Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

After 35 uneventful days at sea, Rolfe returns to find Jamestown in a “pitiful state.” The well has been ruined, and Whitaker has died. While Argall begins damage control, Rolfe goes to the woods to meet with one of the nearby tribes. He tells them of Pocahontas’s death and of his plans for a school—according to his letter to Edwin Sandys soon after, the tribes are “willing to part with their children.” Rolfe’s letter leaves out the fact, however, that the Algonkians are in a difficult political position. Powhatan has retired, leaving his younger brother in charge and Opechankeno as a “chief military man.” Uttamatomakin delivers a scathing and worrying tirade to Opechankeno “against England [and] English people.” Meanwhile, it is likely that microbes which come off the ship from England with the returned natives infect the surrounding population, making the winter of 1617 a hard, devastating one.

Tensions escalate throughout the spring of 1618 as both Indians and colonists wish they could use the young Thomas Rolfe, back in England, as a bargaining chip. Opechankeno refuses to part with any more lands unless they go directly to Thomas; the English, meanwhile, wish they had use of the young, malleable Thomas as an interpreter and ally. Backers of the Virginia Company in London grow dissatisfied with Argall’s inability to coax more land from Opechankeno and his people—a man many English don’t even see, in spite of his status, as a “relevant player.” Late in 1618, Powhatan dies.  As tensions escalate throughout 1619, Opechankeno begins to realize that he can do little to stop the white invaders from claiming more and more of his people’s land through force and violence.

As another epidemic ravages the native populations, Argall is recalled to London and a new governor is installed—Opechankeno’s interpreters tell him the man is of low station and little power. The new governor, humiliated by the Indians’ lack of respect for him, asks Rolfe—recently remarried to a young English woman—to meet with them. Rolfe, however, knows his own value as a captive, and sends two lesser men in his stead. Opechankeno is offended by Rolfe’s refusal to visit in person, but agrees reluctantly to a new kind of arrangement which might ease political relations. He states that he will not give up any more land, or any children for instruction in a “school”—but if whole families are given houses, cattle, and land, he will send groups to live among the colonists and learn from them.

Rolfe writes a letter exaggerating his role in brokering this new arrangement to Sandys—he fails to mention his new marriage, a fact which might offend the Indians and thus make him less of an asset to the English. John Rolfe is still determined to make something of himself as a merchant farmer, and uses his social position at Jamestown to petition King James I for changes to the tobacco importation law that would be in his favor. In 1621, Rolfe is even named to a colonial council as the fledgling Virginia government is reorganized. By puffing up his standing with the Virginia Company’s patrons back in London, Rolfe has elevated his own position, too.

Rolfe is not the only one dependent on the political favor of Londoners—the three Virginia Indians who were left behind due to illness when Rolfe sailed back for Jamestown were, Townsend writes, “absolutely and completely dependent on powerful patrons” who hoped to convert them to Christianity—and often succeeded, pinning them to baptisms while they were in the throes of illness. Two women who’d accompanied Pocahontas to England as attendants—and who were likely of high birth back in Virginia—are essentially sold into slavery, shipped to Bermuda to become wives, along with servants to offer as dowry. One of the women, christened with the name “Mary” in London, dies at sea. The other, Elizabeth, is married off and disappears from the historical record soon after.

In March of 1622, Rolfe, then 37 years old, becomes seriously ill. He takes to bed and calls upon a reverend to help him compose a will. In the document, he leaves his plantation across the river from Jamestown to Thomas, and leaves a lesser property to his new wife and their daughter, Elizabeth. Rolfe dies; merely days later, the Powhatan people launch an attack on Jamestown and kill somewhere between 350 and 400 colonists—a quarter of the colony’s population—in a carefully-orchestrated assault. 

Many historians, Townsend writes, have puzzled over why the Algonkians so completely reversed their policy of peace. Some posit that the Indians were sick of losing their land; others suggest the attack was some kind of religious ritual, given that it coincided with the four-year anniversary of Powhatan’s death and the five-year anniversary of Pocahontas’s funeral. In reality, Townsend states, the Powhatan people likely chose to orchestrate such a deadly assault because of what Uttamatomakin reported of London—that there would be no end to the arrival of new settlers, that England was vast and populous, and that they would, eventually destroy the Algonkians. This, the tribes likely knew, was one of the last moments in which they’d have any kind of advantage as a people.

When the heads of the Virginia Company back in London learn of the attack, they blame the settlers for becoming too “cozy” with the natives. The colonists respond that it was instead the fault of the Virginia Company for suggesting they get cozy in the first place. The Virginia Company gives the colonists carte-blanche to “remove the Indians and take the country for themselves”—at last, the colonists have license to wage all-out war on the Powhatan people, with no aim of making peace in the future, and so they do.

Years later, in the 1630s, Thomas Rolfe, nearly 20, travels to Virginia and assumes the lands and titles that are his. He seems ashamed of his connection to the remaining Powhatan people, but nonetheless pays visits to Opechankeno and one of his mother’s sisters. In 1644, after Thomas has been living in Virginia for many years, Opechankeno leads yet another uprising against the colonists with what remaining men he has. Thomas, at last forced to choose sides, fights against his mother’s people, and is awarded the title of lieutenant as a result of his efforts. He gains more land and clout, even as the world of his own native family members “fell apart.” In October of 1646, Opechankeno’s successor is forced to sign a peace treaty ceding huge swaths of land to the English. After his death, the tribes, no longer united under a mamanitowik, struggle to survive.

By 1649, a queen named Cockacoeske has risen up to lead the Pamunkey tribe. However, between continued English expansion and fights against other, outlying Siouan tribes, her people’s population drops steadily. In 1676, as Iroquoian groups raid the colony, Cockacoeske is called to Jamestown and asked to fight alongside the settlers. Cockacoeske, regal and silent for most of the meeting, at last agrees to supply 12 men to fight for the colonists—it is likely that she has about 150 at her command. The colonists end up attacking Cockacoeske’s village; the queen flees into the woods while her people’s homes burn.

In 1677, after the arrival of commissioners of the king from London, multiple tribes gather together to sign a peace treaty. Among them are the Weyanock, the Nottoway, the Nansemond, the Appomattock—and Cockacoeske, the queen of the Pamunkey. The reservations created in that treaty still exist today—and the descendants of the tribes’ leaders still struggle “to keep their traditions alive.”

Townsend writes that many historians lament Pocahontas’s death—had she lived, they claim, she might have been able to improve relations between the colonists and the Indians. This is, Townsend says, a “naïve” point of view—“the destruction of Virginia’s Indian tribes was not a question of miscommunication [or] missed opportunities.” The settlers, who wanted the Indians’ land, were always going to take it—and to imply that a single person, be it Pocahontas or Queen Cockacoeske, could have stopped the inevitable is cruel and unfair. “A new nation,” Townsend writes, “was [always] going to be built on their people’s destruction.” The story of Pocahontas and others like her, Townsend says, is not one of failure—rather, it is a story of a real-world heroism not found in “epic tales.”