BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts Hello and welcome to Homeschool History.
I'm Greg Jenner and I've spent my whole career making history fun on the TV show Horrible Histories and more recently on the BBC podcast You're Dead to Me, although that one's mostly for the grown-ups.
With everyone being cooped up in the house, I thought I'd deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family.
Who says that homeschooling can't be a bit of fun?
Today we are journeying back over 400 years to meet an iconic figure in Native American history Pocahontas.
Except that wasn't actually her name, or at least not always.
In her lifetime, she had four different names.
We think she was born as Princess Amonut, probably in 1596.
Her dad was called Wahun Seneca and he was known as Chief Powhatan, meaning he was in charge of the Powhatan alliance, made up of lots of different tribes.
We don't know what happened to her mum, but sadly some people think that she died giving birth.
Her mum's name, however, was probably Pocahontas, which is where Amanute got her nickname.
But even though she was born as Amanute and she was known as Pocahontas, she spent a lot of her life going by the name of Matuaka, meaning the flower between two streams, and that's the name we'll be using today.
Okay, let's talk about her childhood.
As a girl, Matawaka would have shaved her head except for one long braid hanging down at the back.
Even though she is sometimes called a princess, and she was the favourite daughter of Chief Powhatan.
He had lots of children and she wasn't next in line to rule, and she didn't have lots of luxurious clothes either.
In fact she might not have worn many clothes at all, except in the winter, when she popped on some warm furs.
In 17th century Powhatan culture, women and kids had lots of important jobs to do.
They built houses, made mats and crockery farmed, prepared food and animal skins, collected water, looked after very small kids and much more.
They were even hairdressers to the men.
And Matawaka would have learned to do all of these things, even as the daughter of the powerful Chief Powhatan.
Can you imagine the British royal family doing a bit of building work, knocking up some plates and giving Prince William a bit of a haircut?
We are very normal in that sense.
A lot of what we can learn about Matawaka comes from two different places.
Firstly, there are something called oral histories, which are a way of passing down history through storytelling.
Now this is very important for Native American people to keep their traditions going.
Now we also have the historical documents written down 400 years ago by English colonists about their time in America.
The tricky thing for historians is these spoken and written accounts often disagree, so it's hard to know exactly what happened to Matuaka.
But let's have a crack at it anyway.
In 1607, when Matawaka was maybe 11 years old, roughly 100 people from England arrived on ships and set up a wooden fort near where her tribe lived.
The English called it Jamestown because everyone there had to change their name to James.
Hello, my name's James and I just bumped into a chap named James back there.
No, I'm kidding.
It's actually they named it after King James I, but my idea is more fun.
The setting up of Jamestown Fort was part of a business plan run by the Virginia Company in the hope that they could found a colony and make loads of money, trading with the locals and selling America's natural riches to people back in Europe.
As well as looking to make lots of dosh.
The English colonists also thought it was their job to spread Christianity and their way of life.
And they planned to do this by taking Native American kids away from their families and raising them with English families.
Unsurprisingly, Native people were pretty happy with their own beliefs.
Thank you very much, and didn't really fancy having their beloved children taken away and handed over to random foreigners waving guns around.
You can probably see why fighting soon broke out.
In the Disney movie Pocahontas, Matawaka is shown as an adult who has an English boyfriend called Captain John Smith.
How do you do?
This isn't true.
She was 11 years old.
She was a kid.
Smith was real, though.
He was the head of the Jamestown colony and he was an experienced soldier, although that doesn't make him a very reliable witness.
He liked to exaggerate stuff and later in his life he wrote The General History of Virginia, which is a book that includes lots of stories historians think might be untrue.
Liar, liar, pants on fire!
Soon after building Jamestown.
He said he was captured by Powhatan warriors and brought to meet Chief Powhatan who was going to kill him.
Ah!
But Matawaka threw herself on top of him to shield him from harm, and this convinced her dad to spare John Smith's life.
Phew!
Nice story, but Native American oral histories say he was never in danger and this was actually a ceremony to make him part of their tribe, one in which he had to pretend to die before he could be reborn as part of their people.
Now, John Smith didn't speak the Algonquin language, so maybe he didn't understand what they were saying.
In truth, John Smith also had a bit of a habit for writing about young women coming to his rescue.
He also said that Matawaka ran many miles at midnight through dense woods to warn the English that her father was planning to ambush and kill them.
Maybe he made these stories up to excite his readers or to convince important people back home to invest money in his Jamestown colony.
I mean, if he genuinely was always getting saved by heroic children, he must have been a pretty rubbish soldier.
Yeah, Sergeant!
Oops.
According to the English colonists, Matawaka had learned some English, and so she was sent to Jamestown by her dad to request the release of prisoners who'd been captured.
This was a mega important mission with high stakes, so it's maybe a bit surprising that a kid was involved.
I mean, there's a reason the police don't use children as hostage negotiators.
If you give a kid a megaphone, they're just going to ask for ice cream.
Yeah.
Although in fairness, so would I. I love ice cream.
There are also accounts of Matawaka doing more child-friendly things.
The English colonist, William Strachey, wrote about Matawaka playing with the English children and teaching them how to do cartwheels.
Again, you don't really see hostage negotiators doing cartwheels in cop movies, which is a shame really because I think it would be fun.
Even though she was born as Amanute and went by the name of Matuaka, the English mostly knew her as Pocahontas, which means playful child all the cartwheels, I suppose or naughty child.
In Powhatan culture.
People take on new names as they grow up and change, or they may also have a special name that isn't shared with strangers.
It's possible that she used Pocahontas around the English out of fear that they might do bad magic on her if they knew her real name.
Thankfully, the English didn't actually know any real magic, as they hadn't yet read Harry Potter.
Between 1609 and 1610, there was a terrible famine known as the Starving Time.
Loads of Jamestown colonists died of hunger.
There's even archaeological evidence that they got so desperate they started eating other people.
Disgusting.
Luckily, Matawaka wasn't around to watch any of this horrible stuff, as she was living in another village by this point, and she got married to a man called Kokoom and they had a child together.
Now a married woman.
She would have grown her hair out long and she may have had some tattoos as well.
She seemed to have been leading a pretty normal life for a few years until the English colonists spotted her again in 1613 and ruined everything.
The English and the native people were fighting again.
So a sailor called Samuel Argyll saw Matawaka and thought oh cool, let's kidnap her and use her as a bargaining chip in negotiations with her dad.
No, not cool.
Not cool at all.
There are several different versions of the story, but Matawaka was tricked onto Argyll's ship and she was taken against her will and her husband Kokoom was killed, which would have been tragic for Matawaka and their child, but great news for the English colonists, because it now meant that she was free to marry one of them.
Such nice guys, right?
Hmm...
In 1614, Matawaka was married to a man named John Rolfe, even though he thought it was a sin to fancy her because she wasn't a Christian.
What a romantic.
Not every colonist had the same worries, however.
Jamestown's new leader, Thomas Dale, asked to marry one of Matawaka's sisters, but he was refused because she was already married.
And it turns out, so was he.
I can't imagine his wife was too pleased about that.
Now, do you remember that Jamestown as a colony was set up to make lots of money?
Well, it was failing big time until that is John Rolfe found a way to grow valuable tobacco plants.
However, he probably learned how to do this from Native American people, perhaps even from his new wife Matawaka, except he didn't call her Matawaka.
I said at the beginning that she had four names in her life.
Well, before she could be married to John Rolfe, Matawaka had to become a Christian.
And that involved changing her name to Rebecca, named after a biblical woman whose marriage united two different groups of people.
The conversion of a Powhatan princess was seen as a huge win for the colonists.
And they hope that she was a great example of how other native people could be converted too.
Although it's pretty weird to be proud, you got someone to join your religion.
Hmm.
The colonists wrote that some of Matawaka's family attended her wedding and were delighted with the way she was treated.
You may not be surprised to know that Native American oral histories say that she was treated very badly and was very, very sad.
In 1616, the Jamestown colonists needed more English people to invest money in their big tobacco growing plan.
So Matawaka was taken to London as a sort of advertising campaign.
She was presented to the king and queen and she was given a big makeover to make her look like what the English thought a princess should look like.
The big felt hats, dangly earrings and huge stiff ruffs that they gave her were a world away from the clothes she would have worn in Powhatan culture.
She looked more like Queen Elizabeth I, and it's very hard to do cartwheels in those big Tudor dresses.
The English were trying to make her into one of them as a way to promote their Virginia colonies, and it worked.
Four years later, the Mayflower ship set sail for the same part of the world and the story of modern America began.
Matawaka spent much of her life being used by other people for their purposes, and it transformed her into the Pocahontas myth.
And 400 years later on, it was still happening, when she was turned into an unrealistic Barbie doll or an unrealistic Disney princess.
Alas, the real Matawaka had a very sad life and a sad end.
In 1617, shortly after arriving in London, she became very ill and died.
She was probably only 23 years old.
But before she died, she and John Rolfe had a baby called Thomas, who stayed in London when John went back to America, although Thomas later returned to Virginia after his father's death.
And Matawaka's child with her first husband, Koko'um, also survived.
It means that Matawaka has relatives who are alive today.
Matawaka was buried in Gravesend in Kent, where there is now a statue to her, which you can look up on the internet.
She's now remembered as an important figure in American, English and Native American history, even if not everyone can agree on how to remember her.
And that brings us to the end of matawaka's story.
So now it's time for the quiz.
Are you ready?
Okay, here we go.
Three two, one first question which alliance of native american tribes did matawaka belong to?
I'll give you a clue.
It begins with p.
Question two pocahontas means either playful child or naughty child, but who else in her family was also called pocahontas?
Question three what was the name of the English captain who claimed Matawaka saved his life?
Question four, what was the name of the fort set up by the English colonists in 1607?
And question five, who was Matawaka's Native American husband?
Okay, let's do the answers.
The answer to question one was the Powhatan Alliance, and her father was Chief Powhatan.
The answer to question two, her mother was called Pocahontas.
The answer to question three was, of course, Captain John Smith, the Cheeky Fibber.
The answer to question four was Jamestown.
And the answer to question five, her first husband was called Kokoom.
How did you do?
If you didn't get five out of five, that's OK.
Hopefully you've learned loads about Matawaka or Pocahontas and you can now point out all the mistakes in the Pocahontas movie.
Tune in next time for some more homeschool history and make sure to subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode.
Thank you for listening.
Take care and goodbye.
Homeschool History was a Muddy Knees media production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
The script was by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Emma Neguse and me.
The producer was Ben Green.
The historical advisor was Dr Misha Ewan and the Native American advisor was Ethan Brown of the Pamunkey tribe.
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