On This Day: Pocahontas saves John Smith's life (may be a cultural fiction) - Dec. 29, 1607
(edited from article)
"
The science of Jamestown
For centuries, scholars interested in Jamestown and Werowocomoco, the Indian village where Pocahontas lived, could rely only on contemporary accounts and later historical works. But recent archeological excavations and other scientific research conducted in what experts believe to be the sites of these two settlements in eastern Virginia have revealed tantalizing new evidence. Still being analyzed, the evidence is helping to further flesh out the story of these sites and their most famous residents, John Smith and Pocahontas.
Mid-December
Captain John Smith leads an expedition in search of Indians willing to provide the colonists with food, but a group of Powhatan Indians ambushes the team, kills some of the members, and takes Smith prisoner. The Powhatan chiefdom includes about 15,000 people in 30 districts, counting that of the Paspahegh.
December 29
After about two weeks in captivity, Smith is brought before Chief Powhatan. According to Smith's later accounts, Powhatan calls for his execution but changes his mind after his daughter Matoaka, best known by her nickname, Pocahontas, pleads for the stranger's life.
We will likely never know whether Pocahontas actually saved John Smith's life or was simply playing her appointed role in an Algonquian adoption ritual, in which Smith's reprieve represented his rebirth into the chiefdom. But archeological evidence does suggest that the adventurer might have spent time at Werowocomoco. Among tempered pottery fragments, arrowheads with fine projectile points, and other artifacts that place Powhatan Indians at Werowocomoco during the early 1600s, excavators found pieces of copper chemically identical to English copper uncovered at Jamestown. Experts think it likely that Smith carried the metal scraps seen here in hopes of establishing a trade agreement for food. Local Indians valued copper for its luster.
"
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pocahontas/jamestown.html
(edited from Wikipedia)
"
Pocahontas
Pocahontas (c. 1596–1617) was a Native American woman belonging to the Powhatan people, notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. She was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribes in the Tsenacommacah, encompassing the Tidewater region of what is today the U.S. state Virginia.
Pocahontas was captured and held for ransom by English colonists during hostilities in 1613. During her captivity, she was encouraged to convert to Christianity and was baptized under the name Rebecca. She married the tobacco planter John Rolfe in April 1614 at the age of about 17 or 18, and she bore their son, Thomas Rolfe, in January 1615.
In 1616, the Rolfes travelled to London, where Pocahontas was presented to English society as an example of the "civilized savage" in hopes of stimulating investment in Jamestown. On this trip she may have met Squanto, a Patuxet man from New England. Pocahontas became a celebrity, was elegantly fêted, and attended a masque at Whitehall Palace. In 1617, the Rolfes intended to sail for Virginia, but Pocahontas died at Gravesend, Kent, England, of unknown causes, aged 20 or 21. She was buried in St George's Church, Gravesend; her grave's exact location is unknown because the church was rebuilt after being destroyed by a fire.
Numerous places, landmarks, and products in the United States have been named after Pocahontas. Her story has been romanticized over the years, many aspects of which are fictional. Many of the stories told about her by the English explorer John Smith have been contested by her documented descendants. She is a subject of art, literature, and film.
Many famous people have claimed to be among her descendants, including members of the First Families of Virginia, First Lady Edith Wilson, American actor Glenn Strange, and astronomer Percival Lowell. Pocahontas is the twelfth great-grandmother of the American actor Edward Norton.
John Smith
Pocahontas is most famously linked to colonist John Smith, who arrived in Virginia with 100 other settlers in April 1607. The colonists built a fort on a marshy peninsula on the James River, and had numerous encounters over the next several months with the people of Tsenacommacah – some of them friendly, some hostile.
A hunting party led by Powhatan's close relative Opechancanough captured Smith in December 1607 while he was exploring on the Chickahominy River and brought him to Powhatan's capital at Werowocomoco. In his 1608 account, Smith describes a great feast followed by a long talk with Powhatan. He does not mention Pocahontas in relation to his capture, and claims that they first met some months later.
Margaret Huber suggests that Powhatan was attempting to bring Smith and the other colonists under his own authority. He offered Smith rule of the town of Capahosic, which was close to his capital at Werowocomoco, as he hoped to keep Smith and his men "nearby and better under control."
In 1616, Smith wrote a letter to Queen Anne of Denmark, the wife of King James, in anticipation of Pocahontas' visit to England. In this new account, his capture included the threat of his own death: "at the minute of my execution, she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine; and not only that but so prevailed with her father, that I was safely conducted to Jamestown."
He expanded on this in his 1624 Generall Historie, published long after the death of Pocahontas. He explained that he was captured and taken to the paramount chief where "two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could layd hands on him [Smith], dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his to save him from death."
Karen Ordahl Kupperman suggests that Smith used such details to embroider his first account, thus producing a more dramatic second account of his encounter with Pocahontas as a heroine worthy of Queen Anne's audience. She argues that its later revision and publication was Smith's attempt to raise his own stock and reputation, as he had fallen from favor with the London Company which had funded the Jamestown enterprise.
Anthropologist Frederic W. Gleach suggests that Smith's second account was substantially accurate but represents his misunderstanding of a three-stage ritual intended to adopt him into the confederacy, but not all writers are convinced, some suggesting the absence of certain corroborating evidence.
Early histories did establish that Pocahontas befriended Smith and the colonists. She often went to the settlement and played games with the boys there.
When the colonists were starving, "every once in four or five days, Pocahontas with her attendants brought [Smith] so much provision that saved many of their lives that else for all this had starved with hunger." As the colonists expanded their settlement, the Powhatans felt that their lands were threatened, and conflicts arose again. In late 1609, an injury from a gunpowder explosion forced Smith to return to England for medical care and the colonists told the Powhatans that he was dead. Pocahontas believed that account and stopped visiting Jamestown but learned that Smith was living in England when she traveled there with her husband John Rolfe.
Cultural representations
After her death, increasingly fanciful and romanticized representations were produced about Pocahontas, in which she and Smith are frequently portrayed as romantically involved. Contemporaneous sources substantiate claims of their friendship but not romance. The first claim of their romantic involvement was in John Davis' Travels in the United States of America (1803).
Rayna Green has discussed the similar fetishization that Native and Asian women experience. Both groups are viewed as "exotic" and "submissive," which aids their dehumanization. Also, Green touches on how Native women had to either "keep their exotic distance or die," which is associated with the widespread image of Pocahontas trying to sacrifice her life for John Smith.
Cornel Pewewardy writes, "In Pocahontas, Indian [sic] characters such as Grandmother Willow, Meeko, and Flit belong to the Disney tradition of familiar animals. In so doing, they are rendered as cartoons, certainly less realistic than Pocahontas and John Smith; In this way, Indians remain marginal and invisible, thereby ironically being 'strangers in their own lands' - the shadow Indians. They fight desperately on the silver screen in defense of their asserted rights, but die trying to kill the white hero or save the Indian woman.’"
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas
---------------------------------------------------------
On This Day: "The Greatest Game Ever Played" helps launch an industry - Dec. 28, 1958
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016370563
On This Day: New Netherland residents protest for religious freedom - Dec. 27, 1657
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016370540
On This Day: Lincoln averts war with Great Britain by agreeing to release Confederate diplomats - Dec. 26, 1861
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016370495
On This Day: Webb telescope heads toward halo orbit - Dec. 25, 2021
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016370438
On This Day: D.C. residents gain limited local governance, as seen later on Jan. 6, 2021 - Dec. 24, 1973
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016370405