He believed that she would become more of a target, because she was beginning to come of age. After some time, Smith returned to England after a gunpowder incident, of which the colonists told Matoaka he died of.īecause of tense relations, Wahunseneca stopped allowing Pocahontas to go to Jamestown. The Mattaponi believe this was not possible, as she would not have slipped past the warriors guarding her in the night.
It was during this visit that popular myth claims Matoaka came to Smith and warned him of Wahunseneca's plot to kill him. Smith was berated by Wahunseneca, who told Smith he wanted peace between the two peoples. In the summer of 1608, tensions grew between the Powhatan and the English due to Smith demanding corn from villages. The Mattaponi believe that misconceptions of her leading the entourage of food stem from her being placed in the front of it as a peace symbol from the Powhatan. She would not have traveled of her own accord, as Jamestown Island took crossing the York River and walking twelve miles – a trip hardly passable for a ten-year-old girl. It was at this time that she and Smith exchanged English and Algonquin words for translation, as she eventually helped to serve as translator between peoples. Matoaka would have been in this group, but with much protection from warriors and the quiakros, as she was the treasured daughter of the paramount chief. Wahunseneca allowed tribe members to bring food to the English because they had no knowledge or experience of cultivating the land. Smith would have first met Matoaka in Jamestown after his return. The ceremony to make Smith a werowance took four days, and children (such as Matoaka) were not allowed in these spaces. However, the Mattaponi claim that Smith's life was never in danger as he was then a respected member of the tribe. It was this ceremony in which Smith describes the famous scene of Pocahontas saving his life. Due to the hardships faced by the colonists on Jamestown Island, Wahunseneca offered to adopt the colonists into the tribe and name Smith their werowance (sub-chief).
After a skirmish, Smith was taken to Wahunseneca, to whom he explained that the English arrived to avoid the Spanish, whom the Powhatan were wary about. In the winter of that same year, Smith and some others were met by hunting warriors. At the time, quiakros tried to make the English allies of the Powhatan. Matoaka was about ten years old when the English landed in what is now Virginia in 1607. She was determined the favorite of Wahunseneca, as she reminded him the most of her late mother. At the time, her name was '''Matoaka''' or Amonute, with Matoaka meaning the “flower between two streams,” as her mother was Mattaponi and her father was Pamunkey, relating to the Mattaponi and Pamunkey ( York) Rivers. Pocahontas died while giving birth to a daughter. Though it was customary for him to marry maidens from each of his tribes to strengthen the bloodline within the nation, his most treasured marriage was his marriage of love to his wife, Pocahontas, before he became paramount chief. According to the authors' account of Mattaponi oral history, the story of Pocahontas is a love story between Pocahontas and her father ?, Wahunseneca (sometimes spelled Wahunsenaka), the paramount chief of the Powhatans.