Pocahontas

Pocahontas was a daughter of Powhatan, paramount chief of the Powhatan alliance in Virginia. As a child and young woman she interacted with the Jamestown settlers and later became a hostage during conflict between the English and Powhatan communities.

She converted to Christianity, married John Rolfe and travelled to England, where she was presented as evidence of colonial success. Her early death and later romanticisation obscured the coercion, diplomacy and cultural conflict that shaped her life.

Hourly History’s Pocahontas follows the Powhatan woman whose encounters with English settlers became one of the most familiar stories of early colonial America. In William T. Vollmann’s Argall, John Smith’s encounters with Pocahontas are repeatedly reshaped into legend, while hunger, disease and retaliatory violence expose the colony’s weakness and the coercive assumptions beneath its claims to possession. Samuel Argall’s capture of Pocahontas in 1613 leads to her conversion, marriage to John Rolfe and journey to England, where she is displayed as evidence that colonisation can be presented as Christian improvement. Vollmann’s elaborate imitation of early modern language repeatedly collides with blunt accounts of exploitation and betrayal. Angela Hunt’s Jamestown places its fictional family near John Smith and Pocahontas while asking whether kinship is defined by blood, culture, vow or shared faith.