9. Pocahontas Was Kidnapped and Taken Prisoner
In the summertime, the Powhatan people would often walk around without any clothes on, because it was so hot outside. While this was normal for Native American culture, the male white settlers became sexually depraved, and would capture women and children to rape them.
In England, rape was a felony, but men almost never went to jail for the crime. If a man raped a woman, he usually got away with it by claiming that the woman was lying, or that she had sex with him willingly. A woman had to somehow prove in court that she had been raped by the man. Obviously, DNA evidence did not exist back then, so it was impossible to prove without any witnesses.
But in Powhatan culture, rape was such a serious crime, that it was punishable by death. They always took the woman’s word for it. Their culture respected human life so much, they would never lie about something like that, knowing the man would die. So many Powhatan women were raped by white men from Jamestown, that the Powhatan were ready to go to war.
In a last-ditch effort to get some leverage, a man named Captain Samuel Argall kidnapped Pocahontas and used her as a hostage. She was 16 years old at the time and had just given birth to a baby. They threatened to kill her if they even tried to retaliate. The Jamestown colonists let Chief Japasaw know their terms. Pocahontas handed her infant daughter over to the other women in the village, and she never saw her again. The men from Jamestown took her to the jail cell in the bottom of Captain Argall’s ship as a prisoner.
Her brother-in-law, Chief Japasaw, assumed that they were only taking her as a hostage temporarily until the issue was settled. He had enough faith that human beings with any sense of honor would never actually kidnap a young mother with an infant baby who wasn’t even weaned yet. He did not want to do something that would get Pocahontas killed, either. So Japasaw never sent any men after them, and neither did her father. Pocahontas’ husband tried to save her, but the men from Jamestown killed him in front of her.
While she was prisoner on the boat, she became understandably depressed and stopped eating. Since she was a hostage, the English wanted to keep her alive. They allowed her sister to visit her, in hopes that it would raise her spirits enough to eat. She told her sister that she had been raped by multiple men and that they told her that her father did not love her, and that’s why he wasn’t coming to save her. Pocahontas’ sister assured her that this was not true, and that they loved and missed her very much. She remained in custody and became pregnant with a baby from one of her abusers.