How did Pocahontas die?

The short answer is that no one knows precisely, but the consensus is that she died of illness, though the exact nature of that illness is unknown. Numerous infectious diseases were prevalent in London, and the Indians who were brought to crowded urban areas for the first time were especially susceptible to the novel European diseases. The ocean-going boats on which the Pocahontas entourage traveled were also dangerously filthy places. An idea proposed in recent years, that Pocahontas died from poison, has no basis in fact, though we can't rule it out entirely. The Pamunkey tribe of Virginia, which has the strongest connection to Pocahontas, has no official position on how she died. Following is what some authors have said about her death.

[For information about Indian depopulation (page in progress), see "How big a part did European diseases play in the Jamestown story?"]

David A. Price; Love & Hate in Jamestown (2003)

"The coal smoke of the city had long disagreed with her-hence the Rolfe's move to Brentford-and she had begun to struggle with illness as she and her husband waited for a change in the weather. Neither Smith nor Purchas had made note of any visible problems in her health before then. In view of her sensitivity to the foul air, it is generally believed her condition was a pulmonary infection such as pneumonia or tuberculosis." (p. 182)

Citing:
Stith (1747) p. 143. The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia
Smith (1986) vol. I, p. xlv ?
Woodward (1969) p. 184. Pocahontas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Va. Co. Recs. vol. r, p. 338

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

"Finally the wind shifted and the Rolfes could go aboard their ship, the George, and start for Virginia. But when the ship reached Gravesend, downriver from London, Pocahontas had to be taken ashore to die. All the contemporary accounts or her death are aggravatingly brief. John Chamberlain wrote merely (on March 29), "The Virginian woman (whose picture I sent you) died this last week at Gravesend, as she was returning homeward." Not very informative! Samuel Purchas added only that she made a good Christian end, which is what readers really wanted to know in those days. Nobody wrote anything about her deathbed scene, as Francis Mossiker did in the 20th Century. Nor did anybody think at the time to mention what the poor woman died of, at the age of twenty going on twenty-one. Many young women of that age died of various causes back then, in both England and Tsenacomoco. Childbirth often did the job, but just as often it was contagious diseases for which there was then no cure. And plenty of those were going around.

One of the most contagious killers in the seventeenth century, other than smallpox, was the "bloody flux," a hemorrhagic form of dysentery that mutated into something else in the next century and disappeared from the records. Circumstantial evidence indicates that a shipboard epidemic of this unpleasant malady was what carried off Pocahontas so suddenly-and her death does seem to be unexpected, if we can believe the March 10 warrant. [A letter sent to the Rolfes previously by the Virginia Company that didn't mention any illness.]
....
The "sickness," which probably (but not certainly) attacked Pocahontas as well as all the others on board, is harder to pin down. But while the Tassantassas in Virginia were healthy as of June 1617, a terrible outbreak of bloody flux occurred later in the summer. Survivors in Jamestown remembered the ships that arrived: the George (with Rolfe aboard) and the Neptune and the Treasurer (in August, after being separated from the George). "With them [the last two or all three?] was brought a most pestilent disease called the bloody flux, which infected almost the whole colony."

Citing:
McIlwaine. (1915) I:28. Journal of the House of Burgesses. 13 vols. Richmond; Virginia State Library.
Haile. (1998) 905. Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony: The First Decade, 1607-1617, Champlain, Va.

Benjamin Woolley: Savage Kingdom - The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America (2007)

"Pocahontas, meanwhile, was preparing to depart 'against her will'. She and her son were now both suffering from an unidentified illness. Waiting for the wind to 'come about to send them away', their condition deteriorated, and John Rolfe began to consider leaving the child behind, fearing it might not survive the voyage.

In the event, they were all aboard the George when she cast off sometime around mid-March 1617. They were approaching the wide Thames estuary when Pocahontas's condition became critical, and it was decided to put in at the nearby port of Gravesend. Some comfort to the ailing princess and her infant son would have been sought at a nearby inn, such as the Flushing, run by a Belgian described in a contemporary travel guide as a 'capital fellow'.

All hopes of her recovery now rested either on the purging and blood-letting of English physicians, or the 'extreme howling, shouting, singing, and ... violent gestures and Antic actions' performed by priests like Uttamatomakkin as part of their healing rite. Neither side was able to save her, and by the end of March, she was dead." (p. 345)

Citing:
Chamberlain to Carleton, 18 January 1616-17, in CSP Dom - James I, vol. 1, xc, No. 25.

Camila Townsend: Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2004)

"The party seemed eager to be home, for they decided to travel even though almost none of the Virginia Indians felt well, struggling against colds, flu, and apparently pneumonia. They made their way down the Thames, leaving the city behind, passing through a marshy, dreary land. Twenty miles downriver, they could see a tall church and a three-story inn on a rising ground in the town of Gravesend. John Rolfe told Argall they needed to stop. Pocahontas was too ill to continue.

They went to the inn at Gravesend, and Pocahontas was put to bed. They surely sent for a doctor, but a medical man in that era would have been able to do little that would actually help. If they bled her, it would have hastened her demise. Her infected lungs were filling with fluid. Most of the other Indians were sick, too; they could do little to comfort one another.

Pocahontas died there in the inn." (p. 157)

Citing:
No one in particular. In footnote #38, she says, "All sources agree that they stopped at the inn at Gravesend, but nothing else is sure. It is even theoretically possible that Pocahontas died of some other ailment unrelated to the respiratory infections from which all the Indians were suffering, but given her youth and previous good health, that is unlikely." (p. 206)

Alfred A. Cave, Lethal Encounters (2011)

"Before the ship carrying them back to Virginia cleared the English Channel, Pocahontas died, probably of dysentery, and was buried in Gravesend on March 21, 1617." (p. 101)

Cave seems to be citing Rountree, rebranding the "bloody flux" as dysentery.

Added 6/28/2020

David Penney, Associate Director, Museum Scholarship, National Museum of the American Indian, from the Smithsonian Channel's 2017 Pocahontas: Beyond the Myth.

"We don't know what she was afflicted with. Some even are afraid that she might have been poisoned, that they didn't want her to go back. We don't know."

My comment:
I think Penney is referencing Custalow & Daniel here with his mention of poisoning, though it's possible he's heard other Indians say this. That Indians might have the darkest explanation for Pocahontas's death would not be surprising. You still have to wonder why only Pocahontas among the Indian travelers would have been dispatched in this way, while the highest ranking Indian, Uttamatomakin, was allowed to return safely to Jamestown.

On the possibility of poisoning

A recent Internet conspiracy theory is that Pocahontas was poisoned. The perpetrators have been identified as Samuel Argall and John Rolfe working together. Because anything is possible, we cannot rule this out, in the same way we can't rule out her death by lightning. We must, however, remember that there is no evidence to support any of these possibilities, as they are only the products of 21st Century imagination.

Nevertheless, as this is an interesting topic, let's examine it a little more closely. First, let's consider the availability of poison. If there is anything that supports the poisoning theory on a circumstantial basis, this would be it. It appears that the Jamestown settlers had no qualms about using poison as a weapon. Here's the most egregious example (summarized by myself):

After the 1622 massacre by Opechancanough's forces, and after the English had made numerous retaliations, Opechancanough proposed a truce to halt the bloodshed. On May 22, 1623, William Tucker, along with John Pott, the colony physician, and a dozen colonists, met with a large contingent of Powhatan Indians led by Opechancanough at a spot on the Pamunkey River. The two sides promised peace, and as toast, the colonists offered the Indians wine laced with poison, while they themselves drank from a separate source. The strategy succeeded in killing as many as 200 Indians, though not Opechancanough, who survived. This March 22 attack by poisoning was later to be declared an annual holiday by the colonists to commemorate their deliverance by God from the natives. (Source: Price, D. Love & Hate in Jamestown, pp. 218-219.)

The Powhatan Indians, for their part, may have attempted to use poison against the colonists, but the information is only available by way of English records. Rountree tells of two occasions. The first was in 1608, during a period when the colonists and the Indians were involved in a series of violent incidents. She writes (with Smiths words in quotation marks):

"The great werowance decided to call a truce, which he did with a chain of pearls for Chawnzmit as a personal gift. His subjects would bring corn to trade, he said. And his word was good: "Five or six days after from all parts of the country within 10 or 12 miles [i.e., within 15-20 km] in the extreme frost and snow they brought [the Strangers] provision on their naked backs." They also expressed their resentment when they offered cooked food, which the Arrogant Ones ate and found to be poisoned. The poison was not strong enough, however, for "it made them sick, but expelled itself." A son of Opitchapam, Wecuttanow, seems to have been the major player in that attempt, for as the Pamunkeys saw the aliens off, they tried to excuse him.' (Source: Rountree, H. Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. p. 128)

The second attempt was by Opechancanough himself, though it never really got off the ground. He had in mind to invite the Jamestown colonists to a kind of funeral ceremony for the recently deceased Powhatan, Rountree says:

"Opechancanough overreached himself by adding a complication that backfired. He knew, as modern botanists do, that the plant most poisonous to human beings in the Chesapeake region is spotted cowbane (Cicuta maculata): a thumbnail's worth can kill a fully grown cow. The plant grows throughout the region, but it is more plentiful on the Virginia Eastern Shore. He therefore sent to Esmy Shichans, werowance of the Accomacs, asking for a supply of it and offering payment in beads, probably copper ones because the Accomacs had plentiful shells in their territory. When Esmy Shichans balked, the messenger explained why it was wanted, at which point the chief refused altogether to have anything to do with the project. Not only that, but he sent a warning about a plot to the governor in Jamestown." (Source: Rountree, H. Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. p. 209)

John Smith was accused by his enemies of attempted murder by poison when the ruling faction in Jamestown tried to gather evidence against him at the time of Smith's return to England. Benjamin Woolley (Savage Kingdom, 2007) writes:

"They charged him with a range of offenses ...[various accusations, including] that he attempted to poison one of the Dutchmen with ratsbane; ..." p. 229

To conclude this issue, we know that both the colonists and the Powhatan Indians had employed poison against their enemies, so the availability of poison is not in doubt, though we have no specific evidence that poison was used in Pocahontas's death.

What is the relative likelihood of death by poisoning?

Even if you allow the possibility of poisoning, it's important to acknowledge the far greater likelihood that contagious disease, all too common in those days, was the actual culprit, and that the Native Americans visiting London would have had less natural immunity to the diseases originating in Europe. Indeed, by going from the forests of Virginia to the highly populated, infectious stew of London, they were unwittingly subjecting themselves to the most dangerous environment of their lives. Note that two centuries later, Hawaii's King Kamehameha II (Liholiho), and Queen consort, Kamāmalu, died on a visit to London (1824) in a very short time after contracting measles.

Tuberculosis was once a leading cause of death among Europeans and Native Americans alike. The disease sometimes took years to claim its victims. However, a form of tuberculosis, called "Galloping Consumption" caused death much more quickly than typical tuberculosis, requiring only a month or two.

A fascinating 2011 article on the History Channel website, "17th-Century Londoners Died of Fright, Itch and Grief," reveals how a 17th Century "statistician" gathered records on death rates in London in 1620. Here are the introductory paragraphs:

From "17th-Century Londoners Died of Fright, Itch and Grief" (Jennie Cohen, 2011)

Life was hard for 17th-century Londoners—and death came both often and mysteriously. Nowhere is this more apparent than in John Graunt’s “Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality,” a groundbreaking vital statistics text that helped launch modern demography. A 1679 edition of the treatise went on display at London’s Royal Society on Monday as part of an exhibition celebrating 350 years of scientific book collecting.

Born in 1620, John Graunt worked as a haberdasher, held a series of municipal position and served in the London militia. In the mid-1600s he began aggregating and analyzing the city’s weekly death lists, known as bills of mortality, and in 1662 he published the first edition of “Natural and Political Observations.” In the landmark report, Graunt calculated death rates, identified variations by subset and pioneered the use of life tables, which show predicted mortality for each age group. He observed, among other things, that women lived longer than men and that more than one-third of London’s children never made it past the age of 6. (Link to article)

On a marginally related note, the first-born son of Queen Anne, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (1594-1612), died at the age of 18, most likely from typhoid, based on post-mortem descriptions. His death was considered a tragedy to the nation, as Henry had shown promise as a leader, while his younger brother, Charles, the next in line, had always been sickly. Due to the politics of succession, one would have to consider the possibility of poisoning in the death of Henry Frederick, although historians seem generally satisfied that he died of illness, most likely typhoid, or possibly porphyria. (Wikipedia)

The Impact of disease on Native American history

Relevant excerpts from Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond (2005)
ISBN-9780739467350

"The grimmest examples of germs' role in history come from the European conquest of the Americas that began with Columbus's voyage of 1492. Numerous as were the Native American victims of the murderous Spanish conquistadores, they were far outnumbered by the victims of murderous Spanish microbes." p. 197

"The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by the Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale. For instance, in 1519, Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. ... What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac. Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards' invincibility. By 1618, Mexico's initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million." p. 210

"When Hernando de Soto became the first European conquistador to march across the southeastern United States, in 1540, he came across Indian town sites abandoned two years earlier because the inhabitants had died in epidemics. These epidemics had been transmitted from coastal Indians infected by Spaniards visiting the coast. The Spaniards' microbes spread to the interior in advance of the Spaniards themselves." p. 211

".... archaeological excavations, and scrutiny of descriptions left by the very first European explorers on our coasts, now suggest an initial number of around 20 million Indians. For the New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century or two following Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been as large as 95 percent." p. 211

"The main killers were Old World germs to which Indians had never been exposed, and against which they therefore had neither immune nor genetic resistance. Smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus competed for top rank among the killers. As if these had not been enough, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague tuberculosis, and yellow fever came up close behind. In countless cases, whites were actually there to witness the destruction occurring when the germs arrived. For example, in 1837, the Mandan Indian tribe, with one of the most elaborate Indian cultures in our Great Plains, contracted smallpox from a steamboat traveling up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The population of one Mandan village plummeted from 2,000 to fewer than 40 within a few weeks." p. 211, 212

Edit: I understand there are some issues with Diamond re. the above. I will try to read more on this topic from other sources (3/15/2018)

Shipboard conditions on transatlantic vessels in the 17th Century

Tyler Ambinder, in City of Dreams: the 400-year Epic History of Immigrant New York (2016) wrote about the conditions on Dutch sailing vessels to Manhattan in the 1600s. The situation for the English would have been the same, possibly worse, but unlikely to have been better than for the Dutch.

"Passengers threw up frequently from seasickness, and the cramped below-deck areas that the passengers shared quickly became suffused with vomit. Adjusting to a strange new diet, many immigrants developed diarrhea, which was difficult to contain within tempest-tossed chamber pots. As a result, bacteria-laden feces, mixed with vomit, soon ran in small rivers around the feet of the third-class passengers. Although the Dutch were not accustomed to roomy homes, the transatlantic voyage forced them into much closer contact with far more people for longer periods of time than ever before. Viruses spread quickly, as did body lice, which transmitted additional deadly bacteria to the passengers through the bugs' own feces (the source of typhus, commonly known as 'ship fever'). Measures that might have forestalled these threats--such as bathing or even hand-washing--were not customary to begin with, and out of the question on a vessel where every drop of fresh water was precious.

On ships of this era, boiling vinegar was commonly sprinkled in the passenger quarters in an attempt to disinfect these putrid compartments, but such efforts could not hold back the tidal wave of filth, germs and vermin. Burials at sea were a sad rite of passage for any immigrant voyage. Losing 10 percent of the passengers and crew on a single seventeenth-century transatlantic crossing was common. Twenty or even 30 percent was not an unusual toll. Knowing this, and not trusting the ship's doctor (who typically moonlighted as a barber), passengers often traveled with their own medical remedies. But as the Van der Zees note, these 'syrups, balsams, unguents, suppositories, pills, and quack remedies' could not forestall the march of death aboard each immigrant ship..[56]" p. 13. 14, citing van der Zee (1978)

My comment:
Pocahontas and John Rolfe hopefully had better accommodations than the lowliest passengers, but it's unlikely they could have avoided the pestilence and poor conditions entirely. There was also a large retinue of Virginia Indians on board, and I can't imagine the English providing them with better care than the English passengers. The Indians, too, would not have been able to bathe as the customarily did while at their homes along the rivers. For the English, this was less of a problem, as they didn't bathe anyway.

Is the lack of a cause of death suspicious?

No cause of death is available for most people who died in the 17th century. I haven't researched this question in detail, but anyone who wishes to look for the cause of death among this list of prominent people who died in the 17th century should feel free to do so. A perfunctory look at the data tells me that no cause of death is listed in many cases. As an example, we don't know the cause of death for William Shakespeare, a contemporary of Pocahontas, and a well-known celebrity in his own lifetime. We also don't know the precise cause of death for John Smith, though it appears he died of illness. We have no known cause of death for John Rolfe or Thomas Rolfe either.

Did anyone have a motive to murder Pocahontas?

Jack D. Forbes and Paula Gunn Allen have speculated that Samuel Argall and John Rolfe, Pocahontas's own husband, could have been responsible for her death. Gunn Allen stated their reasoning stemmed from the mysterious circumstances of her death and their general mistrust of the colonists. They never explained, however, why Uttamatomakin (aka Tomocomo) and Matachanna managed to escape being murdered if the reason for killing Pocahontas was to keep her from telling Powhatan and Opechacanough what she knew of the English after her fact-finding trip.

Speaking of motivation, and operating on the theory that evidence is unnecessary when tossing out rumors or quoting "sacred oral history," one would have to look at Powhatan priest, Uttamatomakin, who mysteriously escaped poisoning, as an additional suspect. Perhaps he disagreed with Pocahontas's agenda and wanted sole access to Powhatan in order to tell his side of the story. Perhaps it was a 'false flag' operation. In any case, if the poisoning theory sounds attractive, remember that Uttamatomakin had access to poison, access to the victim, and ultimate control of how the story was communicated to the Powhatan Indians. Likewise, Matachanna, the half-sister of Pocahontas, and the least-loved of Powhatan's daughters, could be considered another suspect for the same reasons. **

** For the record, I don't think this happened. I'm just trying to make a point that any claim about a historical event should have some evidence.
** I need to add that we have no evidence that Matachanna even accompanied Pocahontas to England, though I will attempt to verify whether there is a record of that or not. Meanwhile, the points about Uttamatomakin written above would still hold.. {Added 2/23/2020]

Return to Controversies page