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Pocahontas (Volume 93)
Dispelling the clouds of romance and legend that have surrounded Pocahontas throughout the more than two centuries since her death, Grace Steele Woodward here re-creates the life of the Powhatan Indian princess. Indeed, the true story, as it emerges from these pages, is probably more dramatic and certainly more significant for American history than the legend.
The story of Pocahontas coincides with the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World. Her story begins with her first visit to the colony as a child of ten and ends with her journey to England with her English husband, John Rolfe, and their young son.
The event which catapulted her to fame was, of course, her rescue of Captain John Smith from murder at the hands of her father, Chief Powhatan, and his warriors. But the more significant contribution she made was her almost singlehanded deliverance of the Jamestown colonists from starvation and massacre. Without her compassionate gifts of food and warnings about her father's plots against them, the Jamestown settlers would probably have met the same fate as that of the Roanoke settlers.
Pocahontas' visit to London was arranged by the Virginia Company, which established the Jamestown colony, not only as a gesture of appreciation to the young princess but also as a means of stimulating further interest in New World colonization. It was Pocahontas' final act of devotion to the colonists. She was never to see her homeland again.
In preparation for writing this biography, Mrs. Woodward searched out the Virginia settings where Pocahontas lived as a child and those in England which she visited in adulthood. The author studied every pertinent document of the period, from official records of the Virginia Company to letters of highborn Londoners telling about Pocahontas' visit to England and its sorrowful aftermath.
The story of Pocahontas coincides with the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World. Her story begins with her first visit to the colony as a child of ten and ends with her journey to England with her English husband, John Rolfe, and their young son.
The event which catapulted her to fame was, of course, her rescue of Captain John Smith from murder at the hands of her father, Chief Powhatan, and his warriors. But the more significant contribution she made was her almost singlehanded deliverance of the Jamestown colonists from starvation and massacre. Without her compassionate gifts of food and warnings about her father's plots against them, the Jamestown settlers would probably have met the same fate as that of the Roanoke settlers.
Pocahontas' visit to London was arranged by the Virginia Company, which established the Jamestown colony, not only as a gesture of appreciation to the young princess but also as a means of stimulating further interest in New World colonization. It was Pocahontas' final act of devotion to the colonists. She was never to see her homeland again.
In preparation for writing this biography, Mrs. Woodward searched out the Virginia settings where Pocahontas lived as a child and those in England which she visited in adulthood. The author studied every pertinent document of the period, from official records of the Virginia Company to letters of highborn Londoners telling about Pocahontas' visit to England and its sorrowful aftermath.
227 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 31, 2025
Out of all the books I've now read about Pocahontas, this is the oldest, having been first published in 1969. Right off the bat, there are some stark indicators that this was written in a different time. As other reviewers have pointed out, Woodward writes about the Powhatans' "savagery" in a way that we would find deeply offensive today. Part of it is the pro-colonialism mindset, that Europeans' triumph over the Native Americans was proof that their culture and way of life was superior. The other part is simply historical inaccuracy: there does not, for instance, appear to be any evidence that the Powhatans routinely sacrificed children to please their god, as Woodward claims they did. There are a few other unfortunate eye sores: the Sedgeford Hall Portrait, long believed to have been a painting of Pocahontas and her son, Thomas (and a key instrument in many an internet conspiracy theory) has since been revealed to be a portrait of a different woman, and it does not appear to even cross Woodward's mind that John Smith's memoirs may not be entirely reliable. Whenever a discrepancy arises, Woodward gives him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he misremembered or even suggesting that the Virginia Company may have suppressed some of his writings.
It's a shame that this will put off many prospective readers, because Pocahontas is actually a very well-written, informative, and accessible book. It provides on overview of Jamestown's founding equal to Love and Hate in Jamestown or Savage Kingdom in half the pages, along with a basic summation of Pocahontas' short but fascinating life. I particularly enjoyed the way Woodward captured the many eccentric personalities that make Jamestown--and most of American history, really--so intriguing to us four centuries later. In Smith's case, Woodward might not have been skeptical enough of his tall tales, but she painted a far more balanced portrait than you'll find in modern histories: someone who was clever and competent, but also gritty and ruthless (she also dug up a quote of Smith describing Pocahontas as being like a daughter to him, which was appreciated). And there were parts of the story she detailed that other histories have ignored, such as the settlement of Henrico and some of lesser-known trips and meetings Pocahontas had while in England (I have mentioned before that no writer has managed to make Pocahontas' trip abroad interesting, but so far Woodward has come the closest).
At the same time, there were some revelations that, while not exactly disproven, can't really be taken at face value either. This book contains the first description that I've seen of John Rolfe's appearance, as well as new details about his education and family history. She claims that Pocahontas and Rolfe even visited his family during their trip to England. But Woodward doesn't provide a source--there is an extensive bibliography, but she only uses footnotes for direct quotes and figures--and since no other historian has relayed this information, I'm inclined to believe that whatever source she had wasn't a reliable one. This is but one example of many instances where I was left questioning the validity of what I was reading.
Pocahontas herself is somewhat of a background character in her own story. It's impossible to write her biography without including what's going in Jamestown, but here she's more two-dimensional. Woodward describes all the important milestones in her life, but she never tries to get inside Pocahontas' head or questions the official narratives that other people have written for her. This is arguably another product of the times, before writers and readers started to view Pocahontas' story with a more critical eye. Other historians like Camilla Townsend have talked about how the traditional perspective of Pocahontas was that she represented the "good Indian" who loved white men and preferred English culture to her own barbaric upbringing. This was before my own time: I was born after the Disney movie, and grew up in an age where the public perception of Native Americans had fully shifted to that of the "noble savage"--where it still is now, if we're being frank. Townsend has also criticized this interpretation, particularly in regards to Pocahontas, who is nowadays viewed as a victim with no agency by many people. I was as shocked by some of the things Woodward said as anyone else, yet I also appreciated that she acknowledged how the Powhatans practiced slavery, with many of Chief Powhatan's wives having been war prizes. I've started to see young indigenous men on social media push back the past few years against the narrative that America was inherently peaceful prior to colonialization, so perhaps we're starting to edge towards a more nuanced, less politicized, historical narrative. I suspect it will be a very slow transition, however, which is perhaps only natural given how long the original "savage" narrative dominated our culture.
In short, Woodward's Pocahontas is structurally well-written but otherwise unreliable. More than anything, it functions as a primary source in and of itself, a snapshot of a moment in the country's intellectual history.
It's a shame that this will put off many prospective readers, because Pocahontas is actually a very well-written, informative, and accessible book. It provides on overview of Jamestown's founding equal to Love and Hate in Jamestown or Savage Kingdom in half the pages, along with a basic summation of Pocahontas' short but fascinating life. I particularly enjoyed the way Woodward captured the many eccentric personalities that make Jamestown--and most of American history, really--so intriguing to us four centuries later. In Smith's case, Woodward might not have been skeptical enough of his tall tales, but she painted a far more balanced portrait than you'll find in modern histories: someone who was clever and competent, but also gritty and ruthless (she also dug up a quote of Smith describing Pocahontas as being like a daughter to him, which was appreciated). And there were parts of the story she detailed that other histories have ignored, such as the settlement of Henrico and some of lesser-known trips and meetings Pocahontas had while in England (I have mentioned before that no writer has managed to make Pocahontas' trip abroad interesting, but so far Woodward has come the closest).
At the same time, there were some revelations that, while not exactly disproven, can't really be taken at face value either. This book contains the first description that I've seen of John Rolfe's appearance, as well as new details about his education and family history. She claims that Pocahontas and Rolfe even visited his family during their trip to England. But Woodward doesn't provide a source--there is an extensive bibliography, but she only uses footnotes for direct quotes and figures--and since no other historian has relayed this information, I'm inclined to believe that whatever source she had wasn't a reliable one. This is but one example of many instances where I was left questioning the validity of what I was reading.
Pocahontas herself is somewhat of a background character in her own story. It's impossible to write her biography without including what's going in Jamestown, but here she's more two-dimensional. Woodward describes all the important milestones in her life, but she never tries to get inside Pocahontas' head or questions the official narratives that other people have written for her. This is arguably another product of the times, before writers and readers started to view Pocahontas' story with a more critical eye. Other historians like Camilla Townsend have talked about how the traditional perspective of Pocahontas was that she represented the "good Indian" who loved white men and preferred English culture to her own barbaric upbringing. This was before my own time: I was born after the Disney movie, and grew up in an age where the public perception of Native Americans had fully shifted to that of the "noble savage"--where it still is now, if we're being frank. Townsend has also criticized this interpretation, particularly in regards to Pocahontas, who is nowadays viewed as a victim with no agency by many people. I was as shocked by some of the things Woodward said as anyone else, yet I also appreciated that she acknowledged how the Powhatans practiced slavery, with many of Chief Powhatan's wives having been war prizes. I've started to see young indigenous men on social media push back the past few years against the narrative that America was inherently peaceful prior to colonialization, so perhaps we're starting to edge towards a more nuanced, less politicized, historical narrative. I suspect it will be a very slow transition, however, which is perhaps only natural given how long the original "savage" narrative dominated our culture.
In short, Woodward's Pocahontas is structurally well-written but otherwise unreliable. More than anything, it functions as a primary source in and of itself, a snapshot of a moment in the country's intellectual history.
August 20, 2016
This is a decent introduction to the life of Pocahontas (indeed, it was the first scholarly examination of her role in the early colonization of America) but I cannot in good conscience give it a higher rating due to the author's appalling cultural superiority that pervades the text. Here are just a few of the disturbing passages in question:
"(Pocahontas) rose...above the ignorance and savagery of her people, whom the Jametown colonists termed 'naked slaves of the devill.'"
"...in her willingness to learn English ways, English words, and English rituals, (Pocahontas) revealed an extraordinary ability to move from a culture grounded in sacrifice and superstition into a culture that was by contrast enlightened and sophisticated."
These passages are rather shocking coming from an historical text written in the 1960's. No objective viewpoint is given about the differences and similarities between the white and native cultures of the period. It's obvious the author did no research into the Powhatan culture other than examining texts written by white English settlers who had many reasons for describing the Indigenous Peoples as lesser than themselves.
The author includes many citations of works referenced throughout the book except for the section in which she describes the Powhatans as being "devil-worshipers" and practitioners of human sacrifice (most likely because such documents don't exist outside of white settler accounts that shouldn't be read as ultimate truth.)
The majority of the text is a good jumping-off point for researchers interested in the subject, but these specific anecdotes about traditional Powhatan culture must be read for what they are - a WASP viewpoint of an unknown culture that bears more than just a trace of racism.
"(Pocahontas) rose...above the ignorance and savagery of her people, whom the Jametown colonists termed 'naked slaves of the devill.'"
"...in her willingness to learn English ways, English words, and English rituals, (Pocahontas) revealed an extraordinary ability to move from a culture grounded in sacrifice and superstition into a culture that was by contrast enlightened and sophisticated."
These passages are rather shocking coming from an historical text written in the 1960's. No objective viewpoint is given about the differences and similarities between the white and native cultures of the period. It's obvious the author did no research into the Powhatan culture other than examining texts written by white English settlers who had many reasons for describing the Indigenous Peoples as lesser than themselves.
The author includes many citations of works referenced throughout the book except for the section in which she describes the Powhatans as being "devil-worshipers" and practitioners of human sacrifice (most likely because such documents don't exist outside of white settler accounts that shouldn't be read as ultimate truth.)
The majority of the text is a good jumping-off point for researchers interested in the subject, but these specific anecdotes about traditional Powhatan culture must be read for what they are - a WASP viewpoint of an unknown culture that bears more than just a trace of racism.
February 16, 2024
The author researched many sources of information including the country near Jamestown and in England where Pocahontas lived. This is an interesting history of a well remembered young woman told from an European-American point of view. She helped save the Jamestown settlers from starvation. Legend says that she saved John Smith’s life at the hands of her father the Chief. At one point as a teenager she was kidnapped by the Europeans and held for ransom due to disagreements with the tribe. During this time she studied the English language and religion and married an English man. They had a son. She was put on display in England as an example of the good relations between the Native people and the settlers. She did take the opportunity to speak out about poor treatment of her people by the Europeans. In 1617 became ill and died in England at about age 21. This book was published in the 1960s by the University of Oklahoma Press which is known for publishing and thus preserving scholarly accounts of the early days of settling of the US by the Europeans.
June 4, 2012
I concise history of Pocahontas's life from the English perspective. Lots of English primary source material (fully cited).
The author also cites interviews with several relatives of the Pamunkey chief, and saw traditional items in his personal collection. I would love to know how these relatives feel about Pocahontas--and if they have any oral tradition as to how her father felt about her collaborating with his enemies. That is the big gap in this book--and it appears Woodward had the opportunity to at least ASK. She does not mention if she did.
Woodward feels the need to mention how the Powhatan culture was "grounded in sacrifice and superstition" (159) and how they devil-worshiped (8). (Not being Christians, how could they worship the devil? That really makes no sense.) She might have gotten another star had this cultural superiority been left out.
The author also cites interviews with several relatives of the Pamunkey chief, and saw traditional items in his personal collection. I would love to know how these relatives feel about Pocahontas--and if they have any oral tradition as to how her father felt about her collaborating with his enemies. That is the big gap in this book--and it appears Woodward had the opportunity to at least ASK. She does not mention if she did.
Woodward feels the need to mention how the Powhatan culture was "grounded in sacrifice and superstition" (159) and how they devil-worshiped (8). (Not being Christians, how could they worship the devil? That really makes no sense.) She might have gotten another star had this cultural superiority been left out.
July 19, 2017
This book taught me a lot about Pocahontas. However, it was more about the settling of Jamestown than it was about Pocahontas. She certainly played a big role in the settlement of Jamestown but it would have been nice to hear the story written from her perspective. To me this is kind of like what it would be like to read Harry Potter from Draco Malfoy's perspective. You can still get the story, but you would miss out on so much. I expect a book titled Pocahontas to be about Pocahontas...
January 14, 2015
This book was published under the guise of education. It is old and thus lacks modern revelations on the subject. For a more accurate study read the book, Pocahontas by Gunn Allen.
June 30, 2025
A nice early(ish; 1969) study of a fascinating figure in American history. Of course, a bunch of scholarship has come out since then, including the Pulitzer nominated Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (2004), but this was a nice brief introduction to the main swaths of her life.
September 1, 2022
This is a delightful book that does an excellent job of telling the complex story of Poohantas' support for the Jamestown settlers, in spite of her father, Chief Pohatthan's war on the same settlers. It is well worth reading.
October 2, 2022
Loved that this book is so well researched.
September 4, 2015
The Plight of the Virginia Colony
This book might have been titled The Plight of the Virginia Colony, or Powhatan, King of Early Eastern America. It’s as much about those things as it is about the Indian girl. That’s not the author’s fault and pointing it out is not intended as a knock against the book. If you’re interested in a solid history of the beginning of the Virginia colony, this book is for you. But to get back to Pocahontas, if it’s her biography, where is she? The truth is, of course, our information regarding her is sporadic. She disappears for months, even years at a time, and for long stretches of the book, too. The more pertinent question may be, what did she accomplish?
Strip away the legends and the romance, and what do we have? A precocious princess, the daughter of a very powerful king, a strong-willed girl who was born into royalty and who, for better or worse, played a very important role in the earliest history of the settling of the North American continent.
How big of a role did she play, and did she alter the course of American history?
Oftentimes, we view history as following an inevitable course. Historical figures don’t bend history to their will. They only appear to bend it and are seen afterward to have been carried along by the tide of historical forces. They may move it but only in the direction it was already going.
So the Virginia Colony wouldn’t have failed without the intervention of Pocahontas, and even if it had failed, North America would still be what it is today.
Or not.
Maybe some country besides England, (Spain, perhaps,) would have settled North America. Implausible? Hard to image? Maybe, but we’ll never know.
The big question, did Pocahontas really put her neck down alongside John Smith’s neck on the chopping block when Powhatan sought to behead Smith? This book accepts the possibility it did in fact happen, although maybe not in as dramatic a fashion as Smith claimed years later, or maybe every bit as dramatic. Again, we simply can’t know for sure.
What we do know, Pocahontas may have been her dad’s favorite princess but Powhatan was a tough old bird and if Pocahontas really did offer her neck, there was a chance she’d have lost it. Powhatan was a father but he was also a stern ruler.
Was Pocahontas a traitor to her people?
Powhatan ruled most of tidewater Virginia and was quick to defend what was his. He was avaricious and cruel and…wise. Wise in seeing, like Pontiac and Tecumseh after him, the threat to a way of life, although Powhatan was only thinking about his own kingdom while those other two seemed to have wanted nothing less than the extirpation or removal of every white person in America.
Pocahontas sees it differently. She was drawn to the exotic, fair-skinned peoples who arrived from the east and who, unlike earlier Europeans, explorers and fishermen, had clearly come to stay. Was she naïve, thinking the red men and the white men could get along? Was she foolish to bring food to the whites when they were starving? The success of the colony was tenuous at best those first years and without Pocahontas’s help, it might have failed entirely. At one point, the colonists had packed their bags and loaded them onto ships and had actually started for home when they were intercepted by a provisions-bearing fleet.
Pocahontas defied her father’s wishes by helping the colonists and how do the colonists repay her? By making her a prisoner, a hostage toward her father’s good behavior, a pawn the colonists would trade for food and for peace. Powhatan doesn’t budge and allows his favorite daughter to remain a prisoner of the whites. She becomes even more enamored of the English ways, and of a particular Englishman (not Captain John Smith.) She ultimately becomes an Englishwoman, Rebecca, and after a triumphant tour of England and at the age of 22 and with her father in self-imposed exile, having wearied of the struggle, Pocahontas dies far from home and what follows is the three-centuries long rollback of the Native Americans.
This book might have been titled The Plight of the Virginia Colony, or Powhatan, King of Early Eastern America. It’s as much about those things as it is about the Indian girl. That’s not the author’s fault and pointing it out is not intended as a knock against the book. If you’re interested in a solid history of the beginning of the Virginia colony, this book is for you. But to get back to Pocahontas, if it’s her biography, where is she? The truth is, of course, our information regarding her is sporadic. She disappears for months, even years at a time, and for long stretches of the book, too. The more pertinent question may be, what did she accomplish?
Strip away the legends and the romance, and what do we have? A precocious princess, the daughter of a very powerful king, a strong-willed girl who was born into royalty and who, for better or worse, played a very important role in the earliest history of the settling of the North American continent.
How big of a role did she play, and did she alter the course of American history?
Oftentimes, we view history as following an inevitable course. Historical figures don’t bend history to their will. They only appear to bend it and are seen afterward to have been carried along by the tide of historical forces. They may move it but only in the direction it was already going.
So the Virginia Colony wouldn’t have failed without the intervention of Pocahontas, and even if it had failed, North America would still be what it is today.
Or not.
Maybe some country besides England, (Spain, perhaps,) would have settled North America. Implausible? Hard to image? Maybe, but we’ll never know.
The big question, did Pocahontas really put her neck down alongside John Smith’s neck on the chopping block when Powhatan sought to behead Smith? This book accepts the possibility it did in fact happen, although maybe not in as dramatic a fashion as Smith claimed years later, or maybe every bit as dramatic. Again, we simply can’t know for sure.
What we do know, Pocahontas may have been her dad’s favorite princess but Powhatan was a tough old bird and if Pocahontas really did offer her neck, there was a chance she’d have lost it. Powhatan was a father but he was also a stern ruler.
Was Pocahontas a traitor to her people?
Powhatan ruled most of tidewater Virginia and was quick to defend what was his. He was avaricious and cruel and…wise. Wise in seeing, like Pontiac and Tecumseh after him, the threat to a way of life, although Powhatan was only thinking about his own kingdom while those other two seemed to have wanted nothing less than the extirpation or removal of every white person in America.
Pocahontas sees it differently. She was drawn to the exotic, fair-skinned peoples who arrived from the east and who, unlike earlier Europeans, explorers and fishermen, had clearly come to stay. Was she naïve, thinking the red men and the white men could get along? Was she foolish to bring food to the whites when they were starving? The success of the colony was tenuous at best those first years and without Pocahontas’s help, it might have failed entirely. At one point, the colonists had packed their bags and loaded them onto ships and had actually started for home when they were intercepted by a provisions-bearing fleet.
Pocahontas defied her father’s wishes by helping the colonists and how do the colonists repay her? By making her a prisoner, a hostage toward her father’s good behavior, a pawn the colonists would trade for food and for peace. Powhatan doesn’t budge and allows his favorite daughter to remain a prisoner of the whites. She becomes even more enamored of the English ways, and of a particular Englishman (not Captain John Smith.) She ultimately becomes an Englishwoman, Rebecca, and after a triumphant tour of England and at the age of 22 and with her father in self-imposed exile, having wearied of the struggle, Pocahontas dies far from home and what follows is the three-centuries long rollback of the Native Americans.
April 14, 2010
Okay, I could be prejudiced on this particular book; while I was in high school(long ago and far away), I worked for Grace Steele Woodward, with the reading research for "Pocahontas" being both the hardest and most enjoyable months of the two years I spent with her.
Even with a reasonably decent vocabulary, it's difficult to tell you what an awesome experience it was (at the age of 16 & 17) to be in the rare book vault of G______ Museum, holding books in my gloved hands that were written in the 17th century. It was the foundation of my life as a bibliophage, and changed my opinion of reading History on the spot.
As to the book: Mrs. Woodward could inject life in the dryest of subjects, so with a character like Pocahontas, coming from the very birth of America, she's at her best. Her research went further than the contemporary written material, with trips to Jamestown and England she found the lessor known Pocahontas.
In the almost fifty years since I first knew Mrs. Woodward, I have read a number of other books centered on this era of America's history; this is the book that made Pocahontas a real person, not a character out of a myth. We see Pocahonts, flaws and all, from a young woman to a wife and mother, and finally as England's ambassador for the New World.
Even with a reasonably decent vocabulary, it's difficult to tell you what an awesome experience it was (at the age of 16 & 17) to be in the rare book vault of G______ Museum, holding books in my gloved hands that were written in the 17th century. It was the foundation of my life as a bibliophage, and changed my opinion of reading History on the spot.
As to the book: Mrs. Woodward could inject life in the dryest of subjects, so with a character like Pocahontas, coming from the very birth of America, she's at her best. Her research went further than the contemporary written material, with trips to Jamestown and England she found the lessor known Pocahontas.
In the almost fifty years since I first knew Mrs. Woodward, I have read a number of other books centered on this era of America's history; this is the book that made Pocahontas a real person, not a character out of a myth. We see Pocahonts, flaws and all, from a young woman to a wife and mother, and finally as England's ambassador for the New World.
January 1, 2014
I'm done. I sort of skimed but still I got the main jest of things. It well written, with plenty of references and even some glossy black & white photographs. When I next want to read about Pocahontas this would be an excellent choice.
Read
December 22, 2015Loved the well-known story, but especially liked the footnotes and epilogue.
January 18, 2016
Very good book.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews