In 1614, Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia. The marriage helped produce a temporary peace between English settlers and Powhatan peoples. It also became one of the most enduring, contested stories of early colonial America.

Pocahontas entered colonial narrative as a figure of mediation, conversion and imperial romance. Later poets and dramatists repeatedly reshaped her story, often revealing more about their own age's ideas of empire, gender and race than about the historical woman herself.