Pocahontas — Biography Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was born around 1596, likely in the Tidewater region of what is now Virginia. Her real name was Amonute, though she also had a more private name, Matoaka. ‘Pocahontas’ was a nickname meaning something like ‘playful one’ or ‘ill-behaved child’ in the Algonquian language — a reflection of her lively, curious personality. She was the daughter of Wahunsenacah, also known as Chief Powhatan, the powerful leader of the Powhatan Confederacy, a network of about 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes living in the Chesapeake Bay region.

When English colonists arrived and established Jamestown in 1607, Pocahontas was about 10 or 11 years old. The relationship between the colonists and the Powhatan people was complex — sometimes cooperative, sometimes violent. The story most people know — that Pocahontas saved the life of English colonist John Smith by placing her head over his when her father was about to execute him — was told by Smith himself, though historians debate whether it happened as he described, or whether it was part of a Powhatan adoption ceremony that Smith misunderstood. What is clear is that Pocahontas acted as a messenger and sometimes helped bring food to the struggling English settlement.

In 1613, when Pocahontas was about 17, she was taken captive by English colonists and held at a settlement called Henricus. During her captivity, she converted to Christianity and took the baptismal name Rebecca. She also met a tobacco planter named John Rolfe, and the two developed a relationship. In 1614, she married Rolfe — with her father’s approval — in a ceremony that helped bring a period of peace between the Powhatan Confederacy and the English colonists. In 1615, she gave birth to a son named Thomas.

In 1616, Pocahontas traveled to England with her husband and a group of Powhatan men and women. She was presented at the court of King James I and became a celebrity in London society, admired and celebrated as a ‘civilized savage.’ She sat for a formal portrait — the only portrait made during her lifetime — and attended numerous social events. John Smith, whom she had not seen since 1609, arranged to meet her in England. She reportedly turned away from him at first, overcome with emotion. She had believed him dead.

Tragically, Pocahontas never returned to her homeland. In March 1617, as the ship carrying her and Rolfe back to Virginia sailed down the Thames River, she became gravely ill — likely from pneumonia, tuberculosis, or another disease — and was brought ashore at Gravesend, England, where she died. She was approximately 21 years old. Her son Thomas was left behind in England to be raised by English relatives. Pocahontas is remembered today as a symbol of the complex, painful encounter between Indigenous peoples and European colonizers in early America — a young woman whose life bridged two worlds.

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