Were John Smith and Pocahontas Really in Love?
Certain origin stories have embedded themselves in the American foundational canon despite — or maybe because of — the degree to which the truth was embellished or outright fabricated. The anecdote of George Washington chopping down a cherry tree was invented by biographer Mason Locke Weems. The midnight ride of Paul Revere to warn of approaching Redcoats was exaggerated by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And the cross-cultural relationship between Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, originally documented with minimal romantic elements by the latter, has been twisted and reformulated enough times that most people have little idea of the true nature of their connection.
Of course, getting to the truth of 400-year-old events is always a little dicey, particularly when the relevant details have largely been passed down by just one person. But that hasn’t stopped historians from drawing conclusions from the available evidence, and we’ll take up the task here to determine whether Smith and Pocahontas were actually engaged in a romance, and why this unlikely love story has endured through the ages.
Pocahontas Was an Intermediary Between the Settlers and Her People
First, the agreed-upon facts: Smith arrived in current-day Virginia with the rest of the English settlers at Jamestown in the spring of 1607. Toward the end of the year, the 27-year-old captain was captured by a group of Powhatan people, a confederacy of more than 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes. However, Chief Powhatan, also known as Wahunsenaca, ultimately released Smith to foster trade relations between the Indigenous peoples and the European settlers.
At some point around this time, Smith became acquainted with one of Chief Powhatan’s daughters, a girl of about 11 years old named Amonute, also known by her nickname, Pocahontas. Despite her young age, the smart and spirited girl served as a liaison between the two groups, and Smith recorded her presence at Jamestown in various manuscripts and letters.
Their paths diverged in 1609, when relations deteriorated between the settlers and Indigenous peoples, and Pocahontas was forbidden from visiting the settlement. That fall, Smith returned to London after being injured by an exploding keg of gunpowder.
In 1613, Pocahontas was taken captive by another English captain, Samuel Argall. It’s unknown whether the events that followed were forced upon her or in any way voluntary, but she went on to convert to Christianity, taking the name Rebecca at her baptism, and she married tobacco farmer John Rolfe, with whom she had a son.
In 1616, Pocahontas had a brief reunion with Smith during a visit to England with her husband and a Powhatans delegation. She died from an unspecified illness shortly before her planned return to Virginia.
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Smith’s Changing Stories
The first written mention of Pocahontas came in a letter from Smith to a friend, which was published in 1608 as “A True relation of such occurrences and accidents of note, as hath hapned at Virginia.” In the text, Smith describes Chief Powhatan’s daughter as being "not only for feature, countenance, and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of his people: but for wit and spirit, the only Nonpariel of his Country." Later, he relays a moment in which Pocahontas, serving as her father's emissary, is entrusted with a group of released Powhatan prisoners.
Smith next wrote of his young acquaintance in the 1612 manuscript A Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion. This text included a collection of Indigenous words and phrases, one of which came with the translation: "Bid Pokahontas bring hither two little Baskets, and I wil give her white beads to make her a chaine."
The former captain’s recollection of events became a little more interesting by the time he published The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles in 1624. This multivolume work features the now-familiar storyline, curiously missing from earlier reports, of how Pocahontas thwarted Smith’s execution. Setting the scene, Smith writes (in the third person) of how his head was about to get smashed against two stones until "Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death."
The text also includes a letter, supposedly written to England’s Queen Anne in 1616, which describes another moment of Pocahontas intervening to warn Smith of a pending ambush from her father: "The darke night could not affright her from comming through the irkesome woods, and with watered eies gave me intelligence, with her best advice to escape his furie; which had hee knowne, hee had surely slaine her."
Given the author left these events out of earlier chronicles of his life in Virginia, many historians feel that Smith either exaggerated or outright made up the stories as a means of self-promotion. Still, even with the newer details that add to the drama and the depth of his relationship with Pocahontas, Smith’s descriptions fail to convey a clear romance between the two.
The Romance Blossoms in Popular Culture
Pocahontas was a well-known historical figure in the American colonies by the mid-18th century, but the narrative around her life, her relationship to Smith, and the state of relations between European settlers and the Indigenous tribes they encountered took a turn after the Revolutionary War.
The first major reimagining of the facts came with Englishman John Davis' 1803 book Travels of four years and a half in the United States of America. Although he was ostensibly rehashing a version of the story heard during his trip, Davis unapologetically crossed into the realm of historical fiction by making the heroine a few years older, concocting flowery dialogue, and highlighting passionate feelings between Smith and Pocahontas.
Five years later, the story of Pocahontas, and her rescue of Smith from the brutality of her father's warriors, earned a dramatic retelling on the stage with The Indian Princess; or, La Belle Sauvage, a musical play by American playwright James Nelson Barker.
With denizens of the young country eager to latch on to origin stories to establish a national identity, the romantic ideals introduced in Davis’ book and The Indian Princess quickly caught on. Other plays about the Powhatan maiden accepting her Christian colonizers were released to the public, as were numerous paintings depicting Pocahontas getting married, being baptized, or, of course, saving Smith from getting pummeled to death.
Although the love story between Smith and Pocahontas didn't feature in every creative work at the time — she was, after all, married to someone else — it became a popular focal point for artists and writers alike. Thanks to plays such as John Brougham's popular 1855 musical Po-ca-hon-tas, or The Gentle Savage, and books such as David Garnett’s 1933 historical novel Pocahontas or The Nonpareil of Virginia, the romantic entanglement was embedded in popular culture by the time Disney delivered its take with the animated feature film Pocahontas in 1995.
The Truth Emerges but the Narrative Remains
While Disney’s Pocahontas drew some criticism for perpetuating stereotypes about Native Americans and European settlers, it also ignited a new round of research into the well-worn story. Among the surprises that emerged was a published version of Pocahontas’ life from the oral tradition of the Mattaponi Tribe, replete with details that both complement and contradict the better-known accounts of Smith and his contemporaries.
Nowadays, historians generally believe that there was a friendship, or at least some form of mutual appreciation, between the English captain and the bright, lively girl who served as an intermediary and translator between two cultures. However, it's highly unlikely there was a romance, considering both the lack of evidence for its existence and the age gap between the two. Nevertheless, the prevailing narrative of their relationship endures to this day, and given the power of a compelling love story — fiction or otherwise — it may continue to do so for another 400 years.
