Speaker 1: Hello everybody, Hello, welcome back to the show. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: so stuffed from all the giving so much. Thanks. Um.
Speaker 1: What what are you grateful for this year? Oh? That's nice? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously this show. I mean say, this is
Speaker 1: life changing. All are amazing fans that have been uh
Speaker 1: so dedicated to keeping in touch with us and and
Speaker 1: sharing our episodes and and giving us amazing feedback and suggestions.
Speaker 1: I mean, not not to sound cheesy, but I am
Speaker 1: genuinely very grateful for this show in the community around it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. It's it's both gratifying and flattering when people
Speaker 1: are like, first of all, I'm listening to your show,
Speaker 1: which just like that, right, and then to be like
Speaker 1: and I'm engaging with it in a variety of ways.
Speaker 1: It's like wise that is truly awesome. Yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: grateful for that as well. Yes, I'm very grateful to
Speaker 1: be vaccinated, able to like go out again. Curiously, do
Speaker 1: stuff feel a little less weird about it? And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm grateful for normal ship too. Just
Speaker 1: we have a house we can't afford and sure not
Speaker 1: out in the cold. All very important things to be
Speaker 1: grateful for. I mean, especially with these episodes, as we're
Speaker 1: talking about some intense privations and so this these this
Speaker 1: history has definitely made me very grateful for having multiple
Speaker 1: hoodies and cantry full of food. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a weird time to be alive, but well it
Speaker 1: could be a lot worse. There were weirder times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. I hope everybody had some tasty food and
Speaker 1: some great friends and family that they were around, or
Speaker 1: did your thing and said screw it, I don't like
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and I'm I'm taking this day to myself. That's
Speaker 1: awesome too. Or if you had a contentious Thanksgiving with
Speaker 1: some family members, I hope you one the fights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope everyone had time to reflect on their you know,
Speaker 1: many things to be grateful for. And uh, I hope
Speaker 1: that you spent most of the dinner telling all your relatives,
Speaker 1: your neighbors, your uncles and aunts. I know you saw
Speaker 1: about ridiculous romance and are and Are part one Pocahontas
Speaker 1: story about Pocahontas and John Smith and got them all
Speaker 1: excited for part two, which we're going to do down.
Speaker 1: I kind of hope, especially that you quoted all the
Speaker 1: gross things that the colonists ate during the starving time
Speaker 1: while you were seating, seating yourselves for your delicious meal,
Speaker 1: like this one guy ate his own pregnant wife past
Speaker 1: the gravy. Oh time makes it funny, right or something
Speaker 1: like that. Sometimes distance plus time equals jokes. So I
Speaker 1: think that's the math too soon. I didn't take I
Speaker 1: didn't take a lot of math classes, to be fair.
Speaker 1: What's it? I think mel Brooks said. Tragedy is me
Speaker 1: cutting my finger? Comedy is you falling down an open sewer? Great? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is hilarious. That's hilarious. So true. Well, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what isn't true. Story about Pocahonis and John Smith
Speaker 1: getting it on at some point in the sixts that
Speaker 1: never happened. Okay, And in part one of our Pocahonists
Speaker 1: two parter, we debunked that popular myth about her being
Speaker 1: in love with John Smith and saving his life and
Speaker 1: all that crap. In actuality, pocahont was just a child.
Speaker 1: She only met John Smith a few times at most,
Speaker 1: and it's not certain that his life was ever in
Speaker 1: danger from the Powhattan tribes in the first place. But
Speaker 1: the story doesn't end there. Pokeahon Is marries twice, once
Speaker 1: to a fellow native coco Um and once to the
Speaker 1: colonists John Rolf. So what happened to Cocoa? How come
Speaker 1: John Rolph isn't part of the myth of Pocahonis. I mean,
Speaker 1: what actually happened here? Let's find out. Yeah, let's go,
Speaker 1: Hey their French come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got
Speaker 1: some stories to tell. There's no match making, a romantic tips.
Speaker 1: It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be
Speaker 1: any type of person at all, and abstract cons at
Speaker 1: are a concrete ball. But if there's a story where
Speaker 1: the second glance ridiculous roles a production of I Heart Radio. Okay,
Speaker 1: So remember we mentioned in part one, but just to
Speaker 1: reiterate that where we got this story came from a
Speaker 1: variety of sources um and pretty much the only indigenous
Speaker 1: source out there that we can find from the native people,
Speaker 1: uh is a book called The True Story of Pocahontas,
Speaker 1: The Other Side of History, and that was by Dr
Speaker 1: Lynwood Little Bear Coustallo and Angela L. Daniel silver Star UM.
Speaker 1: And this story is an oral tradition passed down from
Speaker 1: Pocahonta's own relatives. Um. So it is a skewed and
Speaker 1: disputed version of the story. Um. But when you're weighing
Speaker 1: it against what the English wrote down at the time,
Speaker 1: you realize that kind of both of them have told
Speaker 1: their own versions. Yeah. Um, and you've got to kind
Speaker 1: of give a lot of credit to the people who
Speaker 1: are actually going through this. Yeah. Yeah. It just feels
Speaker 1: wrong to be like, oh, well, since it doesn't match
Speaker 1: the written records, will say it's a lie when who
Speaker 1: wrote down the written record? The guys are trying to
Speaker 1: make themselves look good and and and the oral history
Speaker 1: like fills in a lot of holes at times too,
Speaker 1: and answers questions that the that the English version doesn't,
Speaker 1: So that they're both uh you know, historically valuable takes um.
Speaker 1: Both worthy of a grain of salt um, but both
Speaker 1: very necessary I think, to to tell this story properly.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And when we you know, as we try to,
Speaker 1: we will make sure to tell you when the story
Speaker 1: is super different, urgent and you know, expressed both sides
Speaker 1: of it and you can talk it out. It's kind
Speaker 1: of our favorite part. So when last we left the colonists,
Speaker 1: George Percy's ship leadership had whittled them down from five
Speaker 1: hundred settlers to only sixty. Unbelievable in less than a year. Two.
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy sucked. And one day a supply
Speaker 1: ship that had been stuck in Bermuda for ten months
Speaker 1: finally arrived in Virginia. On board was a man named
Speaker 1: John Rolfe, who was determined to get into the tobacco industry.
Speaker 1: I guess back then it was I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: so weird to read about tobacco back then, because they were,
Speaker 1: like some people really thought it was a medicinal, had
Speaker 1: a lot of medicinal properties. And this one guy who
Speaker 1: wrote a lot about how it it's like fixed every
Speaker 1: problem eventually died of nose cancer. Anyway, it's just really
Speaker 1: fascinating to see what people were. Kind of how people
Speaker 1: viewed tobacco at this time. That sounds a lot like
Speaker 1: how we view marijuana now. I hope it doesn't meet
Speaker 1: the same fate. It's almost like we should legalize it
Speaker 1: so they can be studied for real. But anyway, if
Speaker 1: only John rolf had boarded the ship the Sea Venture
Speaker 1: in England carrying precious tobacco seeds from Trinidad, and no
Speaker 1: one knows how he got his hands on him, because
Speaker 1: at the time Spain had a monopoly on the tobacco
Speaker 1: industry and they had made it punishable by death to
Speaker 1: sell tobacco seeds to anyone but Spanish people. So speculation station.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see John Rolf like walking up to
Speaker 1: with someone in Trinidad being like, um when when its
Speaker 1: tall days, Mi amigoes Um, I am definitely Spanish from Spain.
Speaker 1: How do you any tobacco seeds? Poor favoury grassy saw
Speaker 1: that smashing if you had any lying about um, just
Speaker 1: take him off your hands. But people in Trinidad like,
Speaker 1: well he I don't know, he said me, Ami goes
Speaker 1: that sounds right, and they're like he's white, they're white. Whatever?
Speaker 1: Giving me money here yea. But this ship, the Sea Venture,
Speaker 1: had been shipwrecked in Bermuda, and for ten months the
Speaker 1: settlers scraped by on the islands as they broke up
Speaker 1: their leaky as big ship to make two smaller ones
Speaker 1: to carry them the rest of the way to Virginia.
Speaker 1: Some of these settlers, however, had died, maybe from harsh
Speaker 1: tropical conditions or from low supplies for various other reasons,
Speaker 1: and two of the people who tragically died here were
Speaker 1: John Rolf's wife, Sarah and their infant daughter. So when
Speaker 1: Rolf arrived in the New World, he was a widower.
Speaker 1: There's this guy on board who was named Lord de Loire,
Speaker 1: and he, by the way, is the guy they named
Speaker 1: Delaware after Lord Delaware. That's true, um, and he was
Speaker 1: there to be the new president of the Colony of Virginia.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned in part one, when these ships arrived,
Speaker 1: there were sixty crazed, half starved colonists running around in
Speaker 1: this rundown fort, and Lord de Laire was like, uh no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, We're going back to England. Goodbye to this mass.
Speaker 1: I imagine he's like Donald Glover in that meme from
Speaker 1: Community where he walks in and everything's on fire and
Speaker 1: people are running around screaming and the pizzas like never mind.
Speaker 1: So they had back on the ship, but all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this new ship showed up with a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty extra settlers and a year's worth of provisions.
Speaker 1: So Delaware is like, never mind, all ashore, who's going ashore?
Speaker 1: And by the way, everyone's going ashore, So let's get
Speaker 1: back to it. We're gonna give this the old College try.
Speaker 1: And I think this is like round four of them
Speaker 1: trying to make this work. Yeah, many rounds have happened,
Speaker 1: English or nothing, if not Persist didn't. It's amazing. I
Speaker 1: mean hearing their story in part one about how bad
Speaker 1: they were, especially had John Smith not shown up and
Speaker 1: saved their asses. That I can't believe the English did anything,
Speaker 1: let alone were the largest empire in the world around
Speaker 1: this time. It's shocking. And they literally like persistence win surprised.
Speaker 1: If you can throw enough bodies at any situation, is
Speaker 1: true theodies, and they have a lot of bodies. But
Speaker 1: I mean, god, it's like we can't handle intense sunlight,
Speaker 1: and we took over like half the equator. Uh, we
Speaker 1: can't handle any diseases, and we would going to all
Speaker 1: new places getting sick and dying left and right. We
Speaker 1: don't know how to far we're bringing perfumers into farm.
Speaker 1: It's incredible that they were able to do this horrible
Speaker 1: and horrible. Yes, and Lord de la Wire had brought
Speaker 1: a change of policy with him as well, because we
Speaker 1: mentioned in Part one that the Virginia Company had sent
Speaker 1: all these settlers with a pretty strong like don't offend
Speaker 1: the natives sort of idea. Like they were like, whatever
Speaker 1: you can do to avoid a skirmish with them, please do.
Speaker 1: But at this point, the angle of p how hot
Speaker 1: and war had broke out. Violence between the natives and
Speaker 1: the settlers was escalating, and the Virginia Company was sick
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. It was really making them look
Speaker 1: bad around the drawing rooms of London. I mean actually that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the British did not like hearing about natives being badly
Speaker 1: treated by there. It made him look bad, it really did.
Speaker 1: They were like, we don't want to hear about that.
Speaker 1: It's quiet. It's quiet if I hear about our behavior.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be all above board and honorable. And plus,
Speaker 1: they were in the New World to make money. Damn it,
Speaker 1: shouldn't we make some fine al We've been spending and
Speaker 1: supplying and spending and supplying, and all we get our
Speaker 1: dead bodies. So they decided that now it was a
Speaker 1: okay with them to let Laura de Laire ruthlessly suppressed
Speaker 1: by whatever means he saw necessary, any internal descent or
Speaker 1: external threats, and that meant life got a lot more
Speaker 1: brutal for the colonists and the tribes. So wait, so
Speaker 1: the Virginia Company was like, first we said, don't treat
Speaker 1: the native people badly, and you did, and that made
Speaker 1: us look bad. So what we're going to change is
Speaker 1: we're not going to say don't treat them badly anymore.
Speaker 1: That way, that's unbelievable. Again, the decision making is a
Speaker 1: real question mark for me. I don't understand how any
Speaker 1: of these folks, for me, really fixing the wrong problem here.
Speaker 1: And like, life was already so brutal for the colonists,
Speaker 1: particularly already they were already in fighting, they're already starving,
Speaker 1: they're already diseased. I mean, they already had so many problems,
Speaker 1: and then they were just like creating more within themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's really weird. Within Jamestown, martial law was introduced.
Speaker 1: De l o. Wire would whip colonists for any infraction
Speaker 1: like missing church Heaven forbid, literally yeah right. A second
Speaker 1: defense of blasphemy was punished by having a lancet thrust
Speaker 1: through the tongue. O good lord, you know, and these
Speaker 1: are the guys that are calling everyone else savages, you know,
Speaker 1: just like colonists who deserted or who rubbed the storehouse
Speaker 1: were hanged, burned, broken upon wheels, and bound to trees
Speaker 1: until they starved. Even stealing flowers from another colonist garden
Speaker 1: became a capital offense. And again, I mean, like we're saying,
Speaker 1: it just seems so weird to be like, okay, you
Speaker 1: know what, too many people are dying. Let's make everything
Speaker 1: an offense where you get executed. Like everything you do
Speaker 1: you could get killed for it. That that'll fix it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And of course they were even crueler
Speaker 1: to the native tribes. They had previously engaged in skirmishes
Speaker 1: with these tribes, of course, but usually on both sides.
Speaker 1: They would they had their rules, you know, they would
Speaker 1: leave the women and children alone. Or they often took
Speaker 1: prisoners rather than brutalizing and killing everyone. Prisoners were more
Speaker 1: valuable than corpses after all, right, Yeah, you can trade
Speaker 1: them for things. Their negotiation and you know, negotiating tactics
Speaker 1: or whatever. I mean. I remember in part one we
Speaker 1: talked about the prisoners taught them how to farm and
Speaker 1: and yeah, and they wouldn't negotiate, you know, they had
Speaker 1: some So then Powhatan was like, here, I'll give you
Speaker 1: some ship if you give me the guys back, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. They were really was more valuable to not
Speaker 1: kill someone than it was to kill them. But now
Speaker 1: the English were done with all that, they attacked a
Speaker 1: neighboring tribe and they killed everyone there, and they burned
Speaker 1: down their houses and their crops. George Percy, who was
Speaker 1: in charge of this raid, tried to spare the queen
Speaker 1: and her children by taking them prisoner, but Lord de
Speaker 1: Laire was like, no, the only good native is a
Speaker 1: dead native. Percy wrote that they threw the children into
Speaker 1: the river and then blew their brains out, just charming
Speaker 1: way to put it. But when he was ordered to
Speaker 1: burn the queen alive, Percy stood his ground. He said, new,
Speaker 1: I will not do that. I have seen enough floodshed
Speaker 1: for today. So instead he had some of his men
Speaker 1: take her to the woods and kill her with swords. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like I said, I've seen enough floodshed for today.
Speaker 1: But someone else can see it. These chaps haven't seen enough.
Speaker 1: Let them see a little, them, see a little George
Speaker 1: Percy Villain of the week, except Dolore is worse. So
Speaker 1: it's like, I guess England is the villain of the
Speaker 1: week in this story. You know, it's I gotta say
Speaker 1: we we I don't know how it is over in
Speaker 1: the UK, and maybe some of y'all can enlighten me,
Speaker 1: but we of course have a lot of uh, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of discussion and conversation and and you know,
Speaker 1: a certain degree of guilt about how American colonists treated
Speaker 1: the indigenous people when they came here. Do y'all talk
Speaker 1: about that in England? Because that was you you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's something. I mean, obviously we
Speaker 1: are the descendants of those direct people, but England has
Speaker 1: the descendants of all the people who were ordering it
Speaker 1: mostly to happen. So were you all talking about that?
Speaker 1: And who profited off of all that land being and everything.
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and start an international incident here. Maybe
Speaker 1: England owes some reparations to the native tribes of America.
Speaker 1: Anybody ever suggests that, because honestly, in England owes some reparations,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you want to get on that list,
Speaker 1: you'll be in at the bottom of a very long list.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's why England like backed off the Empire thing,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, now, we're a real small country. Sorry,
Speaker 1: we can't pay anybody back everything we took. But look
Speaker 1: at these beautiful jewels the queen is wearing. Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, we still have all your stuff in our museum.
Speaker 1: We're not going to give it away anyway. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it's I mean, it's a very good point. I
Speaker 1: I kind of thought that too, because you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're studying colonial America. It's Native Americans and it's English.
Speaker 1: There's no Americans as we know them. Yeah, as we
Speaker 1: are yet Americans pretty soon, but like actual United States
Speaker 1: of America citizens treated a whole other class of people horribly,
Speaker 1: like monsters and the natives, and the natives can't discount
Speaker 1: that pretty much. Everyone do continue to have our anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we I guess you could say that we started
Speaker 1: as we meant to go on was pretty horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we went on with it. So yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: there's some great things. There's Yeah, we got this is
Speaker 1: a comedy show, you're right, so moving I think of
Speaker 1: something funny and we'll move on. So yeah, okay, Because
Speaker 1: Delaware showed up at this clear change and how they
Speaker 1: were going to be behaving toward the natives. The tribes
Speaker 1: were all being way more cautious around the English, especially Pocahonas.
Speaker 1: Rumors persisted that the English were hoping to kidnap her
Speaker 1: and keep her hostage because they knew how much pow
Speaker 1: Hotton cared about her, so they were like, this might
Speaker 1: be our linchpin of our victory. Basically, she would be
Speaker 1: a very valuable hostage. So when Poconas came of age
Speaker 1: in sixteen ten, her ceremony was much quieter than it
Speaker 1: normally would have been. If there had not been in
Speaker 1: English around, she would have had a bigger kincanera, you fox.
Speaker 1: This ceremony, called a huskan off for boys and a
Speaker 1: huskana squaw for girls, happened once kids hit puberty, so
Speaker 1: anywhere from twelve to fourteen, and it was a signal
Speaker 1: that they were grown now and ready for courtship and marriage.
Speaker 1: And since pocahonas mother was dead, her older sister Matta
Speaker 1: Chana oversaw the ceremony. The boys rituals seemed to be
Speaker 1: much more intense and elaborate than the women's. They had
Speaker 1: to like run a gauntlet, They had to lay like
Speaker 1: they were dead while everyone else feasted around them, and right,
Speaker 1: because it's after they run the gauntlet, so they're already hungry,
Speaker 1: and then they're like probably smelling all this good food,
Speaker 1: and everybody's laughing and chilling, and they're like laying like corpses.
Speaker 1: The people were patient, they were used to it. And
Speaker 1: then also the boys would go live in the woods
Speaker 1: for nine months with some elders, and so then when
Speaker 1: they came back, there was this big gap between the
Speaker 1: boy that left and the man who came home. So
Speaker 1: now he's seen as a warrior, you know, he's a
Speaker 1: man now. And also their allegiance had changed from family
Speaker 1: to the whole tribe um. So it was a really
Speaker 1: non symbolic way, I guess, of of just showing again
Speaker 1: that that gap of like this a boy left and
Speaker 1: here comes a man, you know, and he had nine
Speaker 1: months to prove that he could live in the it's
Speaker 1: to deal with some crazy shit. For women, I can
Speaker 1: find very little of the process. I'm just I'm assuming,
Speaker 1: you know, they mostly talked about like what Pocahonat wore
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, so I'm kind of assuming that
Speaker 1: it was mostly about looking cute, and then they would
Speaker 1: do some ritual dancing and feasting and praying that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um less of a gauntlet, less of running
Speaker 1: off for a nine month not not as much of
Speaker 1: that going on. Yeah, their life is going to be
Speaker 1: a gauntlet there. They're curing the meat and weaving the
Speaker 1: rugs and building the fires and building the houses. Like
Speaker 1: you're nine months of childbirth comes later, They're nine months
Speaker 1: comes first. But they did also have a ritual name change,
Speaker 1: So they had their childhood name and then they had
Speaker 1: their name as a woman, and they got to choose
Speaker 1: that name. And this is when pocahont chose the name
Speaker 1: Poconti is for herself, after her mother, which was what
Speaker 1: her father had already called her, you know, because he
Speaker 1: loved her mother so much, so she already had some
Speaker 1: attachment at that name. For sure. I'm sure they were
Speaker 1: not surprised when she was like, let's just go ahead
Speaker 1: make an official. Yeah. Now, after this ceremony, the oral
Speaker 1: history this book states quote, there was a big pow
Speaker 1: wow held in celebration and thanks Giving. Hey, Thanksgiving, everybody.
Speaker 1: I knew there's a tie in somewhere. So one of
Speaker 1: the big moments of this pow wow is the courtship
Speaker 1: dance that allowed single male warriors to search for a mate,
Speaker 1: and our girl, Pocahonas was approached by a warrior named Cocoum.
Speaker 1: The other side of History says that quote. The fact
Speaker 1: he was not a chief and thus not high in status,
Speaker 1: suggests that Pocahontas may have married for love. But pow Hatton,
Speaker 1: her dad, the head Hancho here, was also into this pairing.
Speaker 1: He was like, yes, good choice. I like this. I'm standing.
Speaker 1: I'm shipping Pocahonas and coco Um here. We stand because
Speaker 1: first of all, Cocoum was the brother of one of
Speaker 1: Potton's close ist friends, chief Japazaw. So you can imagine
Speaker 1: you can imagine, uh how hot and and Japazaw like
Speaker 1: trying to get the trying to match make right. I believe,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, would it be so cute if my
Speaker 1: daughter and your brother, Oh my god, they're perfect. Okay,
Speaker 1: somebody go tell someone to make sure they sit together
Speaker 1: during dinner. Okay, try and make sure they get the
Speaker 1: same spaghetti noodle. And then when they do, they're both
Speaker 1: like sitting in the corner together, like watching like it happened.
Speaker 1: He's looking at her, she's looking at it. Adorable, but
Speaker 1: even better than this fact that he was related to
Speaker 1: this friend of his, is that it's possible Cocoum was
Speaker 1: one of pou Hotton's bodyguard, which consisted of fifty of
Speaker 1: the best warriors that all the tribes had to offer.
Speaker 1: I remember, they're getting increasingly worried that the colonials would
Speaker 1: try to take Pocahona's hostage. So pow Hotton was certainly
Speaker 1: glad that she was going to marry someone who could
Speaker 1: protect her. One of the best warriors there is, right.
Speaker 1: He was like, what if you hadn't picked him, I
Speaker 1: probably would have picked this selection of warriors for you.
Speaker 1: But they also took the precaution of sending the newlyweds
Speaker 1: to live with Kocoum's family and the PoTA Womack tribe
Speaker 1: village Passapatanzi, which is also where Chief Japazol lived, and
Speaker 1: it was in a remote area. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: northern Virginia. There was no English hanging around there yet,
Speaker 1: and pow Hotton figured that with both coco Um and
Speaker 1: japaz all looking out for her, Pocahonas would be safe
Speaker 1: and then he could get on with the pow Hotton
Speaker 1: part of the Anglo pow hotten war, right, and for
Speaker 1: a while it seems everything was, you know, turning out fine. Well,
Speaker 1: let's just stop there and happy ending. They lived happily
Speaker 1: ever after the end. Can we just cut it off there, guess,
Speaker 1: but it would be a pretty shitty EPI. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: While she was living with the PoTA Womack, the other
Speaker 1: side of history says she gave birth to a son.
Speaker 1: Other places say they had a daughter, so I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly sure, but anyway, they had a kid and they
Speaker 1: were really happy about it, all right, and that's what Matt,
Speaker 1: You're right, Let's include that, and then let's cut off
Speaker 1: the end of the story happily ever after with either
Speaker 1: a son or a daughter who knows? Right. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna take a commercial break, and then
Speaker 1: I guess we'll have to come back with the rest
Speaker 1: of the story. Stay tuned because it's thrilling. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. So when we left off, of course,
Speaker 1: Pocahonas had married Cocum and went to go live in
Speaker 1: his village where Chief Chapazaw was going to look out
Speaker 1: for them, and everything's good. Meanwhile, the war is going
Speaker 1: strong the land along the rivers is extremely fertile, having
Speaker 1: been well cared for by the Powhattan nation. Hello, take
Speaker 1: a lesson English. And the English were doing everything they
Speaker 1: could to steal that good agricultural land away. They had
Speaker 1: already taken control of the entire James River, and they
Speaker 1: were always looking for a way to snatch up Pocahontas
Speaker 1: because they figured holding her hostage would be a great
Speaker 1: way to end the hostilities but still get whatever they wanted,
Speaker 1: so valuable bargaining chip. They knew how much pow Hotton
Speaker 1: cared for his daughter, So one day in six Captain
Speaker 1: Samuel Argall learned where Pocahontas and her family were hiding out,
Speaker 1: and he decided to quote possess myself of her by
Speaker 1: any stratagem strut. According to this book The Other Side
Speaker 1: of History. He went to Chief Japazaw and threatened to
Speaker 1: attack the entire village if he didn't hand over his
Speaker 1: sister in Pocahona's Japisa knew that they couldn't hold off
Speaker 1: an English attack all by themselves, and they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: time for backup to arrive from pow Hotton, so he
Speaker 1: made our Gall promise not to harm Pokehontas and then
Speaker 1: reluctantly made his wife go get her and bring her
Speaker 1: aboard our Gall's ship. As soon as she was a board,
Speaker 1: our Gall handed them a copper kettle, implicating them in
Speaker 1: the betrayal, basically saying, look, we gave you something for it,
Speaker 1: so now you've officially traded her for this kettle. And
Speaker 1: she saw it so that she could tell how Hotton Oh,
Speaker 1: they must have traded me for a cop kettle. And
Speaker 1: before sailing away he had coco Um killed. Unfortunately, their
Speaker 1: son was with a relative and was spared, but pretty dark.
Speaker 1: And that that is the oral history from Pocahona's people
Speaker 1: passed down. That's the way the story goes. But the
Speaker 1: English story is different. They say the PoTA Womack tribe
Speaker 1: was not always loyal to pow hotton Um. For example,
Speaker 1: they were still trading with the English even though it
Speaker 1: was technically forbidden during this war. And that's how Captain
Speaker 1: Argyll had a contact among their Poto Womack tribe to
Speaker 1: know that Pokehon that Pokeontas was there. So Captain Argyll
Speaker 1: actually went to Japazaw and offered to ally with the
Speaker 1: Poto Womac against pow Hotton if they would hand over
Speaker 1: pokehonas So the English are like they were ready to
Speaker 1: turn against their all, and that's how come it worked out, okay,
Speaker 1: you know. And then Japazaw tricked pokehon Is aboard. Together
Speaker 1: they held her for ransom and demanded the release of
Speaker 1: English prisoners and the return of weapons from pow Hotton.
Speaker 1: And according to the Matta Pony, he immediately paid the ransom,
Speaker 1: but then the English demanded a second payment. According to
Speaker 1: the English, pow Hotton only paid part of the ransom
Speaker 1: and they had to hold out for the full amount.
Speaker 1: So there's a breakdown here. So the the Matta ponies say,
Speaker 1: we gave you the thousand bucks you asked for, and
Speaker 1: then the English said, yes, but you forgult about the
Speaker 1: second payments, you know. But the English say, we asked
Speaker 1: you for two thousand in the first place, and you
Speaker 1: only gave us half. So again it's and this is
Speaker 1: a hard one because there's you would have to be
Speaker 1: there to know, right, you you what, I'm inclined to
Speaker 1: side with who I sympathize with, right, I'm inclined to
Speaker 1: be like, well, the oral history of the Mattapony. I
Speaker 1: want to take their side because they were the ones
Speaker 1: being subjected here. Um. But but you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I cannot say that neither of us can um. And
Speaker 1: again you're looking at what was written down by people
Speaker 1: who very much wanted to make themselves look good and
Speaker 1: what was kind of a game of telephone for a
Speaker 1: few generations before it was written down. So neither is
Speaker 1: necessarily a huge, a reliable account or the whole story. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but but which at which point in history? Usually we
Speaker 1: just kind of have to decide for ourselves what we
Speaker 1: believe or that we don't really believe anything. I think
Speaker 1: is where I land with it, And like, I know
Speaker 1: that I'm not getting the full story, and I know
Speaker 1: the story doesn't exist. There's some things we cannot know,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of hard to reconcile with. Sometimes too,
Speaker 1: it's true, and then other times you just have the
Speaker 1: cultural differences that just misunderstanding. How Harton was like, well,
Speaker 1: if I make a deal with John Smith, then I've
Speaker 1: made a deal with all of y'all, right, because that's
Speaker 1: how it would work for us. If you made a
Speaker 1: deal with my one of my were a wances he
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to make it without my permission, and therefore,
Speaker 1: if I got somebody took over for me, they would
Speaker 1: probably honor that agreement. Whereas the English didn't see it
Speaker 1: that way at all. They were like, that's just some guy,
Speaker 1: that's he don't he don't represent all of us or
Speaker 1: the gift giving or any of that stuff. It might
Speaker 1: have just been enough that the cultural difference was not
Speaker 1: respected by enough by either side maybe to fully know
Speaker 1: what conversation they were actually having. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: And in either case, what what we do know is
Speaker 1: true in between these two stories is there was a
Speaker 1: woman being traded around who didn't really fall to understand
Speaker 1: what was going on, and she was being used by
Speaker 1: many people in this as a token in this in
Speaker 1: this war that was going on. And then also just
Speaker 1: to talk about coco Um. Yeah, the English accounts don't
Speaker 1: really have much written about him, and they say no
Speaker 1: one knows what happened to him, and that he just
Speaker 1: wasn't He's just not part of their story at all. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So there's no record of him being killed on purpose
Speaker 1: by Samuel Argyll, although I have to wonder if Samuel
Speaker 1: Argo would have known Cocum, you know, I would have
Speaker 1: just been like, yeah, we there's some warriors and we
Speaker 1: killed him. I don't know who he's married to. I
Speaker 1: don't care, I don't know, but but anyway, so it's
Speaker 1: he might have been killed or not. We didn't know
Speaker 1: what happened to coco Um for you and his story,
Speaker 1: it's not it's it's a grab bag of truths, and
Speaker 1: it's good to remember as contemporary things are happening around us,
Speaker 1: how much things are being framed and sold in a package.
Speaker 1: And it might look like, well, I'm here now, so
Speaker 1: I clearly know the whole story, and you don't. You
Speaker 1: never know it, not really anyway now, of course, whatever
Speaker 1: the truth here is this this back and forth issue,
Speaker 1: this issue of them taking Pocahontas, whoever's idea it was,
Speaker 1: whoever was okay with it. This created a tense standoff
Speaker 1: that lasted for a whole year. Pocahontas was held in
Speaker 1: Jamestown for a few months and then taken to a
Speaker 1: Virginian city called Henricus, which had been established in sixteen
Speaker 1: eleven away from the swampy Jamestown peninsula. This is also
Speaker 1: where John Rolf remember him u. He had established the
Speaker 1: Verena farms, plantation, and was exp remending with his tobacco strain,
Speaker 1: which was called Orinocco. Thank you. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many of our listeners are and your fans. I've come
Speaker 1: from my castle in Ireland. But Orinoco Flow is a
Speaker 1: very important song in the nineties. So John Rolf's experiments
Speaker 1: uh in tobacco farming and mixing these strains and everything
Speaker 1: they had turned Virginia into a profitable colony. Finally, in
Speaker 1: sixteen twelve, he wanted to let the Orinoco flow all
Speaker 1: through Virginia, but of course there were some obstacles. King
Speaker 1: James hated tobacco, so he discouraged it. He was I
Speaker 1: will catch you smoking in my colonies, young mad as
Speaker 1: long as you're living under my rule, no tobacco. He
Speaker 1: called it a vile weed too, so it is kind
Speaker 1: of well, it's like marijuana in its own time. Also,
Speaker 1: the Virginia Company thought colonists would plant tobacco instead of corn,
Speaker 1: which they desperately needed to become a self sufficient colony,
Speaker 1: so they discouraged tobacco planting too. And then finally there
Speaker 1: just wasn't enough labor to handle cultivating a cash crop
Speaker 1: like tobacco as well as cultivating food to feed the colony. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you're you might be thinking around this point
Speaker 1: as I was, and I was reading this, boy, how
Speaker 1: did the Americans deal with the fact that they didn't
Speaker 1: have enough labor to farm tobacco and food at the
Speaker 1: same time. Well, the Library of Congress website rites quote.
Speaker 1: The ultimate answer to the labor problem was ominously foreshadowed
Speaker 1: in a little noticed event that Rolfe described in sixteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: the arrival of a dutch Man of war carrying a
Speaker 1: group of captive Africans. For by the end of the century,
Speaker 1: African slave labor would become the colony's economic and social foundation.
Speaker 1: So really wild to see these early steps. Honestly, in
Speaker 1: a large part John rolf himself deciding no, I'm going
Speaker 1: to make tobacco work, and that being just you know,
Speaker 1: an early domino in what eventually led to, you know,
Speaker 1: the enslavement of an entire race of people in this
Speaker 1: country for generation generation, generation that we're still dealing with
Speaker 1: the repercussions of today. Wow. John Rolfe, not to put
Speaker 1: all that on your shoulders, but not all of it.
Speaker 1: But he's just trying to make some money. He's just
Speaker 1: like nobody else is doing tobacco. I think it's a
Speaker 1: great idea, guys, know right, turns out it's addictive. Anyone
Speaker 1: knew that. But yeah, But at this point in our story,
Speaker 1: it's six thirteen, so this has not happened yet. Everything
Speaker 1: is pure and great. Pocahonas is around fifteen or sixteen
Speaker 1: at this point, and she's taken to Henricast for safekeeping
Speaker 1: and put in the care of Reverend Alexander Whittaker to
Speaker 1: learn more of the English language, to learn their religion
Speaker 1: and their way of life. Because the Virginia Company also
Speaker 1: had a goal to convert Native Americans to Christianity. It
Speaker 1: was like a big major colonization goal of theirs, so
Speaker 1: they probably figured Pocahontas was a great place to start
Speaker 1: with all that, and according to the colonist Ralph Hammer,
Speaker 1: Pocahonas received quote extraordinary courteous usage among her captors. But
Speaker 1: according to the other side of history, Pocahonas fell into
Speaker 1: a deep depression while she was being held hostage. The
Speaker 1: English constantly told her that because her father wouldn't pay
Speaker 1: the ransom, he must not love her enough, and he
Speaker 1: must not love her anymore, and if he did, he
Speaker 1: would pay it and she would could leave. She could
Speaker 1: leave right now if he would just pay it. But
Speaker 1: I guess he just doesn't love you like they're just
Speaker 1: every day like drilling her with this horrible list of
Speaker 1: So she had a nerve is breakdown, unsurprising, and the
Speaker 1: English asked if her sister would be allowed to visit,
Speaker 1: so they made an arrangement, and when Matachana showed up
Speaker 1: with her husband, Pocahonas told her that she had been
Speaker 1: raped and thought that she was pregnant. And the Mattapony
Speaker 1: oral history says the reason they moved her to Henry
Speaker 1: Kiss in the first place from Jamestown was to hide
Speaker 1: this pregnancy, and it also says that she gave birth
Speaker 1: to a son called Thomas before she converted to Christianity,
Speaker 1: before she ever married John Role for any of that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's sticky because, as we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: first episode, this history is disputed somewhat. Some historians, like
Speaker 1: Helen Rountree, who writes for the Encyclopedia Virginia, believe that
Speaker 1: no oral history exists at all, but also that treating
Speaker 1: pocahon Is badly would have gone against English interests. They
Speaker 1: had a truce going during negotiations, and they were still
Speaker 1: outnumbered by the Native people and they feared retaliation. So
Speaker 1: this is really the biggest divergence in the two stories
Speaker 1: so far, and it definitely deserves, you know, some conversation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, you know, it's not like this
Speaker 1: is an unusual scenario for a girl from one of
Speaker 1: the native tribes, Yeah, to be raped and stuff. It's
Speaker 1: not hard to believe that they would have treated a
Speaker 1: girl like this because they did that. In fact, I
Speaker 1: just saw yesterday that Deb Hayland, the Interior Secretary, has
Speaker 1: added squaw to the list of slurs, because that is
Speaker 1: a word that the English used specifically to describe young
Speaker 1: Native children that they want to have sex with. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know if that meant young like prepubescent, or
Speaker 1: if it meant young like they're eleven, they're twelve to
Speaker 1: fourteen and have undergone their puberty dance or not. Either way,
Speaker 1: either way, it's really gross. Yeah, I just want to
Speaker 1: throw that in there because youth is just such a
Speaker 1: different word to us today than it was to the commonist.
Speaker 1: I just like to really point that out now. It's interesting,
Speaker 1: but it's very interesting, So yeah, don't say that. But
Speaker 1: then again, like as we said in part one, it
Speaker 1: kind of doesn't feel fair to reject the tribal oral
Speaker 1: history out of hand just because it doesn't align with
Speaker 1: the written records at the time. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what we've been saying, right, because of course the written
Speaker 1: records of the time were written by the English, who
Speaker 1: were not trying to write down like yeah, and then
Speaker 1: I raped a prisoner. Uh, you know, obviously they're gonna
Speaker 1: make it as clean and uh and positive to themselves
Speaker 1: as they can. I mean, plus, they're out here being
Speaker 1: like we're Christian. Were these men of God trying to
Speaker 1: spread this wonderful word of God? And why would they
Speaker 1: write down? And we did that by raping this young
Speaker 1: girl doing all this crazy ship. But I do want
Speaker 1: to point out that this story could also sort of
Speaker 1: be propaganda by the tribe itself in a way, the
Speaker 1: kind of the way the English account is somewhat propaganda
Speaker 1: for them. Yeah, in terms of just like trying to
Speaker 1: earn sympathies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't mean it
Speaker 1: in a bad way, like, but but it's kind of like, listen,
Speaker 1: know this this is something that happened to a lot
Speaker 1: of Native women. They were raped and impregnated and killed
Speaker 1: by englishmen. But it seems like white people don't really
Speaker 1: care about any Native besides poccons. So okay, why don't
Speaker 1: we put that experience on that character that you care
Speaker 1: about and it will make you care about the actual
Speaker 1: Native people that have happened to She's like, you're your
Speaker 1: avatar for Native people you give a funk about. So
Speaker 1: if that's what it takes, then here, now do you care?
Speaker 1: You pissed? What are you gonna do? You know? I
Speaker 1: mean that could be true too, So Avatar challenging choice
Speaker 1: of words because of course the movie Avatar was such
Speaker 1: a poor representation of Western colonization of Native people's But no, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's interesting to kind of pick it apart
Speaker 1: like that. Again, just going back to the idea that
Speaker 1: you've got an oral history that's been told over and
Speaker 1: over again and down through generations that will inevitably have changed,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens with I mean, that's been happening
Speaker 1: in all storytelling throughout history, written or not. Um and
Speaker 1: but then but then you've got the written history is
Speaker 1: some people who are trying to make themselves look good,
Speaker 1: So where's the truth? Um? I can't even say it
Speaker 1: somewhere in between because it might be on either end. Um,
Speaker 1: all we know is the situation as it stands today
Speaker 1: and the documented history that we do have. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: I think that for most saying conscientious people can can
Speaker 1: go ahead and align your sympathies where they ought to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean that that might be what what I
Speaker 1: was saying might be kind of why some historians don't
Speaker 1: want to comment, yeah, because they're like, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's an oral tradition, So how am I supposed to
Speaker 1: come in and tell you you haven't been telling this
Speaker 1: story for generations, Like that's not for me to do.
Speaker 1: But also like, again, it's the facts as they occurred
Speaker 1: to Pocahonist might not be true, but they certainly are
Speaker 1: true facts. Does that make sense? And so it's sort
Speaker 1: of like I don't want to be like that's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of hogwash because it has a lot of
Speaker 1: truth in it, even if it didn't happen to that character.
Speaker 1: She's the representative character of the experience as a whole.
Speaker 1: So it might be like, yeah, Okay, I mean, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say Pocahonas, I'd say somebody else, but nobody cares
Speaker 1: about anybody else, So I you know, I'm just wondering
Speaker 1: if that's that's my own speculation stage. I mean, we
Speaker 1: do that today in stories. I mean, you know, it
Speaker 1: will do a you know, do a movie about somebody
Speaker 1: riding the Oregon Trail and like that character becomes iconic
Speaker 1: and everything that happened to them is what happened to
Speaker 1: people on the Oregon Trail. But we're centralizing it on
Speaker 1: one character. That's very common in storytelling for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Pocahonas did live among the English for about a
Speaker 1: year while she was waiting to be released. In March
Speaker 1: of sixteen fourteen, standoff culminated in this violent clash along
Speaker 1: the Pamunkey River, and Pocahonas was allowed to go ashore
Speaker 1: to speak with some of her relatives, and she told them,
Speaker 1: according to the English record that quote, if her father
Speaker 1: had loved her, he would not value her less than
Speaker 1: old swords, guns or axes, wherefore she would still dwell
Speaker 1: with the english Men who loved her. I believe the
Speaker 1: Matta Pony history has a similar quote from her, but
Speaker 1: of course, in their history she's been told that he
Speaker 1: don't love her, whereas in the English history he you know,
Speaker 1: they feel like he doesn't. He really doesn't. I mean
Speaker 1: they're framing it as if he really doesn't, and that
Speaker 1: she came to that conclusion herself right, And as Tony
Speaker 1: Horowitz relates in a Voyage Long and Strange, one Englishman
Speaker 1: certainly did love her, Enya enthusiast John Rolfe, who wrote
Speaker 1: to the colonies governor asking for permission to marry her.
Speaker 1: He wrote that his feelings for her quote have a
Speaker 1: long time been so entangled and enthralled, and so intricate
Speaker 1: a labyrinth that I was even a wearied to unwind myself.
Speaker 1: They're out. Apparently this confession was a little risky because
Speaker 1: the English didn't look kindly on marriage with Heathens, and
Speaker 1: rolf wrote that he knew quote the heavy displeasure which
Speaker 1: Almighty God conceived against the sons of Levi and Israel
Speaker 1: for marrying strange wives God, strange wives like, And he
Speaker 1: knew the other settlers might quote tax or taunt me.
Speaker 1: But even so Ralph was too in love to care.
Speaker 1: He could barely endure the many passions and sufferings which
Speaker 1: I have daily, hourly, yea, and in my sleep endured.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't about sex. It's about sex, it's not
Speaker 1: definitely I don't want to just have sex with her.
Speaker 1: He was very quick to assure the governor it was
Speaker 1: not just about colonel you know, pleasures or whatever. It
Speaker 1: was definitely because he could save her soul and his
Speaker 1: own through their union. Um, she wanted to become Christian,
Speaker 1: he told the Governor, and quote gave a great appearance
Speaker 1: of love to me. And Tony concludes this by saying,
Speaker 1: we have only Rolf's words as evidence of her affection,
Speaker 1: so that's very important to keep in mind. Pocahon is
Speaker 1: never wrote down like Mrs john Roll for anything in
Speaker 1: her diary. Like she we don't know how she felt
Speaker 1: about him, hearts. Mrs Poconta, the other side of history,
Speaker 1: says that likely she just wanted to do the best
Speaker 1: she could for her people. She thought this would be
Speaker 1: a great way to handle it. She had a half
Speaker 1: white child, so she was probably like fine, whatever. They
Speaker 1: also think that Rolf wanted to marry her, not necessarily
Speaker 1: because he was in love with her, but he wanted
Speaker 1: Potton's tobacco guys to like give him some guidance on
Speaker 1: his crops or whatever. So kind of of a cold
Speaker 1: way of looking at their union. I guess I prefer
Speaker 1: to believe his letter to the governor that he was
Speaker 1: burning with passion and hopefully she felt the same. That
Speaker 1: would be a nicer story, certainly. I'm it's given me
Speaker 1: just tiny little flashes of Karl Tandler, who wrote in
Speaker 1: his book about you know, the love he shared with
Speaker 1: Elena Dayos and you know we looked back in an
Speaker 1: hour like she had no interest in him at all,
Speaker 1: but he was the only one writing it down. So again,
Speaker 1: don't know if that's true for these two are not
Speaker 1: um again, just have to just have to kind of
Speaker 1: choose how you want to look at it, I guess
Speaker 1: in a way kind of because nobody can tell you
Speaker 1: what's true. Not uncommon though, even if we're going to
Speaker 1: the oral history tradition for women even in the tribes,
Speaker 1: to marry for sensible reasons, for for unification reasons, So
Speaker 1: that entirely possible, right. And they pointed out to of course,
Speaker 1: that being taken hostage was also very normal amongst the tribes.
Speaker 1: It was very normal to Okay, I got a hostage.
Speaker 1: You're going to be treated well for as long as
Speaker 1: I need to keep you. So it wasn't anything like
Speaker 1: her being held hostage by the English would have been fine,
Speaker 1: except that she fell into this depression and that's why
Speaker 1: they think she was mistreated. But look, everyone gave permission
Speaker 1: for this wedding, including pow Hotton. So maybe this was
Speaker 1: the answer, right, Maybe that's all worked out. Marriages, Like
Speaker 1: we said, they bring together warring nations all the time.
Speaker 1: Both the pow Hotton nation and the English settlers were
Speaker 1: trying to find a way to end these hostilities without
Speaker 1: feeling like they lost. So in April of six fourteen,
Speaker 1: Pocahontas was baptized and she took the name Rebecca. Oh
Speaker 1: my God, Becky, I love your hair. Tony Horwitz writes
Speaker 1: that she was named Rebecca quote after Isaac's biblical bride,
Speaker 1: whom God told two nations are in thy womb, one
Speaker 1: mightier than the other. It's a bit of a loaded name,
Speaker 1: all right. I'm like, did she pick it or did
Speaker 1: they pick it? Because if they picked it, that's a
Speaker 1: real message. We don't have any evidence to suggest that
Speaker 1: she knows the name Rebecca. I mean, I guess she's
Speaker 1: learned the Bible. They would have been probably teaching her
Speaker 1: English by reading her the Bible, I imagine, And I
Speaker 1: mean they wanted to convert her, so she didn't. She
Speaker 1: was like scrolling through Instagram like Rebecca, Jessica now mackenzie
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, she had that chalkboards like Klin McCarty, Josh Lynn.
Speaker 1: They were all crossed down. She's like Rebecca. Rebecca married
Speaker 1: John Rolfe with her uncle and two brothers in attendance.
Speaker 1: Her father couldn't come, obviously, because it was Paal Hotton.
Speaker 1: He would have been killed or captured likely, but he
Speaker 1: did send a necklace of huge pearls as a gift,
Speaker 1: and he also gifted them hundreds of acres of land.
Speaker 1: So he's very supportive of this union. And this was
Speaker 1: the beginning of what became known as the Piece of Pocahontas.
Speaker 1: Ralph Hamer wrote quote, ever since we have had friendly
Speaker 1: commerce and trade, not only with Paal Hotton himself, but
Speaker 1: also with his subjects round about us. So as now
Speaker 1: I see no reason why the colony should not thrive apace,
Speaker 1: and it did partly because of Ralph's or no co flow.
Speaker 1: Tony Horwitz writes, quote, within a few years, settlers were
Speaker 1: growing tobacco to the exclusion of other crops and exporting
Speaker 1: it by the ton at tremendous profit. Tobacco was the
Speaker 1: gold that Europeans had so long sought in North America
Speaker 1: and never found. Well, that sounds once again like everything's
Speaker 1: going great for everyone, and I feel like we should
Speaker 1: just stop the story right there and not here anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: we got everybody's making everybody's married and happy. It's like
Speaker 1: the end of a Shakespeare play. And now all these settlers,
Speaker 1: they're finally making all this cash just profit profit profit, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they made a lot of profit, probably because they didn't
Speaker 1: have to pay the people who were harvesting the tobacco.
Speaker 1: I think that really helps your profit margin. Just something
Speaker 1: I learned history. But anyway, speaking of profit, let's go
Speaker 1: to a commercial break, all right, welcome back to part
Speaker 1: three of part two story. Yeah, I kind of got
Speaker 1: lost in a second part. Does that make it part six?
Speaker 1: Did it? By anyway? Welcome back to the show's not
Speaker 1: getting into that. So yeah, so things are going well
Speaker 1: and Henry Kiss and Jamestown and other settlements and it's
Speaker 1: generally agreed that in sixteen fifteen, Pocahontas now known as
Speaker 1: Rebecca rolf gave birth to Thomas Rolfe. Like we said,
Speaker 1: the oral history is pretty firm that she gave birth
Speaker 1: to Thomas before she married John. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seems a little weird to hide a baby for
Speaker 1: a year and then jump out being like, here's my
Speaker 1: newborn one year old. I mean, this isn't a sitcom.
Speaker 1: Came out like a toddler and be like, oh, you
Speaker 1: have fresh out of the delivery room. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she's still recovering and the kids walking, so yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't like to cast doubt on the
Speaker 1: roral history or anything like that. That that one just
Speaker 1: doesn't quite play for me. I'm not really seeing them
Speaker 1: being able to hide a baby for a year and
Speaker 1: then popping out like this is a new baby. I
Speaker 1: was like, I guess it's possible that she maybe had
Speaker 1: another baby that they named Thomas, and they put the
Speaker 1: first Thomas somewhere else and then they were like, here's
Speaker 1: this Thomas. But that seems weird too, Like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: that one just doesn't play out for me quite right,
Speaker 1: it feels discordant um. But again we don't know, so
Speaker 1: we do not. But according to the English history, she
Speaker 1: had a newborn child in sixteen fifteen, and then the
Speaker 1: Virginia Company decided they wanted John and Rebecca to come
Speaker 1: to England and show off how great the Virginia Company
Speaker 1: was doing it establishing settlements and converting natives to Christianity.
Speaker 1: So it kind of wanted like a walking billboard for
Speaker 1: their efforts in the New World. So she and Rolph
Speaker 1: went to England in sixteen sixteen, and they weren't alone
Speaker 1: in this voyage. They were accompanied by their son Thomas,
Speaker 1: and eleven pow Hottons, including Pocahontas. Older sister Matta China
Speaker 1: and her husband came along as well, as well as
Speaker 1: a priest called Tomacomo. Toma Coomo was going to be
Speaker 1: pow Hotton's eyes and ears in England's finally his chance
Speaker 1: to get a look at this famed country that all
Speaker 1: the white people were showing up from talking such a
Speaker 1: big deal. Oh we have all these you know, horrible
Speaker 1: smelling streets and rickety carriages, and at whom I controlled bath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then apparently you've got like a bunch of people
Speaker 1: starving all the time. To an earlier native visitor to
Speaker 1: England had only seen London in the Times and reported
Speaker 1: that there were no trees in England, which explained what
Speaker 1: brought the colonists to Santa Comaco. But how Hotton asked
Speaker 1: to Macomo to go find out about the English god
Speaker 1: and the English King, and also to find out what
Speaker 1: really happened to John Smith, because remember he hadn't believed
Speaker 1: the story they told him back in six nine that
Speaker 1: Smith had died on his way back to England. Tomacomo
Speaker 1: was also supposed to count as many Englishmen as he
Speaker 1: could by cutting notches into a stick, but as Tony writes,
Speaker 1: he quote had to quickly abandon this census and was
Speaker 1: likewise stunned by England's abundant crops and trees. So he
Speaker 1: must have seen more than just the city of London,
Speaker 1: because he's like, there's actually a but ton of people here,
Speaker 1: and there's a whole there's so much land. What are
Speaker 1: they doing over here? What got all the kinds of
Speaker 1: trees and rivers and ship? Yeah? No, they went they
Speaker 1: went about like they went to Norfolk and then into
Speaker 1: like a couple different so he got to see the countryside,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I was stunned because he was just like, well,
Speaker 1: we thought that's what you were over at our spot for.
Speaker 1: You got plenty of it. You've got plenty and Helen
Speaker 1: round Tree, writing for Encyclopedia Virginia, says quote his encounters
Speaker 1: with evangelistic clergyman would turn his sympathies forever against the English.
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't be hard. Honestly, imagine the first guy
Speaker 1: to come up to me like, please come give confession
Speaker 1: for your sins, my son, excuse me? I bet they
Speaker 1: were like, because he's also a priest, right, so they
Speaker 1: were like, let's have a little priestly beating and talk
Speaker 1: about priestly somethings, and the you know, Tomacomo was like, well,
Speaker 1: we you know, we smoked this pipe and we have
Speaker 1: these visions and we talk and we you know, we're
Speaker 1: part of the council with whatever. And the clergyman were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: as well. We tell women they're going to hell if
Speaker 1: they don't have sons. That's what we do. So when
Speaker 1: Tommacomo got back to Virginia, he started advising open Chankina.
Speaker 1: How Hotton's brother who would eventually plan the attack that
Speaker 1: started the second Anglo how Hotan war So and saying
Speaker 1: that Temacomo got back, and he's like, listen, open chink
Speaker 1: and eyelas. You don't know, I love these guys over here,
Speaker 1: and open chink. And I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I never liked these When it's my turn, let's get
Speaker 1: some action going. And Pocahonas was presented as a princess
Speaker 1: while she was in England's This is sort of like
Speaker 1: one of the you know the first time we're starting
Speaker 1: to hear this royalty kind of moniker I guess being
Speaker 1: bestowed on her, but she actually was not one. According
Speaker 1: to pow Hotton tradition, their lineage is matrilineal so pow
Speaker 1: Hotton's brothers or his sister's eldest sons were the ones
Speaker 1: in line. It's all about who the mom was. But
Speaker 1: it was just kind of a way to like let
Speaker 1: everyone know what kind of treatment pocahon Is should get
Speaker 1: while she's in town. You know, they were like, she's
Speaker 1: not just a brown woman whom you treat badly. She
Speaker 1: is a royal brown woman, so treated nicely. Again, I
Speaker 1: think they were they were really trying to show a
Speaker 1: good time in England to all of the nat of
Speaker 1: tribes that they would then say, oh, well then yes,
Speaker 1: we'll take your way of life, that's what we would prefer.
Speaker 1: They were really trying to sell the tribes on England
Speaker 1: via Pocahontas. Yeah, John Smith even wrote in a letter
Speaker 1: to Queen Anne that they should treat her like a
Speaker 1: royal guest because it would help maintain their good will
Speaker 1: with the pow Hutton's and it seems like she was
Speaker 1: pretty well received. Um. She and John Rolfe went to
Speaker 1: plays on parties, they were seated with lords and ladies,
Speaker 1: and once Pocahontas and Tomacomo were seated with King James,
Speaker 1: and apparently he was just so unprepossessing that they didn't
Speaker 1: know it was him until someone told him later, which
Speaker 1: I think must have been an interesting cultural, just weird
Speaker 1: moment for them, because like we said when in part one,
Speaker 1: when John Smith met Powe Hotton, they had really rolled
Speaker 1: it out like he was like seated on this day
Speaker 1: as he was dressed up for it, like they wanted
Speaker 1: to show off. And then she's meeting their king and
Speaker 1: he's like, I guess we're in a like a beige
Speaker 1: suit or something. He's just chilling in the corner, and
Speaker 1: they were just like that didn't look like a king
Speaker 1: to me, you know. Picturing also like how I imagine
Speaker 1: they probably dressed her over there in Englishes, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm just juxtaposing in my mind this twelve year old
Speaker 1: girl back in tribal America doing cartwheels in the village. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, now like getting her corset tied up, you know,
Speaker 1: being put into this British bundage and told like, see,
Speaker 1: isn't this life better? Right with like a rough and
Speaker 1: like her hair all piled up and all this weird stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like if it were me, I'd be like
Speaker 1: not really going to go back to like having a
Speaker 1: good time, you know, right, and we were doing fine.
Speaker 1: It does seem that they were pretty interested in some
Speaker 1: of it. Like there was at one point John Smith
Speaker 1: like sent some builders to Powhattan to build him an
Speaker 1: English style house. There was like, you know, there were
Speaker 1: some things that they were like, I'm interested in that
Speaker 1: I'd like to know. But it's almost more of an
Speaker 1: indictment to me of the of the English, because the
Speaker 1: natives were like, there's things about your culture that I like,
Speaker 1: and i'd be interested in, whereas the English were like,
Speaker 1: and your culture is nonsense and savage and they're all
Speaker 1: going to hell and I have to save you. Right,
Speaker 1: totally weird, completely different way of looking at the world
Speaker 1: around you. Yeah, because of course, like you know, we
Speaker 1: don't want to say that the tribes weren't happy to
Speaker 1: receive guns for hunting or comforts. You know that that
Speaker 1: that the English were so obsessed with. You know that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you show up and you're like, hey, try this,
Speaker 1: try this comforter I've made. You're like, oh, damn, this
Speaker 1: is a lot better than what I've been making here.
Speaker 1: But then you get into like, well how did you
Speaker 1: make it? Well? Yeah, it takes a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: if you ever heard of capitalism, um, because it's kind
Speaker 1: of like that, it's great, you're gonna love it. But yeah.
Speaker 1: Their homes were also really mobile, because they were telling
Speaker 1: show with mats on the floor that they wove so
Speaker 1: they could pick up and go where. Moved the whole
Speaker 1: capital city away from Jamestown. Yeah, I know, a big deal.
Speaker 1: And so maybe the English style house, I mean, that
Speaker 1: could have been even him trying to be like I'm
Speaker 1: also permanent. You know, it might have been just like
Speaker 1: if I build a house, like you build a house,
Speaker 1: maybe you'll see this as my property. Yeah, who knows,
Speaker 1: but yeah. Pocahont, while she was in England, also spent
Speaker 1: some time with Rolf's family, so she got to meet
Speaker 1: her in laws. That's nice, I guess, depending on how
Speaker 1: they were. She was introduced to society under their sponsorship,
Speaker 1: so she probably went to lots of parties and events.
Speaker 1: And she also sat for an English portrait, as you say,
Speaker 1: fully dressed in very very English garbs. She's looks like
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth as Whollo, except that she's not obviously now.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long after they arrived that Pocahont learned that
Speaker 1: John Smith was still alive. She's like that old that
Speaker 1: old man when I was a kid also and so
Speaker 1: used to teach me English. But it would be months
Speaker 1: before he called to see her. In his account, he
Speaker 1: said he was just busy. But it seems like everyone
Speaker 1: thinks that this was hell a rude of him not
Speaker 1: to come see her. Right, Historians and contemporaries like believe
Speaker 1: that like this was a dick move, right, I mean
Speaker 1: they're like, if you have a friend in town. You
Speaker 1: go call on him, like what do you wait too long?
Speaker 1: And it's incredibly impolite. It's like you don't want to
Speaker 1: talk to him for some reason. I mean, could that
Speaker 1: be according to you? This girl saved your life. You
Speaker 1: know a couple of times, wouldn't you want to go
Speaker 1: stay high? Think so? Or yeah? What he is? He like,
Speaker 1: she's going to call me out that it never happened.
Speaker 1: And eventually they did meet, and it was an awkward meeting.
Speaker 1: John Smith wrote that when she saw him, pocahon Is
Speaker 1: quote without any word, turned about, obscured her face as
Speaker 1: not seeming well contented. Then she reminded him of all
Speaker 1: the promises he had made to Powhatan. What was yours
Speaker 1: should be his? She said, you called him fove or
Speaker 1: being in his land a stranger. But instead Smith had
Speaker 1: dipped out and his English friends told pow Hotton that
Speaker 1: he was dead, and none of them ever believed that,
Speaker 1: And in fact, Pocahonas told John Smith that the pow
Speaker 1: Hoptons that came to England with her had made sure
Speaker 1: to ask about him when they got to England, quote
Speaker 1: because your countrymen will lie much. So She's like, we're
Speaker 1: used to you guys lying you know, the idea that
Speaker 1: John Smith was dead. Of course we didn't believe that,
Speaker 1: so go check in on that guy. Yeah. She was like,
Speaker 1: not only that, but we were like, is the first
Speaker 1: thing we're gonna do. Yeah, and we're gonna find out, oh,
Speaker 1: you lie. The prize. First thing we do is going
Speaker 1: to find out that you lie. Right, Because again paw
Speaker 1: Hotton like would rather have been dealing with John Smith
Speaker 1: this whole time. And no, guys, it wasn't so much.
Speaker 1: I think that they were mad that John Smith was there.
Speaker 1: They were mad that the English had told him that
Speaker 1: John Smith was dead, when in fact, I I speculation
Speaker 1: station wonder if pow Hotton might not have told the
Speaker 1: English if he knew John Smith was alive, Well, then
Speaker 1: you get him back here. I want to talk to
Speaker 1: John Smith maybe if we're gonna we're gonna go through this.
Speaker 1: I liked talking to him, and I don't like you.
Speaker 1: That might have been why they told him, like he
Speaker 1: might have been like, I'm sorry, but I made a
Speaker 1: deal with your were of once John Smith and they
Speaker 1: were like, well John Smith ain't our chief, first of all,
Speaker 1: and secondly he's dead. So now you're dealing with me
Speaker 1: George Percy, who sucks and like, and then Lord de Lawire,
Speaker 1: who sucks even more apparently. Um so, yeah, that's probably true.
Speaker 1: And I think they were still pretty pissed at John
Speaker 1: Smith though, because you know, I guess he hadn't really
Speaker 1: made it very clear how it worked, or had promised
Speaker 1: them ship that he never could delivers very possible too,
Speaker 1: because he was, you know, kind of a brag got braggert,
Speaker 1: so he might have been like, oh, yeah, no problem,
Speaker 1: like this is gonna be great forever now and whatever.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't even try to keep the piece
Speaker 1: after he left maybe or something. So anyway, I don't
Speaker 1: think she was happy with him. Is short of that. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: In March sixteen seventeen, they all boarded a ship to
Speaker 1: go back to Virginia. They had done their propaganda tour
Speaker 1: for the Virginia Company and it was time to go home.
Speaker 1: But suddenly Pocahonas got really sick, and after only a
Speaker 1: few miles down river, they stopped to take her ashore.
Speaker 1: That's where she passed away, telling her husband all must die.
Speaker 1: She was interred on March one, sixteen seventeen. John Wolfe
Speaker 1: wrote that she was quote much lamented, and she was
Speaker 1: only twenty one years old. Much like a lot of
Speaker 1: this story. There are several theories about how Pocahonas died
Speaker 1: um In the other side of history. They say that
Speaker 1: pow Hotton was told Pocahonas was poisoned. They say that
Speaker 1: she was in perfect health before they got on the
Speaker 1: boat back to Virginia, Um, and then she suddenly got
Speaker 1: sick after a meal and that's when she died. So
Speaker 1: the timing is real awkward, and they she probably got
Speaker 1: poisoned in voyage long and strange. Tony Horwitz says some
Speaker 1: of her contemporaries wrote that she was bothered by the
Speaker 1: smokey environments of the you know, area of London that
Speaker 1: they were living in, So maybe she had like tuberculosis
Speaker 1: or some kind of respiratory complaints. But Helen Roundtree in
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia Virginia says that's not very likely because Pocahonas
Speaker 1: would be very used to smoky native homes. They had
Speaker 1: like a fire in the middle of their tents, so
Speaker 1: they would have been very common to have a smoky
Speaker 1: house and that wouldn't have bothered her at all. Um.
Speaker 1: She also said that John Rolfe had been given a
Speaker 1: huge grant to start a mission church in Virginia, and
Speaker 1: she writes that quote Pocohonis would have been expected to
Speaker 1: serve the dual roles of interpreter and house mother, which
Speaker 1: would have been a strenuous assignment for someone who is
Speaker 1: ill or dying. So she doesn't see the tuberculosis argument
Speaker 1: because that, you know, you kind of have that for
Speaker 1: a minute before you get killed by it. Um. However,
Speaker 1: she says that the ships that brought John Rolfe, Tomacomo,
Speaker 1: and the other colonists back to Virginia after Pocahonas died
Speaker 1: also brought an epidemic of hemorrhagic dysentery that they called
Speaker 1: bloody flux with them. So maybe Pocahonas just got the
Speaker 1: bloody flux while she was on board and that's what
Speaker 1: killed her. That sounds like a bloody fluxing bad time
Speaker 1: for real, horrible and honestly, that explanation makes the most
Speaker 1: sense to me personally, Um, simply because her son Thomas,
Speaker 1: who was you know, a toddler at this point, was
Speaker 1: also very sick at the same time that Pocahonas was,
Speaker 1: and when she was dying She told John Rolfe that
Speaker 1: she was happy to die if it meant that her
Speaker 1: son could could live, and he was like telling her
Speaker 1: that looks like Thomas is going to recover. And so
Speaker 1: she was able to die at peace with that. So
Speaker 1: that lends a lot to me to say, there's something
Speaker 1: going on this ship. Why would they poison a toddler? Well,
Speaker 1: and it's unlikely he would have survived and she would,
Speaker 1: you know, and why poison her at all? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand. I mean, you know, there's assholes everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it could have just been some rando. It's just
Speaker 1: odd to be like, Okay, we got everything we wanted
Speaker 1: out of this native woman. She's converted. She's out here
Speaker 1: making us look good. Now she's going to go back
Speaker 1: to Virginia make us look good even more with her
Speaker 1: her people. Let's kill her on the way. Well no,
Speaker 1: but I mean in terms of government conspiracy, I don't
Speaker 1: believe it. But some random pure blood asshole, you know
Speaker 1: who's just like I don't like that John rolf married
Speaker 1: one of these tribal women. Like you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: posing as an English person, but you're not, Like I
Speaker 1: could see some racist dick bag. You know, the poison
Speaker 1: story doesn't necessarily flesh out, but you know, and not
Speaker 1: to say that someone wouldn't do it just out of malice.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always out of malice when you're poisoned someone.
Speaker 1: But you know what I mean, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But that's a good point. It's a good point. I
Speaker 1: do have a tendency to be like, there's no logic
Speaker 1: in that, forgetting that humans don't always act from logical
Speaker 1: That's true too anyway, because Thomas the Toddler was really
Speaker 1: sick and John rolf had to get back to the
Speaker 1: New World and open his church and everything, he ended
Speaker 1: up reluctantly having to leave Thomas in England to be
Speaker 1: cared for by his brother Um expecting, I think to
Speaker 1: see him, you know, have him to be sent to
Speaker 1: Virginia at some point, but he actually would never see
Speaker 1: him again. Thomas would not sail to Virginia until sixteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, which is thirteen years after John Rolfe died,
Speaker 1: so he kind of lost both his parents that day.
Speaker 1: And paw Hatton fell into a deep depression when he
Speaker 1: found out about Pocahon's death, and this had been his
Speaker 1: favorite daughter, you know, for her whole life. She'd been
Speaker 1: such a an important part of this story. And pow
Speaker 1: Hatton's like, what's in his seventies at this point, she's
Speaker 1: only twenty one. I mean, he probably definitely expected her
Speaker 1: to live a lot long. Absolutely, the English got word
Speaker 1: of his death in April of sixteen eighteen, and he
Speaker 1: was succeeded first by a brother who proved ineffectual, and
Speaker 1: then by his brother Opechankanaw, the last great pow Hotton leader.
Speaker 1: And remember Opa Chackinaw had gotten all that shitty feedback
Speaker 1: about anything from Toma Como being like, these guys aren't cool.
Speaker 1: And Helen Rowntree writes in a stunning throwback to our
Speaker 1: Carl Tandler episode again second reference to that that quote.
Speaker 1: If his funeral followed custom, then paw Hotton's body was flayed,
Speaker 1: his flesh removed from the bones and dried, his skeleton rearticulated,
Speaker 1: and his abdomen filled with valuables, and the whole covered
Speaker 1: with the preserved skin to achieve a semblance of the
Speaker 1: living form. Uh. You know, hey, that's a cultural tradition,
Speaker 1: and in its own way, it's beautiful. In my way,
Speaker 1: it's not because I'm a little terrified of skin being
Speaker 1: taken off and then put back on again. But you know,
Speaker 1: that was that their thing. But this was this was
Speaker 1: not strange. This was a very normal tradition. Um and uh.
Speaker 1: And to them, it wasn't one of the most horrifying
Speaker 1: things they've ever heard. And that's okay. We've ever We
Speaker 1: grow up with different ideas, That's okay. John Rolph ended
Speaker 1: up back in Virginia, as we know, with his or
Speaker 1: no co flow. He married a third time, and he
Speaker 1: died in sixteen twenty two. But though his marriage and
Speaker 1: his tobacco enterprise was critical to the success of the colony,
Speaker 1: he was, as Tony Wrights quote, gradually airbrushed from American memory.
Speaker 1: But why you know, I'm like John rolf It seems
Speaker 1: like a cool American hero. He like smuggled these seeds
Speaker 1: over and had a whole business concern he was trying
Speaker 1: to start. And he's the reason this whole colony started
Speaker 1: turning a profit. We loved turning a profit. That's true.
Speaker 1: You'd think we'd learn more about him well. To the
Speaker 1: reason is because by the time we started to celebrate
Speaker 1: Jamestown as a country most states had banned marriage between
Speaker 1: Native Americans and white people, and that, of course made
Speaker 1: John rolf and Poconi's story a little awkward. But also
Speaker 1: people in Virginia became super obsessed with being able to
Speaker 1: tie their lineage to Pocahonist and John Rolfe. I guess
Speaker 1: it's like old money New York being like myle until
Speaker 1: it just came over the Bay Flower. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like that in Virginia. To be like that great grandmother
Speaker 1: was Poconta's right. So in when Virginia passed its Act
Speaker 1: to Preserve Racial Integrity that segregated anyone with any trace
Speaker 1: of a non Caucasian heritage, they made sure to include
Speaker 1: a clause exempting white Virginians with quote one sixteenth or
Speaker 1: less of Indian heritage and quote no other non Caucasic blood.
Speaker 1: And this became known as the Pocahontas Clause. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Virginia did what I mean in nineteen twenty four, just
Speaker 1: a decade before, we were causing a real fuss about
Speaker 1: a whole other group of people being stodgy about racial purity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we had just come off of it. We have
Speaker 1: we were dealing with it. Ourselves right over here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: act to preserve racial integrity. Gross, incredibly gross. And then
Speaker 1: that that they were also like, but let's count how
Speaker 1: many generations from Pocahona And that's this as much as
Speaker 1: you can have heard blood specifically. Wow. And it's okay
Speaker 1: because it makes us look good to have people here
Speaker 1: from the colonists date. I don't know, it's very weird.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone who cares about anything as much
Speaker 1: as racists care about race, you know, like the the
Speaker 1: bonkers lengths they go to. It's blowing my momd and
Speaker 1: and every day you learn more about it, and it's like, what,
Speaker 1: holy shit, what is wrong in your brain? A lot,
Speaker 1: a lot, well, at least one big thing. But then
Speaker 1: John Smith was the perfect American hero, Tony writes, quote
Speaker 1: a man of action and dash, self made, individualistic, iconoclastic,
Speaker 1: a braggart, a con man, an escape artist, an accomplished killer,
Speaker 1: scornful of rank, and ceaseless in his salesmanship. Like, that's
Speaker 1: that's who we want to tell stories about. So of
Speaker 1: course John Smith became the favored figure in this in
Speaker 1: this tall tale, and of course creating this story of
Speaker 1: the quote good Indian who was attracted to Christianity and
Speaker 1: English customs and society, who fell in love with a
Speaker 1: white man and preferred his way of life to her own,
Speaker 1: who foiled her own people's plans and preference for white
Speaker 1: people that softened the story of the brutal English subjugation
Speaker 1: of the natives. So that's so basically all in all,
Speaker 1: we can see why the story of Pocahonis and John
Speaker 1: Smith is the one we've been hearing all these years,
Speaker 1: and not not John Rolf or not the whole real
Speaker 1: story of all three of them and everyone else involved. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, and just you can see why
Speaker 1: it kind of feels like Pocahonis is barely a person
Speaker 1: anymore because she's been so propagandized by each and every
Speaker 1: side of the story where whatever they were trying to do,
Speaker 1: with whatever they were trying to do, they made her
Speaker 1: story work for it. And so it's it's just incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult to parse out who this woman was. I wish
Speaker 1: I had a little more information about her likes and
Speaker 1: dislikes or what her personality was beyond she was a
Speaker 1: playful woman, a playful one as a kid, and like
Speaker 1: to turn cartwheels, and I guess had, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of an optimistic, cheerful, loving outlook about things at least
Speaker 1: at least yeah, when she was nine, or at least
Speaker 1: when she's ten or eleven or whatever, when they were
Speaker 1: actually writing about her as a person. And when they
Speaker 1: stopped doing that, it's no one knows. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just it's and it's really sad because again, this is
Speaker 1: a real person who really lived in breathe, and she
Speaker 1: had her own desires and her own goals for her
Speaker 1: life and for her family and had two to three
Speaker 1: children and didn't get to raise any of them. And
Speaker 1: it's just frustrating. It's just frustrating. It makes me want
Speaker 1: to keep a diary, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't want nobody till somebody what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I was thinking. Don't worry, I'll
Speaker 1: tell them all what you were thinking. She thought I
Speaker 1: was great, Well that's true. Oh see, I got it right.
Speaker 1: That's all I know about her. She thought I was great,
Speaker 1: Well I need to know the end. Yeah. It is
Speaker 1: really fascinating to break this down, to see all these
Speaker 1: different sides of it. You know, sometimes I think you
Speaker 1: can you go into these like real stories and you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there there's some balance here between these these
Speaker 1: two factions that we're fighting over this land and uh.
Speaker 1: And they were always trying to see common ground. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't all Percy's. There were some john Smith's who
Speaker 1: were like trying to negotiate and make things work out
Speaker 1: for everyone's in everyone's favor. Um. But underneath all that,
Speaker 1: you kind of can't forget that they never should have
Speaker 1: been here in the first place, claiming it as their own,
Speaker 1: because this was a place people already lived. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to show up in a new country and
Speaker 1: say like, hey, we've been over here. Do you guys
Speaker 1: want to talk? Do you want to open some lines
Speaker 1: of trade? You wanta you wanna? Maybe you guys some
Speaker 1: if y'all want to come live over in our land,
Speaker 1: you can, and maybe some of us can live over here,
Speaker 1: like that's build an embassy or normal inter continental trade
Speaker 1: and open communication. Awesome. I love it showing up and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this is cool, it's mine now, by the way, right,
Speaker 1: and I know you're a king, but actually you're a
Speaker 1: subject of my king, even though you never fucking heard
Speaker 1: of him, like what very weird. It's difficult, so happy
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving anyway, I don't really understand. And then I will say, like,
Speaker 1: another reason I really like the book A Voyage Long
Speaker 1: and Strange, which we used quite a lot for these
Speaker 1: episodes as well, is because Tony Horwitz he he follows
Speaker 1: the trail of the Vikings or the conquistadors or the
Speaker 1: colonists in history, and then he goes in person today
Speaker 1: to see and follows the trail today and kind of
Speaker 1: tells you like, Okay, I'm talking to natives now today
Speaker 1: how they are feeling about this. Or I'm talking to
Speaker 1: white people now today who trace their lineage to Pocahonus,
Speaker 1: Or I'm talking New Swedes who live in Kansas City
Speaker 1: and I don't know how they got there, but but
Speaker 1: you're going to tell me, you know. And it's really
Speaker 1: very interesting, and a lot of the natives that he
Speaker 1: spoke to, particularly about Pokeahonas, we're just kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know. Another thing that really bothers me about the
Speaker 1: story of Pocahonas is that it takes away everything about
Speaker 1: our our people beyond they were either stoic and kind
Speaker 1: and had their arms wide open, and we're mowed down
Speaker 1: quickly and gone forever, or they were these brutal, you know,
Speaker 1: worrying nations and you know, came at them with sticks
Speaker 1: and got mowed down and that was it. And they're like,
Speaker 1: you kind of were taking away all of our pomp
Speaker 1: and our dumbness and all our stupid ship that we are.
Speaker 1: We're also people, you know, natives are also people. So
Speaker 1: they had plenty of of their own ideas about taking
Speaker 1: over property or or being in charge, or falling in
Speaker 1: love or what you know, all that, and you it
Speaker 1: does kind of get obscured with like, well, anyway, unfortunately
Speaker 1: those traditions are gone because we mowed over a bunch
Speaker 1: of those people. And um so now it's just this
Speaker 1: very narrow view of this whole really rich culture. Um So, anyway,
Speaker 1: just another plug for that book. You should read it.
Speaker 1: That's cool, That's very cool. And I guess in the
Speaker 1: interest of Thanksgiving to like I do think it's important
Speaker 1: to we've been critical in this episode of American colonists
Speaker 1: and and all our descendants and you know America today
Speaker 1: and England and what they were doing here and across
Speaker 1: the world. Um And that's important, And that doesn't mean Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I hate living here so much and everything
Speaker 1: about it's horrible. Like, it's just important to recognize this
Speaker 1: so that as you're moving forward, to what degree you
Speaker 1: can of make amends you do and um, to what
Speaker 1: degree you cannot let these things happen in the future
Speaker 1: you do. It's it just matters, and you can and
Speaker 1: both of those viewpoints can exist at the same time.
Speaker 1: You can be like you can look you can look
Speaker 1: critically at the racial history of this country in theory, um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's uh, that's really important for us
Speaker 1: to kind of just keep in our standardized and personal educations,
Speaker 1: you know, because we also have to keep teaching ourselves
Speaker 1: because as we have learned, history is only so much
Speaker 1: and you know, to to public schools credit there's only
Speaker 1: so much time in a school year, and history keeps
Speaker 1: getting longer, right, so you you can't you don't. There's
Speaker 1: literally not time in twelve years of school to look
Speaker 1: at every angle. Um. So it's I think it's important
Speaker 1: to I mean, Jesus, we're just doing it out of
Speaker 1: necessity for for this job. But it's so cool that
Speaker 1: we get to go dig up all these other sources
Speaker 1: and really makes me want to spend my free time
Speaker 1: doing that more. Um, so you know, your personal education
Speaker 1: and analysis is just as important. And hopefully some of
Speaker 1: y'all are listening to this show as your education actually
Speaker 1: scares me, but I kind of it would also be awesome,
Speaker 1: So we are we are, But yeah, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on both parts of this story.
Speaker 1: And maybe I mean I'd love to hear what you
Speaker 1: thought was true before you listened, because I know some
Speaker 1: people have really educated themselves about the real truth of
Speaker 1: John Smith and many people maybe and I think schools
Speaker 1: have even changed how they're teaching that story somewhat putting
Speaker 1: a question mark there because I don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: probably depends on the school. Um, but yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: curious to see, like what people thought the story was
Speaker 1: and what they thought was untrue and true about it
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, just any of your I'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and set the barlow. I knew nothing. I mean
Speaker 1: I literally like I knew that the Disney movie was
Speaker 1: wrong and that's all I knew. Yeah, Um, I knew
Speaker 1: that she was a lot younger. That's that's pretty much
Speaker 1: where I came into this from. Like pocahonas Yeah, she
Speaker 1: married a different guy, and I think she was like
Speaker 1: twelves at first. Um, and that's that's it. That's that's
Speaker 1: pretty good, pretty much all I knew. So, Um, we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about it in school. I don't think this
Speaker 1: one came up in our American history class. No. I
Speaker 1: only remember that, like the one time I didn't do
Speaker 1: my homework. I always did my homework as a very
Speaker 1: nerdy nerd, and I liked my homework. I did my homework,
Speaker 1: but mostly this one time I did not do it.
Speaker 1: And the next day we had like a pop quiz
Speaker 1: and one of the questions was about the story of
Speaker 1: Pocahonas and I was straight up like, I guess I'll
Speaker 1: take the Disney movie out of my brain and put
Speaker 1: it on here and said, no, she loved John Smith
Speaker 1: or whatever. And of course did not get that question.
Speaker 1: A raccoon and a hummingbird, yea, they were talking, they
Speaker 1: didn't talk. Gibson was in it, Christian Bale. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so I like that that red X lives forever in
Speaker 1: my memory. So I knew it wasn't true as a kid,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I ever looked into it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Yeah, I love that the one
Speaker 1: time you didn't do your homework there was a pop
Speaker 1: quiz the next day. And to this day you get
Speaker 1: anxiety if your work's not done by the end of
Speaker 1: the day, probably just because of that. I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: going to be the one time I didn't prepare that
Speaker 1: it matters. It's always the one time you didn't prepare
Speaker 1: that it matters, by the way, not in my experience,
Speaker 1: that's what it feels. I was one of those B
Speaker 1: minus students because I never My homework average was zero.
Speaker 1: But I came in and I rocked those quizzes and tests.
Speaker 1: Now as an a student, but I'm not a teacher's pet.
Speaker 1: I'll say that I didn't know how to be a
Speaker 1: teacher's pet. English teacher Mrs Waters, and I lover and
Speaker 1: I'll ever forget her, called me aside one day at
Speaker 1: the end of the semester and she said, Eli, you
Speaker 1: are a square peg in the round hole of the
Speaker 1: public education system, but you have to do it. You're
Speaker 1: smarter than this. And I did a little bit more
Speaker 1: for a while than that fizzled a way. She she
Speaker 1: try your academic career all right, now, look at you.
Speaker 1: You're you're given history lessons. Well, I'll just marry a
Speaker 1: smart girl. Oh, marry an a students and yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: both find out that it doesn't actually matter later on
Speaker 1: in life. Kind of same position. Well, yes, please, okay,
Speaker 1: please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you, especially,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you have a connection to this story
Speaker 1: or are you one six related to Polcahuntas okay, or
Speaker 1: if you're from any of these tries, especially if you
Speaker 1: have any opinion on the Mattapony oral history or any
Speaker 1: of that. Definitely would love to hear. I would love
Speaker 1: to hear. Please get back to us. You can reach
Speaker 1: us through email at Romance, at iHeart media dot com,
Speaker 1: or on social media Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite
Speaker 1: Boom and I'm at oh Great, It's Eli and the
Speaker 1: show is at ridic Romance. We are so happy to
Speaker 1: hear from you all the time. We hope you had
Speaker 1: a lovely Thanksgiving week and then we're moving into this
Speaker 1: holiday season everybody's having, you know, joy and cheer and
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. Yes, and we are so just
Speaker 1: very thankful for you spending your wonderful free time with us.
Speaker 1: We are or your multitasking time or whatever it is
Speaker 1: you do while your listeners chat. We just really appreciate
Speaker 1: you choosing us. We are and were thankful for your neighbors,
Speaker 1: your uncle's, your aunts who listen as well. And please
Speaker 1: share this episode and any others around whatever way you can. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks everyone, We'll catch on the next one. Can't wait
Speaker 1: so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening
Speaker 1: to our show. Tell your friends, neighbors, uncle's in dance
Speaker 1: to listen to a show ridiculous, Well NaNs