The marriage came after Pocahontas's capture by the English during hostilities and her conversion to Christianity, taking the name Rebecca. The union helped usher in a period of relative peace—later called the 'Peace of Pocahontas'—between the Virginia colonists and the Powhatan Confederacy, though it proved temporary and did little to halt English expansion.
Pocahontas had been taken captive by English colonists in 1613 during a period of deteriorating relations, held for roughly a year at Henricus, where she was instructed in Christianity and English customs. She took the baptismal name Rebecca before marrying Rolfe, a widower who had been experimenting with growing a sweeter Caribbean strain of tobacco that would eventually become Virginia's economic lifeline.
The wedding, held in a small church in Jamestown, was as much a political arrangement as a personal one, sanctioned by both Powhatan and colonial leadership eager to stabilize a relationship strained by years of skirmishing and mutual distrust. It produced roughly eight years of reduced conflict, a rare peaceful interlude in early Virginia's violent history.
Pocahontas traveled to England with Rolfe in 1616, was presented at the court of King James I as a curiosity and a symbol of successful colonization, and died there in 1617 before she could return home—her early death cutting short any lasting personal legacy from the marriage, even as the peace it briefly secured allowed the Jamestown colony to survive its most fragile years.
Key people: Pocahontas, John Rolfe