Pocahontas

Born Amonute around 1596, daughter of Wahunsenacawh who controlled the Powhatan Confederacy across Virginia's Tidewater, she became a bargaining chip when English colonists captured her for ransom in 1613. During captivity she was baptized Rebecca and in April 1614 married tobacco planter John Rolfe; their son Thomas was born in January 1615. The Rolfes traveled to London in 1616, where she was presented to English society as the "civilized savage" meant to lure investors to Jamestown - she attended a masque at Whitehall, became a celebrity, was elaborately entertained. In 1617, preparing to return to Virginia, she died at Gravesend of unknown causes and was buried at St George's Church, her grave's exact location lost after the building burned and was rebuilt. What the English explorer John Smith later wrote about her has been disputed by her documented descendants, but the romanticized versions stuck - her name now marks landmarks across the United States, and her story has been claimed by everyone from First Families of Virginia to a First Lady to an astronomer.