With their new animation blockbuster “Pocahontas,” the movie moguls at Walt Disney have revived the legend of one of the most romantic heroines of all time–the beautiful American Indian princess who saved the life of English Colonist Capt. John Smith by cradling his head in her arms when he was about to be clubbed to death on orders from her father.
But “legend” it is. As becomes readily apparent to visitors here and the surrounding tidewater Virginia country that was the Powhatan Indian princess’s ancestral home, the actual story of Pocahontas is quite different than what Disney has put on the big screen.
The true tale is also a love story, but the lover in it is not the handsome, blond Mel Gibson-voiced Capt. John Smith of the movie, and the ending is far from happy. The tragedy involves less a clash of Indian and European cultures and interests than it does alien microbes and differing immune systems.
Even Shirley “Little Dove” Custalow McGown, of Virginia’s Mattaponi tribe, who served as the film’s “Native American consultant,” lamented that “My heart sorrowed that Disney changed the history of my people.”
Disney, which last year scrapped plans for a gigantic American history theme park in Virginia, worked scrupulously hard in the film to depict authentically the Powhatan culture at the time of the first English settlement, and to avoid giving offense to Native Americans.
The face of Pocahontas was inspired by that of an actual Indian woman, not the usual pert Hollywood model, and American Indian activist-turned-actor Russell Means was cast for the voice of Pocahontas’ father, Chief Powhatan, just as he was used in the equally sensitive film “Last of the Mohicans.”
But, as noted by Dr. William Rasmussen, curator of art at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond and co-author of “Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend,” the Disney people have created a sexually mature Indian princess complete with cleavage, sacrificing truth for movie plot. At the time she supposedly fell in love with Smith and prevented her father from ceremonially bashing in his head, the real Pocahontas was actually 12 years old.
“And Smith was 27,” said Rasmussen. “Their relationship was much more likely a father-daughter one.”
Cleavage or no, Disney’s Pocahontas is rather chastely dressed. In real life, she would have gone about completely naked at the age she encountered Smith, adopting only a sort of apron upon reaching puberty. She also likely would have been generously tattooed, with depictions of lizards and other local wildlife.
Smith was a brave fellow, but something of a wild man, who had beheaded Turks in battle and been enslaved for it. Set free by the amorous wife of a Turkish pasha, he was enslaved again by Russians and had to murder his way to freedom. Joining the “Virginie” expedition as that kind of ferocious adventurer, he was considered brash, erratic and unreliable by many of his fellow Colonists.
It was commonplace for Indian tribes to torture their enemies–both European and native–as a sign of respect.
“If Smith was to have been executed, clubbing was not the means the Powhatans would have used,” wrote Rasmussen. “To the Indians’ thinking, a quick death by clubbing or burning was a humiliation awarded petty criminals within the chiefdom; a worthy opponent, like Smith, would have rated the honorable experience of a slow and painful execution, which probably would have included flaying and dismemberment, with limbs thrown into a fire, followed by disembowelment.”
According to Smith’s account, he was fed and entertained by his captors; the condemned generally were not treated as guests. Powhatan’s initial policy toward the English settlers was largely one of cautious coexistence, and it’s not clear he would have dealt with Smith as would have an enemy defeated in battle.
Smith first wrote of the life-sparing incident in his book “Generall Historie of Virginia” in 1624, some 16 years after the supposed fact, not mentioning it in other, earlier works, and there were no other witnesses to it. Scholars have found Smith an egomaniacal and untrustworthy historian.
At all events, he was badly burned in an accidental fire the year after his encounter with Pocahontas and returned to England for treatment.
According to Warren M. Billings, author of “Jamestown and the Founding of the Nation,” Pocahontas and Powatan did keep the peace between Indians and English settlers for many years, but their efforts were not always reciprocated.
The movie depicts the Colonists as avaricious, and has some lusting after the mineral riches of the Virginia hills. As travelers to the Old Dominion will note, those hills–the Blue Ridge Mountains–lie more than 100 miles west and far beyond the early ambitions of Jamestown. The actual Colonists were interested mostly in survival here on their malarial, swampy riverbank. They, in fact, briefly abandoned Jamestown. Even in George Washington’s time, 150 years later, mining was a minimal enterprise and closely regulated by the Crown back in England.
Pocahontas, whose real name was Matoaka, was–according to some contemporary reports–actually married to an Indian youth named Kocoum. Married or single, she was kidnapped by the English in 1612 at age 16 and held hostage at Jamestown in return for food, cessions of land and English prisoners the Powhatans had taken. While in captivity, she converted to Christianity and was married to Colonial leader John Rolfe, famed for getting the Colony hooked on the cultivation of tobacco, thus assuring its commercial success.
They had a son, Thomas, and in 1616 the Rolfes journeyed to England, where Pocahontas–renamed Rebecca–was presented to the king and queen, and accorded much honor. Just before they were to return to America in 1617, she died and was buried at Gravesend.
“She probably died of tuberculosis,” said Rasmussen, noting how susceptible the Indians were to European disease germs. “At the same time, the English were dying like flies over here because their immune systems couldn’t handle it.”
Jamestown and its satellite settlements were subsequently attacked twice by the Indians in the 17th Century, at great loss of life. Rolfe and his son returned to Virginia and had many descendants.
The Virginia Historical Society (428 North Blvd., Richmond; 804-358-4901) had mounted a quite fabulous exhibit on Pocahontas (“Her Life and Legend” is its catalog) earlier this year, but it concluded shortly before the release of the movie. The museum has retained many artworks and artifacts in its collection, and visitors will be treated to a number of depictions of early 17th Century Virginia history.
Jamestown, just south of Williamsburg on the James River at the end of the southern segment of the Colonial Parkway, has been maintained by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities and the National Park Service in such an evocative state that you may well feel that the princess, Smith and Rolfe only just left it.
A centerpiece of this riverside restoration is a serene gone-to-green bronze statue of Pocahontas–the artist’s imaginary conception of what she might have looked like, to be sure, but one that seems to capture the spirit of the legend.
The old Jamestown fort that Smith helped erect is, of course, long gone. And there has been considerable debate recently over where on the grounds it was actually located. The Park Service has long maintained that the original foundation is now under the James River, but some archeologists believe it was so large that the remains of some portions still can be located on land.
A major excavation has been undertaken to prove the point, and to date it has turned up more than 40,000 relics and artifacts from the early Jamestown period, many of which are now on display at the park’s visitors center. Jamestown also possesses a pair of rare white mussel shell earrings, which turned up in England, reputed to have belonged to Pocahontas.
Not far from the Pocahontas statue is a brick church tower erected in 1639, when the Colonists and the Powhatans were still living in tense juxtaposition.
For more information concerning the Jamestown site, which is equipped to assist the handicapped, call the Colonial National Historic Park, 804-898-3400.
A short distance from the actual Jamestown site is the replica Jamestown Settlement, a not entirely authentic but certainly representative and interesting re-creation of the first fort and environs, including a facsimile Indian village and full-scale replicas of the ships Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery that first brought the Colonists from England. It’s also equipped for the handicapped. Call 804-229-1607.
Directly across the James River from Jamestown, on Virginia Highway 10 between Hopewell and Surrey, Va., is the remains of the Flowerdew Hundred settlement, dating back to the early 17th Century, and modern-day archeological dig with a small museum. At Surrey is Bacon’s Castle, a 1665 fortified dwelling place, behind which down a short dirt road is “Smith’s Fort”–an earthworks believed to have been constructed by John Smith as a refuge for the Colonists should they have to abandon Jamestown to Indian attack.
Another excavation, at the site of the Wolstenholme Towne settlement wiped out by Indian attack, can be found 6 miles southeast of Williamsburg on Country Road at Carter’s Grove Plantation, a 1750 manor house (804-229-1000).
Also recommended for those interested in Pocahontas-era early America is North Carolina’s Ft. Raleigh National Historic Site (919-473-5772), once home to the fabled “Lost Colony” that predated the 1607 founding of Jamestown by 22 years.
Located on Roanoke Island just west of the Outer Banks and 3 miles north of the town of Manteo on U.S. Hwy. 64, is where Walter Raleigh attempted to start a colony in 1585. The small settlement survived long enough for the first English baby in North America, Virginia Dare, to be born there in 1587. But the Colony’s ships that sailed for England that year for resupply were unable to return until 1590, and they found the colony completely vanished, but for the mysterious word “Croatan” carved in a tree.
The Ft. Raleigh facility has an excellent visitors center. At the nearby Waterside Theater (919-473-3414), a local theatrical troupe performs into late August the story of “The Lost Colony” on an outdoor stage.
Also by the Ft. Raleigh site on Hwy. 64 is Manteo’s fabulous Elizabethan Gardens (919-473-3234), a sumptuous re-creation of a formal garden of that period.
