Desperate Shores — Rebecca Rolfe

American Political History · Mar 22, 2021 · 14m · transcript

She was the daughter of the most powerful chief on the Virginia coast. She was taken hostage at seventeen. She learned English, converted to Christianity, married a tobacco farmer, and sailed to London to charm the court of King James I. Then she stood in a house in Brentford and made John Smith answer for every promise he had ever broken.

Rebecca Rolfe — known to history as Pocahontas — lived her entire life in the space between two worlds that were tearing each other apart. She brokered a peace that held for eight years. She raised a son who became one of Virginia's founding families. She…