Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

In April 1614, Pocahontas was baptized at a politically important moment, when she was sure that the treaty between her people and the English had stuck. Judging by records left by other indigenous converts, her ideas about the ceremony of baptism might have differed from the ideas of those who baptised her: “Other texts tell us that Indians who converted [...] were virtually always incorporating the Christian God into their previously existing pantheon” (125). Pocahontas might have seen accepting Christ as something like accepting the protective okee guardian spirit of the new village into which she’d married.

Pocahontas surprised the English by telling them that her name was not Pocahontas, but Matoaka, perhaps the adult name she took when she first married. She then took the biblical name Rebecca; Rebecca was the wife of Isaac, and the mother of Jacob and Esau, combative brothers who founded two separate ancient nations (Israel and Moab). Townsend speculates that Pocahontas might have been moved by the story of Rebecca, who also crossed cultural boundaries for marriage. Pocahontas may also have been pleased to take a new name, a mark of prestige in her worldview.

Pocahontas and Rolfe married and set up their household on Hog Island, an area just across the river from Jamestown.