Did John Smith misunderstand a Powhatan 'adoption ceremony'?

As we know, there has been much debate over whether John Smith was actually rescued by Pocahontas or not. That debate is not resolved, but the question has been complicated by the introduction of the "adoption ceremony" theory.

What is a Native American adoption ceremony?
In some Native American tribal societies, orphaned children and captive adults won in battle were sometimes adopted by their captors and underwent a ritualized death and re-birth as newly accepted tribal members. It is often said that this is what happened to John Smith, possibly with Pocahontas as a participant.

Scholars today generally agree that the Powhatan Indians, around the time of the 'rescue', sought to have John Smith, and by extension, the English settlers at Jamestown, as allies against the Spanish and against enemy tribes. As such, there was likely a moment when Powhatan conferred upon Smith a special status vis a vis the Powhatan confederacy. However, there continues to be debate as to whether the rescue that Smith described, if it occurred at all, and an 'adoption' refer to the same thing. Some scholars who doubt there ever was a rescue separate the 'adoption' from the rescue incident. Some who dispute the 'rescue' nevertheless say Smith was actually describing an 'adoption", which in my view provides a muddled and unsatisfactory understanding. How can something that didn't happen at all (in their view) be used to describe something else?

Ultimately, you can be on either side of the rescue story and still be on opposite sides of the "adoption ceremony" question. For example, anthropologist Helen Rountree claims there was no rescue and there is no evidence of an adoption ceremony. Anthropologist Frederice Gleach says the rescue happened and was in fact an adoption ceremony. Journalist David Price believes in the rescue but discounts the adoption ceremony explanation. Following are quotes from various writers and their stance on this issue.

It was an adoption ceremony

Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2004)

"For those who have liked the story, though, it may come as welcome news that there is broad consensus among experts that Powhatan probably did in some way ritually adopt John Smith.(24) Pocahontas conceivably might even have played some small part in a vivid ceremony, along with other wives and children. Adopting Smith would have been in keeping with the Algonkian culture. The paramount chief, as we know, preferred actual sons to rule over subject tribes, but he was certainly willing to work with ritually adopted ones. Establishing kinship ties was the principal means of ensuring his expanding control. Even ordinary prisoners of war were often adopted rather than killed. Furthermore, later events prove that Powhatan and Smith both believed some sort of special tie to have been established between them at that time." p. 56

My comment:
In her footnote #24, Townsend cites Kathleen Brown, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Daniel Richter, Frederic Gleach, and Margaret Holmes Williamson as those who provide the "broad consensus", with Rountree having doubts. Count Townsend in the camp of "there was no actual rescue; it was merely an adoption ceremony."

Rebecca K. Jager, Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea: Indian Women as Cultural Intermediaries and National Symbols (2015)

"It is likely that Pocahontas saved Smith in 1607, but it is also likely that Smith failed to understand what had happened to him. [5] ... Twentieth-century scholars who have accepted Smith's description of events - and not all do - looked for other incentives that pushed Pocahontas to spare his life. ... Peter Hulme and Paula Gunn Allen suggest that if Smith's claim was truthful, it it likely that he was ritually adopted. His imminent execution was actually a ritual to recognize his demise as a stranger and his rebirth as a kinsman and an ally. [6] Pocahontas, by saving Smith, became his cultural sponsor who was responsible for acclimatizing him to the expectations of the Powhatan confederacy. Allen suggests, 'Pocahontas became something like the god-mother of this new-made Powhatan. [7] This would explain her consistent good-will toward the English despite frequent hostilities and her captivity in Jamestown. p. 212, 213

My comment:
Jager cites Gunn Allen and Hulme for the adoption theory, but we can assume that Jager is pretty much on board with this thinking. As we can see in her wording, she prefers to think of it as there being an actual rescue that resulted in Smith being adopted by the Powhatans, the details of which Smith failed to understand.

Frederic W. Gleach, Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (1997)

"Pocahontas was acting in an important cultural role as mediator (cf. Kidwell 1992), symbolically saving Smith's life so that he could effectively be reborn into a new world of cultural relationships." p. 117
"Different Algonquian and other eastern cultures included a variety of ceremonies for adoption, although none is known to match this in elaboration. The only recorded ceremonies are for the adoption of individuals, however, and I would argue this ritual was part of something much larger. ... The threat of death by clubbing may seem excessive for a ritual of adoption, but structurally it is precisely what one might expect: a symbolic ending of one existence and the beginning of a new one. In this sense, the threat of death was intended to be perceived as real; the end of the prior state must be marked, dramatically and finally." p. 119
"The rescue and the final ritual with Powhatan must be considered together, and together with the protracted redefinition ritual and the procession through Tsenacommacah that preceded them, as a rite of passage 'adopting' the English colony." p. 120

My comment:
Gleach believes Smith's account that Pocahontas was part of a 'symbolic' rescue that was actually an adoption ritual. He further theorizes that the Powhatans were not only adopting Smith, but adopting the English, with Smith as their representative.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (2007)

"As Powhatan's men stood around [Smith] with clubs, Pocahontas 'the king's dearest daughter ... got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death.' Smith believed that Pocahontas had risked her own life to save his, but modern scholars argue that she was playing a role in a scripted ceremony through which Smith experiences a symbolic death that ended in his being adopted into Powhatan's family." p. 228

My comment:
Kupperman quotes Smith from The Generall Historie so that the legendary story remains intact, then clarifies that scholars believe it was actually an adoption ceremony. Her wording "modern scholars argue" doesn't indicate where she herself stands on the question. She just wants to dispense with the issue and move on to topics she can actually contribute to. I noticed that Townsend, above, cites Kupperman as part of the "broad consensus" that supports the adoption theory. Townsend's book was written 3 years before The Jamestown Project, so her knowledge of Kupperman's view had to come from something earlier, and presumably a book or article that was more definitive about Kupperman's beliefs than the quote above.

It was not an adoption ceremony

David A. Price, Love & Hate in Jamestown; John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation (2003)

"An immediate problem with such [adoption ceremony] theories is that nothing is known about seventeenth-century Powhatan adoption ceremonies (assuming they existed), nor is any other tribe in North America known to have had an adoption procedure comparable to what was undergone by Smith. It has been suggested that the ceremony follows the 'structure' of 'the classic pattern of rites of passage.' Yet the Powhatans' own rite of passage for young males does not bear this argument out. The ritual, known to the English as the 'black boys' ceremony, did include mock deaths - and, it was said, some real deaths - but otherwise it had little in common with Smith's experience." p. 244
"Apart from the paucity of empirical support, the theories have another problem. Smith's involvement with the Powhatans did not end on December 30, 1607. Why, then, did Smith never learn of his supposed mistake? How did he stay so clueless about the true nature of what he believed had been his near execution? These questions seem hard to surmount. Smith remained in Virginia, in frequent contact with the natives, including Powhatan and Pocahontas, for some time to come. Indeed, on account of Smith's detailed study of native life and culture in Virginia, his writings are among the principal sources for Powhatan ethnologists today. For that matter, Smith later witnessed the black boys ceremony himself; if his experience had been comparable, he was in a position to put two and two together." p. 244
"Overall, there is no compelling reason to believe that the events in Powhatan's assembly hall were anything other than what Smith perceived them to be. There is even less reason to doubt that Pocahontas was just who she appeared to be that day: a girl acting compassionately toward the pitiable stranger in front of her." p. 245

My comments:
Price cites no one in his assertion that no other tribe in North America is known to have had an adoption procedure like the one Smith described. However, it's often difficult to find sources for the non-existence of something, so I suppose we have to give Price the benefit of the doubt that he diligently researched this and found nothing. Frederic Gleach, a specialist in this area, and quoted above, appears to be satisfied that such adoption ceremonies existed.

On the question of why he remained clueless of the true nature of his near execution, there are two points to be made. A couple days after the "rescue" he was told that he now had a special relationship to Powhatan and they would henceforth share resources (or so Smith said). Thus Smith did not remain "clueless" about his adoption; he merely separated the rescue and his new, special relationship to the Powhatans in his mind. Secondly, his account of the rescue came many years later, so it's possible his thoughts on what happened to him had evolved. He also (probably) learned of the Juan Ortiz story after he returned to England to help shape his thinking. [I have no evidence that Smith knew of the Ortiz story, but that's the type of thing he'd have been keen to read about.]

Price's belief that Pocahontas actually rescued Smith as an act of compassion puts him in a minority at this point in the 21st Century. However, knowing how the Pocahontas legend has morphed over time, we should not be surprised if this line of thinking comes into fashion again someday.

Helen C. Rountree (2005); Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown

"Philip Barbour has suggested that Powhatan seems to have adopted Smith afterward, so he speculates that the rescue incident was part of an adoption ritual among the Virginia native people. [35] However, the behaviors described by Smith (feast him, pretend to murder him, pretend to rescue him) do not correspond with the adoption procedures recorded for any other Woodland Indian tribe. And no adoption procedure at all among the people of Tsenacomoco was ever described, although they very probably had one. Instead, the sequence of actions echoes the public phase of the huskanaw, or initiation of boys into manhood. But even then, things are out of place. [description of huskanaw} John Smith was not tested before being fed, and the age and gender of his savior are all wrong. And anyhow, why huskanaw that foreigner? No other seventeenth-century European account mentions any kind of endurance test inflicted upon a visiting diplomat before making an alliance. And Smith's position, on the evening of December 30, 1607, was that of a representative of his country." p. 80

My comment:
Rountree references Philip Barbour, a mid-20th Century scholar on John Smith.and the Jamestown settlement. (Link to his papers). Her resistance to the adoption ceremony appears to be that the details described by Smith don't match her understanding of such an event, plus her general belief that Smith made up the entire incident (see Rescue page).

Helen C. Rountree (1990); Pocahontas's People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries

"This incident, along with the 'rescue,' has been taken by some historians to be a formal adoption procedure. The incident by itself (conference, decision, announcement) may have been something of the sort, since it approximates descriptions of adoption procedures in other Indian groups (e.g., Iroquois), and Powhatan is known to have placed his real sons in ruling positions and expected them to send him tribute. However, Smith did not write of the 'rescue' itself as though it were part of a ritual, and no identical sequence of events is recorded as an adoption procedure for any native American group." p. 39

Comment:
Frederic W. Gleach, quoted above, disputes Rountree's conclusion on the adoption theory and calls her out (Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures, 1997):

"Rountree is certainly right in questioning the literal nature of the rescue, but her dismissal of it "from an anthropological viewpoint" is mistaken; lacking a larger framework as developed here, she dismisses the entire event as ritual. After describing the successive gathering with Powhatan and his men painted black, she writes: [see 1990 quote from Rountree above] Rountree does not explain why she trusts Smith to recognize a ritual from a foreign culture when she does not trust his account of the rescue. Furthermore, Smith's interpretations of meanings and reasons are far more likely to be wrong that the simple facts he chose to record. Any observer - or even participant - can misunderstand or only partly understand the meanings of and reasons for an event; this is particularly true of ritual events and is even more likely if the observer is unfamiliar with the culture in which the event is embedded." p. 119

Summary

To summarize this a bit, we see that experts disagree on whether or not the 'rescue' was actually an adoption ceremony. To believe that it was, you first have to believe that Smith was telling the truth as he understood it, even if his cultural understanding was inadequate to the task. There is also the possibility that the adoption, if there was one, is not identical to the Pocahontas 'rescue.' Smith may have been adopted near the end of his captivity without he himself understanding it, and regardless of whether or not the Pocahontas 'rescue' happened as he described it. My personal feeling, for what it's worth, is that Smith was adopted near the end of his captivity as an attempt by the Powhatan to secure the English as allies, though I have serious doubts (with room for future revision) about whether the 'rescue' actually occurred. - 7/20/2019

Relevant Documents

A True Relation by Captain John Smith, 1608 at Virtual Jamestown
A Description of New England, 1616 (PDF)
New England's Trials by Captain John Smith, 1620 (rare first edition, PDF)
The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England and the Summer Isles by Captain John Smith (PDF)
John Smith's Letter to Queen Anne; an excerpt from The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (html)
The Complete Works of Captain John Smith at Virtual Jamestown

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