The woman known to history as Pocahontas was born  around 1596 and given the name Matoax or Matoaka.  Pocahontas was a nickname meaning “playful  one” which she was given during her childhood. Click here for this 71-minute documentary by The People Profiles posted on May 12, 2024.

Pocahontas’s father was a man named Wahunsenaca,  the paramount chief of the Powhatan nation, whose homeland was called Tsenacomoca in the  Powhatan language. He was later known to the English as Chief Powhatan. Wahunsenaca initially controlled six tribes but by the early 17th century he used a combination  of military and diplomatic means to establish an alliance network known as the Powhatan Confederacy that included over thirty tribes. 

The first English attempt to establish a colony  in North America was led by Sir Walter Raleigh (above, right), who founded the Roanoke Colony in 1585. Raleigh bestowed the name of Virginia upon the eastern coast of North America from Spanish Florida and up to modern-day Maine in honor of Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. King James (above, left) succeeded her in 1603.

Pocahontas’s  conversion to Christianity subsequently enabled her marriage to John Rolfe on the 5th of April 1614. She  would have been seventeen or eighteen years old. However, she maintained a lasting friendship with Captain John Smith (above left and right) who had returned to England. He met her there just before she died.