Pocahontas-16 - Drawing. Public domain image.

Pocahontas (1596—1617), Powhatan woman who fostered peace between English colonists and Native Americans by befriending the settlers at the Jamestown Colony in Virginia and eventually marrying one of them. Among her several native names, the one best known to the English was Pocahontas (translated at the time as “little wanton” or “mischievous one”). She was a daughter of Powhatan (as he was known to the English; he was also called Wahunsenacah), chief of the Powhatan empire, which consisted of some 28 peoples of the Tidewater region. Pocahontas was a girl of age 10 or 11 when she first became acquainted with the colonists who settled in the Chesapeake Bay area in 1607.