The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
The Books
Ramusio Map (1534). Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library
Pocahontas (c. 1596 - 1617)
By Abby Fisher
In May of 1616, Pocahontas set sail with her husband, John Rolfe, from her native land of Jamestown, Virginia, for Plymouth, England. She would never return. Instead, when Pocahontas arrived in Plymouth in June of 1616, accompanied not just by her husband but also, possibly, by their young son Thomas, she was welcomed handsomely. They traveled from Plymouth to London, where they lodged at the Belle Sauvage Inn. The irony of the name was not lost on the inn’s contemporaries. Little attention, if any, was paid to John Rolfe––Pocahontas herself was the sight to behold. Pocahontas alone was invited to appear before the Royal Court as a delegate from the New World, a deliberate tactic on the part of the Virginia Company. Pocahontas––and not her middle-class husband––was invited to sit for a portrait by a court artist, Simon van de Passe––whose engraving is the only known depiction of Pocahontas done while she was alive. Pocahontas was invited to participate in the annual masque at Whitehall, The Vision of Delight, where she was “probably considered to be more part of the decoration than the guest list.” Considering that his wife was enjoying living the life of an elite socialite too much for his own taste, Rolfe suggested they move to Brentford, where there was “more wholesome air for native lungs.” So the couple moved from the Belle Sauvage Inn in London to Brentford. It was in Brentford that Pocahontas met John Smith once again. Believing him to have died after departing from Virginia in 1609 with a severe gunshot wound, the surprise meeting came as quite a shock to Pocahontas. There is evidence that, prior to this meeting in about 1616, Smith had written a letter to Queen Anne regarding Pocahontas’ conversion to Christianity and her stance as a friend of the English nation and its Virginian colony.[1]
Despite only crossing the Atlantic once, Pocahontas left an important imprint on how Britons imagined and reacted to encountering natives of the Americas. In England, where she spent parts of 1616 and 1617, she was a great sensation.
Whether or not Smith ever delivered the letter to Queen Anne is still debated, as no record of its delivery other than Smith’s word in his 1624 Generall Historie remains. While John Rolfe was eager to return to Virginia, Pocahontas seemed to have been enjoying life in England and it was rumored that she left “against her will.” Whatever the case might have been, Pocahontas never returned to the Americas. Shortly after their departure from the London port on the George, Pocahontas died off the coast of St. George’s Church in Gravesend. Her funeral was on March 21, 1617. Although there are conflicting accounts––including some from people who say she was murdered––Pocahontas is believed to have contracted tuberculosis aboard the George which led to her untimely death at about 21 years old. Shortly afterward, John Rolfe departed again for Virginia, leaving his young son, Thomas Rolfe, in the care of Sir Lewis Stukley. Thomas Rolfe would never see his father alive again, though he would return to Virginia nearly twenty years later.[2]
Simon va de Passe, "Pocahontas." Known as Rebecka during her time in England, Pocahontas was invited to social events, where she was presented (even displayed) as an example of the docile Indian who has accepted Christianity. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Pocahontas’ willingness to depart for England may never be fully understood, since not a single word can be confidently ascribed to her. However, the mission of her trans-Atlantic journey was clear: John Rolfe, and the Virginia Company with him, wanted to display Pocahontas. Pocahontas, or Lady Rebecca to the English, was a spectacle––the prime example of the barbarous savage turned docile Christian, especially when contrasted with Uttamatamakkim, alias Tomocomo, Powhatan’s medicine man sent as his spy, who escorted Pocahontas to The Vision of Delight. She became, however willingly, the definition of what the Virginia Company wanted her to be: a living accomplishment of their activities abroad. Pocahontas served her purpose for the Virginia Company: “In fact, Pocahontas’ appearance at the Royal Court can be held responsible for an awakening interest by the monarch in Virginia as testing ground for the education and thus indoctrination of Indian youngsters.” For John Rolfe, even after his wife’s death, “marrying an Indian princess as [a] stepping stone in his career finally started to pay off.” Wernitznig even argues that, “[for] the Virginia Company of 1617,...Pocahontas’ death at Gravesend served colonial purposes more ideally than her physical return to Virginia” because it allowed for her memory to be mythologized, to serve their purpose more immediately.[3]
This is not to say, however, that John Rolfe was towards Pocahontas either exploitive or uncaring. Upon his return to Virginia, John Rolfe, expressing honest sorrow at her loss, wrote in a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys, “My wives death is much lamented, my childe [is] much desyred [sic].” Historians debate whether Pocahontas would have tolerated manipulation by Rolfe or his other English counterparts. According to John Smith, who reencountered her in London, Pocahontas, speaking to Smith, said: “You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like to you; you called him father being in his land a stranger, and by the same reason so must I doe you [sic].” This quote portrays Pocahontas as being significantly disappointed by Smith’s actions and perhaps as having a “deep disenchantment” with the English. Disenchanted as she may have been, if Smith’s word is to be believed, Pocahontas carried herself with enough dignity to speak out against those who paid her with disrespect.[4]
The Belle Sauvage Inn in the eighteenth century. Pocahontas and her husband stayed here when they first arrive to England in 1616. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Although no words of Pocahontas survive, interpretations of the meaning of her life abound. From these, those interested can clearly see that she was at once a wife, a mother, a prize, an example, a victim, a traveler, and a piece of the resistance.
[1] Wernitznig, Europe’s Indians, 13-19.
[2] Gallagher, “History”; Wertnitzig, Europe’s Indians, 22; Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 90.
[3] Wernitznig, Europe’s Indians, 13-24.
[4] Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 87-90.
References
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Gallagher, Edward J. "The Facts." The Pocahontas Archive. May 2015. Accessed 5 May 2020. digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/pocahontas/history.php.
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Gallagher, Edward J. "History." The Pocahontas Archive. May 2015. Accessed 5 May 2020. digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/pocahontas/time.php.
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Vaughan, Alden T. Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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Wernitznig, Dagmar. Europe's Indians, Indians in Europe. University Press of America, 2007.