Metacomet (1639–1676) was the Wampanoag chief who led King Philip’s War against the New England colonists in 1675–1676 to prevent Puritan expansion into native lands.

Pocahontas (ca. 1595–1617), also known as Matoaka and Rebecca Rolfe, was the daughter of Wahunsonakok, a Powhatan Indian chief who mediated between the Powhatans and the English colonists at Jamestown. In 1607, she participated in John Smith’s initiation into tribal membership of the Powhatans, an incident that has been mytholigized and re-imagined throughout American history. After being captured by an English expedition in 1613, Pocahontas was reluctantly converted to Christianity. She took the name “Rebecca” and was married to John Rolfe...

Squanto (ca. 1580–1622) was a Patuxet Indian who acted as an interpreter and de facto intermediary between the Wampanoag Indians and Pilgrim settlers at Plymouth. Previously, he had been captured and taken to England by Captain Thomas Hunt in 1614.

Roanoke Island, off present-day North Carolina, was the site of the first English settlement in North America. Founded by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585, the colony lasted barely a year. In 1587, Raleigh sent another group of colonists out to settle in the Chesapeake. When they reached Roanoke, the ship’s captain refused to take them farther, and they remained on the island, while John White, the colony’s leader, went back to England for supplies. When he returned in 1590, he discovered that all the English colonists were gone, giving the...