Pocahontas

I am taking an American Women's History class at PSU and after spending all last week talking about what we were going to talk about this term, today we finally dove into the material, starting with Pocahontas.

I learned a few things about Pocahontas today.

1. The Disney movie is a gross misrepresentation of historical facts.

2. Chief Powhattan was trying to adopt John Smith as part of a greater plan to incorporate the Europeans into their tribe.  His perceved "torture" was a male initiation rite.  It was not strange for Pocahontas to intervene since in Powhattan society, it was under the women's jurisdiction to decide the fate of captives.

3. Pocahontas is a tribal nickname meaning "mischievous one".  She had other names...Matoaka meaning "White Feather", and Amonute meaning "Beloved Woman".

4. Powhattan means "People of the Dream Vision" and Pocahontas had shown that she had visionary gifts.  To her, her marriage to John Rolf and her baptism were part of fulfilling her destiny, since she had dreamed that she would do great things for her people.

5. The Europeans thought the Native Americans were savages, while the Natives viewed the Europeans as newcomers to be incorporated (until Europeans started killing them with disease and warfare).  Marriage of Native women to European men was a way of legitimizing and initiating the incorporation.

I am a little angry that Disney fed me such trash.  Because I thought I already knew about Pocahontas, I might have missed out on learning about a very dynamic person, one who has a much more complex life then what's "just around the riverbend".