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.
