Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

In February of 1608, at Powhatan’s request—he has been sending regular gifts of corn and raccoon tails to Jamestown—Captain Newport travels to Werowocomoco to meet with him. As the group of Englishmen and native guides proceeds across creeks and into the forests surrounding Werowocomoco, the English are tense, and keep their weapons trained on their guides. At the meeting between the two leaders, Newport gives Powhatan gifts of silk and a greyhound dog. Powhatan asks for guns but is refused them. The men agree to each exchange a “son”—but each party deceives the other. The English offer up a young man named Thomas Savage, an apprentice of low birth, while Powhatan sends a young man named Namontack, who was not likely one of his biological children.

While Thomas Savage stays at Werowocomoco, he befriends Pocahontas. She teaches him Algonkian, and he, it seems, teaches her English. In April, Newport travels to England with Namontack, leaving behind a group of settlers who are hard at work day in and day out fortifying Jamestown. Tensions between the settlers and the Indians continues to increase, as the colonists disturb Powhatan and his tribe with the noise of shotgun drills. The Powhatan people, meanwhile, often steal metal tools from the fort.

In May of 1608, the English and Paspaheghs each seize hostages from each other’s groups. The English raze the Paspaheghs’ village, and the tribe surrenders and release their hostages—but the English do not release all of theirs in return. Three days into the Paspahegh men’s captivity, Powhatan sends Pocahontas to Jamestown to negotiate for the prisoners’ release. She is 10 years old, and it is her first visit to the colony. Accompanied by a man whose Algonkian name sounds to the English like (and is recorded as) “Rawhunt,” Pocahontas solemnly and silently enters the fort and, with the help of Thomas Savage, translates a speech made by Rawhunt asking for the release of the prisoners and a return to peace. More messengers soon arrive with gifts meant to serve as ransom, the negotiation continues. Soon, Pocahontas is speaking kindly with the colonists and comforting the prisoners.

Pocahontas is sent, in all likelihood, not because she is Powhatan’s favorite daughter—it is possible that she is sent because, as the daughter of a commoner, she is “among the children he could most afford to lose.” It’s also possible that Pocahontas is the best translator available, or that her presence will signify a white flag to John Smith, who knows her from his time at Werowocomoco. In the end, Pocahontas secures the prisoners’ release—and over the course of the rest of the year makes several more visits to the fort. As her language skills increase and her presence at Jamestown becomes accepted, Pocahontas grows in value to both her father and to the English.

“It is only possible to glimpse [Pocahontas’s] character,” Townsend writes. Historians have never discovered a letter, diary, or anything else written in Pocahontas’s own words—everything that is known about her comes through “in the comments left by the white men who knew her.”

Because the language Pocahontas spoke is largely lost—and because the Englishmen who wrote about the Powhatan people could not differentiate between the differences in their versions of Algonkian—only a “hodgepodge” of words exists, and historians cannot find things composed about Pocahontas in the words of her own people. The only full Powhatan sentences historians have, oddly enough, come from John Smith, who was instructed in the language by Pocahontas and who wrote down sentences she taught him. The sentences in his notebooks reveal Pocahontas to be a curious child who asked about the arrival of more colonists in large “canoes” and expressed a desire for precious white beads.

At the same time, Smith’s notebooks and his later writings about Pocahontas speak of her as a “nubile and sexy” young woman rather than the 10 or 11-year-old girl she was. Either Smith wrote false accounts of Pocahontas, was attracted to a child, or some mixture of the two. The writings of Smith’s contemporaries reveal that many other colonists saw Smith’s relationship with Pocahontas and his language lessons with her as a ploy to get closer to the Indians, Powhatan specifically. Some suspected he even was trying to “ma[ke] himself a king, by marrying Pocahontas,” revealing their lack of knowledge about the Powhatan people’s matrilineal systems of inheritance and power.

Late in the summer of 1608, Captain Newport and Namontack return from England with more supplies. Newport summons Powhatan to Jamestown to receive presents from the British king—and to swear loyalty to him. Powhatan, through a messenger, replies that Newport should come to him. Newport obliges—and at the meeting, forces Powhatan to submit to having a crown from King James placed on his head, an act that Powhatan likely recognizes as a power play. He himself has used the practice of “anointing tributary werowances who were bound to do his bidding” to signify his own power in the region.

As the season continues on, John Smith—having been made president of Jamestown—continues to demand “as much corn as possible” from the surrounding tribes, threatening them with violence if they do not give him all he asks for. In December of 1608, when Smith goes to Powhatan to beg for more corn, Powhatan asks for swords and guns in exchange—but Smith refuses. Powhatan agrees to a lesser trade but warns Smith that if he continues to take advantage of the Powhatan people, they will retreat into the woods and hide themselves in lands where the English cannot find them.

The visit is tense—Smith later claims that Powhatan and his kinsmen threatened Smith’s and his men’s lives, and that only a warning from none other than Pocahontas helped them evade the ambush. Townsend doesn’t entirely refute this possibility, though she admits that the anecdote only surfaced at the time of Smith’s most sensationalized writings about Jamestown and Pocahontas herself. Relations between the Jamestown colonists and the Powhatan were bad enough, she says, that the Powhatan might have been planning an attack. Instead of carrying one out, however, Powhatan moves his people from Werowocomoco quickly and stealthily. Pocahontas flees with them—and does not see Smith again until her voyage to England many years later.

Over the next several months, tensions continue to escalate. In pursuit of an escaped Paspahegh hostage, Smith and his men raid a nearby village, killing many and taking more prisoners. The tribe’s werowance conveys a message shortly after, threatening to flee to the forest (as the Powhatan did) if the violence continues. Smith agrees to a truce—though he is frustrated by his inability to bring the natives under his thrall as the famed conquistador Cortés had done in South America.

What Smith doesn’t realize is that the Spanish came upon Indigenous tribes who lived sedentary, agriculturist lives in permanent villages—they were not like the Algonkians, who were comfortable living nomadic lives until relatively recently. In a letter sent around this time, Smith writes that the English had tried to conquer the “‘wrong’ Indians.” In 1609, in the wake of increasing unrest among the colonists at Jamestown, Smith leaves to return to England. Without him—and without the help of Powhatan—the colonists begin to starve.

As the new leaders of Jamestown attempt to extort help from Powhatan by taking hostages, they face swift retribution: Powhatan executes a man named Ratcliffe who tracked Powhatan to his new village, sending a clear message that he will not be pursued. In May of 1610, however, two new ships arrive at Jamestown. Finding barely 100 people alive in the colony, the people on the ship quickly decided to help the colonists evacuate. It seems as if Jamestown has failed, and as if the colonists are at last abandoning the New World and leaving the Powhatan people in peace. As the ships head downriver, however, they are met with a surprise: a new governor, Lord De La Warr, arriving with a new charter, 150 new settlers, and provisions. Both fleets return to Jamestown, and a messenger brings word to Powhatan: the colonists are staying after all.