Native princess Pocahontas was the daughter of Chief Powhatan. The colonists first met her when she was about 13 and Powhatan sent her to Jamestown to establish peace and beg for the release of Indian captives in the fort. Captain John Smith describes her in his True Relation, 1608:

Not only for feature, countenance, and proportion, much exceedeth any of the rest of his [Powhatan's] people: but for wit and spirit, the only Nonpariel of his Country.


In a letter to the wife of King James I, Queen Anne, Smith recounts the deep respect and friendship he shared with Pocahontas as exemplified by this story:

When her father with the utmost of his policie and power, sought to surprize mee,...the darke night could not affright her from comming through the irkesome woods, and with watered eies gave me intelligence, with her best advice to escape his furie; which had hee knone, hee had surely slaine her.


Pocahontas was captured on the Potomac and brought to Jamestown as a hostage so as to ransom the return of several imprisoned colonists along with arms and tools confiscated by Chief Powhatan's people. While in Jamestown she met tobacco farmer John Rolfe, whom she married one year later. Their marriage helped establish peace between the natives and colonists for eight years. In 1616 they sailed to England where Pocahontas was presented to the court. Before they could return to Virginia, Pocahontas fell ill and died at Gravesend, on March 21, 1617. She and Rolfe had one son, Thomas, who eventually returned from England and established his family in Virginia.