While cleaning out some of our recordings from TV, I ran across a whole section that we’d recorded for Emily — probably a couple of years ago. One of the recordings was Pocahontas — an animated version released by Disney. It occurred to me that the Disney-fied version of Pocahontas and John Smith didn’t look anything like reality.
Most of the legends about Pocahontas are about her courage and kindness — the way she intervened between her own Algonquin tribe and the colonial settlers, and how she saved the life of Captain John Smith when she put her own head down next to his on the execution block.
Turns out that there probably isn’t a lot of truth to those tales. It’s possible that John Smith and Pocahontas may have crossed paths when Smith skirmished with her father, Powhatan, but it’s unlikely that the 12-year old performed any legendary acts of bravery.
Pocahontas was really an innocent victim of the colonists — she was kidnapped as a teenager by British settlers and held hostage in hopes that her father, Powhatan, would strike a peaceful — and lucrative — settlement. While in captivity, a British minister taught her English and tried to “civilize” her. Pocahontas had an aptitude for both her English lessons and for British culture. When she was 19, she married Englishman-colonist John Rolfe and took the name Rebecca — that means “mother of two peoples.” (Pocahontas has several different names. She was named Ammonite at birth and went by the name Matoaka, that means “flower between two streams.” She supposedly earned the nickname Pocahontas, which means “playful one,” because of her happy, inquisitive nature.)
Rolf was a planter and cultivator of tobacco, but his business was suffering due to heavy English import taxes. King James I refused to lower tariffs, so Rolfe’s solution was a promotional tour that used his English-speaking Indian wife as bait while Rolfe peddled tobacco samples. Pocahontas was a big hit with her careful English and her high-necked English dresses — a big contrast to the traditionally dressed Indians that traveled with her on the tour. But King James I never lowered tobacco duties and the trip to England proved to be her undoing. Pocahontas, and about half of the Indians who accompanied her on the tour, was stricken with a European disease — she died of smallpox shortly before she was to return to America. She was only 22 year old and she was buried in England.
I mentioned the story of Pocahontas saving the life of John Smith when his head was on the execution block — here’s how the story goes….
The first English settlers arrived in Jamestown colony in 1607. That winter, Pocahontas’ brother kidnapped colonist Captain John Smith and made a spectacle of him before taking him to meet the chief.
According to Smith’s writings, his head was placed on two stones and a warrior was prepared to smash his head and kill him. But before the warrior could strike, Pocahontas rushed to Smith’s side and placed her head on his, preventing the attack. Chief Powhatan then bartered with Smith, referred to him as his son, and sent him on his way.
The legend appears to be his own publicity-seeking invention. Captain John Smith never even mentioned Pocahontas in his writings until 1824, seven years after Pocahontas had died and decades after he’d landed at Jamestown.
So I guess the message is don’t believe everything you see on TV or in the movies, and probably less of the things you see in animated movies….
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