Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.0MB) | Embed
The lingering American perception of Pocahontas is some form of the Disney film version: a tribal chief’s daughter bravely steps in to save Jamestown settler John Smith from a grisly execution by his Indigenous captors. There is little to no evidence any of that happened. Pocahontas is currently making headlines because England is devoting a considerable amount of attention to the 400th anniversary of her death. She spent her final years in the European country after marrying an English man. In addition, President Donald Trump uses her name as an insult against a political foe. The American East Coast tribes that claim her, meanwhile, have no special recognition of Pocahontas. Will the general public ever really learn the truth about Pocahontas? Historians and tribal members help us update our portrait of Pocahontas’ life.
Guests:
Robert Gray (Pamunkey) – Chief of the Pamunkey Tribe
Dr. Camilla Townsend – professor of history at Rutgers University
Break music: Prayer Loop (song) Supaman (artist)
Hello,
Wonderful show on Pocahontas and her enduring legacy. I wanted to make some brief comments, touching on other points in the discussion today.
Just before the Disney Pocahontas movie was about to be released, in the mid ’90s, my grandma disclosed that the family was related to Pocahontas. Grandma passed soon after that. I read up on Pocahontas, and, after seeing the movie, thought about my grandma’s truth versus fiction and was struck then by the artistic license Disney took with the story. Grandmother had passed before seeing the movie, but, this year, Pocahontas appeared in our family’s DNA test results, via the Rolfes and Bollings of Virginia, confirming grandma’s oral history.
Pocahontas has long been celebrated and even rewarded by whites for her presumed assimilation into Colonial European societies (which we now know was compelled for reasons of diplomacy). On genealogy sites, folks of European descent like to boast of an association to Pocahontas, as well as to other assimilated ‘Cherokee Princesses’ in the family bloodline. It makes one wonder if the trope of the “Indian princess” in European-American family lines in fact began with Pocahontas, for she was the progenitor of aristocratic white planter societies in Virginia through her only child, Thomas Rolfe; mother of societies of wealthy white people who founded fortunes on her people’s ancient lands. Pocahontas became a powerful, iconic, symbol to them of native Virginia, native sacrifice, Christian conversion, and, ultimately, martyrdom to the expansion of white land ownership in the South and then later in the West. Like other Indian princesses, it is a point of pride to claim her. It makes one both aristocratic and Native American in the mind at the same time.
Our grandma was the daughter of a Cherokee man, and the granddaughter of African American slaves. Our line through her tells of Pocahontas, as well as other native and black women who had children with white men, likely through force. My research work involves trying to reveal such hidden lives, and there are so many, like myself, out there trying to discover family which then leads them to discover truths about American History not typically taught in school.
Unlike the 1995 Pocahontas movie, a more recent Disney hit was a portrait of a strong, native, heroine, Moana, who is independent, doesn’t need a white man, or any man, to save her or marry her, nor does she give up her people’s lands or her culture. Such a portrait of a person of color marks a welcome paradigmatic shift, and I think the portrait of Pocahontas will continue to change, too, going forward, to better reflect a more complete truth of who she was, and thus give us greater understanding of our country and of native history.
Thank you for honoring Pocahontas, today. And thank you so much for your show, everyday.