Images of a Legend
POCAHONTAS
1994, Mary Ellen Howe
After nearly four centuries of mythmaking, could Pocahontas's true
appearance be resurrected? Virginia portrait artist Mary Ellen Howe
hoped that it could, and she spent six years researching and
producing what may be the most accurate portrait of Pocahontas that
can be painted. Howe's starting point was de Passe's 1616 engraving,
but unlike the painter of the copy made in the 1700s, she made
certain that the colors of her work were appropriate: Pocahontas's
beaver hat is white, her hair black, and her skin tone modeled after
that of Pamunkey, Mattoponi, and Rappahannock Indians. As she
studied the facial structures of modern Virginia Indians, Howe
noticed the same overbite, dimpled chin, and high cheekbones that
van de Passe saw in Pocahontas. Asked why she devoted herself to
this endeavor, Howe explains that she could not forget a woman whose
extraordinary accomplishments included the adoption of a foreign
culture and the winning of acceptance by 17th-century English
society.