| 1 | 1614 | - 5 Apr 1614—5 Apr 1614: Pocahontas marries John Rolfe
Don’t blame Disney: Pocahontas was being mythologized from the moment she came cartwheeling into the English settlers’ fort as the barely clothed, free-spirited teenage daughter of Chief Powhatan. John Smith was the first to stoke the legend, penning the now-famous account of Pocahontas saving him from execution upon his 1607 capture by the Tsenacommacah. How much of his account is true is up for debate, but it is a matter of record that after Smith left Jamestown for England, Pocahontas was taken hostage by settlers seeking the return of their own people. Her father agreed to a prisoner exchange but having been baptized by the settlers, his daughter chose to stay among them — marrying John Rolfe in 1614. Two years later they set sail for England, where Pocahontas rebuked Smith for leaving Virginia and forsaking the promises he had made to her people. As Pocahontas and Rolfe were returning to the New World in 1617, she became seriously ill and died in her husband’s arms. Rolfe was killed in an Indian attack in Virginia in 1622, so he was not around to counter the Rolfe-Pocahontas-Smith love triangle idea later exploited by writer John Davis in his book “Travels in the United States of America.”
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1604 - 1656 (52 years)
