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Pocahontas's Story
Pocahontas is remembered because she helped to keep the peace between her own people and the early English settlers in North America. In America, statues of Pocahontas have been erected, and there is a memorial to her in the church at Gravesend in England where she died. The Disney film tells one version of her story.
- About 1596
- Pocahontas was born in America. Her father was Powhatan, a local Indian king.
- About 1606
- Some English people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and landed in America near the village where Pocahontas lived. The English people built a town and called it Jamestown because James I was the king of England at that time.
The English people traded with the Indians. They exchanged tools and pots for food. But the English and the Indians did not always trust each other, and they argued over food and land.
Pocahontas went to the town to see the English people. She learned to speak English and helped to translate conversations between the two groups of people. One winter, the English people ran out of food, and Pocahontas asked her father to help them. Powhatan listened to his daughter and sent them supplies of food.
But soon they started arguing and fighting again. During the fighting, an Englishman called John Smith was captured by the Indians. Pocahontas had met John Smith in Jamestown, and she stopped the Indians from killing John Smith.
- About 1612
- When Pocahontas was about 16 or 17 years old, she was taken to live with the English people in Jamestown, and was given an English name, Rebecca. She hoped the English and the Indians would stop fighting each other.
- About 1614
- Pocahontas married John Rolfe, an Englishman. They had a son and called him Thomas. At last the fighting between the Indians and the English people stopped.
- About 1616
- Pocahontas sailed to England with her husband, John, and their son, Thomas. John Smith had written a letter to Queen Anne, the wife of King James, telling him how brave Pocahontas had been to save his life and how she had worked to bring peace between the English and the Indians. When Pocahontas arrived in England she was presented to the king and met many other important people.
- 1617
- It was time to leave England and return to America, but Pocahontas was taken ill with smallpox. She died and was buried at Gravesend in England.
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