, I've got tons of supplies, I've got leadership.
You would trust the hottie.
I've got a couple extra LBs on me.
I'd be like, you know what, we're going to be fine.
We like this guy's confidence.
We like the cut of his pantaloons.
Well, Baron Delo R ruled Jamestown with an iron fist.
Oh.
It basically became a miller.
military state. Everyone was required to work set hours. Would you like to hear the hours?
Yes.
6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Oh, I love it.
Isn't that sad that those are better working times than today?
Yeah, you started off. It's a military state and I'm like, oh, I would like to go there.
Now, you're not going to like these next rules. Oh, okay. They're pretty bad.
Colonists were not allowed to leave the fort.
And they had to make repairs.
They had to build new buildings.
And there's new rules in place, which the settlers called laws of blood.
You ready to hear about them?
Yeah.
Okay, first off, Kristen, no profanity.
So you can't say or whole or lick my...
Or my...
My goodness.
Oh, geez.
Can't say any of those fun words.
Second rule, no vilification of the...
Christian faith. In fact, it's probably one of the main reasons this colony is failing. People need to put God back in Godforsaken hellhole.
Am I right, Kristen? Yes. And third, absolutely no belittling of King James I first or anyone in charge of Jamestown.
Oof. If you violated these rules three times, it resulted in death. Not death. Yes, they killed people, executed them.
You say crapola three times and then off with her head?
If you say, hey, how's your, your mother, you're dead, Kristen.
You're dead.
You got to look out.
They're coming at you with muscle shells.
No, that's what the Powhatan did.
Oh, okay.
I'm sure they just stabbed you with a big sword.
Yeah, pretty boring.
All right.
Yeah, they weren't creative like the Powhatan Nation.
Oh, God, I guess not.
So another rule was settlers were no longer allowed to meet,
with people from the Powhatan Nation.
Any interaction with local tribes had to be handled by the higher-ups.
Okay.
Let me tell you what you're describing, Norm.
It's a cult.
This is a cult.
We're in a cult now?
We're in a cult.
Okay.
I was just going to say an authoritarian settlement.
It's a cult.
Okay.
It's a cult.
Do you think people really believed in Jamestown that much, like a cult?
Yeah.
We love you, Baron Delaware.
I'm just saying all of these rules controlling what comes out of your mouth.
controlling what you do with your body, controlling every damn thing.
Mm-hmm.
Got yourself a cult.
You know, I think this Baron Delaware guy is kind of a...
Can't say that.
No, you can't.
You call him a stone cold cutie pie, though.
That's right.
So after he arrived, Baron Delawar reached out to Chief Wahoon Seneca.
And he was like, we come in peace and friendship.
Mm-hmm.
Just so long as you give us back all of those weapons you took from us.
Well, Chief Wahoon Seneca sent a message back.
And it basically said, hey, how about you kiss my whole asshole?
Yes!
And I've got a better idea.
How about you fucking leave?
Yes.
Yes.
And then he said, don't you dare send me any more messages?
The only way I'll allow further communication is if you give me a couple of horses and a coach.
You know?
Because that's what you fancy English folk like to ride around in.
and apparently you think so highly of me.
Mm-hmm.
He was being a little sarcastic.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Well, Baron Delaware did not appreciate the sass, Kristen.
Mm-hmm.
So in response, he chopped off the hand of a captured Paspehaye man
and sent it to Chief Wahoon Seneca.
Oh.
Yeah, it looks like the Anglo-Powitan War was going to rage on.
Baron Delawar talked a big game, but he did not last long in Jamestown.
only nine months.
He admitted that it was a, quote,
very noisome and unwholesome place.
In March of 1611, he sailed back to England, sick as a dog.
Weird.
I'm so shocked that a society where you can only say three curse words and then you're murdered
would be kind of a shitty place to be.
I can't imagine.
I think he just was a very pretty,
privileged high society guy and he went to Jamestown and he just like either didn't believe John
Smith or just like was not prepared for what he was about to run into and he was just like,
ooh, this fucking rough here.
I am going home.
He thought he could control things that he could not control.
And when that blew up in his face, he got sick as a dog and went home.
I'm sure it was humbling and shocking for him.
Yep.
And he never came back.
Of course he didn't.
But we do have to give him some credit because he successfully stabilized the Jamestown settlement when it was all but finished.
In addition, he encouraged private enterprise.
He gave everyone in Jamestown a plot of land to grow crops and make some money.
And one colonist who took advantage of this deal was John Rolf, survivor of the Sea Venture shipwreck in Bermuda.
John Rolf and his wife Sarah both made it to Jamestown.
But sadly, Sarah died soon after arriving.
How she died, we have no idea.
John Rolfe was now a widower, alone in a new world.
And so to reverse his fortunes, he focused his efforts on finding a crop that he could grow and sell and get rich off of.
And for John Rolfe, that was tobacco.
A hole.
The Powhatans, in fact, most indigenous tribes in the Americas, had been growing tobacco for a long time.
But the Europeans had only known about it for the past 100 years.
It was first introduced after Christopher Columbus's 1492 expedition.
And they kind of went fucking nuts for tobacco.
It was one of the biggest exports from Spanish colonies in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.
The Spanish had like a monopoly on the tobacco industry.
They owned the orange properties on the monopoly board.
In fact, the English bought all of their tobacco from the Spanish.
So for the English, there's a lot of interest in finding a way to grow their own tobacco.
And you might be wondering, well, why didn't the English just use the tobacco that the Powhatan were growing?
Well, they tried their tobacco, and they were like...
Was it like someone who's used to Folgers and then all of a sudden you give them an espresso?
And they're like, my God!
Exactly.
What have you done to me?
Oh, this is much stronger than Maxwell House.
They thought it was way too bitter.
Uh-huh.
It tasted like a Nintendo Switch cartridge.
You ever licked a Nintendo Switch cartridge?
Why the hell would I have done that?
The very valid question, Kristen.
Yes.
So, you know, Nintendo Switch cartridges are tiny,
and so they coat them with a very nasty, disgusting, bitter coating.
Oh, so kids don't choke on them?
Yeah.
So if kids put them in their mouth, they're just like...
Yeah.
Just like the tobacco.
Have you?
licked one? Oh, I had to. I was so curious. I licked the hell out of one one time. And it was
bitter as hell. So yeah, the powetan tobacco way too bitter. So John Rolf said,
what all inventors say, Kristen, he proclaimed, there's got to be a better way. That's right.
The English wanted something sweeter. So John Rolfe thought, what if I can grow a sweeter
strain of tobacco. That'll make me rich. So he started experimenting with that. And on that note,
we're going to take a short commercial break to hear from one of our sponsors.
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Doodaloo?
Do you like that little doodoolew?
It kind of gives you a nice transition back in a norm story.
You're welcome.
Meanwhile, at the Powhatan capital village of Orapax.
Chief Wahoon Seneca was not happy about the English returning to Jamestown, but there was one reason for him to be happy.
His favorite daughter, Pocahontas, was now 13, 14 years old.
It was time for her coming-of-age ceremony.
Okay, so most of the following information comes from native oral history.
Okay.
In Powhatan culture, when a girl began to show signs of maturity, such as having her period, they held a ceremony to signify the event. It was called Hoskanasquah. This ceremony was basically a way to announce that a girl was becoming a woman and she was eligible. And during the ceremony, you got to choose a new name for yourself to signify becoming a new person. Pocahontas, who also went by Matoaka, chose the name Pocahontas.
as her official new name after her mother.
Pocahontas would also get some new clothes
because up to that point, Powhatan kids usually just ran around totally naked.
Now, Pocahontas would wear a deer skin dress, moccasins,
jewelry made from seashells or copper or white beads.
She may have had turkey feathers in her hair.
After the Hoskanasqua ceremony,
there is a celebration of fanfare and dancing.
The Powhatans called it a powwow.
Oh.
So that's where that word comes from.
Yeah.
There was eating, dancing, socializing, prayers to their God, Ahone for protection.
And during this powwow, there was also a courtship dance where potential suitors could try and woo the new eligible lady.
Oh, shit.
Now, when we grew up, Kristen, the courtship dance involved awkward slow dancing to the song All My Life by Casey and Jo.
Yes.
But the Powhatans did not do this.
What?
It's like they'd never even heard of Casey and Jojo.
So for me, it was I had put my hands on the girl's hips and she put her arms around my neck and we just like rocked back and forth.
Right, right.
That was the courtship dance.
Yeah, with room for the Holy Spirit in between you.
That's the rule.
Basically, in Powhatan culture, eligible men would dance with Pocahontas one after the other and try to win her over.
and one man swept Pocahontas off her feet.
It was a big, sexy, buff warrior named Kokuum.
Oh shit.
I'm about to bust.
Me too.
Okay, I don't really know if he was big and sexy and buff, but I gotta imagine he was.
Okay.
Cocoaum was considered one of Chief Wahun Seneca's best warriors.
He was part of his private guard.
And so they did their courtship dance, and afterward, Kokuom said,
Man, this is fast.
Now, just to be clear, I don't know the actual timeline if it was like literally right after the dance.
But basically, Cocoam won the courtship dance and wanted to marry Pocahontas.
Yeah, he did the sprinkler.
She was excited.
They got married.
Gotcha.
The worm.
What if it was the worm?
Crazy.
In the Disney film, Chief Powhatan, because he was not called Wahoon Seneca in the movie.
He tells Pocahontas that Coquam wants to marry her.
But in the movie, Pocahontas is like, ew, no, not that tall, sexy warrior.
Ew, no one wants that.
Ew, he's way too serious and I'm a free spirit.
And this upsets Chief Powhatan.
He thinks Coquham will make a fine husband.
So in reality, the marriage between Pocahontas and Coquoam was a marriage of love.
Pocahontas had no royal claim.
It would not have been an arranged marriage for political purposes.
And Coquam is kind of shrouded in mystery.
The English had basically no information on him.
They only acknowledged that he was Pocahontas' husband
and that he was a, quote, private captain, aka a warrior.
Okay.
Some historians even believe Coquam does not exist.
They thought it was just like a mistranslation.
Well, that would be a pretty big mistranslation.
translation. Well, you know, there's a similar palatan word called like koku-rah that sounds like koku-um. And kou-rah translates to
captain. And so there's some historians that believe they were actually referring to somebody else, not
Oh, okay. So it's not that she never got married. Right. Okay. It's just said she may have not
married a powhatan warrior named koku-on. Okay, gotcha. Native oral history.
is clear on this.
She did marry a warrior named Kokuum.
Oh, okay.
So, did Pocahontas and Kokuum have children?
We don't know.
English sources say, no, they didn't have children.
Native oral history says, yes, they had one child.
Either a daughter named Kaoki or a son, they also named Kokuum.
Okay.
After their marriage, Pocahontas and Kokuum moved to a village named Pasa Patanzi,
which belonged to the Padawomic tribe.
More than likely, this is where Kokoam was originally from.
The Padawomics lived on the outskirts of the Powhatan nation.
It was very far from the chaos ensuing at Jamestown.
Pocahontas probably hoped to live her remaining years in peace with Kokoam and their child in Pasa Patanzi.
What did she do?
She probably did what the other women did in the village.
She tended to crops.
She took care of her husband.
She maybe got some tattoos, which was traditional in Powhatan culture.
She wore those white beads she had always coveted during her visits to Jamestown.
She was a young married woman.
Well, a woman in Powhatan culture anyway.
You've got to wonder if she even really thought about the English anymore.
She probably did.
I mean, that's a big part of her childhood.
And that she got to be kind of the one child selected to go do that?
Yeah, but she wasn't living with her father anymore.
Right.
She was very far from the English settlement.
Her interactions with the English were practically non-existent now.
Yeah.
So you've got to wonder day to day.
Oh, yeah.
Day to day, no.
Are you really thinking about the English anymore?
No, no.
Well, soon she would come face to face with the English again.
So for the next few years, war raged between the two sides.
Chief Wahoon Seneca continued his resistance of the English efforts to colonize his land,
and England kept sending weapons, supplies, and bodies to James Stee.
And Kristen, if you thought Jamestown was run like a military camp under Baron Delawar, it got even stricter as time went on.
The Virginia Company believed that idleness and a weak spirit was the reason Jamestown was failing.
So they made some more changes.
For example, church service is now mandatory.
If you missed it once, no food for a week.
Good grief.
If you missed church twice,
Oh, you better believe that to peddlin.
You're getting the paddle.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
Well, a floggin, but...
Oh, my God.
And if you missed it a third time,
well, we're just going to have to kill you.
You are kidding me.
Nope.
Well, I'm guessing no one missed church.
No.
Can you imagine if you had the shits
and you were late for church in Jamestown?
You just got a shit in the pew?
Maybe that's why they call them pews.
Hey.
Hey.
But that's not all, Kristen.
Here are some other things that could get you in trouble at Jamestown.
You ready?
Desertion.
But if you desert, they have to catch you, you know.
Sure.
Number two.
Theft.
Okay.
Number three.
Unauthorized harvesting of corn belonging to others.
Okay.
Well, that just sounds like theft.
Yeah.
Okay.
Number four.
Unauthorized picking.
of flowers.
Hmm, that's also theft.
Give me a break.
Number five, unauthorized gathering of grapes.
What the fuck?
That is also theft.
Okay, here's a new one.
Unauthorized slaughtering of domestic animals.
Probably a good rule.
Okay.
Work was now enforced with the whip.
Oh.
Leaders demanded that crops get planted in time to ensure the storehouses were well stocked
for the winter.
Meanwhile, the Anglo-Powitan War continued.
and there was plenty of violence all around.
Here are a few examples.
In August of 1610,
about 70 English colonists
rated a nearby Paspehé town.
They killed and shot about 20 people,
burned down the Yehikens,
and captured the wife and children
of the Warawantz, Wawincha Punk.
If you recall all the way back in episode two, Kristen,
Wawincha Punk actually helped the English
when they first arrived at Jamestown.
After the raid on the Paspehahe village, the English retreated back to their ships with Wau Winchapunk's wife and children.
And then they killed his children by, quote, throwing them overboard and shooting out their brains in the water.
Oh my God.
Well Wynchapunk's wife was brought back to Jamestown.
At first, they wanted to burn her at a stake, but instead they stabbed her to death with a sword.
Oh, my God.
The few Paspeje people who survived that raid scattered and assimilated into other tribes.
Wawinchapunk would die a few months later in a skirmish near Jamestown.
And that was basically the end of the Paspehae tribe.
They disappeared from historical records.
A year later, the English returned to the Paspehae village only to find it overgrown with weeds.
So they just wiped out an entire tribe.
And so cruelly.
Yeah, but the Powhatan Nation fought back.
That same summer, the English received an invitation for a feast with the Queen of the Appomatic, a Werawan squad named Oposono Kwonuske.
The English were very familiar with Oposono Kwonuske.
She was friendly with them when they first arrived at Jamestown.
She was described as young, very attractive, very brave.
One time the English demonstrated to her how their guns.
worked and she, quote, did not flinch at the sound.
Oh.
So when the English got this dinner invite, it sounded like a good time.
So several Englishmen showed up.
Poposono Konuske was like, hey, fellas, welcome to my village.
A quick note, could you leave your weapons on your boat?
Because they really scare all these hot, horny women in my village who definitely want to bang you.
And the Englishmen were like, hell yeah, brother, no problem.
Word. They didn't fall for that.
They did. They left all their guns in their boats, and they came for the feast.
You are kidding me.
I guess you're going to know what happens next, huh?
Oh, dear God.
So they had a huge feast with turkey and venison, and then right after the queen of the Appomattock had them all killed.
Fed them first, huh?
Fed them first, then killed them.
Classy.
She had had enough of English encroachment on her land, and this was her revenge.
the English would of course retaliate by raiding her village and burying it down
Oposono Konuske was mortally wounded fleeing into the woods
For the next few years violent encounters between the English and the Powatan Nation were frequent
But the English were making headway
And soon they started expanding their footprint in the new world
It seems as though they were finally ready to admit that James Town was in a pretty crappy location
Plus remember they're still trying to compete
Pete with the Spanish Empire, so they wanted to grow. In 1611, they traveled further up the James River,
and they created a second permanent settlement, and they named it Henry Coe, named after King James'
oldest son, Prince Henry. Chief Wahoon Seneca got word that the English were trying to build a new
settlement, and he immediately dispatched warriors to stop the construction. And he didn't send
just anyone. He sent a fierce warrior named Namatanu. The English called him Jackson,
of the feathers because he notably wore a swan wing on each of his shoulders in battle.
Wow.
Yeah.
Namatano and his warriors constantly attacked the English as they tried to construct Henrico.
But English firepower proved to be too much and Namatano eventually had to halt his attacks.
Miraculously, Namatano was never shot during these skirmishes.
And that led him to believe he was magically invulnerable to English bullets.
Oh.
10 years later, Namatineau would die from a gunshot wound.
Yeah.
The English finished up the construction of Henrico in January of 1612.
And things seemed to be turning around for them.
They now had multiple settlements.
They had stifled attacks from the Powhatan Nation.
But you might be wondering, what about food?
It always seemed like that was the Achilles heel of the English.
Yes.
Well, believe it or not, the English had finally found a willing trade partner.
the Padawomac tribe, who lived along the Potomac River, also of note where Pocahontas was living.
But why the hell were the Padawomics trading with the English?
So the Padawomics were one of the largest and richest tribes in the Powhatan Nation.
They were located pretty far from Chief Wahoon Seneca, about 90 miles away.
Okay.
And because of this, they didn't always have to do what Chief Wahoon Seneca told him.
to do. Yeah, they were kind of out of his
control. Yeah. They of course paid
tribute to him. Sure. But it was more
to just keep things civil. Yeah. It was a
very loose alliance.
Yeah. Kind of like how Florida's
technically part of the United States.
Technically. I'm not a state.
I'm a monster. Is on the
license plate of every
Florida car. So when the English
wanted to trade with the
paduomics, they offered
up good stuff like fur and metal
and weapons.
And the Padawomics were like, well, what do you want?
And they're like, corn.
Corn.
Corn.
And they were like, okay.
Patowomics had a ton of corn.
Sure.
Well, on one trade visit in March of 1613, an English captain named Samuel Argyll learned that, quote, the great Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, was living with the Padawomics.
With this news, Captain Argoll came up with an idea.
What if we kidnapped?
Pocohannas.
Oh.
Okay, so kidnapping people was not a new idea.
The Spanish did it all the time to indigenous people.
And the Virginia company actively encouraged taking hostages,
especially important people, to get what they wanted.
Yeah.
And I'm pretty sure Pocahontas qualified as an important person.
The clergy were also big fans of kidnapping, Kristen.
Because, hey, what a great opportunity to convert the savage.
Because every time we go to their village, they get mad at us and they try to kill us.
Huh, weird.
It's super weird.
What's up with that?
You know, suddenly, people are really open to my ideas when I kidnap them and hold them at gunpoint.
It's such a great negotiation tactic.
Yeah, they're actually happy to be kidnapped.
They're doing everything I tell them to do.
Great.
Captain Argyll believed that by kidnapping his favorite daughter, Chief Wahoon Seneca would surely give
the English back all of their stolen weapons, English prisoners, and corn.
So the next month in April of 1613, Captain Argyll sailed to the Padawomac village of Pasa Pantanze,
which is where Pocahontas was living. He dropped anchor, he pointed all of the ship's cannons at the village,
and then he met with the whereuance of the village, a man named Yipassus.
Captain Argyll told Yipassus, quote,
if he did not betray Pocahontas into my hands, we would no longer be brothers nor friends.
And Yipassas was like, whoof.
Yeah, I can't do that because if we give you Pocahontas, Chief Wahoon Seneca is going to declare war on us.
Yeah.
Hint, hint, that's what's going to happen to you if you kidnap Pocahontas.
Well, Captain Argyll fired back.
And he was like, well, if you don't give us Pocahontas, we will declare.
declare war on you.
Good God.
And he said, hey, don't worry about
Chief Wahoon Seneca. Don't worry about him.
Because if he declares war on you,
we have got your back.
Bullshit.
You don't think so?
No.
Why don't you think so?
Someone who has their cannons pointed
at me and who is threatening
me, I'm not going to believe,
oh, I'm actually your good friend.
And when things get really bad for you,
I'm going to totally back you up.
Yeah, but they're,
were their number one corn supplier. Yeah, and they're coming to kidnap someone. It's like burning
down the only Wendy's in town. Where are you going to get the frosties? Exactly.
Well, Yipassus replied, okay, well, so I'm the wherewance of this village. I'm going to go need to
talk to the boss man who's the king of the Padawomac. So Yipassas met with the Padawomac Council for
several hours, and they debated about what to do. And ultimately, they concluded that, yes, they would
hand Pocahontas over to the English.
Kristen, any thoughts as to why they said they would do that?
Well, they kind of had no choice.
Great answer.
I'm going to give you a few more reasons.
Okay.
So I mentioned earlier that the Padawomac lived pretty far north from the rest of the Powhatan Nation.
Their territory bordered enemy tribes.
So they had to deal with that constantly.
Yeah.
So basically the benefits of protection from the Powhatan Nation, they weren't all that great.
but they did have a lot of benefits from trading with the English.
They were getting that metal and fur, and it was very lucrative for them.
The paduomics also understood that the European presence in their land was probably not going away.
Right.
They had already traded with the Spanish.
Now they were trading with the English.
They had even traded with the French by now.
So they were like, hey, we might as well get a head start and work with the English.
Yeah.
Hooray. But as you mentioned, Captain Argyll was threatening them. So that made the decision pretty easy. So the Padawomaxx decided to help out with this abduction. Yipassus was promised a copper kettle in exchange for his help. So shortly after this, Yipassus and his wife invited Pocahontas to come and take a look at Captain Argyll ship, which was anchored in the water nearby.
This sucks.
Pocahontas, who was now 16 years old, would not have turned down an invitation from a wearerwance.
So the three of them walked down to look at this massive English ship, and then Yipassus' wife, who was probably in on the whole abduction plot.
Yeah.
Claimed that she wanted to see inside the ship.
And Yipassus pretended to get all frustrated, and he was like, but honey, it would be rude for you to go alone onto this ship.
Hey, how about we all go?
Pocahontas, don't do it.
It's a guided tour.
The worst thing, worse than being kidnapped, is going on a guided tour because that's a
kidnapping that you pay for.
Well, and it should have been a dead giveaway when you passers started putting on a bike helmet,
okay?
Pocahontas was not stupid.
She knew the history of Europeans kidnapping her people, as we've talked about in previous
episodes.
Yes.
And she knew that she was probably at risk of being kidnapped because she was the daughter of Chief Wahoon Seneca.
But Yipassus assured her that these English did not know who she was.
They were kind of new to the area.
Plus, these English, they were friendly with the Padawomics.
And Pocahontas believed him because, yeah, they'd been trading regularly with no issues for the past year.
And this was coming from a werewants of respected tribes.
tribal leader. There was trust there. So Pocahontas and his wife boarded Captain Argyll's ship.
And on board Captain Argyll welcomed them. He handed out elbow pads, knee pads, helmets, and then he assigned them each a segue. He went over the rules of the tour.
Okay, so actually, here's what happened. Segways would not be invented for another 388 years, Kristen.
Tragically, they did have to wait for those wonderful.
Yeah, so that joke is really stupid.
Uh-huh.
It's no Pew joke.
We can all agree to that.
P.U.
Wait a minute.
That's what we'll call them.
So Captain Argyll actually did give them a guided tour.
Sure.
But no segways.
And then he treated them to a huge feast.
And after the meal, Captain Argole was like, who, I'm getting kind of tired.
I think I've got theitis, aka a food coma.
Yeah.
A.k.a. The after-dinner dip.
After-dinner dip. I've never heard that.
Yeah, you know, you come down.
Yeah, I know. Did you make that up, though?
No.
Oh, okay.
Never heard after-dinner dip?
No.
Well, now you know.
Listeners, reach out. Is this something he's making up?
No, it's real.
You've heard of theitis.
Yes.
You heard of food coma?
Yes.
Yeah. After-dinner dip. It's just another way of saying it.
Okay.
I'm going to start using it.
Start using it. So you admit you just made it up.
No, no, no.
I learned about it while writing this brilliant episode.
Okay.
Okay.
And I really enjoy after-dinner dip.
Okay.
I'm going to start using it.
All right.
Continue your story.
Okay.
All right.
So Captain Argyll turned to Pocahontas and was like, oh, Pocahontas, I bet you have the after-dinner dip, too.
Say, what if you took a nap in this room?
Give me a break.
Pocahontas probably didn't want to be rude.
Yeah.
Or maybe she actually did have the after-dinner dip.
We've all been there, folks.
So she went to go take a nap.
Who knows if she actually slept or not.
But she came out later and she told Yipassus,
okay, I think I'm ready to go home now.
Yeah.
But then Captain Argyll stepped in
and proclaimed that Pocahontas was now his prisoner.
And if Chief Wahoon Seneca
wanted her back safely,
he'd have to hand over all of his stolen weapons,
any English prisoners he had,
and some corn.
Yipassus put on the performance of a life
time, Kristen, because he was like...
I'm shocked!
So, how did Pocahontas react?
According to the English, she was dead silent.
Her reaction actually annoyed Captain Argyll.
He wrote that she, quote, grew pensive and discontented.
What was he expecting?
Maybe he expected her to burst into tears or throw herself on him and say, please, no, I'll do anything.
Yeah, okay.
But this strategy of silence was something Pocahontas had learned from her father in his negotiations with the English.
Not only was it an intimidating response.
Right.
As in, whatever, this doesn't bother me.
But it also gave her time to think about what was going on.
She also could have been in a bit of shock.
Absolutely.
Pocahontas's response probably bothered you pass us too.
He repeatedly proclaimed his innocence and was like,
Oh, I can't believe this is happening.
Yeah.
As he stroked his brand new copper kettle.
I don't want to give you passes too much shit because he was kind of forced to do this.
Yeah, he was.
Still, it sucks.
So a messenger immediately went to the capital village of Oropax to tell Chief Wahoon Seneca that Pocahontas had been kidnapped.
Yeah.
And it upset him greatly.
He consulted with the Chiakros priest about the next steps.
And one suggestion was, we need to launch an all-out attack.
on the English and rescue Pocahontas.
But Chief Wohenseneca believed that doing something like that would result in her death.
Yeah.
So instead, he agreed to meet the English demands.
He would turn over all those weapons, all the hostages, and he would give them food in exchange for Pocahontas.
But until he was ready, though, he asked that the English, please treat her well.
Satisfied with that response, Captain Argyll pulled anchor and he brought Pocahontas back to Jamestown.
Now, at this point in my research, my immediate question, Kristen, was, well, wait a minute, what happened to Pocahontas's husband, Cocoaum?
Right.
According to the Disney film, Cocoaum sees John Smith and Pocahontas making out.
And he goes fucking berserk.
Uh-huh.
He and John Smith start fighting.
And right when he's about to stab John Smith in the neck, a young English soldier named Thomas shoots Coquham dead.
Of course, we know by now that that entire movie is bullshit.
Uh-huh.
So what actually happened to Coquham?
Some sources say, we have no idea.
Mm-hmm.
Native oral history says that Coquam was killed by the English.
At the same time, they kidnapped Pocahontas.
Oh, my God.
And their child survived and was raised by the Padawomac tribe.
Oh.
Sadly, Pocahontas never knew the fate of her husband or her child.
Pocahontas had not been to Jamestown in almost four years.
And as she walked into the fort, she noticed how different everything looked.
All of those children she had played with in the marketplace, laughing and doing cartwheels, they were gone.
Most were either dead or missing.
Mm-hmm. They'd said too many curse words.
Mm-hmm.
Called Baron Delawar a butthole.
Mm-hmm.
It seemed as though the English had learned a thing or two.
Their houses were now built with tree bark and woven mats, just like the Powhatan Yehikens.
But things didn't just look different, they felt different too.
Pocahontas was now in Jamestown as a prisoner, not as a visitor.
And because of the hostilities of the Anglo-Pauatan War, distrust was rampant.
English did not look at her in the same way.
Sands, a few of the old-timers, who remembered her visits as a child.
Yeah.
We don't know what Pocahontas was feeling at the time, but there's no doubt she was probably very scared.
Her arrival at Jamestown was a big deal.
News spread quickly that the Powhatan princess had been captured.
The English were thrilled because they were like, wow, with Pocahontas, we could get all of our weapons, we could get all the hostages, and hey, we could maybe end this war with Chief Wahoon Seneca.
And what happened next depends on what source you read.
Here on an old-timey podcast, we pride ourselves on being fair and balanced, Kristen.
Do we?
It's why we are able to have guests like Dolly Parton, Judge Judy, and Adolf Hitler.
He was not a guest.
He just burst in here and he farted a bunch and said that people shouldn't sign up for our Patreon.
Yes, he actually insulted our podcast, which we are okay with because we don't want to be on his side.
That's right.
We take a very brave stance on this podcast.
We are anti-Hedler.
And we will not apologize for it.
That's right.
We're standing by that statement.
So according to English history, Chief Wahoon Seneca did not meet the full ransom demands.
He sent seven English prisoners, a canoe full of grain, but he just couldn't give up those weapons.
He sent a few damaged muskets.
It's understandable in a way.
Chief Wohun Seneca knew that.
giving up those weapons could spell doom for the entire nation.
Sure. Also, do they really know how many weapons we took? Probably not. So we're definitely not
going to give away all of them. Yeah, but they don't want damaged muskets. I know. I know. I'm just
saying. Well, the English were like, nope, that's not good enough, so we're going to keep Pocahontas.
Now, native oral history says that Chief Wahoon Seneca did meet all of the demands. But the English
simply refused to let Pocahontas go. Because with Pocahontas in captivity, they knew that Chief
Wahun Seneca would never attack them. Yeah. And so they're just like, we'll just keep her,
even though they got everything they wanted. Whichever version is true, what we know for sure
is that Pocahontas remained in English captivity and that the two sides stopped talking.
So with Pocahontas in English hands, there was no word from Chief Wahoon Seneca, the English decided, well, let's turn Pocahontas into a model Indian princess.
Gross.
But they couldn't do it in Jamestown, Kristen.
Pretty rough place to be.
Mostly men lived in Jamestown.
The English wanted Pocahontas to integrate into their society, and so they sent her to their new settlement further upriver, Henrico.
Henrico was quickly becoming everything James Town was supposed to be.
Turns out building a town on a mosquito-ridden swampy land is a bad idea.
Who knew? Everyone.
But more importantly, there is a variety of people living in Henrico, including women and children.
So they wanted Pocahontas to socialize.
So Pocahontas was handed over to a man living in a small house on the church grounds.
Reverend Alexander Whitaker.
You're looking at me.
I hate everything about this.
I cannot imagine you're taken from your community, taken from your husband, and you're...
Did you say they had two children or just one child?
They had one.
We're just not sure if it was a daughter or a son.
Right.
Gotcha.
And then they want to parade you around.
And now you have to probably get raped by this reverend, right?
We'll get to that in the next episode, Kristen.
Oh, great.
Something to look forward to.
Mm-hmm.
So Reverend Alexander Whitaker, let's talk about him for a minute.
He was from a pretty prominent family in England.
He attended Cambridge and studied religion.
He was ordained as a minister, and at first he did the usual thing of working at a parish.
But Alexander Whitaker wasn't about that life.
He wanted a challenge.
And what better challenge than to convert the savages in the new world over to Christianity?
so he signed a contract to live in Virginia for three years.
Reverend Whitaker had some somewhat progressive takes for the time.
In his opinion, indigenous people were not stupid.
They were quick learners, very intelligent.
Give this man a medal of honor.
Why?
For that very progressive take.
Yeah, he's a hero, dear.
No, Kristen.
The real problem was that they had been led to us.
astray by their pagan ways.
God bless those pagans.
Reverend Whitaker also acknowledged that the English,
we're doing some pretty fucked up things in the new world.
He complained about it frequently.
He wrote, some of our adventurers have been the most miserable, covetous men.
Many of them have been murderers, thieves, adulterers, idle persons, all of which God
hates from his very soul.
I love how hateful and bitchy God is.
don't you
In fact a lot of the other colonists, Kristen,
they didn't like Reverend Whitaker
because he criticized their behavior so much.
Yeah, he's judging.
I get it.
You can't judge me, I'm judging you.
That's what I always say.
Well, when Reverend Whitaker learned
that he was going to get to work with Pocahontas,
the Powhatan princess,
he was thrilled.
What a perfect student.
Well, maybe prisoner is the better word.
It is the better word because it's the only accurate word.
We know Kristen.
Okay.
I'm being sarcastic.
Because now Reverend Whitaker could demonstrate that his ideas and methods were best for converting the savages.
And slowly but surely, Reverend Whitaker stripped away Pocahontas's identity.
Her traditional deerskin clothing was thrown away.
Instead, Pocahontas had to wear traditional English clothing, a long white petticoat.
A bodice.
I guess it's that thing with the straps that kind of tightens everything up there.
Yeah.
Oh, my.
Big jugs.
Folks, get on that pig butter level.
Get to $10 tier.
I'm wearing a bodice right now.
He just, he's actually wearing a Carhart sweatshirt, and he just lifted his tities as if he was in a nice bodice.
Is it bodice or bodice?
It's bodice.
Okay.
Thank you.
Come with me to Delaware and we'll go by an authentic bodice.
She had to wear a skirt, socks, shoes.
This is quite an adjustment.
Yeah.
Considering it was also the summertime, it's hot as fuck.
Also stupid as fuck.
Who wears all white when you're basically outside all the time?
She's not a tennis player.
It's before Labor Day.
Calm down.
You can wear white.
During meals, they used plates.
silverware, drinking glasses.
Pocahontas ate vegetables unfamiliar to her.
Things like peas, onions, turnips, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots.
Sorry.
What do you laugh?
What's so funny about vegetables?
Nothing, but you're just saying there are a lot of terrible things in this story, undeniably.
But you are listing vegetables as if you're listing off murder.
Murder.
Kidnapping.
Slavery.
Fair enough.
Carrots.
Okay.
Those little pearl onions.
Those are good.
She wouldn't have been mad about this.
Pocahontas was forbidden from making offerings to her gods like Ahonay.
She could no longer say any Powhatan religious chants.
Instead, throughout the week, Reverend Whitaker taught Pocahontas English and the Christian faith.
Many of these same tactics were used later in Native American residential schools, which operated by the phrase, kill the Indian, save the man.
Yeah.
Some English sources state that Pocahontas was simply delighted to be integrated into their society.
Why are you laughing?
Because that is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
Okay, well, one book I read said that Pocahontas was moving from a culture rooted in sacrifice.
and superstition to a culture that was enlightened and sophisticated.
Oh, wow.
I wonder what the skin tone was of the person who wrote that stupid book.
It was an old book, too.
It's from the 60s.
Yeah, of course.
Now, it's one of those books, as a historian, you have to be very careful when you read,
because, yes, it has a lot of great information in it.
Sure.
But it also has shit like this, and you really have to analyze statements like that.
You have to consider the source.
Yes.
As I've mentioned before in this series,
Pocahontas never wrote her own thoughts and feelings.
So we don't really know what she was feeling about this current situation.
So fuck it, let's speculate.
Yeah.
Was Pocahontas afraid?
Undoubtedly, she was...
Yeah, we can apply common sense to this situation.
I wish more historians would do that.
Because a lot of historians would be like, well, we just don't know.
She didn't write it down.
Therefore, we just have no idea.
That's a very nice way of thinking of it.
How would you think of it?
I think that if it were reversed, if a 16-year-old white woman had been kidnapped, at the same time her husband had been murdered, her child taken away, then she's forced to go live in another culture, all this stuff.
I think white historians would be very comfortable talking about how, no shit.
we can probably decide how she felt about that, how terrifying that would be.
I'll say this.
My favorite book so far while doing the story is by Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma.
Very, very, very, very good and analyzes all the sources and, yeah, rightfully assumes, yes, Pocahontas was scared to death when she came to Jamestown.
Of course.
So was Pocahontas afraid?
undoubtedly. She was
forcibly taken away from her family,
her friends, her
child, her husband.
She could not leave. She was
a prisoner. Well, wait a minute.
Why didn't Pocahontas try to leave
or try to resist learning
the English language or Christianity?
Oh, God. A couple of reasons.
Number one, Pocahontas understood the situation.
She knew
that as long as she was in
captivity, her own people would be safer.
Yeah.
Hostilities had ceased during this time.
So Pocahontas went along with everything because this was a way to protect her people.
Number two, the stealing and kidnapping of women was a thing in Powhatan society.
They did it with enemy tribes.
So Pocahontas was probably instructed as a child.
Here's what you do in these situations.
if God forbid she was ever kidnapped.
Yeah.
And that was, in order to live, you have to submit to your circumstances.
Kristen, thoughts?
Yeah, I think this is just survival instincts.
And you see this all the time in like true crime stuff or in domestic violence relationships, people being like, well, why didn't she leave?
Why didn't she?
Why didn't she?
Why didn't she?
bullshit. That's not the question we should be asking. There is nothing wrong with doing what you need to do to survive a situation.
If that's learning a new language, if that's trying to gain some of the trust of the people who surround you, you got to do it.
Yeah, absolutely. She probably wanted to kick Reverend Whitaker in his and call him a, you know,
Oh, careful Pocahontas, you're getting close to your limit there.
That's two strikes.
But yeah, she did what she had to do to survive.
And to protect the Powhatan Nation.
Yeah.
It's the year 1613.
Spring turned to summer.
Summer turned to fall.
There was still no word from Chief Wahoon Seneca.
Pocahontas received her lessons throughout the week.
And on Sundays, she and Reverend Whitaker would go into Henrico and attend serving.
with the other settlers.
Also attending these services
was the widower tobacco farmer
John Rolf.
What the hell had John Rolfe
been up to over the past few years?
Well, his tobacco
experiments had been going well.
Okay. Very well, actually.
Oh, okay.
He had managed to cultivate a new strain
of tobacco, which he called
Arunico.
Not very catchy. Sorry.
Well, his fellow colonists
loved it. They said it smoked pleasant, sweet, and strong. He's like the new vape store in 2014
that opened up next to the high school. He is. Come on, kids. He's vaping porium. I've got the
fruit loops flavor for you. Buy one cartridge, get one free. Those cigarettes are bad for you. You're
going to love these vapes. The vapes are way healthier. Well, and soon, John Rolf was given a big
plot of land near Henrico to grow vast amounts of this tobacco.
The Virginia Company hoped this new crop would be supremely profitable for them.
Spoiler alert, it was.
But Sundays were not for farming.
It was a day of rest.
The Lerds Day.
And it was on one particular Sunday service that 28-year-old John Rolf first laid eyes on the woman he would eventually marry 16-year-old Pocahontas.
Wait, how old was he?
28.
Lord.
On the next episode of an old day.
Timey Podcast.
Oh my.
And the series finale.
Oh.
Pocahontas goes to England.
Wow.
Oh.
This was terrible.
Pretty rough episode.
Yeah.
I had a lot of fun, though.
I think I speak for everyone when I say that the worst part was learning about those
turnips and the carrots.
No.
And the peas.
And the onions.
And the goddamn cauliflower.
Listen, the worst part for you was the muscle shells.
That honestly.
Getting flayed with muscle shells.
I did not know that that was a thing that could happen to a person.
Okay.
Okay.
And I was just horrified.
Well, it was interesting.
I was reading about how the Powhatan would, I guess, torture is the word.
It's absolutely the word.
And it was kind of an art form in that society.
They would like come up with creative ways to talk.
torture people and muscle shells and flinging the skin in the fire pit was just a new fun way to do that.
It's like a contest.
Who can think up the most fucked up way to kill somebody?
And yeah, somebody should have won a big prize for that.
That is a weird thought.
America's next top torturer.
Oh, my red silk hat is off to you, whoever thought of that.
Also, I don't ever want to be on your bad side.
Okay, great. Norm, that was absolutely horrifying.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Norm, not that all this talk of torture and kidnapping and murder wasn't fun,
but I would like to try to lighten it up a little bit by reading some reviews of our podcast.
Our small, independent, sexy podcast.
That's right. That's what everyone's saying about it.
Everyone, if you haven't already rated or reviewed us, please do.
It really helps our small, independent, sexy little podcast to move up in the charts.
And it stops us from having charts.
And that's really important in this day and day.
That's not true. That's not true at all.
Well, my goodness.
You ready for this first one here, Norm?
Let's hear it.
This first review comes from Anne, the lesbian.
That's clever.
Five stars.
Title, EpiPen Ready.
EpiPen.
The body of the review reads us.
follows. I have alpha-gal syndrome, which means I have an anaphylactic reaction to red meat.
But I love these meaty boy episodes so much that I listen to them with my EpiPen at the ready.
I was really wondering where this was going with the EpiPen.
Which means a lot, considering I'm an American with American health care.
Thank you. And the lesbian. You know what? What a perfect episode. This was a very meaty
episode. And I bet Anne had to stab herself several times just to get through it. But, you know,
I'm sure she's saying that it's worth it. This next one comes from fucking Angie.
Oh. Fucking Angie gives us five stars. Angie, that's one strike in James Town. No food for a week.
Title of the review reads, dump your Lexa Pro down the drain.
Please do not listen to this review if you take Lexapro.
But anyway, continue.
Body of the review reads,
Anytime I feel like harling myself over a ledge,
I instead reach for my phone and play an episode of old-timey.
Kristen's brilliant vocals and Norman's disarming demeanor
have the same effect as my meds.
Best History podcast ever!
All right, yeah, you know what?
We hear in an old-timey podcast we say,
get rid of those meds, this is the cure for everything.
We do not say, no, we do not say that, Kristen.
Now, that would be interesting if we could get a doctor on the show to confirm that an old-timey
podcast is just as effective as Lexapro.
Dr. Hubert Montgomery was on the podcast.
We should reach out to Dr. Hubert Montgomery.
He might be able to do that for us.
Yes, yes.
I have always said that depression isn't real.
And so surely our podcast can fix that fake illness.
Well, we'll need Dr. Hubert Montgomery's expertise.
Okay, great.
You got one more for us?
I got one more for you.
This comes from A Brick 57.
Okay.
Five stars.
Title of the review.
This show has Riz.
Oh, Riz.
Charisma.
The body of the review reads,
This podcast is Sigma.
The hosts have main character energy.
I've learned a lot and laughed out loud.
They ate and left no crumbs.
New paragraph.
Have you heard about people taking photos with their dead relatives during the early 1900s?
You should do an episode about that.
The photos are so creepy.
Well, another reason to get on that pig butter investor tier,
because we'll show the photos.
I love the journey that that review took us on.
I also love that clearly it comes from a certified young person.
We don't know if it actually comes.
Certified young person.
We don't know.
Riz.
Eight and left no crumbs.
That person is under 35.
Better than a mustard-soaked glizzy, if you ask me.
Gross.
Anyway.
Thank you all for those wonderful reviews.
We really enjoy.
reading them. It is really fun. They're just, they're getting wilder and wilder. They are. People are
getting out of line at Subway and they're saying, hold up, I need to write this review. I need to take my
time with it. I'm going to get in the little wooden booth with the green top. And I'm going to write this
review. I like how uncomfortable you got during the Lexapro review. You were really picturing people
throwing out their life saving medication or serious medication. We can't be, we have to add the disclaimer that we don't
actually recommend you do this.
Norm, here's...
Because somebody is going to actually do it.
No, they're not.
You never know.
Here's my fantasy.
One person does take it seriously.
But the med they were going to take,
peptobismol.
Oh, that's a very important medication.
Taking it many times myself.
Helps tremendously.
Anyway, on that note,
Norm, you know what they say about history?
hose. We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from
The Books, Pocahontas and the Powhatan dilemma by Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas by Grace Steel Woodward,
and The True Story of Pocahontas, The Other Side of History, by Dr. Linwood Little Bear Custolo
and Angela L. Daniel Silverstar. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to an
old-timey podcast.
Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts.
And while you're at it, subscribe.
Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and YouTube at Old Timey Podcast.
Join the Reddit community, our slash old-timey podcast.
We're almost at 800 Redditors.
Woo!
And follow us individually on Instagram.
She is the lovely Kristen Pitts-Karuso.
She recently took a photo of herself with our new toilet.
It's true.
And I go by Gaming Historian.
And until next time, Tudaloo, Tata, and Cherry.
Bye!
