I’ve always had an affinity for Disney Princesses who qualified as WOC (women of color). Pochahontas was no exception to this rule. However, just as with Aladdin, I will readily admit that with the Disney film, all is not as it seems. Watching Pochahontas as an informed adult requires an American history lesson.
For starters, Pochahontas wasn’t her real/only name. Powhatan Indians often changed names throughout their lifetime. A name was assigned at birth, some had multiple names at once to be used in different contexts, some had secret names that only special people knew, and some changed their names with serious life events. As far as historians know, Pochahontas’ first name was Matoaka. The name Pochahontas was a nickname. When she converted to Christianity, she took the name Rebecca.
In the film, it would appear that Pochahontas is a beautiful young woman who I would assume, on appearance and wisdom, is about 17-20 years old. While it’s hard to know the exact year the real Pochahontas was born, John Smith estimated that she was about ten years old when he met her. This immediately poses a problem because John Smith was a grown man, so their on-screen romance was pretty inaccurate. Actually, as far as this blogger and most historians can tell, their romance was nonexistent. However, John Smith did actually write of a time when he was about to be executed by the Native Americans and Pochahontas threw herself in front of him to save his life.
The film also depicts that she is to be married to Kocoum, but there is a lot of skepticism surrounding Kocoum’s existence.
Pochahontas 2: Journey to a New World is a bit more romantically accurate. Pochahontas did actually marry John Rolfe and she traveled with him to England. At this time of course her name was Rebecca, she was of a more appropriate age, and she had a son. Although Pochahontas wasn’t considered a princess in her native culture, the English treated her as though her status was that of a princess. Nobody is sure how she felt about John Rolfe or if she was happy about their marriage.
Pochahontas died in March 1617. She was 22 and there are only speculations about her cause of death.
Finally, here’s a song from Pochahontas that demonstrates why Governor Ratcliffe is a pretty realistic villain (and also why I hate him):
Interesting choice for a passion blog, you must really love disney movies! I always knew that there wasn’t much truth behind many of the movies that supposedly were created about true historical people but I chose to love them anyways, they not only make great stories but a lot of them have good lessons. Anastasia is another movie that is totally historically inaccurate but I watched it countless times anyway. Its cool that you chose to write your blog on this and I liked the way you formatted it and included a link at the end. Your post was critical without bashing the movie. Keep it up!!!
I like this post a lot. Movies that romanticize a lot of historical events can be enjoyable for that specific reason, however it’s also important to recognize that what we see on the screen is more often false than true. Thank for for providing the historical context of the movie, further demonstrating that Hollywood creations should be taken with a grain of sand.