Pocahontas only surviving daughter of the king". Pocahontas was her father's "delight and darling", according to the colonist Captain Ralph Hamor but she was not in line to inherit a position as a "weroance", subchief, or "mamanatowick" (paramount chief). Instead, Powhatan's brothers, sisters, and his sisters' children all stood in line to succeed him. In his "A Map of Virginia" John Smith explained how matrilineal inheritance worked among the Powhatan: Pocahontas is most famously linked to the English colonist Captain John Smith, who arrived in Virginia with a hundred other settlers in April 1607, at the behest of the London Company.
Powhatan had with the Spanish prior to their arrival). Within two weeks of the English arrival at Jamestown, deaths had occurred. The settlers had hoped for friendly relations and had planned to trade with the Virginia Indians for food. Captain Christopher Newport led the first English exploration party up the James River in 1607, when he met Parahunt, "weroance" of the Powhatan proper. The English initially mistook him for the paramount Powhatan ("mamanatowick"), his father Wahunsunacawh, who ruled the confederacy. On a hunting and trade mission on the Chickahominy River in December 1607, Captain John Smith, later president of the colony,