Matoaka Pocahontas: The Founding Mother of America - Was She Murdered?

Examining whether the woman known as "Pocahontas" was poisoned by her kidnapper on the voyage home from England.

Dear Readers,

This is the transcript of the podcast about the possible murder of the woman known as “Pocahontas”. It is a fascinating story and one that represents to many in the indigenous community a symbol of the relationship between their communities and the settlers. For, the very first woman to have an interaction with the new arrivals was kidnapped, trafficked and may have been murdered.

However, there are many, many twists to this extraordinary story including her meeting with the English King - James Ist - and Queen several times to discuss a potential peace between the Powhatan natives and the colonists.

Read on. For this a very interesting and true story.

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Matoaka Pocahontas, the legendary daughter of Powhatan, has been one of the most misunderstood stories in American history.

The last chapter of her life is particularly intriguing.

She was sent to England to meet King James Ist. It was part investment trip for the Virginia colonies. Part a spy trip for her father to check out his potential enemies.

Matoaka Pocahontas was relatively well-treated by the English Royal Court. One person described her, "as the most noble person there..."

But when Matoaka left England, she boarded a ship, had dinner with her old kidnapper - the man who had human trafficked her - and was dead within two days.

Was her death from natural causes or was the real cause much darker...?

CrimeWaves investigates…

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Matoaka Pocahontas: The Founding Mother of America - Was She Murdered?

Jamie Pereira: Tell me about the beginning of Matoaka Pocahontas' life.

Declan Hill: Look, one of the first things we've got to give our listeners and our viewers a chance to recognize is almost everything that we think we know about Matoaka Pocahontas is utterly wrong.

Including her very name. Pocahontas is a kind of, infantile child name that she never would have used herself. So I'm begging you. I'm begging the listeners. I know that you've switched into here about quote Pocahontas. I'm doing scare quotes at the moment, but we're going to talk about Matoaka all through the rest of this episode, because I think that's doing homage and respect.

To a person who it's pretty difficult to overstate how terrible parts of her life were, how badly she was treated. So forget the Disney movie, forget any of these romantic, stories and ideals we've been fed about her and John Smith and romance. They're wrong. However, the actual true story is even more interesting, including that she may have been poisoned or killed at the end.

Jamie Pereira: So, If her relationship with John Smith isn't what we thought, what was her first relationship with the English?

Declan Hill: It was a bunch of utter aliens landing on this new continent. They knew nothing about what they were going to go and find. They were obsessed with finding gold and diamonds because they'd heard that the Spanish and Mexico and Latin American made their fortunes.

So they land in Virginia desperate to find mineral wealth and they don't, but they haven't learned the language. They know very, very little about the culture they're going to find there. And then it gets really horrific inside the colony.

Jamie Pereira: Tell me a little bit about that.

Declan Hill: But first of all, they arrived with no women. So these guys are there in this strange, extremely cold place. Remember they don't have central heating, insulation, anything like that. They're literally wool, wood fire, and they've got no women. They got no women for years. And many of the quote English colonists.

There are a number of different nationalities, including Italian, including West Indian, but that first few years, it's just English guys who are being dumped on the other side of the world. No women, nothing there. And they start deserting. They're like, "Forget this for a game of soldiers!" To quote the English term, "I'm going to join the Indians, at least I can have a wife there," and they start running away. They start deserting. So the English governors and the guys in charge of these colonies, start calling start massacring their own people. Forget what they do to the Indians. We'll deal with that later. But just the appalling punishments, executions within Henricus and Jamestown is pretty shocking to a modern day reader.

Now, defenders of those places would say, "Hey, if they didn't do that, everybody would have left and the discipline would have collapsed and there would have been massacres."

But it's undoubtedly there was a really hard regime inside those encampments. So there was some early initial trading between the indigenous bands and the English colonies there.

And one of the certainties that we know is that Matoaka was along for some of that interchange. In between 1607 and 1610, there are reports that she's playing, she's doing cartwheels, She's enjoying herself. She's playing with the young boys of the colony.

Just a kid having a good time, enjoying herself.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world on behalf of myself and the whole crime waves team. We hope you enjoy this special edition of the show:

Regular listeners will know that in the early 2000s, the founder of our college here at the University of New Haven -Dr. Henry C. Lee- was invited by the Las Vegas entertainment legend -Wayne Newton- to find the location of the body of Matoaka Pocahontas.

Dr. Lee passed the search on to me and we are building a team as a cold case unit. So this is not typical historical research, but police investigations looking only at the facts that we can determine. For just as Matoaka's life was full of hardship, so too has her legacy been exploited by just about every malevolent force in American history.

We only want the facts. If once we discover the actual true location of Matoaka, we're not touching it or disturbing anyone's final resting place. That will be a decision of the local UK community and the indigenous bands of Virginia.

So now, we're beginning our work. Later, we're going to bring in toxicologists, UK historians of every social class, and of course, indigenous experts. And the rules are very simple of this quest. No exploitation of Matoaka, no propaganda, no mythologizing the woman who was a very good case to be called the founding mother of America.

Now, the musical bridges in this episode are the songs -"the hits"- of that time.

In this episode, we wanted to share with you the very basic facts of this case. And to do so, one of our brilliant students, Jamie Pereira, a junior in forensic science. That's the field of biological determination of causes of death and crime scene. She's begun the research into one of the mysteries around Matoaka Pocahontas... was she murdered?

Jamie Pereira: How did they communicate?

Declan Hill: It's a real problem because the English have no knowledge of the indigenous language, the indigenous obviously have no knowledge of English.

And so at various times, they're putting boys into indigenous encampment, the indigenous are sending, people into the English to learn their language. And one of those first people is Matoaka. And so she is one of the cultural bridges because she learns to speak English. So she is going back and forth, translating, working with them.

But there were some really interesting cases of people being bilingual at that time.

Jamie Pereira: Who did she marry?

Declan Hill: Again, what we're getting from two sources here, one is some primary documents written back by the English to their investors back in England. So there's letters, there's diaries, there's journals. And then we're also dealing with indigenous sacred stories that have been passed down and one of them begins to discuss sometime around 1610 that Matoaka, passes through menstruation and is almost in the first couple of months found a man to marry or a teenage boy slightly older than her.

And so they marry and they're married from about 1610 to about 1613. And again, this is something that's never discussed or very rarely discussed. In the kind of popular legends of Matoaka it's always thought that she fell in love with some white guy arriving from England, and that's not the case.

That is not the case. Happy childhood, married to a guy married for a couple of years, age 13, 14, 15, which was the normal age at that time. And then the dark times of 1613 happened.

Jamie Pereira: It seemed like the English were turning on each other at some point when they first initially got there. How did it turn against the Native Americans?

Declan Hill: Pretty badly. And one of the things that I must say in defense of John Smith is he's actually not a bad guy in those first couple of years. He's exploring, He's going around. He's making alliances. That's too strong a word. But friendships of some type between him and the native leaders.

There's some controversy about the nature of that. He claims that he was about to be executed. And then Matoaka saved him. But what is clear. is that there was a strong relationship between the indigenous bands and John Smith. Strong enough so that years later, Matoaka, when she gets to London, is angry with this guy and slightly contemptuous and disrespectful of him.

" Hey, we made you a member of our family, our clan family, and you lie to us."

so, they're short of food, they're at war with the people around them communication has stopped effectively. And that's where they start really mounting up the killing inside Henricus in Jamestown. They bring a warrior over, a very good warrior, a guy called Thomas Dale, who has fought with the Dutch against the Spanish. And that was like the big battle war of all time at that and that era. It was truly extraordinary. And he was a very good soldier. But he comes over and he tries to, and he does impose an iron discipline inside the colonies and it becomes a horror movie.

There were more than 200 different ways you could get yourself executed in Jamestown and Henricus, falling asleep on guard duty not going to church. However, you had to go to church 15 times a week. Now, much of that was mustering, making sure everybody was there, but even if you slept in and missed church a couple of times, you were suddenly facing capital punishment.

That's how severe the stuff was going on. So you can understand why, if you're an English colonist, you haven't had sex for years, you're being persecuted by this guy, you're like, "Man, I'm going to go join the indigenous guys." forget this and as well, what people tend to forget is that most of the people brought over, again, they didn't volunteer. They were indentured labors. So somehow they got in debt to some highfalutin lord back over in England and the highfalutin lord goes I'm invested in this thing so you can get out of it by going to work over there for seven years.

And they would do, and they were virtual slaves. They were wage slaves. So it had all those things going on. So you can see why the native way of life was so attractive to these guys at that time.

Jamie Pereira: There's a lot of violence coming from the English. How did that provocation turn against Matoaka? How did she become a victim?

Declan Hill: Look, first of all, it was a right full on war between the indigenous bands and the English, but the English colonies were divided upon a couple of small settlements.

And then there were indigenous bands within indigenous bands. And what one of the guys does is he basically plots a human trafficking, kidnapping of Matoaka. Matoaka is known to be the favorite daughter of the head king of the indigenous. They find her, she's now being married off to a smaller indigenous band.

And they essentially go behind her back to the chief of the band and they say, "We'll give you a copper cooking pot if you give us Matoaka." And so they lay out a plan to steal this kid. She's now roughly 14, 15. She's the, ceremonial friend of the chieftain's wife in this particular band.

So she's trusting them. And we have this in primary documentation the very people that steal her, the very people that come up with this plan to, to human traffic her with the price of a copper pot. Write it down and they're like, "Oh, yes, we clever. We did a very good job by doing this."

And so they bring them on the ship. The chief and his chief wife say, "Oh, I so want to get on." Matoaka's " I just don't want to go on the ship. Guys, we shouldn't be on this ship."

They come on, they drink, they rest. And then the other indigenous are taken off and she is left on. And she's desperate to get off. She's screaming. She's pleading to get off.

And the English just laugh and sail off. So just remember that moment of human trafficking and kidnapping of Matoaka, with all the romance that we've seen purported of, between her and John Smith. It really is a desperate lie. This is the truth about Matoaka. She was kidnapped, she was human trafficked, for the price of a single copper pot.

Jamie Pereira: What were the conditions like of her imprisonment?

Declan Hill: Look, what we know was the people writing about her imprisonment were the same people imprisoning her. So they were saying, "Oh things are great."

But you can see almost between the lines that she's protesting. They talk about her being deeply miserable. They talk about her shouting and arguing and fighting back over the first few months. And then gradually you have a sense that something was going on, whether it was beatings, whether it was torture, whether it was something worse, that gradually was getting her down.

But there was no doubt that Matoaka, after she was human trafficked, after she was kidnapped and seized by the English forcibly and jailed, was fighting hard against them.

Jamie Pereira: What was her treatment like in captivity?

Declan Hill: It's difficult to speak About how bad it was. If you follow the indigenous oral tradition. The English primary sources describe her as being forcibly dressed in Western clothing. She's living in isolation. They say that they treated her very well, but remember they're feeding her food that she's never eaten before.

They're making her dress in clothes that she's never worn before. There is also a forcible religious quote, education. The English colonists are desperate to get gold and they're desperate to convert people. And most of the indigenous people have just said, no, we're not interested. And so here they have finally got a captive and they're desperate to convert her.

And that psychopathic maniac, Thomas Dale, who's an excellent warrior and arguably keeps the colonies on track by executing lots of people. And when forcing discipline quote, takes a special interest. In her education, the indigenous bands say that quote special education went far further and that there was an offspring that could have come from that quote special education.

We don't know. We do know from the primary sources that quote special attention was paid to her and that quote special attention last the better part of a year. There's negotiations going back and forth between Paul Hunton, who is the Supreme Chief and the indigenous bands and the English guy Thomas Dale.

And finally, they agree to meet, they agree to have a peace treaty or peace negotiations. And that's where it's like a scene on a game of thrones, because Paul Hunton, whoever goes to the person loses face. So Paul Hunton is sitting in his throne room and his warriors come out and there's 400 of them and there's 150 of the English.

And there's a standoff. There's a tension between them. Powhatan is going to go in. He's not, they're going to have to come to him. Thomas Dale on the mean hand has his daughter, his favorite daughter, and he's sending terms of reckoning to Powhatan. And then there's a standoff. There's an armed standoff between these soldiers ready to kill each other.

And in the midst of this, it seems that a peace deal is arranged where a settler, a guy named John Rolfe will marry Matoaka. As a symbol of peace as a symbol of entering the war and Powhatan will send the English some food so they can survive, and the English will stop killing. And so she's really becomes from a human traffic victim she becomes a pawn in a political game between these two people.

And to be fair, her sacrifice, her self sacrifice ends the war, it ends the killing, and there's something of a golden age that begins, I use that word advisedly, between the indigenous bands and the English, and it lasts for a number of years. And it's really brought on by her self sacrifice and agreeing to that marriage with John Rolfe.

John Rolfe is interestingly, has written a seven page love letter to Thomas Dale in the midst of the negotiation saying, by the way, Lord Dale, that woman, I really love her. And it's an interesting letter to read because it really has been read on all kinds of different angles. Some people said, "wow, this is the most romantic letter in history or one of the most romantic love letters in history."

Here's this crazed English guy saying, "I love this woman and I just want to be with her," and other people are saying no.

Jamie Pereira: Matoaka was already married previously before her kidnapping. How did that end in this begin?

Declan Hill: We - we don't know how it ended. Obviously ended with her being kidnapped and her being placed in this marriage of diplomatic and political convenience.

Jamie Pereira: Now Matoaka is in a position of an ally.

How did Matoaka end up in England?

Declan Hill: So we have a couple of years of peace there. And remember, it's our colony and they're sending back their letters to all their investors back in London. They're saying, "Hey, things are great. Now we have this peace. We have this Matoaka person. She's married to one of us. We're building up. Oh, she's converted to Christianity."

So the London investors invite. them back. Them being Thomas Dale, who was the crazy guy running the place, Samuel Argyle, who was the guy who was human trafficking, John Rolfe, who was her husband, and Matoaka. But this is where it gets really interesting.

A band of indigenous natives comes with them, including a close spiritual advisor, Powhatan. And so there's about a dozen natives who get on board the ship. And so it seems like there's two things going on. One is to sell the investment to more people in England so Virginia colony can rise up more. And two is for the natives can learn about their enemies, learn about what's going on.

So it's partly diplomatic, it's partly spy, and it's partly financial. And so off they sail. Now, their journey over to North Atlantic, of course, because Thomas Dale is on the ship, features at least one execution. There's a couple of guys, he says, oh, they're Irishmen, they must be spies, and he hangs one of them.

That, just, I give you that as a taste of what it must have been like living around Thomas Dale. So they arrive in London, and that's where the story gets really interesting.

Jamie Pereira: A Native American in England, how was she treated?

Declan Hill: I don't want to say there was no racism. There was obviously a clash of cultures. Up until the Industrial Revolution, Race wasn't as much of a predominance in English or British society. What was much more important was social class. So. Because Matoaka was considered the daughter of a king, therefore a princess, She was treated, again, I'll use scare quotes, quite well.

At one point, her husband, who's, a commoner, the Privy Council of Britain is considering whether they should put him on trial as a commoner for marrying a noble person. So there's all kinds of weird wrinkles and winkles. But there's no doubt that Princess Matoaka is incredibly popular. All kinds of people want to meet her.

All kinds of people are arranging things. She meets King James and his wife. King James is the guy who had the Bible translated. And it's really actually quite a vibrant time in England. Shakespeare has just died, but it's all kinds of interesting things are going on. And for a season, Matoaka is absolutely the person that everyone wants to hang out with and everyone wants to see.

Jamie Pereira: She is converted into Christianity. How do they respond to this?

Declan Hill: They were really interested in that. This was seen as a victory, a symbolic victory. They end up giving a hundred pounds to John Rolfe and Matoaka for doing this. And they're saying, "Oh, we're giving a hundred pounds because we want to encourage more converts like that."

But there's a really interesting interview. Remember I was telling you about the spiritual advisor of the King who comes along. They actually interview him. And when you look at the primary documents, there's actually an interview of what he thinks of the English. And it's really interesting because most of what we're seeing, most of the documentation is what the English think of the natives and what the English are saying the natives say about them.

This is actually where the native guy is saying, "you want us to convert to Christianity? And you're coming to our country and talking about brotherly love, and this is the way you live? Forget about it. That's not on." And so you have this literal voice. From this other world, coming through the pages, fascinating reading.

Anyway, he goes back to Virginia colony, he survives, gets back to Virginia, and he's won, people think that he's one of the instigators of the great war to come, because he absolutely hates the English after visiting them.

Jamie Pereira: We have a native person who is not used to this new culture, basically being commodified and used for how they're changing this person.

Declan Hill: Yes. Yeah it and what's interesting is that there's a number of natives who've come into England.

There's a famous guy who seemed to have been picked up in the 1580s through another colony. He's come in, there's all kinds of mystery around him, but what is clear is almost every single native that we've got a record for is desperate to get back to their country, desperate to get back to the culture.

They're not sitting there in London, England going." Oh man, I want to stay here. Thank goodness I've left." This is clear that people are driving that way. And that's really a theme throughout much of this interaction is that pre industrial revolution, it was Westerners that desperately wanted to become indigenous.

So part of the reason why they kidnapped Matoaka was that seven, English colonists had run and desperate to join the indigenous. And they, Thomas Dale, wanted those guys back, and that was part of the negotiations. So again and again, I'm not trying to idealize, I'm not trying to mytholize Indigenous culture of that time.

But it was that way that they were going, rather than the other way.

Jamie Pereira: Seems like there'd be a lot of commotion, a lot of attention towards Matoaka and the Jamestown colony coming in. What is the most attention that they got?

Declan Hill: Look there's a great scene. It's the 12th night at the Christmas court of King James and they stage a play.

We still have the script of the play by Ben Johnson and they invite a Matoaka and the spiritual advisor to come and watch essentially with King James. And so they're on the throne, James and his wife are there. And it's a weird one in that it's really. To show off King James's homosexual lover, a guy Buckingham, and he's prancing around the stage and everyone knows it.

So again I'm highlighting it in an, it's just an unexpected world, unexpected court. We it's not the traditional thing that we think, but somebody describes Matoaka as the most noble person in the entire room. So it's not simply racism. There's lots of currents going on. But what is no doubt is that Matoaka is revered and respected by people that meet her.

They even have her painting drawn. There's a famous painting of her where she is described, Matoaka. And they give her various symbols an ostrich feather, pearls to indicate that this is a person of royalty.

Jamie Pereira: Do we have any idea of what she was thinking during this time?

Declan Hill: No, and I don't want to make the mistake of putting in thoughts or into her head.

I prefer just to stick to the facts.

Jamie Pereira: They came in wanting funding. They wanted to show their conversion was working in America. What did they accomplish?

Declan Hill: In terms of the English and the investors of the colony, it was a complete success. Between June 1616 and when she started her journey back in March 1617, a whole bunch of new investment, they got 100 pounds personally herself and John Rolfe for her being the first convert.

So there was lots of attention. They were really the nine day wonder of the court at that time. Quote, check mission accomplished. I think to be fair in terms of a spy mission on terms of the indigenous that also learned a lot. For example, one of the things that they came over with was the idea that there were no trees in England.

Because somebody had come and only seen London and reported back there are no trees in England. Now they understood how powerful the English were, how much they were up against. And they also realized, I think this is key, is they realized they were going to be coming more of them. They were either going to have to deal with them, they being the indigenous people, going to have to deal with the English now, or they were going to be obliterated.

Jamie Pereira: With all they accomplished, they're now leaving England. Talk about that transition out.

Declan Hill: This is frankly where I'm going to hand it over to you because what we've got now Is two sets of competing tales, the English are clear that she's leaving on 1619 March of 1619. She sails off down the Thames River indigenous tradition is that she was murdered.

So you spend the last few months looking at these competing claims. You're a forensic scientist, student of science at one of the best universities in the world for crime scenes. Let's work our way through this.

Here's the question. So we get to a 400 year old mystery. The indigenous sacred tradition says that Matoaka was murdered. The English primary sources only talk about a quote, mysterious illness that kills her extraordinarily quickly. As soon as she gets on board that ship, let's talk about what happens when she gets on board that ship.

Who's with her?

Jamie Pereira: We have her husband, John Rolfe, and her son who was born a year previously. We have Captain Argyle, as well as her accompaniment that she came with from her native tribe. We have Uttamatomakkin, who was the

Declan Hill: spiritual advisor that I was speaking.

And I just want to interrupt here for one second. I'm sorry about this, Jamie, but Captain Argyle is the guy who arranged her kidnapping. So you can imagine on a small ship, just the human interaction between this jerk, who's human trafficked her, now he is on charge of this ship. How does, how did he, quote, celebrate this arrival of Batoka and her husband coming back on his ship?

Jamie Pereira: They're celebrating with a dinner. Their plan went exactly as they wanted. They showed themselves off to the English, and Now they're going to have a celebratory dinner.

Declan Hill: So they have a celebratory dinner and already I'm thinking Agatha Christie. Because, when everything, there's a murder mystery, it always comes around somebody being poisoned at a dinner or drinking the wrong thing. What are they celebrating?

Jamie Pereira: The success that they had in England. She played her part well. She was an example of Christianity conversion of the Native Americans. They got their funding and now they're going back

Declan Hill: so I'm just going to remember that because in the murder mystery that is around Matoaka's death, at least the English are happy with what she's done so far.

What is the thesis that in terms of her murder, starting from that dinner, what's the thesis of why and who could have killed her?

Jamie Pereira: The thesis is that she learned something she was not supposed to. They believe that she was either sitting on a conversation about plans that were going to happen to the Native Americans upon their arrival back in Virginia, or they just did not need her anymore.

And they were able to get rid of her at that point.

Declan Hill: And is there any discussion as to why they would have waited for her to get on board the ship? Couldn't they, if it was going to be a murder, wouldn't a dagger or some poison in the streets of London be more effective?

Jamie Pereira: She was the talk of the town in England. People loved her.

And obviously they still wanted to have peaceful relations with the Native Americans upon coming back. If they're told by her accompaniment that she was stabbed, that's going to raise some red flags.

Declan Hill: So it had to be something mysterious. It had to be a mysterious death if it were a murder. Talk to us about what happens on the ship as it goes down the Thames.

Jamie Pereira: So about 20 miles down the Thames, She ends up not feeling well. We don't know. It's really up in the air whether she started not feeling well before they had even reached the ship entirely, or if this was a sudden occurrence.

Declan Hill: Do we know what her symptoms are?

Jamie Pereira: Based on sacred oral traditions, she was ill in the stomach area and there were convulsions.

Declan Hill: It doesn't sound like. pneumonia. It doesn't sound like a respiratory. It sounds like something being upset in the tummy here, which could be poison after that celebratory dinner.

Jamie Pereira: There are other options as well. So if you look up, the most basic answers are going to be pneumonia. They're going to be tuberculosis. That's respiratory. We're not seeing accounts of coughing. We're not seeing accounts of any respiratory thing.

Declan Hill: what you found in the primary sources is that it was something, whatever led to her death, murder or sickness, came from her stomach. So wasn't respiratory, wasn't tuberculosis. Tell us at least in terms of murder, what it could have been.

Jamie Pereira: We have theories of bloody flux, which this is very similar to her symptoms.

Where it would be a stomach type virus it's also known as dysentery. This is an attack on the intestines, causes diarrhea, stomach problems, it affects the colon mostly, and this could cause death within 48 hours.

Declan Hill: And, my understanding of bloody flux is that it's a disease that's specific to shipborne. So dysentery cholera, you'll get on land from a contaminated water source, but bloody flux was something was specific to onboard ship. Is that right?

Jamie Pereira: Yes.

Declan Hill: Okay. So that's an interesting theory. I've seen it in a number of books on Matoaka.

One is an excellent book written by one of the historians at Henricus, a brilliant guy wrote, 10 facts about Pocahontas in England, which I think a really interesting book, what do we hear in terms of a poisoning? We have a sense of what something that could have poisoned her in that short a time, 24 to 48 hours.

What are the symptoms that we know that she had on the ship from Thames down to that village 20 miles away? Talk us through those.

Jamie Pereira: Although we're not sure exactly when she got sick, She experienced vomiting and convulsions right after she had that dinner.

Declan Hill: In terms of poisons that we know that existed in the 1600s, what is the obvious one that comes out at us?

Jamie Pereira: The one that sticks out would be arsenic, this shows symptoms of abdominal pain, convulsions, vomiting, very similar to the symptoms she experienced.

Declan Hill: We have a princess, Matoaka, who's got on board the ship, She seems okay, certainly well enough to have a, celebratory dinner with the captain hosted by the guy who kidnapped her.

As they're sailing down the Thames, they see a small village, now a town that I visited, called Gravesend. And in Gravesend, the ship is stumped. What happens to Matoaka at that point?

Jamie Pereira: We are not necessarily sure whether she died on the ship before they had reached the shore.

Declan Hill: Yeah, some sources say that, but other sources say?

Jamie Pereira: That she had died in the inn that they had went to after she arrived.

She was sitting next to her son, who is at this point around one year old, and she said that "it is enough that he lives."

Declan Hill: "It is enough that he lives." And then she dies.

Jamie Pereira: Yes.

Declan Hill: Do we know where she's buried now?

Jamie Pereira: We know that she was buried at Gravesend. We are not necessarily sure where her body is at this moment.

Declan Hill: We may be leading an investigatory research team over to Gravesend, over to London, over to Oxford, to examine precisely where her body may have ended up.

There's some dispute, the local historians say it was one place. Other people say it was another and it's become quite a story, but let's focus this particular interview on the potential poisoning of Matoaka. What we know from the mystery, just to recap the last few minutes, is she gets on board the ship.

She seems well enough at least to board the ship. She has a quote, celebratory dinner hosted by the guy who kidnapped her. And very quickly, she's sick with abdominal pains, convulsions, high fever, and they have to carry her off and she's dead within 36 to 48 hours.

Look, one thing that happened was that in four years after Matoaka dies, almost to the day, the indigenous rise up and massacre 400.

English, clearly the advice of the spiritual advisor that had gone with Matoaka that, Hey, more of these people are coming in. The only chance you have of stopping them is to kill them now had gotten through to enough people. But you're talking about something else that happened, something, a mass poisoning.

Tell us about the incident during the indigenous wars back and forth between the English that gives you reason to think there may be a case of poisoning with Matoaka.

Jamie Pereira: In 1623 , the English decided to initiate a peace negotiation with the Native Americans. And during this negotiation, they ended up administering poisoned wine to about 200 Native Americans. This was from Dr. John Potts, who came over from London.

Declan Hill: Did Potts come over expressly to administer this poison?

Jamie Pereira: He did have the intention of administering the poison.

Declan Hill: And how was it, do you know the details of this treatment? Did they all raise their goblets or wine or whatever, and the English drunk one barrel and these guys drank the other?

Jamie Pereira: When they drank the poison, they were under that impression that went well. We're going to celebrate our newfound peace.

Declan Hill: this is like _Game of Thrones season three, the blood wedding_. This is like the red wedding. This is like you invite the people in and then you betray and kill them all.

Jamie Pereira: I'll have to believe you on that one.

Declan Hill: Okay, so you should. It's a great series. Thank you very much. Really appreciate all the research that you've done over the last few months.

Is there anything that surprised you about Matoaka's life?

Jamie Pereira: What surprised me the most was her age throughout every part of the story. She was undeniably young, especially compared to the people that she was with.

Declan Hill: She had incredible resilience.

A lot of stuff happened to her. Kidnapped, human trafficking, this forcible conversion, possible sexual assault. We're not sure, and I don't want to besmirch anything here, but just appalling stuff was going on. And taken out of her culture, out of her language. Yet she continues to bounce back.

Jamie Pereira: Yeah, she was about 21 when she died.

I'm 20 years old right now, and I cannot use a dishwasher. I've never run it before. It's too loud.

Declan Hill: Yes.

Jamie Pereira: I believe that she did show incredible resilience through a lot of these trying times. Especially being such a leadership role in her tribe, she took on a lot of responsibility.

Declan Hill: I think what has surprised me is that it's almost impossible to overstate how badly she was treated during her life.

But that exploitation continued of her legacy long after she was dead. And you see almost every single jerk in history from the Virginia slave plantation owners to the racist, racists of America. And when I say that word, I'm not being sloppy. The actual American fascists. planned an excavation in England to recover her body so it could prop up their fascist movement here in America.

Then American corporations like Walt Disney have deliberately obscured her true story. So that has surprised me, yet through it all, her resilience as a person has come out. Thank you for your work, Jamie. It's a great honor to work with a student like you.

Jamie Pereira: Thank you. Yes.

Declan Hill: Hey, thank you so much for listening to this special edition of Crime Waves. Matoaka Pocahontas, the founding mother of America, was she murdered? It was hosted by my forensic science student, Jamie Pereira.

She did fantastic work and research. So please, if you enjoyed the show, subscribe, follow, or like us on whatever platform you get your podcast on. And you'll also hear more shows from either the best investigators in the world or some of my best students. Thanks again. And we'll see you for the next episode of Crime Waves.