16 Facts About the Real Pocahontas

16 Facts About the Real Pocahontas

Shannon Quinn - September 28, 2018

16 Facts About the Real Pocahontas
When she was brought over to England, Pocahontas was given European clothes to wear. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

6. She Was Taken To England

During all of her time in captivity, the settlers in Jamestown were trying to figure out how to deal with this issue of their relationship with the Powhatan tribe. Jamestown was now making a lot of money by farming tobacco, and they would bring it back and forth to England. Back home in England, the royal family and the general public wanted to treat the natives with respect and keep everything peaceful. They decided that the best course of action was to take Pocahontas, her son Thomas, and her sister over to England in order to demonstrate that they had a great relationship with the Native Americans.

Before she was presented to the rest of society, her captors wanted to make sure Pocahontas could actually communicate with the English. So, she was taught the English language. She was a very intelligent young woman, so she was able to understand the language very quickly, and she could have full conversations with people that she met in her new home.

Many English people had never met a Native American before, and they only heard stories of how savage they were. Once they met Pocahontas, she was speaking English and wearing proper clothing for any lady of the time period. She was a lovely Christian woman, and it suddenly dawned on everyone that these were not savages. These were human beings who could be civilized. She became a sort of diplomat between their cultures.

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