Born around 1596 as Amonute and privately called Matoaka by her family, the woman history remembers as Pocahontas was the daughter of Wahunsenacawh,
Born around 1596 as Amonute and privately called Matoaka by her family, the woman history remembers as Pocahontas was the daughter of Wahunsenacawh, the paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy that controlled the Tidewater region of Virginia. Her nickname Pocahontas meant something like "playful one" or "mischievous," fitting for the young woman who became entangled with English colonists at Jamestown starting in 1607. In 1613 she was captured and held hostage by English captain Samuel Argall during ongoing hostilities between the colonists and Powhatan tribes, and during her year of captivity she lived at Henricus where minister Alexander Whitaker taught her about Christianity and English customs. She converted to Christianity, was baptized, and chose the name Rebecca. She also met John Rolfe, a widower about ten years her senior who had lost his first wife and infant daughter during the voyage to Virginia and who was developing a strain of tobacco that would...