Pocahontas and the Impact of Story Making

For a final project in my Native American Literature's class, I am writing a short story in which I deconstruct the myths and fables surrounding Pocahontas and reveal who she really was, functioning within her own Native American society and the European society. During my research, I have come across some very interesting view points and facts. One fact that struck a particular cord with me, was the story of Pocahontas with which we are most familiar. In the story, Pocahontas saves Captain John Smith from execution by Pocahontas's father. However, as it turns out, the story that has emerged in history text books since 1805 was actually a fabrication. The fact of the story was that it never even happened. Captain John Smith wrote it up when he was writing his National Histories of Virginia. How can we tell? Smith waited to write the story until almost 15 years after Pocahontas (actually named Matoaka) had died. Also, there were no witnesses to the event still alive, and the few that did back up Smith's story, had not actually been at the execution. Finally, Smith's Histories contains to other stories remarkably similar to Pocahontas's in which a beautiful, powerful woman saves him from certain death at the hands of a relative. It's an interesting side note to history and raises a fascinating question about what we take blindly as the truth. If it's in a text book written by people who were "present" at the events, then what is put forth must be what happened. Right? Wrong. History is written by the victors of the war and the people in power. Those on the opposite side of that fence never get their stories out. In the case of Pocahontas/Matoaka, the only story we get of her was one that was fabricated by the surviving conqueror of the America's.

The truth of the story is that Matoaka was an extremely important asset to the European settlement of Jamestown in their first years in America. She worked tirelessly for peace between her Algonquian tribe and the settlers. She brought food and supplies to the settlers when the winter proved too harsh for them. And she constantly worked to help train the settlers how to survive in the harsh Virginia climate. In the end, while Matoaka was on a mission of peace, she was kidnapped by an enemy Indian nation and handed over to the Europeans as a prisoner, a prisoner of the people she had helped keep alive. She was converted to Christianity, given the Christian name Rebbecca, and married off to a European man. Matoaka had a son and moved to England with her husband. In England, Matoaka was used as a walking advertisement for the America's and the opportunities and adventures that existed there. Upon her return to the America's, Matoaka was taken ill and died. Her grave was lost when the church by which she was buried was rebuilt over her grave.

It's not as happy or romantic a story as Disney's Pocahontas would like it to be, I'm sure. It's the straight forward story of a diplomat, but I find it completely fascinating. It's the myths that have clouded our visions of her that drive me to find the truth. Who was she really? How did she grow up? How did she live and survive? What did she feel at her conversion and removal from her homeland? Where would she fit into history today if her story was told correctly? I seek to find out.