This marriage was justly celebrated as the means and beginning of a firm peace which long continued, so that Pocahontas was again entitled to the grateful remembrance of the Virginia settlers.  Already, in 1612, a plan had been mooted in Virginia of marrying the English with the natives, and of obtaining the recognition of Powhatan and those allied to him as members of a fifth kingdom, with certain privileges.  Cunega, the Spanish ambassador at London, on September 22, 1612, writes:  “Although some suppose the plantation to decrease, he is credibly informed that there is a determination to marry some of the people that go over to Virginia; forty or fifty are already so married, and English women intermingle and are received kindly by the natives.  A zealous minister hath been wounded for reprehending it.”

Mr. John Rolfe was a man of industry, and apparently devoted to the welfare of the colony.  He probably brought with him in 1610 his wife, who gave birth to his daughter Bermuda, born on the Somers Islands at the time of the shipwreck.  We find no notice of her death.  Hamor gives him the distinction of being the first in the colony to try, in 1612, the planting and raising of tobacco.  “No man [he adds] hath labored to his power, by good example there and worthy encouragement into England by his letters, than he hath done, witness his marriage with Powhatan’s daughter, one of rude education, manners barbarous and cursed generation, meerely for the good and honor of the plantation:  and least any man should conceive that some sinister respects allured him hereunto, I have made bold, contrary to his knowledge, in the end of my treatise to insert the true coppie of his letter written to Sir Thomas Dale.”

The letter is a long, labored, and curious document, and comes nearer to a theological treatise than any love-letter we have on record.  It reeks with unction.  Why Rolfe did not speak to Dale, whom he saw every day, instead of inflicting upon him this painful document, in which the flutterings of a too susceptible widower’s heart are hidden under a great resolve of self-sacrifice, is not plain.

The letter protests in a tedious preamble that the writer is moved entirely by the Spirit of God, and continues: 

“Let therefore this my well advised protestation, which here I make between God and my own conscience, be a sufficient witness, at the dreadful day of judgment (when the secrets of all men’s hearts shall be opened) to condemne me herein, if my chiefest interest and purpose be not to strive with all my power of body and mind, in the undertaking of so weighty a matter, no way led (so far forth as man’s weakness may permit) with the unbridled desire of carnall affection; but for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of God, for my owne salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbelieving creature, namely Pokahuntas.  To whom my heartie and best thoughts are, and have a long time bin so entangled, and inthralled in so intricate a laborinth, that I was even awearied to unwinde myself thereout.”