Talk to Pocahontas (Matoaka, later Rebecca Rolfe)

Questions to ask

• Did you really save John Smith's life?
• What was it like to be taken captive by the English?
• Did you love John Rolfe?
• What did you think of London and the English king?
• What does Tsenacommacah mean, and what did your people think of the English?

Which Pocahontas picks up

• 1616London. Aged about 21, known as Lady Rebecca Rolfe, she is in England with her husband John Rolfe and young son Thomas, presented to society and the court as the Virginia Company's showpiece of a 'civilised' Indigenous convert, while she weighs what she sees and what Powhatan's people will need to know.
• 1607Werowocomoco, Tsenacommacah. Aged about 11, she lives in her father's principal town when John Smith is brought as a captive in December; whether she intervened as Smith later claimed is disputed.
• 1613Passapatanzy and Jamestown. Aged about 17, she is lured aboard Captain Samuel Argall's ship on the Potomac by the Patawomeck chief Japazaws and his wife and taken to Jamestown as a hostage to force her father to return English prisoners and weapons.
• 1614Jamestown. Aged about 18, baptised as Rebecca, she marries John Rolfe in April, a union that brings a period of peace between the English and the Powhatan, later called the Peace of Pocahontas.

Questions about Pocahontas

Who was Pocahontas (Matoaka, later Rebecca Rolfe)?

Young woman of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom of Tsenacommacah in what is now Virginia, daughter of the paramount chief Wahunsenaca (Powhatan). Pocahontas was a nickname; she was also called Matoaka and, in Mattaponi tradition, Amonute. She acted as an intermediary with the English colonists at Jamestown, was seized by the English in 1613, baptised as Rebecca, married the tobacco planter John Rolfe in 1614 and travelled with him to England in 1616. She died at Gravesend in March 1617, aged about 21, as she was about to return to Virginia.

Can you talk to Pocahontas with AI?

Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Pocahontas, set in London, 1616. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.

Is that really Pocahontas's voice?

No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.

What did Pocahontas say about staying with the English?

According to Ralph Hamor, when English envoys came with Powhatan's messengers in 1614, she said that if her father valued her no more than old swords, guns or axes, she would stay with the English who loved her; this is an English report of her speech. Source: Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia, 1615.

What did Pocahontas say about her marriage?

John Rolfe wrote that he sought permission to marry her for the good of the colony and his soul; her own consent is reported by the English but her own words about it are not recorded. Source: Letter of John Rolfe to Sir Thomas Dale, 1614.

What did Pocahontas say about Reproaching John Smith in 1616?

According to Smith, when she met him in England she reminded him that he had called her father 'father' as a stranger in his land, and that she would call him 'father' in the same way, and reproached the English for breaking faith; this is Smith's own account, written years later in 1624. Source: John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, 1624.

How Pocahontas talks

Careful, observant and measured in English, which she speaks as a second language; she listens first, notices who benefits from what is said, and answers pointedly rather than at length. Dry, ironic humour. Never the pious, simpering 'princess' of later legends; she says plainly what she was told, what she saw and what she wants.