Matoaka
Daughter of Matatishe and
Chief Wahunsonacock of the Powhatan
1595-1617

 

“WHITE HISTORY CALLS ME POCAHONTAS, but that was not my name. And no, I was not an Indian princess. We did not have such a concept on Turtle Island,” the Powhatan young woman emphasized her declaration with a slashing motion of her hand. The gesture made the fringe on her one shouldered white buckskin dress flutter, the shells sewn to the fringe ends clacking together softly.

 

“My life was about as far from the Disney fantasy as you can get. Anyone who watches those Hollywood movies and thinks they know me, know what happened to my life, has been misled. Here’s the real story.

 

“And never call me Rebecca. You have been told that I converted to the religion of the English. This is not true. They told their stories and asked me to agree. I agreed that they were telling me stories. But in my heart I could believe only one truth, the truth of my people. I may have been “baptized”, but I did not “convert”. That baptism was a sham done for the benefit of the English colonists who held me captive. I was one of their first conquests. but it turned my stomach to pretend that I wanted to be like them. They were so deceitful. It was a survival tactic, maybe a bit of youthful curiosity. Nothing more.

 

“They called us savages and thought they knew better than we did how to live on our land. They thought only they knew what to believe in order to be ‘good’ people. But it was the English, and later other Europeans who slaughtered us to steal our land and extinguish our ways that sought harmony among all and with Nature.”

 

“I hear your anger. And I join you in it. What was done, is still being done, to your people, and all the peoples native to this land has been shameful, criminal, and evil.” I wanted her to know that I did not ascribe to the colonial idea that the British and other Europeans were bringing civilization to the Americas.

 

“Tell me what your life was like before it was disrupted by the British who set up Jamestown on your land.”

 

“Tsenacommacah is what we called our land. My people were the Powhatan. We were one of at least six major nations united into what would later be called the Powhatan Confederacy under the leadership of my father, Wahunsonacock. My mother Matatishe Winanuske was said to be my father’s niece, the daughter of his oldest sister.”

 

Wow, I thought. Here’s consanguinity I hadn’t expected in this time period of the late 16th century. Matoaka saw my eyebrows raise in surprise.

 

“We were a matrilineal society,” she hastened to explain. “The position of chief descended down the female line. By marrying the daughter of a chief, my father’s sons were eligible to be chiefs one day. But they had to marry daughters or nieces of chiefs themselves if they wanted their sons to follow.”

 

“Didn’t that create health problems in the families?  I mean, the genetics of that are problematic.”

 

She shrugged. “We knew nothing of that in those days. We only knew that it was the mothers of a tribe that had the true power, for it is the females who bring life into the world. And the strong spirits within the children are what is important. Children without strong spirits may have died early, may have been sickly, but they had their gifts to the tribe and were of no less value to us.”

 

“Of course. What was your childhood like?”

 

“Fun! It was a time when children were carefree, and treasured by all families of the tribe. I played a lot of chasing and hiding games with the boys, many of the little girls did, but I had no interest in learning about weapons and hunting. As daughter of the chief, I could have learned the skills of the warriors, but that had no appeal to me. From an early age, I always had the sense that I was destined to be something different from a warrior.  I just didn’t know what. I never expected how my life turned out.”

 

“Although of course we knew who our parents were, all adults were parents in a way to all children. So we were encouraged, taught, and disciplined by every adult who saw we were in need of it. We were encouraged to engage our true spirited nature. Mine nature was curious and mischievous, even after the strangers came to our land.”

 

“How old were you then? And how did your people react to that event?” So much of the history of colonization of the Americas by Europeans comes only from the myopic perspective of the Europeans. The descendants of those times often have a very skewed view of what really happened,” I noted.

 

“I was still a child, not yet beyond the First Moon ceremony,” she said describing a familiar indigenous ritual common in many cultures that celebrated a girl’s menarche as her entry into the fertility of womanhood. “You would mark my age as around 12 years.

 

“And honestly, we thought these strangers must have been sent to that location they called Jamestown because they were being punished for something. My mother joked that they looked too ignorant to live there, their faces a sickly pale tone, their bodies dressed in too many clothes.

 

“My father took it more seriously. He was apprehensive about their motives for trying to establish a settlement during the drought we were having, on land that was not fit for raising crops, at a time of year that was too late for planting season, where even the deer would not roam often because of the many biting insects, near water that was impure.”

 

“Sounds like they could not have picked a worse piece of land to steal from the Powhatan,” I said, laughing at the arrogant ignorance of those first failed colonists. “Records show that most of the men who had first arrived were either high born ‘gentlemen’ whose experience may have been raising money but definitely not raising food. Worse, their aristocratic household servants could not shoot, nor build, nor do anything really useful for the immediate needs of creating shelter and securing sustenance,” I noted.

 

“Exactly. They puzzled us. We were curious, but thought they were nothing to worry about because we did not expect them survive. They did the most inexplicable things, like imposing names on our river and electing a governing council. None of them had the common sense to build a shelter that wouldn’t be blown apart in the first mild storm. And they had brought very little in the way of useful supplies with them.”

 

“I can see how it would appear that they were being punished when they were so ill-equipped and unknowledgeable about the land they were trying to claim. I understand that two thirds to up to 80 percent of the first group did not survive the first year.”

 

“That’s right. A few of our braves cautiously took them venison and vegetables, out of our ethic of kindness to unthreatening strangers. But they even needed help to build fires for roasting the meat.

 

“The next year brought a second ship and men with more skills who built houses and workshops.  But some seemed from different tribes than the first, and brought dissension, even bringing us weapons that made loud noises and teaching our braves how to use them.”

 

There had been rumors and some records that the second British ship brought German and Polish workmen who could actually build and create needed structures. I didn’t know any had defected to the Powhatan.

 

“Much of colonial history leads us to believe that British settlers came to your lands, the Americas, for religious liberty. But Jamestown was a commercial venture from the start. It was a project of the Virginia Company of London. That was a stock company founded by King James I, for the purpose of establishing colonies in the new world to beat out the Spanish, French and Portuguese making similar land grabs to enrich their kings. The wealthy merchant-adventurers of the Virginia Company expected a profitable return on their investments,” I told Matoaka, who nodded in confirmation of her own understanding.

 

“Yes, that explains the imbalanced attitudes of the successive groups that came to settle their Jamestown. Their motivation was profit, not really in living as Nature intended.”

 

“The common story is that you were captivated by the settlers ….. “

 

“No! I was captured by them, and held for ransom.”

 

“There are accounts that your brothers or uncles may have surrendered you to the British. What’s the real story?

 

“I had been visiting one of the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, the Patawomeck. I had relatives there. It was a time when the British were demanding more and more from my father. They were trying to purchase land and food but cheating in their payments, and not understanding Wahunsonacock’s refusal to sell land. The land was our Mother, how could she be owned?

 

“Tensions were high between the whites and my people and mother thought I would be safer out of their sight. But the Patawomeck were not always on the side of the Powhatan. British Captain Argall persuaded their chief to let me go aboard his ship. He offered the idea as if it were a courtesy, but it was a trick. He knew I was the daughter of the Powhatan chief, who was holding some settlers for their crimes of stealing weapons and tools. The whole thing had flared up into a mini war. Argall wanted to use me to bargain for peace.

 

“I was held captive for years at another settlement the British had created and named Henrico for the son of their chief, King Henry. Little Bear Custalow tells the oral tradition of that time that I was raped. Honestly, I cannot say if I was, for in the beginning I was numb and dazed, and hardly knew what was happening to me. My mind retreated inside myself, seeking the spirits of my people, but not finding them. My eyes could not focus, my lungs could not breathe, my heart beat so quietly that I did not know if I was alive. It was the first time I had been among strangers who did not speak my language, and did not observe my customs, but made me try to speak and perform theirs.”

 

“Today we would call that signs of post-traumatic stress. It might indicate that Custalow was correct. I’m so sorry you went through all that. It must have been terrifying.”

 

“It was very distressing. None of my relatives were allowed to visit me. And they were told lies about me, that I wanted to be like the English, that I was happy learning their language, their stories, and wanted to become just like them.  None of that was true. It was said only to keep Chief Wahunsonacock from launching a full out war on their settlements and wiping them out.”

 

“Was it true that you acted as a negotiator between the English and your tribe?”

 

“It’s a ridiculous claim. Yes, I was the daughter of the chief, and yes, I had learned some English words. But the English were using me for their convenience. They wanted my father to stop pestering their growing efforts to take more and more of our land, and to trade land for old broken and worthless swords and axes that any child could see were worthless. I told Father in our words to not trust the English, for they were full of treachery and had bad intentions.”

 

“What happened after that? Did they allow to you stay with your tribe?”

 

“No, they forced me to return to Henrico with them.”

 

“How did you meet the Englishman John Rolfe?”

 

“He had come to Henrico a grieving widow, for his wife and child had died on the way to the colony. His ship — a supply ship meant for Jamestown — had been wrecked in the islands (Bermuda). John was not a soldier for their King. He was a businessman who saw the opportunity to grow tobacco on our lands, and sell it in England. He wanted to compete with the Spanish who already had a profitable tobacco enterprise.

 

“I felt his sadness, and felt pulled to cheer him up. I felt his attraction for me, and I was interested in him, for he seemed more honest and kind than my captors. I would ask him to teach me more names of things, and he asked me about my people. We flirted. After a while he told me about his wife and daughter and it started a caring for each other. I didn’t feel he wanted anything from me but simply friendship.

 

“John established his tobacco plantation across the river from Henrico, and soon asked me to join him as his wife. We married in 1614 and our son Thomas was born the next year. Because John was well respected by his people, and because I was daughter of the chief of the Powhatan, our marriage brought a kind of peace between our peoples. The boy was only a few months old when John said we needed to go to England so he could sell his crop. So we all set sail in 1616 for Plymouth, and with us came 11 Powhatan as my guardians, including Powhatan medicine man Tomocomo, who was married to my half-sister.”

 

“Your marriage to John Rolfe caused some consternation among the British, didn’t it? Did you know what that was about?”

 

“Those terrible, dishonest Virginia Company people had had a second agenda for invading Powhatan lands. They were consumed by the fever to convert all the natives they could to the religion of the English. It was part of their plan with me all along to figure out a way to present me to their company, their people, and their kings as their first success in that scheme. And to increase their own importance in this fraud, they told everyone the insult that I was not only a ‘tamed savage’ but also a ‘princess’ based on their lie that my father was a ‘king.’

 

“But John was no noble, and in their strange and deceitful world, he was supposed to get permission of his king to marry a ‘princess’, even from another country, even if that was just a lie. Some people didn’t like that he didn’t get permission. It was ridiculous. Some people refused to meet us, others entertained us and made a big fuss like we were some kind of talking animals. I was not happy with John that he brought us to this unpleasant country so far away from home.”

 

“Much has been made about your interactions with another colonist, Captain John Smith. The story that spawned all the untrue fairy tales about you say that you rescued him from being killed by your father. What’s the truth there?”

 

“Smith was not the most honest of men, either,” Matoaka’s eyes blazed in talking about him. “His first written account doesn’t mention me at all, and for good reason — I was not at the feast given in his honor by my father! Yes, he thought he was captured by my kinsman Opechancanough when the hunting party found Smith on our lands. Being unable to speak each other’s tongues, Smith did not understand that it was customary for strangers to be taken to the chief, so that proper tribute could be given. He only thought he was captured.

​

“It was later that Smith changed his own story when he wrote to his queen that he had been under threat and that I had saved him. He did this because he knew Rolfe and I were about to go to England, and he wanted the queen to be impressed that he knew me.”

 

“How typical of colonists to aggrandize themselves and tell false tales to their investors,” I commiserated with her.

 

“Yes, and how terrible to go to a foreign land with the intention of destroying the people and their way of life they found there. To this day, I cannot understand this.”

 

“No, neither can I. And I’m so sorry that your life had to end so far away from home,” I said in a weak apology for all she had had to endure at the hands of the people of some of my other ancestors, the British. “Do you know what it was that took your life?”

 

“Many have speculated about the illness,” she said, closing her eyes as if trying to bring the diagnosis into her mind. “But I believe it was because Tomocomo had been separated from me, and prevented from attending to me as a medicine man would do at home. Instead, I was treated in the English ways, with English medicines, and this weakened my own spirit. It is sad to me to have died so far away from my land and my people, and that my body was not returned to them.”

 

“ I can understand that, and your son Thomas was also sick at the time, which prevented him from sailing back to your people.”

 

“Yes, another kind of betrayal, although one I could better understand. John left Thomas in the care of a guardian, and later he was sent to live with his uncle. John returned to his plantation and never saw Thomas again. My own father Chief Wahunsonacock never got to meet his grandson either. It was so sad all the way round.”

 

“I have read that Thomas did eventually return to the land of the Powhatan and was able to develop some relationships with his native relatives, though not without some disapproval of the English colonists. He married an English wife from the Virginia colony.”

 

“He did, and they have left a trail of descendants related now to me. That at least makes me very happy.”

 

She was done with her story.  Nodding to me, and I nodding back my thanks in return, Matoaka took a step back and disappeared into the mists of time.

 

​

Reflections

 

 

I SHARE BUT A LITTLE of my own life with these five ancestors, speaking mostly of the surprising echoes from their stories that had somehow touched mine.

 

From Bathilde’s life what I relate to most is her connections to the ancient Pagan beliefs, and the finding ways to practice them surreptitiously when she had to. And it is interesting that where most of her life was spent in territory that is somewhat familiar to me from having lived in Germany for four years, and having visited France often. I could imagine myself in her lifetime because of that.

 

From Adelaide’s story, I again found myself drawn back to my own memories of the same landscapes and castles she must have been aware of – especially Paris where she would have lived, and where I spent some vacation time.  Perhaps I inherited a bit of her “fix it” impulse, for I’ve always had that urge if I saw something that could be improved, I could at least think through the way I would do that. And I must admit that there is a part of me that feels – not entitled or privileged in the way Adelaide suggests -- but protected in a kind of invisible way or by unseen forces, like a royal would be watched over.

 

Talking with Anna of Kiev, I relate to her life being largely out of her control in her early years, being expected to just go along with others’ will because they thought they knew what was best for me. I’m intrigued with her Swedish roots, through her mother, because I didn’t learn of my own Swedish connections until very late in life. I feel aligned with Anna’s having to learn French, which I also did in high school, and losing a spouse in an essentially foreign land (since I had divorced mine when we lived in Germany). And I’m intrigued with her determination to be with a man she loved, even when the church excommunicated him for it. I’m no stranger to the high price women sometimes pay for love.

 

Lucie’s story seems one of perseverance during difficult times, which in many ways has been my own story as well. We both were reluctant to settle down too early, and once we did, we wanted a fair amount of control over our lives.  We got that to an extent. But life intervened to present challenges  -- wars with its insufficient estate income and famine for her, while my own challenges were in similarly indirect effects of several wars (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) with insufficient career income for me --  that no one could control.

 

And Matoaka’s life has some of the same griefs as mine, what with being taken (or more accurately relinquished) from my biological family, having my name changed and my identity hidden from me, with a religion forced on me that never resonated with my soul. As my nearest ancestor, chronologically at least among these five women, perhaps it is not surprising that I’ve always had a strong interest in Native America and tracing back to my indigenous kin.