It is true that Pocahontas had acted as an ambassador for her people to the English. In the first years of the colony, she served as a courier for traded goods and as a negotiator between the two sides. But by 1609 the Powhatans' relationship with the newcomers had soured, and soon war broke out. Finally, in 1613, Pocahontas was kidnapped by the English and held at Jamestown.

While captive, Pocahontas studied English and converted to Christianity. Then, in 1614, she wed John Rolfe, one of the first tobacco farmers, and the union brought a modicum of peace to tidewater Virginia.

"Marrying the chief's daughter is a way of forming alliances," says Thomas D. Hall, a professor of sociology at DePauw University who studies borders, frontiers and ethnic conflicts.

	A rare portrait of Pocahontas as an English lady.

"She certainly brought the two sides closer together and she had an enormous affect in England," agrees Bill Rasmussen, Curator of Art at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

Known as Lady Rebecca Rolfe, Pocahontas traveled with her husband and infant son, Thomas, to England, where she was received as foreign royalty, an Indian Princess. Speaking English and following Christianity, Lady Rebecca served as a walking advertisement for colonization. Their encounters with the former Pocahontas- a model "good" Indian- persuaded royalty and potential investors they had little to fear from the native inhabitants of the New World. They could not have been more wrong.
- - - -- - - - - - - -
4 pages: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

Image: Mary Ellen Howe