Pocahontas married John Rolfe and bought Virginia a fragile peace

When Pocahontas married the tobacco planter John Rolfe on April 5, 1614, the ceremony in Jamestown’s church carried far more weight than a private union.

A daughter of the paramount chief Powhatan, Pocahontas had been taken captive by the English a year earlier, held as leverage in a grinding conflict between the colony and the surrounding tribes. During her captivity she was baptized a Christian and given the name Rebecca. Powhatan consented to the marriage and sent kin to witness it.

Contemporaries called the calm that followed the “Peace of Pocahontas.”

The truce it secured held for several years, an unusual interval of stability for the struggling settlement. It proved temporary. Pocahontas died in England in 1617, and within a few years the fighting resumed. Yet for a stretch, a single marriage did what neither side’s weapons could.