After a year in captivity, Pocahontas was brought to a meeting between the colonists and the Powhatan to discuss the ransom.
Accounts vary, but many historians believe that Pocahontas was kept as a hostage and possibly moved from Jamestown to Henrico, a newer colony upriver. In 1613, Captain Samuel Argall, a trader who had recently arrived at Jamestown, kidnapped Pocahontas from the Potowomac. Of Pocahontas, Mattaponi oral history states that during 1609–13, she came of age, married, moved to the Potowomac tribe on the Potomac River, and had a son. Smith’s departure to England in 1609 for medical needs marked the end of most Powhatan-Jamestown communication until 1613. The founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607 brought Captain John Smith to the chief’s attention the political relationship developed between Smith and Washunsenaca saved the struggling colony. Born around 1597/98, Pocahontas grew up in her father’s capital, Werowocomoco, located along the Pamunkey (now York) River.
Pocahontas was the daughter of Washunsenaca or Powhatan, chief of the Powhatan tribe. To make Pocahontas’s English transformation complete, her skin, hair, and eye color have been significantly lightened. Pocahontas is dressed in English costume in rich shades of red, gold, and green, with white lace cuffs and high collar, a pearl earring, and holding a white and gold ostrich feather fan. This is believed to be the oldest oil portrait modeled after the van de Passe engraving. This engraving has been the model for many of Pocahontas’s later portraits, including a painting by an unknown artist currently hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. The only surviving record of the sitting is an engraving by Simon van de Passe. Pocahontas’s only known portrait was created in England, during the last few months of her life. publisher: William Richardson / Engraving on paper, 1793 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Pocahontas / Unidentified artist, copy after: Simon van de Passe, 1595 – 1647.