Who was Pocahontas? How is it that from a period of history in which relations between European settlers and the indigenous population were marked by a combination of tension, distrust, exploitation, and violence, there emerged the story of a young Native American girl who mercifully saved a white settler from death and later married another. What about this story captured the national imagination at the time and continues to do so? Is it simply a feel-good love story? Is it a way to whitewash a brutal history by focusing on one positive event, whether it actually happened or not? Who has Pocahontas become? When we hear or see her name, do we think of the historical figure? The literary and cinematic character? The mythic being? What is it about her that continues to grip the American imagination? What is the purpose and effect of the narrative that defines her?

Sources

Daniel Richter, Living with Europeans (2002)

Simon van de Passe, Matoaka als Rebecca (1616)

Captain John Smith, Letter to Queen Anne of Great Britain (1616)

John Gadsby Chapman, The Baptism of Pocahontas (1839)

George P. Morris, The Chieftain’s Daughter: A Ballad (1840)

Howard Chandler Christy, Pocahontas (1911)

Paula Gunn Allen, Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe (1988)

Gary Edgerton and Kathy Merlock Jackson, from Redesigning Pocahontas: Disney, the “White Man’s Indian,” and the Marketing of Dreams (1996)

Paula Gunn Allen, from Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat (2004)