This story of romantic heroism-the stuff of legend-has defined Pocahontas’s image for centuries. Hollywood movies have portrayed her as royalty-or as Smith referred to her in his 1616 letter to Queen Anne, “Lady Pocahontas”-whose dramatic act of self-sacrifice saved the lives of Smith and the settlers at Virginia’s Jamestown colony. Her death was unexpected: Pocahontas had arrived in England the previous June and spent months touring the country, celebrated by the press as an “Indian princess.” Pocahontas’s tale of trans-Atlantic travel, her marriage to the Englishman John Rolfe, and her alleged conversion to Christianity became part of a compelling cultural narrative that helped promote white colonial interests, especially in the Virginia Company.ĭespite the brevity of her life and the mystery surrounding the cause of her death, Pocahontas remains one of the most recognizable Native icons in American culture today. She went by many names-Matoaka, Amonute, and, at her passing, Rebecca-but she’s best remembered today as Pocahontas. They are still taken away and murdered," DeLeary says.On March 21, 1617, a 21-year-old woman from Virginia’s Pamunkey tribe died at Gravesend, England. "Young Indigenous women and girls are still stolen. Just as Australian Indigenous women are shockingly over represented in homicide and missing persons statistics, so too are Indigenous women in North America. It's no great shock that the film deviates from the truth - Disney's Pocahontas wasn't a documentary.īut to know only the animated version of Pocahontas's history is to ignore a brutal reality - one that extends to today. "Saying that she fell ill randomly and died definitely absolves her captors of any responsibility." Not a finished storyĪt the end of Disney's 1995 film, a healthy, happy Pocahontas stands atop a clifftop, back home with her people. From their perspective, that is exactly what happened - that she was murdered," Blais says. "There were other that were with her on the ship who didn't die. Some Powhatan representatives on the ship with Pocahontas reportedly told her father later that she was poisoned. "According to traditional knowledge, she was murdered." Pocahontas was "paraded around like this successful example of colonisation", Blais says. He was there to spruik tobacco, which he was growing in Virginia and wanted the English to invest in. Then in 1616, Rolfe travelled to Gravesend in the UK, taking his new wife Pocahontas with him. Pulling together the real story of Pocahontas's life involves interpreting both the accounts of the English colonisers and the oral history passed down by her people.Īccording to Blais, it is clear Pocahontas was kidnapped and "used as a negotiating chip" by English colonists, who had arrived in Tsenacommacah in the early 1600s to establish the Jamestown colony. "It's basically just horrific." Contradictory accounts of death Most of the Disney movie, in which a "hyper-sexualised" Pocahontas "falls in love with John Smith and eventually is willing to give up her culture", is "completely historically inaccurate", Blais says. She and Derek Blais, a Toronto-based creative director who is a member of Oneida Nation of the Thames, have re-written a version of the Pocahontas movie called Missing Matoaka, to help set the story straight. "It was written down that she was traded for a pot, a copper pot," DeLeary says. The Powhatan and the English were at war, and to weaken Wahunsenaca, the chief of the Powhatan people and Pocahontas's father, the English hatched a plan to kidnap his daughter. "Her name is Matoaka," says DeLeary, who is also a screenwriter.Īnd when European invaders made their way to her homeland Tsenacomaca, in Chesapeake Virginia in the US, she was not an "18-year-old sex kitten in the woods", she says.Īn 1887 portrait of a young Pocahontas with her son, Thomas Rolfe. "Pocahontas", the name she's commonly known by and the name this article uses, was a childhood nickname. Her name is the first thing that should be corrected. "Let me tell you her story and correct the narrative." Hyper-sexualised and misrepresented If you think this is all so happy, let me tell you. "If going to talk about Pocahontas, and they're going to call me Pocahontas, I'm like, OK, well, listen up. Indigenous readers are advised that this article contains some disturbing historical information.ĭeLeary grew up being compared to the Disney character. Pocahontas was a proud Indigenous woman, the daughter of a Powhatan Chief, and a model of strength and courage.īut during her life, she was kidnapped, traded for property and sexually assaulted, explains Lauren DeLeary, tribal member of the Chippewa of the Thames. Pocahontas was the daughter of a Powhatan chief and was taken from her people.
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