An Introduction to "Pocahontas: Her Life & Legend"
by William M.S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton
[Editor's Note: The following is taken from the catalog
accompanying the Virginia Historical Society's exhibit.]
"When I think of Pocahontas I am ready to love Indians."
Herman Melville, The Confidence Man (1857)1
She has been called America's Joan of Arc because of her
saintlike virtue and her courage to risk death for a noble
cause.2 She has even been revered as the "mother"
of the nation, the female counterpart to George Washington.
Her rescue of Captain John Smith is one of the most famous and
appealing episodes in all of our history. Few figures from the
American past are better known than the young Powhatan woman
who has come down to us as "Pocahontas."
She was born into a culture that had some knowledge of
Europeans, and after their settling on the outskirts of the
territory controlled by her father, she was apparently drawn
to these peculiar strangers. A number of the chroniclers of
the Jamestown founding mention her by name and note her
interactions with the English settlers. This Powhatan girl,
who was reported to have saved John Smith from execution and
to have enjoyed cartwheeling naked with the young boys of the
Jamestown settlement, would as a young woman be kidnapped as a
political pawn, converted to Christianity, married to a
settler, and taken to England as an example of the potential
of the New World for cultural indoctrination. It was among
members of her adopted nation that she took sick and died, at
age 22, as she attempted to return to her homeland.
The fame of Pocahontas began in her own lifetime. Contemporary
Londoners welcomed with excitement a figure who was living
proof that American natives could be Christianized and
civilized. By the beginning of the 18th century, the
reputation of Pocahontas was well established. Readers in
England and on the Continent had come across her exploits in
the popular travel literature of the period, and vignettes of
her life had been included on maps of the New World.3
Robert Beverley reverently told of her in his history of
Virginia; Joseph Addison honored her in an essay in the
Spectator; and a Boston schoolgirl painted her portrait.4
As Europeans of the 18th century looked back to the natural
nobility of "primitive" cultures, the legend of the virtuous
Pocahontas served as a useful model.
The 19th century saw the greatest dissemination of the
Pocahontas legend. This was the period in which the brief
history of America came to be recognized as containing the
types of elements that could be used in the construction of
romantic visual and literary narratives. During the first
decade of the century her story had been wrested from the
exclusive purview of historians by novelists and dramatists,
who had noted the potential in the great events of her life
for stirring fictional portrayals. Portraitists rendered her
image, and history painters recreated and glamorized her
accomplishments. Politicians debating the "Indian problem,"
abolitionists, and sectionalists all manipulated her story for
their own devices, and her likeness was to be seen on numerous
advertisements for tobacco and medicine. Vessels of various
sorts were named after both Pocahontas and Powhatan, as trains
would be in the 20th century. Towns, cities, and counties also
adopted the names of the great Indian figures of Jamestown.
The world record as the fastest horse in harness was held by
the great pacing mare Pocahontas from 1855 to 1867. And while
historians hotly debated the credibility of Smith's record of
her life, one company of Confederate soldiers carried her
image on a ceremonial banner.
Over the centuries since its creation, the Pocahontas
narrative has so often been retold and embellished and so
frequently adapted to contemporary issues that the actual,
flesh-and-blood woman has long been hidden by the
ever-burgeoning mythology. This young woman, who was known
among her own people as "Matoaka" and whose nickname was
"Pocahontas" ("little wanton" or "little plaything"),5
was an eyewitness to the convergence of two disparate
cultures. Although she apparently possessed a number of
extraordinary qualities, including a spirited and engaging
personality,6 it must be remembered that what we
know about her life has been lifted from the narratives of
English males, all of whom brought their particular fantasies
and prejudices to bear on their representations of the New
World and its people. The daughter of Powhatan, whom Europeans
dubbed a "king" and an "emperor," which made his daughter a
"princess," left no words of her own.
NOTES
1. Herman Melville, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade
(Evanston and Chicago, 1984), p. 140.
2. One scholar who has discussed Pocahontas as Joan of Arc is
Ann Uhry Abrams, in "The Pocahontas Paradox: Southern Pride,
Yankee Voyeurism, Ethnic Identity, or Feminine Heroics," a
paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Studies
Association, Miami, Fla., October 1988.
3. One French map, c. 1739 by Jean Baptiste Nolin, Jr., shows
in a vignette the marriage of Pocahontas. It is owned by the
Library of Congress and illustrated in Stuart E. Brown, Jr.,
Pocahontas (Berryville, 1989), p. 21.
4. Bell Inn in London, owned by a proprietor named Savage, had
been a residence of Pocahontas during her visit of 1616-17. A
century later, Joseph Addison in one of his Spectator essays
renamed it "La Belle Sauvage" ("The Beautiful Savage") in
honor of her. He could think of a heroine born and nurtured in
a natural environment only as a person of beauty. See
Pocahontas, La Belle Sauvage (London, after 1956); this
flyer discusses the bronze sculpture of Pocahontas by David
McFall commissioned by Cassell Publishing House in 1956.
5. William Strachey, The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., 6 (London,
1899), p. 111. See also Charles Edgar Gilliam, "His Dearest
Daughter's Names," William and Mary Quarterly, 2d ser.,
21 (1941): 239-42.
6. John Smith recorded that the "wit, and spirit" of
Pocahontas were without parallel among her people (Philip L.
Barbour, ed.,
The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631)
…
[3 vols.; Chapel Hill and London, 1986], 1:93, 274; 2:260.
Those qualities apparently made her a favorite of the many
children of her father Powhatan.
More in-depth discussions of many of these topics are provided
in Robert S. Tilton,
Pocahontas: The Evolution of an American Narrative (New
York, 1994). See also William Warren Jenkins, "Three Centuries
in the Development of the Pocahontas Story in American
Literature" (Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1977).
