[3][page needed] In December 1607, English colonizer John Smith,[1] one of the Jamestown colony's leaders, was captured by a hunting expedition led by Opchanacanough, the younger brother of Powhatan.

[4] As the historian Margaret Williamson Huber has written, "Powhatan calculated that moving Smith and his men to Capahosic would keep them nearby and better under his control.

"[2] In January 1609, Smith recorded directing some of his men to build an English-style house for Powhatan at Werowocomoco, in exchange for food supplies for the hungry English colony.

Powhatan made his next capital at Orapake, located about 50 miles (80 km) west in a swamp at the head of the Chickahominy River.

John Rolfe was one of Pocahontas's many Jamestown teachers before their marriage; he instructed her in matters of the new culture she was being assimilated into, and he also taught her all about Christianity.

This might, at least in part, explain Pocahontas's apparent willingness to assimilate, convert to Christianity, and remain with the colonists: she wanted to be with Rolfe.

Although Rolfe was raised as an Englishman, he did honor his Native American heritage and even visited his uncle, Opchanacanough, along with his aunt, “Cleopatra” upon returning to Jamestown.

The modern Mattaponi and Patawomeck tribes believe that Powhatan's line also survives through Ka-Okee, Pocahontas' daughter by her first husband Kocoum.

[10] Modern historians have dismissed this tale as lacking credibility; nonetheless, a commemorative sculpture of Powhatan has stood at the site since 1985.

[11] In A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608), Smith described Powhatan thus: "[...] their Emperor proudly [lay] upon a bedstead a foot high upon ten or twelve mats, richly hung with many chains of great pearls about his neck, and covered with a great covering of Rahaughcums [raccoon skins].

At his head sat a woman, at his feet another, on each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men on each side [of] the fire, ten in a rank, and behind them as many young women, each a great chain of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and [he] with such a grave a majestical countenance as drove me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage.

"[12] "Powhatan's Mantle" is the name given to a cloak of deerskin, decorated with shell patterns and figures, held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

[13] In his 1906 work Lives of Famous Chiefs, Norman Wood provided a description of Powhatan, based on reports from English colonists.

He was said to be a "tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke, his head somewhat gray, his beard so thinne that it seemeth none at all, his age neare sixtie, of a very able and hardy body, to endure any labor.