Pocahontas: Fact Or Fiction

476 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: portrayal of women in movies

While popular and widely watched the movie Pocahontas is an innaccurate portrail of a signifigant historical event. The Disney Corporation is not known for it’s accurate portrails of historical events and when producing the animated film Pocahontas, Disney did not fail in it’s nonchalant attitude concerning historic fact. Cartoonists at disney must have been watching adult films when they first penciled out the figures of Pocahontas and John Smith. The young Indian princess was only twelve years old at the time of her first encounter with John Smith, yet she is portrayed as a hard body honey in her twenties. In order to match the beauty of their female character, cartoonists depicted John Smith as a perfectly sculpted young man with locks of bright blonde hair; however, he was merely a foul English seaman in his early thirties with dark dingy hair. Pocahontas did not look like Tia Carrera and John Smith was certainly no Fabio. At the begining of the movie John Smith is portrayed as an Indian hater and proclaimed to be the best Indian killer ever. In all actuality he was the greatest link that the English had between the Indians and themselves. His strict military discipline and negotiation proved to be very valuable tools. The Indians respected him and while he was in charge of Jamestown was melting pot that brought the knowledge of two very different civilizations together. ...

Show More
Related

  • Comparison of Three Prominent Women in American History (1616-1768)

    1530 Words  | 4 Pages

    Simon Van De Pasee was a young Dutch Artist who painted the famous painting of Pocahontas, the only painting of her when she was alive. Pasee portrayed Pocahontas as a aristocrat. He did not try to make her an Anglicize Pocahontas; she is still recognized as a Native American in his Painting. During this time Pocahontas was a daughter of a powerful Indian leader in the New World, whom married an Englishmen named John Rolfe and moved to England. Looking closely at the portrait, it seems as if Pocahontas appeared grave, her cheeks are sunken and her hand is skeletal. (Horwitz p 3) It seems as if Simon Va De Pasee wanted people to see Pocahontas before she became deathly ill, which with his painting he did give a brief history of her. Before Pocahontas met John Rolfe, Jamestown was going through a period of starving. Pocahontas would give the English food and warned them attacks her father was planning on the English. In 1614, Pocahontas would convert to Christianity, changed her name to Rebecca and have the...

    Read More

  • Love And Hate In Jamestown by David A. Price

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a young child many of us are raised to be familiar with the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Whether it was in a Disney movie or at a school play that one first learned of Jamestown, students want to believe that this romantic relationship really did occur. As one ages, one becomes aware of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. This is brilliantly explained in David A. Price's, Love and Hate in Jamestown. Price describes a more robust account of events that really did take place in the poorly run, miserable, yet evolving settlement of Jamestown, Virginia; and engulfs and edifies the story marketed by Disney and others for young audiences. Price reveals countless facts from original documents about the history of Jamestown and other fledgling colonies, John Smith, and Smith's relationship with Pocahontas. He develops a more compelling read than does the typical high school text book and writes intriguingly which propels the reader, to continue on to the successive chapters in the early history of Virginia.

    Read More

  • Historical Inaccuracies In The Disney Movie 'Pocahantas'

    143 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the Disney movie Pocahantas there are some historical inaccuracies. For example her age is said to be around 11 years old when she met John Smith in 1607. In the Disney film they bumped up her age to go alone with John Smith's age. In the movie John and Pocahanatas meet almost instantly after he lands in America. According to the History books Pocahantas meets John when he gets captured by her brother Opechancanough.

    Read More

  • The Enduring Significance of Pocahontas

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pocahontas was the daughter of the American Indian Chief Powhatan. Pocahontas, a young Powhatan Indian princess, affected a remarkable and significant relationship first with a small group of English settlers at Jamestown and later with the English rulers of the New World. She worked to maintain good relations between the Indians and early English colonists in America.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    at.” Despite his failure, he is still an Indian man, searching for a proclamation of his

    Read More

  • Essay About Jamestown

    539 Words  | 2 Pages

    One way the settler skills had to do with the deaths in jamestown is the people who were brought were mostly

    Read More

  • Mortality Rate In Jamestown

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    Evidence shows that among the 230 men to arrive at Jamestown between 1607 and 1608, very few had any of the necessary skillsets to survive in the new environment. For example, roughly one third of the men in Jamestown during this time were gentlemen, or “a person of wealth who was not used to working with his hands.” This alone shows the gross lack of knowledge and skills in a large percentage of the men, which would undoubtedly have played a heavy hand in the downfall of the early

    Read More

  • The Chesapeake and New England Colonies: A Comparison

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Chesapeake region of the colonies included Virginia, Maryland, the New Jerseys (both East and West) and Pennsylvania. In 1607, Jamestown, the first English colony in the New World (that is, the first to thrive and prosper), was founded by a group of 104 settlers to a peninsula along the James River. These settlers hoped to find gold, silver, a northwest passage to Asia, a cure for syphilis, or any other valuables they might take back to Europe and make a profit. Lead by Captain John Smith, who "outmaneuvered other members of the colony's ruling and took ruthlessly took charge" (Liberty Equality Power, p. 57), a few lucky members of the original voyage survived. These survivors turned to the local Powhatan Indians, who taught them the process of corn- and tobacco-growing. These staple-crops flourished throughout all five of these colonies.

    Read More

  • Pocahontas Analysis

    1145 Words  | 3 Pages

    Pocahontas is Disney’s 33rd animated movie, which takes place in early 17th century Virginia. The movie is based around Pocahontas, a Native American who is the daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Powhatan Tribe located in the New World. When British settlers of the Virginia Company, including Governor Ratcliffe and John Smith, make landfall in the New World looking for gold, they encounter the Powhatan Tribe when they start building Jamestown and excavating for the precious metal. While the rest of the crew builds Jamestown at the order of Governor Ratcliffe, John Smith starts exploring the wilderness, where he meets Pocahontas. The two of them bond and quickly fall in love with each other, even though Chief Powhatan gave his daughter strict orders to stay away from the Englishmen after a few tribesman, including Kocoum, the Native American warrior Pocahontas is set to marry, gets in a fight with a group of settlers. Word gets around to Kocoum that Pocahontas is spending time with John Smith, and goes to confro...

    Read More

  • Martin Luther King Jr.

    1465 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...f the most prestigious acts for American equality. He was a determined, charismatic man who used good to fight evil despite the anguish. He never gave up on the nonviolent techniques he studied on Gandhi. After his death there were many breakthroughs in civil rights. He may not have been alive to see the promised land, but in many aspects he brought the country there. He like many before him paid the ultimate price for his devotion to righteousness, "If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

    Read More

  • Pocahontas Culture Vs Religion Essay

    1628 Words  | 4 Pages

    His accounts are considered by some to be false and that they were said for attention and fame. In his story he says a Powhatan hunting party captured him in the winter of 1607 (Stebbins 3). Then he tells of the famed rescue by Pocahontas, who was eleven at the time, in which she threw herself over Smith to keep her tribe from killing him (Stebbins 3). There are doubters that this happened for many reasons, including the fact that she was so young. Smith then went back to England because of a gunpowder wound, but Pocahontas was told that he was dead (Stebbins 5). Young English boys of the time were sent to live with the Indians, and vice versa (Stebbins 5). Smith also claims Pocahontas saved yet another life, one of a young boy. The English boy, Henry Spelman, ran away from the tribe he was living with (Stebbins 5). Pocahontas found him and sent him off to live with the Patawomeck tribe (Stebbins 5). These events, which supposedly happened, according to Smith, show Pocahontas’ true caring and free willed spirit she had while living with her

    Read More

  • Pocahontas or Matoaka

    727 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pocahontas was the daughter of Chief Powhatan which made her an Indian Princess. When she was 12 years old, she saved a colonist named John Smith from being clubbed to death. After this, the relationship between the colonist and the Indians were at peace. Captain Smith sent many presents to Powhatan and the Indian woman gave food to the colonist. When John Smith left Jamestown because of a gunpowder accident, the peace between the Indians and the colonist weaken. In 1612, Governor Thomas Dale ordered for Pocahontas to be kidnapped, held for ransom that would be paid in corn by Chief Powhatan. While she was held captive, Pocahontas was baptized Christian and given the name Rebecca. Also while she was imprisoned, Pocahontas fell in love with John Rolfe, who then asked for her hand in marriage. Sir Thomas Dale and Chief Powhatan gave their consent and they got married in Jamestown on April, 1613. This marriage brought peace between the English and the Indians for many years. On 1615, John and Pocahontas had a child named Thomas. Pocahontas became the center of English society’s attention. She had then become Lady Rebecca Rolfe. Before going back to Virginia, Pocahontas became sick. She died on March, 1617, at the age of 21 in England. She was buried in the chapel of the parish church in Gravesend. Rolfe returned to Virginia, where he manufactured tobacco. I liked Pocahontas because she was the kind of person who was willing to do new things and she did the right thing even if no one would agree with her. She is famous for her actions (even if Disney exaggerated them) and I admire her strength and courage to stand up for what she believed in.

    Read More

  • Gandhi Was One of the Greatest Men to Ever Live

    1167 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...crowds of people were gathering in order to hear his words. He seems to be was a person whom the Indians saw in him, perfect and universal man. He had a simple, altruistically and uncorrupted personality. In his political duties he was a firm realist, consistently working towards a goal of liberation; while on the other hand, he was an idealist, living ever in the pure happiness of the spirit.

    Read More

  • E M Forster and the British Raj in a Passage to India

    1325 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... his visits to India. He had firsthand knowledge about the decay of the British Empire. He observed the disharmony that the fervent missionaries caused among the Indian people, the social apartheid shown by the English towards the natives, the arrogance of the British officials and the atrocities committed by them led to the dissolution of the British Raj in India.

    Read More

  • Gandhi`s Passion Towards Helping Indians

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    At age 13, Gandhi was married to a girl of the same age named Kasturbai. After the death of his father, Mohandas’s family sent him to England to study law but he became interested in the philosophy of non violence. He returned to India in 1891, but he did not succeed in the practice of law and he went to South Africa. There he became involved in efforts to end discrimination against the Indian minority. He developed his creed of passive resistance against injustice, “Satyagraha,” meaning truth force, and was frequently jailed as a result of the protests that he led. Soon after launching his monumental Satyagraha “Hold fast to the Truth” movement, he gave up his pleasures vowing to focus all the heat of his passion towards helping India’s emigree and indentured community, win freedom from racial prejudice and discrimination. Gandhis’s passion turned each prison cell he occupied into a self proclaimed “temple” or “palace” even as he taught his self sacrificing yogic spirit to relish the “delicious taste” of fasting, taking pleasure in every pain he suffered for the “common good.” He founded the Natal Indian Congress which commanded an Indian medical corps that fought in the Boer War. Their willingness to endure punishment and jail earned the admiration of people in Gandhi's native India, and eventually won concessions from the Boer and British rulers. By 1914, when Gandhi left South Africa and returned to India, he was known as a holy man: people called him a “Mahatma” or "great soul." Thus his passion to help people thrust him in becoming a leader.      Gandhi’s greatest achievement was to unify India by making himself the symbol of unity. It was Gandhi’s person more than the slogans of nationalism and liberation, that united Hindus and Muslims again...

    Read More

More about Pocahontas: Fact Or Fiction

Open Document