Pocahontas

[[File:Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe.jpg|right|thumb|165px|Not quite Disney. Etching from 1616.]]{{historynav}}
'''Pocahontas''' {{lived|c. 1595|March 1617}} was a [[Native American]] from the tidewater region of what is now [[Fun:Virginia|Virginia]]. She was the favorite daughter of Powhatan, who ruled the loose confederacy that gave him his name.<ref group=note>Well, title actually. "Powhatan" is roughly the equivalent of "Emperor" or "President."</ref> Pocahontas was a nickname; Native Americans often had several names and she was also known as Amonute and Matoaka.<ref name=wppocahontas>{{wpa|Pocahontas}}</ref> She is perhaps best known for her "rescue" of English soldier and colonist {{wpl|John Smith (explorer)|John Smith}} who was allegedly about to be killed by her father: an event that many scholars argue was misunderstood by Smith, or perhaps, never occurred.

==History==
John Smith appears to have changed his story about his travels in [[North America]] several times, notably in 1616 when Pocahontas and Rolfe were due to meet Queen Anne of [[Denmark]] (wife of James I of [[England]]/VI of [[Scotland]]), perhaps to make Pocahontas seem more important. His 1608 account doesn't mention her presence at the critical incident when he was either held captive by Powhatan or they had a chat over dinner or something, but in 1616 he portrayed her as a hero who saved his life, and his 1624 history adds even more fluff.<ref>[https://www.biography.com/people/pocahontas-9443116 Pocahontas], Biography channel website</ref>

Jamestown was founded in 1607 and Pocahontas was instrumental in providing food to the colony in its earliest days. In 1610 the English abducted Pocahontas and held her hostage aboard ship in an effort to insure her father’s good behavior toward them. During her captivity, she “converted” (there is some dispute as to the sincerity of her conversion) to [[Christianity]] and was renamed Rebecca. She subsequently married John Rolfe, a colonist who was instrumental in the economic salvation of Jamestown when he introduced a hardy, flavorful strain of [[Tobacco smoking|tobacco]].

Pocahontas bore a child by John Rolfe, one Thomas Rolfe. She traveled to England with Rolfe, where she was introduced to court. She took ill just as the Rolfes embarked to return to America. Her exact cause of [[death]] is unclear: it is blamed on various popular diseases of the time such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery or smallpox, but there are also claims that she was poisoned. She died in Gravesend, Kent, aged around 22, and is interred there. She left her son Thomas, who was raised in England but aged 20 headed to the new world and became a tobacco farmer.<ref>[https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/pocahontas Pocahontas], History Channel</ref>

==Legacy==
She is the subject of a few stunningly inaccurate movies, not the least of which is [[The Walt Disney Company|Disney]]'s rather frightening (in terms of historical accuracy) portrayal. But Disney's portrayal was hardly the first to go the [[pseudohistory]] route (though Disney at least owned up to it). Because she is an ancestor of most of the First Families of Virginia<ref>http://pocahontas.morenus.org/poca_gen.html</ref> and because later [[United States|Americans]] did not want to acknowledge the acts of any non-white person in their history, Pocahontas's story was greatly romanticized, to the point where some<ref group=note>Such as Mary Virginia Wall in her aptly named 1908 novel [http://books.google.com/books?id=5HUeAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false ''The Daughter of Virginia Dare'']</ref> insisted that she must be white, thus leading to such absurd claims as that she was the daughter of {{wpl|Virginia Dare||,}}<ref group=note>Of whom the [[white nationalist]] webshite [[VDARE]] was named after</ref> who was born in the Roanoke colony in 1587 but lost to historical record along with the rest of the colonists by 1590.<ref group=note>Which would almost have required a [[virgin birth]], given that Dare would have had to give birth to Pocahontas at the tender age of 8. {{wpl|List of youngest birth mothers|Not impossible,}} but [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence|extremely]] [[Occam's duct tape|implausible]] and [[Absence of evidence|completely]] [[PIDOOMA|undocumented]].</ref> There are supposedly more than 100,000 descendants of Pocahontas.<ref>[http://pocahontas.morenus.org/poca_gen.html Pocahontas descendants]</ref>

===The Pocahontas Exception===
When the State of Virginia attempted to define [[race]] in attempting to ban [[miscegenation]] in 1924, the legislators realized that they had to carve out an exception known as the "Pocahontas Exception", which allowed legally-white people to be up to 1/16th Native American, but still only 0% [[African-American|black]]. This was because many of Virginia's most prominent families were (or at least claimed to be) descended from both [[Europe]]ans and from Pocahontas.<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/science/23andme-genetic-ethnicity-study.html?_r=0 White? Black? A Murky Distinction Grows Still Murkier]</ref>

===Fictional treatments===
The subject seems attractive to filmmakers with its combination of scenery and exotic young lady.<ref name=wppocahontas/> Most rather [[paedophilia|elide the fact]] that Pocahontas was around 13 when John Smith arrived for the big romantic scenes.
* ''{{wpl|Pocahontas (1910 film)|Pocahontas}}'' (1910): with {{wpl|Anna Rosemond||,}} a [[Fun:Pennsylvania|Pennsylvanian]] of [[Germany|German]] extraction, as Pocahontas.
* ''{{wpl|Pocahontas (1995 film)|Pocahontas}}'' (1995): The [[The Walt Disney Company|Disney]] animation, starring that figurehead of racial tolerance [[Mel Gibson]] as John Smith and {{wpl|Irene Bedard||,}} an actress of Native American ancestry, as the title character. Around the same time, there was a [[Canada|Canadian]] live action film and a [[Japan]]ese animation both also called ''Pocahontas'', which was in no way a {{wpl|Mockbuster|cynical attempt}} to trick small [[children]] and their grandmothers. There was also a Disney straight-to-video sequel, ''Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World'' which portrays her marriage to John Rolfe. Coincidentally, Gibson also starred in ''Braveheart'', another movie in which he gets it on with an incredibly young historical character, {{wpl|Isabella of France||.}}
* ''{{wpl|The New World (2005 film)|The New World}}'' (2005): directed by the legendary Terence Malick, with Q'orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas, Colin Farrell as Smith, and Christian Bale as Rolfe. While everybody agreed it was pretty, otherwise critics were divided with opinions raising from hatred to bafflement to excessive fandom.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/dec/10/the-new-world-terrence-malick The New World: a misunderstood masterpiece?], John Patterson, ''[[The Guardian]]'', 10, December 2009</ref>

==See also==
*''[[Loving v. Virginia]]'' &mdash; the end of the Pocahontas Exception
*[[One-drop rule]]

==Sources== 
*Helen C. Rountree, ''Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown'' (University of Virginia Press, 2006. {{isbn|0813925967}}). 
*Camilla Townsend, ''Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma'' (Hill & Wang, 2004. {{isbn|0809077388}}).

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Articles needing RWification]]
[[Category:Native Americans]]
[[Category:United States history]]

Categories: Articles needing RWification, Native Americans, United States history