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Definition: Pocahontas from Collins English Dictionary

n

1 original name Matoaka; married name Rebecca Rolfe. ?1595–1617, Native American, who allegedly saved the colonist Captain John Smith from being killed

Pocahontas

From Rourke's Native American History & Culture Encyclopedia
Pocahontas (1595-1617) (also known as Matoaka, her real name) was known as the Indian princess who bridged peace between Native Americans and early European settlers. Her father, Powhatan, was the powerful chief of the Algonquian tribes in the Virginia region. When Pocahontas was 11 years old, she befriended the Jamestown colonists and brought them food. One of the colonists, Captain John Smith, claimed that Pocahontas saved his life by throwing herself over him just before he was to be killed on her father's orders. In 1613, Captain Samuel Argall kidnapped Pocahontas to force her father to release the English colonists he held as prisoners. While being held hostage among the colonists, Pocahontas converted to Christianity and married John Rolfe, a colonist. This marriage led to several years of peace between Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's tribes. In 1616, Pocahontas, her husband, and son traveled to England to raise money for the struggling Virginia colony. Just before returning…
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Full text Article Pocahontas

From The Great American History Fact-Finder
Indian princess and daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Algonquin Indians of Virginia. Pocahontas contributed to the survival of the Jamestown Colony by providing food and serving as an informer of Indian plans to the colonists. John Smith claimed that she saved his life when her father was about to…
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Full text Article Pocahontas

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American Indian heroine. She was the daughter of Powhatan, Chief of the Algonquin confederacy of Indian tribes in Virginia. Her personal name was Matoaka, ‘playful’. She allegedly saved the life of John Smith when he was attacked by her tribe in 1607, and then helped to establish trade and…
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Full text Article Pocahontas

From Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics
Also known as: Matoaba; Motoaka; Rebecca Rolfe (b. ca. 1596–d. 1617) peacemaker Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, the leader of a powerful Indian confederacy in Virginia, served as her father's emissary to the settlers in the English colony of Jamestown. Pocahontas left no written record of her life…
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Full text Article Pocahontas

From A to Z of Women: American Indian Women
Artist William Sheppard painted this portrait of...
Also known as: Lady Rebecca; Mataoaka; Matoaba; Matoaka; Matoax; Matoka; Matowaka; Matsoaks’ats (“lively one&#34); Motoaka; Pokahantes; Pokahantesu (“my favorite daughter”); Rebecca Rolfe (b. ca. 1596–d. 1617) Powhatan peacemaker with Jamestown colonists Perhaps the best known Native American in…
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Full text Article Argall, Sir Samuel

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(är'gӘl), d. 1626?, English ship captain, prominent in the early settlement of Virginia. He commanded a ship sent to Jamestown in 1609 and had charge of one of the ships Baron De la Warr brought to the failing colony in 1610. He made voyages—supposedly to Bermuda, Cape Cod, and Canada—to get needed…
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Full text Article Virginia Randolph (1874–1958)

From The American Women's Almanac: 500 Years of Making History
Virginia Randolph (1874–1958)
The daughter of former slaves, Virginia Randolph would begin teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in Henrico County, Virginia, in 1892 and devote nearly six decades to being an innovative educator whose improved teaching method in vocational training would be adopted worldwide. Born in Richmond, …
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Full text Article POWHATAN (d. 1618),

From The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History
paramount chief of the Chesapeake Bay Region when Jamestown was founded in 1607. Historians have doubted the English colonists’ attribution of imperial authority to Powhatan (Wahunsonacock), but recent scholarship argues that he did exercise great power over his subject peoples. Captain John Smith…
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Full text Article Jamestown

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
First permanent British settlement in North America, established by Captain John Smith in 1607. It was capital of Virginia from 1624–99. In the nearby Jamestown Festival Park there is a replica of the original Fort James, and models of the ships ( Discovery , Godspeed , and Constant ) that carried…
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Full text Article westerns

From The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
Popular stories and films about the ‘Wild West’ of America which have their origins in *tall tales about the early settlers of the North American continent. John Smith (1580–1631), an English-born adventurer who wrote a first-hand account of events during colonization (including the story of…
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Full text Article Gravesend

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Town in Kent, southeast England, 35 km/22 mi east of London, on the River Thames opposite Tilbury, with which it is linked by ferry; borough population (2001) 53,100. Industries include engineering, printing, and the manufacture of electrical goods and a range of paper goods. Gravesend is the site…
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