Pocahontas Descendants in Ballarat

Ballarat is about an hour and half drive from elbourne, capital of Victoria, the southern-most continental state in Australia. It is also home for thousands of descendants of American gold miners, and one special family in Ballarat who lay claim to the descendancy from Pocahontas, which is important for the identification of Native Americans who have come to make Australia home.

            Matoaka was the beautiful and lively daughter of Powhatan, ruler of the land that the English named Virginia . ‘Pocahontas' was her childhood nickname, translated as ‘little wanton,' meaning she was playful and hard to control. Pocahontas saved the struggling Jamestown colony from extinction twice. The first time (Dec. 29, 1607) is the famous story that is retold in the Disney movie, Pocahontas, wherein she saves the life of John Smith from execution by Powhatan, her father. Powhatan proclaimed that Smith's life was to be spared, so that he could make toys for Pocahontas.

Whether that part of the story is true or not, Powhatan apparently initiated Captain Smith into the tribe as a subchief, feasted him, and returned him to the colony. When Smith returned, he discovered that the colony had run out of food. Pocahontas kept the colonists from starving to death that first Winter, by visiting regularly with plenty of food.           Six years later, she saved the colony again (Apr. 24?, 1614) by marrying colonist John Rolfe. A squad from Jamestown had kidnapped Pocahontas, intending to trade her for concessions from Powhatan. Powhatan only met enough of their demands to keep negotiations open. During her captivity, leading colonists worked to convert her to Christianity. One of those colonists, John Rolfe, fell in love with her, and she with him. Pocahontas married John Rolfe, accepted Christianity, and was baptized Rebecca. This marriage created several years of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's tribes.

Pocahontas' life ended on a high note, with a triumphal tour of England (Starting June 3, 1616) as a visiting princess. This part of her life is covered in Disney's Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World . As she started home, English disease took her life. She was buried in the church at Gravesend , England (Mar. 17, 1617) age 21 or 22. (Her exact birth date is uncertain: roughly 1595.)

Four men played big parts in her life, as well as in the Disney movie: her father, Chief Powhatan, the intrepid adventurer Captain John Smith, her father's captain Kocoum, and her husband John Rolfe. Click the pictures on this page, to see more.

The Disney Movie, "Pocahontas", is accurate in some respects. It captures the spirit of the woman Pocahontas and her people, and the spirit of the early days of Jamestown . The settings are accurate: both James Fort and Powhatan village are portrayed authentically, according to current historical and archaeological knowledge (except that there was no bluff overlooking James Fort). London , the Virginia wilderness, and the ship Susan Constant were carefully researched. John Ratcliffe was indeed in charge of the colony when John Smith was captured and released by Powhatan. And last but not least, John Smith wrote that he was saved from execution by Powhatan, when Pocahontas threw herself between Smith's head and her father's stone club.

However, the rest of the movie is pure fiction:

The physical appearance of Pocahontas and John Smith in the movie are fabricated to please modern tastes. They didn't look anything like that.

Pocahontas and John Smith are depicted as being young adults at the same time. Pocahontas was only a girl of twelve (or younger) when she met the veteran adventurer John Smith and (possibly) rescued him from execution by Powhatan.       It is uncertain whether John Smith was telling the truth when he wrote the story of the rescue. To top that, the movie changed all the details. Smith was not out alone, or at night, or to meet anyone. The execution ceremony was not outdoors, and the colony made no attempt to rescue him. Ratcliffe was not in charge of the ships on the way over, he was not in charge of the colony at first, and he was never Governor. Ratcliffe was the second President of the colony, elected after President Wingfield was arrested and deposed. Admiral Newport was in charge of the ships, and also took charge of the colony from time to time. Smith favoured force, while Ratcliffe favoured conciliation.

The friends of Pocahontas and John Smith are fictional, of course, although some of the names (Thomas, Percy) are taken from real life.

Links to Pocahontas biographies.

Powhatan

Powhatan was the father of Pocahontas. As a young werowance (chief), Powhatan inherited the leadership of eight tribes, which he built into a loose empire controlling Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers. This corresponds to Eastern Virginia, most of Maryland , and Delaware . As the Mamanatowick, he ruled over about 28 tribes. Each Powhatan tribe had its own village, with houses of bark over wooden frames. They planted corn and tobacco, hunted and fished. Every few years, the local land would be depleted, so they would abandon the old village and rebuild a few miles away.

In 1607, English colonists of the Virginia Company arrived, hoping to make their fortune (as depicted in the movie). Initially, they built a wooden palisade fort, James Fort, which gradually became the English colonial village of James Towne , or Jamestown . Relations in the early days were chaotic. On any given week, the settlers at James Fort could be fighting with one of Powhatan's tribes, while trading peacefully with others. The various tribes fought with each other as well.

Powhatan lived long, and allegedly had 100 wives, with one child by each. There were a dozen known children of his; Pocahontas was his favorite. King James had Powhatan coronated Emperor of Virginia. (This made Pocahontas a princess, theoretically outranking a lot of the English nobility when she visited England . The English had not yet decided how to treat "savages".)

Links for the Powhatan Indians.

Captain John Smith

Captain John Smith really was the intrepid soldier-adventurer portrayed in the Disney movie "Pocahontas"...other than his looks and personality. He was a short man who wore a beard. Like many famous shorties, he was feisty, abrasive, self-promoting, and ambitious. He was an experienced soldier and adventurer, the man who boldly went out and got things done. If not for him, the colony may have failed at the start -- according to him, anyway.

The Disney movie "Pocahontas" centres on the most famous incident in the lives of all involved, in which Pocahontas rescued John Smith from execution by her father, Powhatan. Captain John Smith himself is the sole source for this tale, in a book he wrote several years afterwards. It was not in his initial report, and was not mentioned by other writers at the time, so historians have always wondered what really went on. This most famous incident may never have happened, since Smith liked to tell stories about himself being rescued by famous ladies. Perhaps John Smith made it up; perhaps it was a show orchestrated by Powhatan, with Pocahontas "saving" John Smith as planned; perhaps it went down just as Smith described.

His stay in America was compressed in the movie, but eventually Smith was shipped back to England on a stretcher, after a mysterious incident in which his powder bag exploded, injuring his leg.

Links for Captain John Smith.

Kocoum

The only thing we really know about Kocoum is an offhand written comment that she had been married to "Kocoum, a captainn of Powhatan." Disney chose to assume that Powhatan arranged a marriage, but that Kocoum was killed before it was finalized. Powhatan chiefs would sometimes give a young daughter in honorary marriage, often to form an alliance. When they grew up, their marriage might become real, or they might decide to marry someone else. What really happened there? Your guess is as good as any. The Indians also had a tradition of "divorce by capture", which required the husband of a stolen wife to recapture her. Since Pocahontas was kidnapped by the colonists, and no Kocoum ever turned up to rescue her, it would seem that when John Rolfe asked for her hand in marriage, Pocahontas was single.

John Rolfe

Pocahontas may have had a girlish crush on John Smith, but the man she married was John Rolfe. When John Rolfe and his wife, Sarah, sailed to Jamestown , they were shipwrecked in Bermuda by a terrible storm. A report of that very event, by a fellow passenger, might have inspired Shakespeare's play, "The Tempest". While in Bermuda, Sarah gave birth to a daughter, Bermuda , but both daughter and wife soon died. John Rolfe picked up some Bermuda tobacco seeds, and when he got to Virginia , he cross-bred them with the harsher Virginia tobacco, to create a mild hybrid. This new tobacco was a big hit back in England , which made the struggling colony a financial success at last.

John Rolfe fell in love with Pocahontas, and obtained permission from Powhatan and the Governor to marry. They had a child, Thomas Rolfe, whom they brought to England with them. When Pocahontas died on the way back, Thomas was left behind to be raised by relatives. John Rolfe died in Virginia at the same time as a terrible Indian uprising that killed many colonists. However, we do not know if he was killed in the massacre. When Thomas Rolfe grew up, he moved back to Virginia to claim his parents' land, and stayed. Thomas was an only child, who had one daughter, who had one son, but eventually, many Americans could proudly say that they were descended from Pocahontas.