In Our Time - Pocahontas

Episode Date: November 21, 2013

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Pocahontas, the Native American woman who to English eyes became a symbol of the New World. During the colonisation of Virginia in the first years of the seventeenth century, Pocahontas famously saved the life of an English prisoner, John Smith. Later captured, she converted to Christianity, married a settler and travelled to England where she was regarded as a curiosity. She died in 1617 at the age of 22 and was buried in Gravesend; her story has fascinated generations on both sides of the Atlantic, and has been reinterpreted and retold by many writers and artists.With:Susan Castillo Harriet Beecher Stowe Emeritus Professor of American Studies at King's College LondonTim Lockley Reader in American Studies at the University of WarwickJacqueline Fear-Segal Reader in American History and Culture at the University of East AngliaProducer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com. UK slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in an un-mug grave in the town of Gravesend, in Kent, lie the remains of a young woman who died there in 1616. Her name was Amanute, but she's better known today by her nickname Pocahontas,

meaning the naughty child. Although she died in her early 20s, Pocahontas has become one of the most celebrated figures of American history. Born into a tribe of Native Americans in Virginia, she's said to have famously intervened to save the life of an English colonist. Later, she converted to Christianity and married another settler, a rich tobacco planter. Her journey across the Atlantic and appearances in London society caused a sensation, and in early 17th century England she was a celebrity, I suppose.

Although comparative little is known about her life, Pocahontas has become a foundation symbol of early America and inspired numerous books and works of art. With me to discuss the life and significance of Pocahontas are Susan Castillo, Harriet Beecher, Emeritus Professor of American Studies at King's College London, Tim Lockley, reader in American Studies at the University of Warwick, and Jacqueline Fear Siegel, reader in American history and culture at the University of East Anglia. Tim Loan, let's begin with the European settlement of North America. advance was at the start of the end of the 16th, start of the 17th century.

Pocahontas was more in 1595-ish. North America was very much the poor relation when it came to colonisation of the Americas. The Spanish had been going to the Americas for about 100 years. They had concentration on the Caribbean, then in Latin America, specifically Mexico and Peru. North America was very much a wilderness, it was the land unknown, it was the land that they weren't that interested in. there'd been some exploration of North America in the 60th century. They haven't found gold.

They'd found lots of hostile Indians. And they'd been very little permanent attempts to settle in North America. There was the odd French fort, the odd fishing village, until the Spanish settler settlement in Florida in St. Augustine in 1565. Then there's a short-lived settlement, which is led by the English in Roanoke Island in the 1580s. That disappears, probably wiped out by Native Americans. by 1590 and then there's no more attempts to settle in North America

until the English go to James Town in Virginia in 1607. But there is an attempt at an imperial development among the English, partly to rival the Spanish there's a war with Spain going on, so that's part of it. And also rumours are emanating from the new world that there's gold in them, there are new worlds, and so on.

Yeah, certainly North America was somewhere that was seen by the English as somewhere that could be attractive. They knew that the Spanish had got vast wealth from the Americas, and they think that maybe there is gold there and the Spanish just haven't found it, and that's one of the reasons they go. They also think that North America could be a good base in order to raise Spanish treasureships that are coming back from the Caribbean. They also think there are crops, citrus fruits, vines, etc., that they can grow in North America, that they would otherwise have to import from other countries. So there are imperial dimensions there.

And there's also a sense, I think, that by the early 17th century, empires and overseas ventures are what big powers do, the French. are doing it, the Spanish are doing it, the Portuguese are doing it, and the English are sort of lagging behind and they're aware of that. They had imperial longings. I think it was towards the, about 1600, the John D, the Queen Elizabeth's first astrologer and alchemist and magician coined the phrase, the British Empire.

Yeah, absolutely, and they start to think about it in an imperial perspective. But the government itself doesn't do a lot. It sort of sanctions colonisation efforts, but it doesn't put state resources behind it. They're definitely funded and resourced by the

people who go, usually by joint stock companies. And in the very early 17th century, a colony was established in Virginia. Yes. But that one held on. That one held on, but by the skin of its teeth, its earliest years are very, very fragile. And by, say, 1610, it's in a state of decay. It's very much on the edge of destruction because they'd sent a thousand people to Virginia in those three years. But in early 1610, there were only 60 of them left alive.

And they'd been wiped out by disease, by Indian warfare. They were really clinging on by the skin of their teeth. So the early years of Jamestown are incredibly fragile and easily could have been wiped out in 1610. What side? What saved it? Well, just as the settlers who were there are leaving, they've given up, they were going to go back to England. They're halfway down the James River on the way to the Atlantic.

They meet a new fleet coming from England with 900 new people. And the new governor forces those poor souls to turn around, go back home and go back to James Town, which probably the last thing they ever wanted to do was to go back to this hellhole which they'd just experienced. Jack Lee and Fear Segal, there was a substantial local population of Native Americans. Can you tell us something about them, please?

Yes, throughout the whole Virginia Tidewater area, there were around about 15,000 who were under the rulership of a Pahattan Indian. It was a very complex society they'd build up and he was still building a sort of empire or they operate in a very different way. It was a matrilineal system and so the inheritance went down the female line

but the ruler was always a man and in these little towns which were spread because there were a lot of waterways and estuaries throughout this region and they always were on the edge of a waterway in these little towns there were what were called Wuronsei which were sub-chiefs who operated underneath the Powhatan whose name was Wahun Senaka but he was called Powhatan as the ruler

What happened in these towns? Why did they become towns? Are these not a sort of nomadic scavenging people? No, no, these are not a nomadic scavenging people. They are semi-permanent towns. So these towns are semi-agricultural. They're towns which are built out of saplings, which are lined with bark, and it's where people live. And in the areas around about are fields which they cultivate.

It's the women that cultivate the fields. The women are the farmers. And they grow maize, corn, and squash, and beans and of course tobacco, which was for them not the kind that was going to be commercial, but was for ceremonial purposes. And then in all the surrounding area, the woodlands, that was also vital to them,

because that was where the men went out to hunt and where they collected nuts and berries, and then, of course, all around was the sea, so they'd also fished. So these are self-sufficient communities, all bound together by language. They all spoke the Algonquin language, and moving around the waterways on these open,

these flat-bottom canoes that they dug out. So it was, if you like, self-sufficient, quite happy community, but with enemies on either side because Powhaten was pushing out. And so one of the reasons he wanted to have the English on his side is he thought they would be useful as allies, first of all against the Spanish attacks, and secondly against enemy tribes that were around about. But he had trade lines right out to the west and up to the north.

So it was in the tidewater area, but it had tentacles, if you like, that reached across the continent. About how long had they been there, do we know? Thousands, but how long they'd been cultivating? What, thousands? I mean thousands, thousands, how many thousands? Probably about, I'm not dead certain, but I would say about, you know, it's estimated 10, 12,000, but the estimates on these things very different. 10,000 years in that same spot, doing much the same thing?

Well, no, no, because I think the agricultural development was more recent, the whole development of maize and crops, and becoming more sedentary, and therefore semi-perman. because these towns, once the land was depleted, they would move and so they were, if you like, semi-permanent townships. When the English arrived, what was their relationship with the Native Americans? Well, when they first arrived, obviously a lot of suspicion and worry on both sides because, first of all, as we've heard from Tim, it was fragile whether this colony was going to work or not. The Ronault colony was probably dispersed by Indians, if not wiped out.

And of course, the Indians had been attacked. by Spanish and people. So both sides were very wary, but they also needed each other and wanted to have interactions. Powell Hatton was keen to have the English on his side, and he also wanted to trade with them. And of course, the colony was absolutely desperate for food

a lot of the time in that early years. And they weren't very good at growing food, were they? No, they weren't good at all. They had to have instruction. Powhatan sent instructors to them down to help them do it. It's interesting that here, and up in Massachusetts, it was the Indians who taught, who fed, who fed the English and the British

for a considerable time. taught them how to grow, taught them what to eat, taught them what was poisonous. Yes, exactly. The food was the great power that the Indians had. Food was the great power at this stage. The difference between up in New England and here is that the terrible epidemic

sort of wiped out the population in New England and left the land, I mean, decimated the population. So there was more land available, more easily available, and fewer Indians to help. Whereas in Virginia, it looks as if although there was illness, there weren't these dreadful epic. epidemic. So there was a fully functioning society with its full leadership there. And also

trade, because for the Indians, what they wanted was, of course, metal tools. This was not a society. They had any kind of metal. So they wanted knives, they wanted scissors, they wanted swords for cutting down trees and, of course, in the end, they really wanted to get their hands on guns.

Susan Castilla, how much do we know about Pocahontas' family? Comparatively little. She was the child of Powarton, the paramount chief of the Powhatan Empire. She was apparently, her mother was not one of Powhatan's significant wives in that. Essentially, the Powhatans were matrilineal and matrilocal, and power went through the female line.

So there was no sort of political power inherent to Pocahontas, but clearly she was one of her father's favorites. When you say clearly, we understand we had about 20 children, didn't he by different words? He did. How do we know clear issues one of his friends? What words does the clarity come from? Well, basically from two sources, John Smith and William Strachey, who speak of her as, Strachey mentions her as her father's darling. And Smith, the earliest, possibly the earliest reference to her is in Smith's true relation of Virginia,

which was sent as an unpaginated report to Luddon with a ship's captain, and then it was subsequently imprinted. He talks about her there as a child of nine or ten, who had interestingly come to Jamestown when there was an exchange of prisoners, as Jacqueline has mentioned, there were some skirmishes, and they often accused the Indians of stealing tools, metal tools, which clearly they wanted.

And it would seem extraordinary, a descendant child with, you know, on this sort of mission, but this, I think, was probably as a signal of non-aggression that he had sent his daughter.

It is odd, isn't it? Because there's a lot about her straying the 20 miles-ish from where they were to this fort, little fort. Obviously she couldn't go alone. So who went with her and why? It's a start of a very, very, very short life,

but it's a significant start, obviously. Absolutely. And the fact that she was so very, young. Smith talks about her as the non-Parel of his kingdom. She clearly was a very very charismatic, very engaging child and very intelligent, very observant.

So, can you go more into the earliest references? This is perhaps be a sort of sub-theme of the programme, just checking things. What do we know? She became such a foundation myth in America. She was Disney-fied, and there you are. But what do we really know about her at the beginning

on which the foundation of her reputation and her life? This engagement with the fort at James Town, which she seems to have got into, being trusted by, being kidnapped, being kidnapped, all sorts of things might or might not have happened. You mentioned Smith. What else is that? Strachie has a charming vignette,

which describes the Indian children, led by poker hunters, who clearly was mischievous and full of life, and they would go to the fort, and they would turn cartwheels. and Strachie remarks rather prudishly that she had nothing on underneath. He didn't really approve of this. But this indicates also that she was really quite young

because usually Powhatan women, when they reached puberty, would wear a leather apron-like garment, and they were really quite modest, so she clearly was very young. Smith again mentions her as a pitiful person, meaning that she was full of pity for the colonist. and she would take them food and would organise others to take them food.

Because some of the time they were literally starving, aren't they? Yes, well, so many of the colonists were rather useless gentlemen who weren't terribly good at farming or much else. Can you tell us a little more? Jacklings indicated about what Pahoutan women

would be doing at that time, because you have quite a lot about that with a lot of watercolours, and what their activity would be. No reading or writing, of course. Not that we know of. Basically farming, they cultivated the crops. Tobacco was used for ceremonial purposes, and I'm sure we'll go on to this,

but it may be that Pocahunter subsequently helped them to know more about tobacco cultivation. Do we know anything about music, about anything else that they might have been doing in the long evenings around the campfire? Well, in Smith's narrative, again, I'm jumping forward, but when he's taken captive, he speaks of a great grim fellow who comes skipping in and the kind of ceremonial dances which they had are really, it's a very fascinating account, and Strachey, of course, talks about their culture in sum to tip. But we do know unequivocally that she did make contact with English. Yes. was to a certain extent

adopted by them, certainly liked them, they liked her. So from the beginning she was maybe a patch, whatever she was. But that did happen when she was at 11 or 12, 10, 11, 12? 9 or 10, I would think. It started then. Yes. Pre-cubescent, clearly.

So what attraction... I mean, we know that there was quite a bit of kidnapping went on. So was their eyes alert for a kidnapping opportunity here? What happened was, this of course was much later.

In the interim, she probably had married an Indian. We don't know what happened regarding that marriage, but later she may have been visiting her husband's people, the Patawamuk. And it happened that Captain Samuel Argal, who was a ship's captain, was on the river. His ship had very heavy guns. And he learned that Pocahontas was,

in the neighborhood, as it were. So clearly he thought it was an opportunity to take her as hostage. And it's interesting that previously the Virginia Company had said that it would be desirable to capture the children of indigenous leaders so that they could be instructed in Christianity, brought to the settlement. So kidnapping was almost official policy. And couldn't learn the language? Yes, absolutely, yes.

Both ways? They did. They would leave sometimes young men with them to learn the language because they would be isolated among the Indians. The best way to learn as total aversion as they learned. Tim Lockley, John Smith's been referred to two or three times.

Can you just briskly say who exactly was, why is significant, and what his part was in this play? John Smith is a soldier, he's an adventurer, he's had a very colourful life. He's done lots of interesting things before he ever goes to America. He's one of the early settlers. He assumes control of the Virginia colony after the death of various leaders.

He's sort of elected into a position of authority at the end of 608. And he's quite an important figure over the next six months because he effectively leads the colony. He's the one probably who saves it from destruction, most likely because he forges some kind of viable relationship with the local Indian tribes where they do procure food enough to survive that winter of 608 to 9. And so there's a lot of ways in which he's a really important person. His most famous episode with Pocahontas

is a relation that he wrote down in, I think his third book when he writes about Virginia in which he publishes in 1624, when he writes about this episode where he was captured by Powhatan and Powhatan was going to kill him and Pocahontas intervened and saves his life She would then be about 16 or something

No no this is still when she was about 10 or 11 This is again about 1608 She intervened and saved his life Now it's quite probable That this incident never happened Because he only writes about it He first writes about it in his 1624 book And that's seven years after she died

It's 15, 16 years after the episode it supposedly took place. In the 1608 version of events that Susan referred to, he doesn't mention it. And he's due to quite well by Parrotton and there's no sense that he's going to be executed. So this is quite probably a literary device. If you read the rest of his book,

he's saved by young maidens about three times in the course of his life. So it's quite a common device for him to write about these kind of things. But even though it's a common device, it doesn't mean it didn't happen, does it? It doesn't mean it didn't happen. And if it did happen, if we give the Smith the benefit of the doubt and say,

okay, he had reasons for not writing about 18608 and he wrote about in 1624, if we say, okay, it did happen, then it probably almost certainly, again, didn't mean what Smith thought it meant, that it quite possibly was an adoption-type ceremony organised by Powhatan, whereby Smith was adopted as one of his then sub-chiefs, who was effectively sub-chief of the English. So there's a pretend death in order that it could be born again into the next time. some kind of ceremony that went on. And that is quite likely interpretation of it,

which is different from Smith's own version of events. But this event is what is then seized on by filmmakers in the future, and it appears in every film that you've ever seen about Smith. Jacqueline, if this did or not, after the relationship with Smith, which has been called a romantic relationship by everybody who hasn't studied the sources because there's no evidence for that whatsoever,

and he was about 30 years, about 10, never mind. There seems to be in a slight amelioration of a relationship between the American Indians and the English. Can you describe? Because one thing we haven't said is the English were ruthlessly racist at this time. And the Indians began to know how to control English by controlling the supply of food.

Yes, they did. And the food issue, as you mentioned before, just continues throughout this early period because Smith is only there in the colony for two years. He goes home with a gunpowder wound in October 1609. But it does seem there's a mediteration of a relationship and there's more trading of goods and exchanging presents. And as Susan said, exchanging people.

There's boy Thomas Savage who goes to live amongst the Powhatan. And then the Indians send a young boy called Namatak, who's used, she's a sort of precursor for Pocahontas, and he is sent to London as a showpiece. He's much too young to bring back the information that they really want. But there is much more a sense of relaxed relations. On the other hand, there's constant pilfering. The Indians don't see stealing from strangers

as being the same kind of crime as stealing from your kinsfolk. There's lots of little encounters where English people get ambushed. And of course, in that raid that Tim talked about, that sacking of when they ran out of food in the winter of 1608-609, now that's seen as a kind of act of aggression. And also, the English start doing things that make the power having people quite worried. They start, instead of cultivating their fields, as they should do in the spring and summer, they move up the James River and they plant three more forts. And this, if you like, exposes the whole interaction that's going to be able to.

to be so tricky throughout the continent and ever after and that is this issue of land because they see this land where they put their forts as clear land and what it is is Indian land that's actually lying fellow and that they're not using and they plant their forts on some of this best land and so there begins to be an awareness that first of all their way of using land is very different because the English people see it as private property you own it you cultivate it for profit they haven't managed that yet and the Indians instead see land as something that you own only by using it. The Yusufrake writes.

So while you're using the land, it's yours. But also all the land around, the forests, etc., are for everybody to use. And so when the English start laying waste to the forest, they're losing their food supplies. They're losing their wood supplies. And so there is this sense that these people are no longer just visitors, but that they are here to stay, that they are invaders. Susan Kestel. In 1610, we hear that Pocohandas was captured by the English.

Can you tell us what happened then? She's 15 then, if I'm right. I'm trying to get my dad backwards. 15, all right. She's captured by the English. She is. She was visiting Petowamuk, possibly her first husband's people, were from there. And essentially she was lured aboard the boat of Captain Samuel Argal.

By, it is said, Yappasus, who was the local chieftain and his wife, who were curious about it, they said, and they suggested to Pocahuntas that they go look at the boat and go on board. She clearly felt that something was wrong, but the wife of Yapusus said that she didn't want to go on board without another woman. So Pocahontas went,

and they also said to her, they don't know who you are, and they don't know you're Powhatan's daughter. This was false. And so they went on. on board. They were shown around and made much of by the captain. But then he announced that

he was taking her prisoner. And Yapasus, it is said, pretended to react with indignation. It seems to have been prearranged, but there are other versions of that. But still, it said that Pocahontas

was, I quote, exceeding pensive as well she might be. I'm sure she was frightened. you know. But she then was taken to Jamestown where she was a prisoner, but she was instructed in Christianity by the Reverend Whittaker, and was again a young woman who was intelligent, personable, and it may be that it is during these sessions that she met John Rolf. So let's talk about the Christianity first.

So that implies that she knew quite a bit of English, or does it? Well, she was in James Town long enough, I think, so that she could learn English. She'd obviously been in contact with English for about six years by now, and she'd been learning perhaps bits and pieces of English over that time, but she's immersed in Jamestown for about a year, during which time she becomes Christianised. The Christianisation of the natives and inverted commas was either the redeeming feature or the sort of sticking plaster on top of the colonisation project, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's never taken that seriously, I think, by the English, and that's also true in New England. I mean, the efforts that the English do throughout colonial America to Christianised Native peoples pale insignificance in comparison, for example, to what's done by the Catholics in Latin America, where they've got missionary groups, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, who were doing a lot of missionary work amongst Indians.

But they wanted her to, they tried, it was very important when she did become a Christian. She was one of the first, if not the first, and so on and so. It was made much of that fact. Absolutely, and it's, again, seen as a justification. and they... Justification. A justification for colonisation. Because one of the things they've talked about

since, even since Rowanoke in the 1580s, is that one of the reasons the English think they can go to North America is that they can Christianise the natives in the Protestant religion rather than risk them all being turned into Catholics by the Spanish. And so they do talk about that in some of their promotional literature. They don't follow through with it on the ground, but they do talk about it as a reason for colonisation. And very soon after that, she marries a man called John Rolfe,

who has introduced a character, beer strain of tobacco into the area which is much more profitable although it scours the land much more effectively as well which which displaces the Indian but John Rolf who has been married once, marry so yes he does he is

previously been married he was one of those that had been on a voyage to Virginia in 1609 he's one of the ones who's shipwrecked in Bermuda he loses his wife and child in Bermuda he then travels back on to Virginia in 1610

he introduces Trinidadian tobacco which becomes the most profitable crop in Virginia he writes a letter justifying his relationship with Pocahontas in 1614 when he denies that he's driven by carnal affections and that he's actually driven by desire to a he loves her

B that he wants to carry on with her Christianisation and her education but also he characterises it as being for the good of the colony which I think is also really interesting because the sort of political dimensions of that relationship are really important. But he also writes another letter, Jacqueline, where he says how much she does love her and how wonderful she is and he can't do without her and all that sort of thing.

And he takes her off to England. Now, can you square those two things? Can I square those two things? Well, just talk about them. I suppose. I mean, he's quite a conflicted person. I mean, don't you think when you read his writing, he's somebody that agonises over things and he actually agonises over his lust or his feelings for her?

But he is also somebody that is very committed to this plantation. I mean, as you say, he's brought this strain of tobacco. The first export he makes is in 1614. So he's clearly, and it hasn't quite become a cash crop, but it's clear that instead of this rather bitter tobacco that the Indians have been grown, there is a real possibility here to beat the Spanish who have dominated this market. So he does actually, you know, carry these two things together.

I think he's a conflicted person. All his writings are very agonized. You think he meant it when he said he was passionately and lustfully in love with him? He was saying that as a private letter. That wasn't a public declaration. Did he meant it? Was he trying to persuade anybody, persuade himself? What do you think was going on?

I believe that, actually. I mean, I don't know about the others. Well, that's different from conflicted, isn't it? Well, no, I think he's conflicted. And when you ask, why is he doing it? I think he's doing it for both reasons. It is for the good of the economy. These people are all feeling so vulnerable

that anything can make peace with the Indians for the development of the tobacco. but you know you can have your lustful ideas aligning up with your political interests. But in 1616, Susan, he takes his new wife to London. Now, why does he do that? I think for many reasons, I think Pocahontas was curious. You know, she was lively, she was inquisitive, she probably wondered what it would be like. So there was some agency on her part. But as also a kind of propaganda coup, here we have,

the Virginia company wanted very much to represent the indigenous people of Virginia as peaceable, tractable, eager to receive the blessings of Christianity and so for Pocahunter's to go to England wearing English clothing, speaking in English, was a very powerful propaganda coup. They were made much of in London, Tim.

Absolutely, they were introduced at courts. They certainly local people at the time write about her and the impact that she makes. She's certainly the highest ranking Virginian who's gone so far. And they even take her to this sort of mask, one of Ben Johnson's masks, and they present her, and they put her in a place of prominence so that everyone can see that she's there. And she's there at the same time as King James and a Bohemia.

Or is that at another event? No, this is the time when they're introduced at court to the king. And she lived for a while in Duke of Northumberland's house in Sondheim Park. Yes, yes. So that's not a... about place to stay. So she was... Oh yes, she was, because she was a princess, and they treated her like a princess. And that's why she's introduced a court, because she's given that status of royalty,

which of course is far exceed that of her husband. But I think one of the interesting things that's going on as well, this is a coup. She's a wonderful walking advertisement for the Virginia company, but she's also part of a diplomatic mission for her people. And even if she isn't actively engaged in that, Utima Tamakin, who is her brother-in-law, he's married to her sister who comes with them. He is a priest, and priests are very powerful and listened to in Pahattan society.

He is a priest and a counsellor to Pahattan, and he goes, and he apparently brings with him a counting stick, he goes to bring back information, who are these people, where have they come from, how do they live, and how many are there? So he takes this counting stick and he's going to notch up how many English people there are. This is an wonderful anecdotal story because they arrive at Plymouth

and they travel up to London and by the time he's got to London he's thrown it away. And things he mostly discovers that he can't believe the incredible filth and the incredible riches. Exactly. The two things, the two extremes. In 1617

they boarded, he wanted to get back to his base. He and Pocahantas got on the boat to go back and she became ill from we don't know do you? No we don't know we have very scant records of her death we know that she had been

apparently healthy they get aboard the ship she sickens while on board the ship they stop at Gravesend in hope of getting medical attention for her but she dies shortly after disembarking of course there are numerous horrible pathogens in London at the time

that she could have caught we don't we have any information such as TB and TB she could have got dysentery there's lots of illnesses I mean, plague is endemic in London in the 17th century. There's lots of things that could have killed her. We don't know what they were

because we don't have any description of her symptoms, not even by Rolf himself. And he does write a little bit about her death. I think he just remarks that her final words were just happy that her son was going to survive her and that he was going to be looked after. We do know, of course, that just she dies on 21st of March and we do know on the 10th of March

that at Zion House the Virginia company come and they give £100 to Rolf and his wife to set up a mission for native children at that time when that signed over there isn't any evidence that she's sick so that the whole notion that she might be declining or had consumption doesn't seem to actually square

it sounds much more like it's some kind of ghastly dysentery that happens very quickly. It's a fast-acting disease because it's a 10-day period when she goes sort of being healthy to being dead. You made you think she's only about 22 or 23 and this vast life has happened to her, she's affected it. What did her death? What effect did her death have when news of it got back to the colony, Susan?

Well, of course, after her marriage to Ralph, there was a period of relative calm and tranquility, and good relations with the Indians, which enabled them to consolidate the colony to bring many more English people. This was considered to be a very great, important events. Like a European marriage between two royal

houses, that sort of thing. It may well have been exactly that. Marriage as an instrument of policy was certainly used in Europe and it could be that Powhatan approved this precisely for that, for that reason. After she died and then after Powhatan's death

however, things went rapidly downhill. Oprah Chanquino had the person who, basically was in charge of policy. And Powhatan was succeeded by one of his brothers, but who was rather

weak, but the person who really called the shots was Opa Chanconer, who perceived correctly that the more English who came, the worse it would be for the Indians. So what he prepared was a preemptive strike, and in

1622 there was an uprising in which 500 English colonists were killed. After that, There were huge reprisals, and you begin to see references in texts by people like Wyatt, for example, of extirpating the Indians, so that essentially genocide was the policy after that. It became, as it were, English policy. Yeah, they talk after 1622 that in a way that did them a favour because they no longer have to pretend to like the Indians or treat with them well. They can now completely justified in destroying and exterminating them.

And the thing is that the English fought long-term campaigns which Indians weren't capable of fighting, and that they would go in and they would destroy villages, they would destroy Indian crops, and therefore that region was then uninhabitable for the Indians who had lived there, and they have to move, whereas the English, they sort of are set up for these long-term battles. And that's what they do throughout the 17th century,

and throughout Virginia and in New England, they fight long-term war that Indians can't sustain. And then the whole thing comes to an in about, is it 1646, when there's very little left of this. Yeah, that's the final peace treaty. And they actually, for the first time, draw a line on the map and say, this is English territory, this is Indian territory.

And then they move that line periodically after that. The push to the West. But this is the first time they actually draw a proper line as saying there's no Indians a lap, this is not Indian territory anymore, it's now English territory. Let's go back to Boccahontas. What influence, when did she start to be,

when did she was thought of as somebody who had an influence and what was it? Well, I suppose at the time, as you know, she's not particularly important. And in terms of, when you say influence or mythic, mythic presence? I think both. Well, I mean, the influence at the time, of course, was real. And as Susan said, the marriage was absolutely key.

And also symbolically, you know, the first convert and then the first cross-racial marriage, that's absolutely key. So that she was seen as very important there. But then there's a kind of lull. And I would say, although there's interest that develops, the real focus on her comes in the 19th century. That's when she becomes a mythic figure for the national narrative of the United States

and the way they're going to think about and talk about native peoples. Can you tell us how that arises, Susan? Which writers are taking that story up? It's about two or three centuries later, isn't it? Absolutely. It goes very quiet, as Jackie has said, but then a man called John Davis wrote four stories

called the Pocahunter's Quartet, which touched off a series of a lot of writing about her. One was by a writer called Unker Eliza Winkfield, who wrote something called The Female American, which is a heady brew. It's a kind of conflation of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, but with a female protagonist. It is a kind of narrative of female empowerment, and Pocahontas is grafted into that. What sources are they drawing on? Is this, it's a good idea. It's in the zeitgeist that this myth should be created.

Are they drawing on the sources that you three have been drawing on in your studies? I think probably so. I don't have evidence of this, but I think probably they had read Smith and Strachey and others. And how powerful, can you just, I interrupt it, how does it grow, this resurrection of the idea of Pocahontas? Well, it goes on as the 19th century unfolds to become a kind of romantic myth of colonization. You have writers like James Nelson Barker who writes about the Indian princess,

and that is when the whole romance between Pocahontas and Smith is blown up and becomes one of the very central elements of the myth. Another writer Robert Dale Owen, who was a social reformer, has a book again about Pocahunter's, which characterizes her as a kind of proto-feminist figure, and that was at the same time of Seneca Falls, of course, you know, the American Women's Rights Movement. Later, George Washington Custis, who was the stepson of George Washington, has an extraordinary book which sees Pocahunter's, essentially is paving the way for Washington and for Anglo-American expansion.

It's an extraordinary kind of intellectual somersault, but that's what he does. On this side of the Atlantic Ocean, what's happening here? Much writing about her here? Is there any continuation of the status she achieved so momentarily, as it were, in Jacobian time? You don't know. What about you? I do think there's much sense of people knowing a lot about her in England in the 19th century. I think one thing to build on what Susan was just saying is that they do treat Pocahontas as one of several Native American women in the 19th century who plays in a very important mythic role like Saga Jua who was involved in the Lewis and Clark expedition,

which is traversing the Louisiana purchase out of the Pacific. Now this idea of the helpful help-meat Indian woman is, is increasingly popular, especially as Indians get more and more marginalised and less and less of a threat, then you can sort of reincorporate them into the national myth as being helpful. But, Jackie, come back to you, the artists, she was depicted in painting, her context and herself was depicted in paintings. She is depicted, and of course we do have one etching,

which is in the National Portrait Gallery in London, which was made when she was here in 1616 by a Dutch artist Simon Banderpas, thank you. And that is the sort of basis on which other pictures have been made. So that that is a rather... What's it like? It's very small. It's a lion...

She looks, she's dressed up as a European lady in waiting. She's got an ostrich plume in her hat and she's holding an ostrich plume fan, which of course was a sign of royalty. She's wearing clothing which looks as though she's armoured. It's very stiff looking. And she's wearing... a beaver skin hat.

And it's that picture that's then taken. And we don't know who did it, but in the 18th century, there's a portrait made, an oil portrait, which then hangs in the Rolf's house in Norfolk. Sorry, we're very near the end. How is she seen by Native Americans today,

briefly, starting with you, Susan? I think in ambivalent ways, for some, I think she was... I think what there is is an attempt to give her agency once more, not as the passive victim of events, but rather as someone who was undertaking a role as diplomat, perhaps doing a bit of espionage for her father,

not as a passive victim, I think. Yeah, and there's a retelling of the story that you increasingly get in the last sort of decade from oral history, from Native Americans, which tells a very different type of story, which talks about, for example, that when she was kidnapped by the England, that she was quite possibly raped, that when she was taken back to England, she was quite possibly poisoned. and that's a very different type of history of Pocahontas

that he's being told in the most recent times. I think one of the most interesting things is the way in which the Virginia Indians have used the American created story to try and reclaim their identity as Indian people. Well, thank you very much. Jacqueline Fier Siegel, Tim Loughley, Susan Castillo, and next week, the History of the Microscope.

Thank you for listening.