After
starting to read the book ‘The true diary of a part-time Indian’ I got
interested in the history of the Native Americans and I tried to find more
information about them when I found an interesting character: Pocahontas.
Who was
Pocahontas? Maybe the most of us (normal people without historic knowledge) know
Pocahontas thanks to Disney, but, who was her? Was a real person? Or she’s just
a fictional character? Well, she did exist and her real name was Matoaka. She
was a Native American that saved Captain John Smith and helped the community of
Jamestown that were dying by starving. But also she was really important for the
Virginia Company. She was practically the ‘model’ of English-Indian
relationship. Her image was used to persuade the natives to adopt the English
ways.
Portrait by Simon de Passe, 1616.
She was
treated as a princess, and met many important people of the era. Maybe that’s why Disney represents her as one
of the princesses.
Disney representation of Pocahontas.
Although
Pocahontas helped a lot if the relationship between English and Native people, in
1617, when she died, the ‘peace’ stopped and the good treatment between both
races ended.
I have no idea that Pocahontas really existed, maybe we should know the real story before seeing the Disney film to understand better. It's really sad that after her death all that she achievement disappeared. Very original topic!
ReplyDeleteI'm really surprised about it! I never thought about her as a real person. Now everything changes to me, she really was an important person and is really good that Disney took her as a character and made of her a princess, so every girl and family can know a little piece of history.
ReplyDeleteThe same as Claudia, I'm impressed. I wouldn't imagine in my life that Pocahontas truly existed! I know that a couple more of animated movies are based on real stories, like the Anastasia movie. It is kind of funny for me to realized that I lived almost 8 years of my life thinking about Pocahontas as an unreal character and know it took me only 4 minutes to know the "behind-story". Nice post!
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