(c.1595–March 1617), was the daughter of the North American Indian Chief Powhatan. In 1607, she befriended the English settlers of the Jamestown Colony. Captain John Smith recorded her intervention which prevented her father from executing him. In 1613, the Indian Princess was baptized into the Christian faith, taking the name Rebekah, by the Reverend Richard Bucke, second chaplain to the Virginia Colony. In 1614, she married John Rolfe, the council member of the Jamestown Settlement noted for having introduced tobacco cultivation in 1612. John Rolfe, a widower ten years her senior, asked the Jamestown officials for permission to marry her:
Pokanhuntas to whom my hartie and best thoughts are, and have for a long time been so intangled, and inthralled in so intricate a laborinth … 216
John and Pocahontas moved to England, where she was received as royalty. They had a son named Thomas, (whose descendants include statesmen, educators and ministers, the most notable being John Randolph of Roanoke and Edith Bolling Galt, who married President Woodrow Wilson in 1915).217 In 1617, Pocahontas contracted smallpox in England and died. He last words were:
Tis enough that the child liveth.218
The original painting of Pocahontas is in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. The inscription painted on the portrait reads:
Matoaks ats Rebecka, daughter to the mighty Prince Powhatan Emperour of Attanoughkonmouck ats Virginia converted and baptized in the Christian faith, and wife to the wor. Mr. Tho:Rolff.219