The Effect of Viewpoint on the Perception of Pocahontas
Elizabeth Cowgill
Discovering America 104
Professor Register
October 14, 2011
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As a young Native American woman who grew up in a time when her world was
rapidly changing, Pocahontas became the face of the Powhatan people for a variety of
reasons, most of them based on legend. These myths surrounding her life have grown
larger than her true self, and her depictions in sources such as George Hillard’s The Life
and Adventures of Captain John Smith from 1834 and Disney’s 1994 film Pocahontas
have spurred a false image of who she really was. The effect of bias in accounts of
Pocahontas was countered by Camilla Townsend’s Pocahontas and the Powhatan
Dilemma, which uses historical facts and concrete data to tell a more accurate depiction
of the life of Pocahontas. Despite this reworking of Pocahontas’s life, these historical
inaccuracies continue to play a large role in her story. Without accounts by creators such
as Hillard and Disney, the story of Pocahontas may not have survived for Townsend to
write about. Therefore, despite the somewhat frustrating effects of an inaccurate
portrayal, in this case, bias was necessary to prompt a discovery of the truth.
George Hillard’s The Life and Adventures of Captain John Smith is primarily a
biography of Smith himself. Therefore, his comments on Pocahontas generally only
appear when in context with Smith, but they are still critical to the story he tells. He
presents an undoubtedly flowery picture of her by writing, “she seems to have possessed
every quality essential to the perfection of the female character; the most graceful
modesty, the most winning sensibility, strong affections, tenderness and delicacy feeling,
dovelike gentleness, and most entire disinterestedness.” 1 The description gives the
reader an automatic assumption that Hillard is romanticizing Pocahontas into his idea of
an ideal woman; more specifically, she resembles the ideal European woman. Despite
being raised into a society Hillard refers to as “familiar with rude ways of living, uncouth
habits and lawless passions,” 2 he claims that Pocahontas’ utterly gentile qualities “were
the native and spontaneous growth of her heart and soul.” 3 The likelihood that a young
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woman possessing thoroughly European, pristine social graces existed in the Virginia
wilderness is virtually non-existent. The early nineteenth-century portrait that presents
her as an ethereal and beautiful young maiden of the forest complements this perfected
version of Pocahontas. 4 The portrait would closely resemble European portraiture of the
same period if not for Pocahontas’ physical appearance and surroundings. She is clothed
in shockingly clean, stereotypically native garb, with feathers in her hair and long, neatly
styled braids. The background connects the beauty to her homeland, with delicate
drawings of rolling hills. This account perfectly meshes with Hillard’s account of
Pocahontas as both natural and otherworldly in her beauty and grace.
Hillard used his concoction of Pocahontas as a pristine creation of nature to
romanticize the life of John Smith. In his opening statements, Hillard proclaims that,
“there is no one whose name awakens more romantic associations than Captain John
Smith. His life is as brilliant and exciting as a fairy tale; and the remarkable adventures
he went through served to develop his good fortune to live in stirring and eventful
times.” 5 This fiery exclamation sets the stage for the overall tone of Hillard’s work; it is
idealized, flamboyant and greatly exaggerated. While historians are aware that
Pocahontas was but one of Powhatan’s great multitude of children, and not one of a
particularly high ranking, 6 Hillard makes of point of describing her as “The king’s most
dear and well-beloved daughter,” 7 a well known inaccuracy that makes Pocahontas’
kidnapping seem all the more dramatic.
Although a Captain and one of the first adventurers to arrive on the untouched
Virginia shore, Smith’s accomplishments seem to fall short of his almost universal
recognition. His enormous, mostly posthumous fame can be explained by a few factors,
the preeminent being that through his alleged association through Pocahontas, he
became a recognizable figure on the early Virginia frontier. Secondly, because of this, he
became a symbol of the early American, Caucasian, male. This image of an adventurer
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treading onto a new frontier was deeply appealing to a man like Hillard, who
undoubtedly admired this idea of a heroic figure, the first of his own kind to stumble
upon virgin territory. Therefore, Hillard’s motivations in writing The Life and
Adventures of Captain John Smith can be attributed to the male interest in the idea of a
hero, an adventurer that men can identify with themselves.
In 1995, Pocahontas made her way from portraits and the pages of books to the
big screen as an animated Disney Princess. In an increasingly progressive era when
women were going to college, earning money, and representing the workforce in
numbers that rivaled men, Pocahontas could not be depicted as the weak-willed maiden
of Hillard’s biography of John Smith. Instead, the on-screen Pocahontas is passionate
and strong. Her first appearance in the film shows her jumping off an impossibly high
cliff into the water, revealing her love for adventure and the land equally. 8 Additionally,
as a Disney movie, there simply had to be a love story. Enter John Smith, the young,
painfully attractive and suave outsider who falls in love with Pocahontas, who eventually
saves his life. In addition to the romantic aspect of the film, there is a heavy
environmental undertone. The English are presented as the antagonists who only want
the peaceful, loving Native American’s land, and John Smith is a representative of that
group. 9 However, Pocahontas is able to “change” him though song and exploration of the
wild, making him “different” from the rest of his crew. This again brings up the point
that although John Smith was one of many English explorers, he tends to be singled out
as the hero of his time.
Disney fully ignored historical facts while making Pocahontas. In truth,
Pocahontas was only a child when the 27-year-old Captain John Smith docked on the
shores of her native Virginia. While it’s possible that the young Pocahontas was
somewhat fascinated by the adventurer, it is extremely doubtful that she had any
romantic attraction to him. Disney’s aim was to make Pocahontas a woman whom its
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young viewers could admire and identify with. Unfortunately, Disney believes that its
female characters must fall in love in order to create a happy ending, and John Smith,
although his historical romantic significance with Pocahontas is questionable, presented
himself as the most romantically available character. As a consequence, due to the
popularity of the film, previous and incorrect accounts of Pocahontas were reinforced by
this new image of an adventurous and earthy woman who had a romantic relationship
with John Smith. Disney tread into dangerous waters by fictionalizing the story of a very
real woman, and succeeded in skewing her perception for an entire generation of young
moviegoers.
In a complete reversal of these prior claims, Townsend’s account of the story of
Pocahontas relies on factual evidence to support her claim that Pocahontas was neither a
heroine deserving of incessant veneration, nor a natural specimen perfectly molded to
suit European ideals. She was simply a young native girl who was thrust into a
historically crucial series of events. Townsend’s purpose is not only to tell the story of the
real Pocahontas, it is to disprove prior versions of her tale. Townsend wittily and rapidly
dispels common claims, and quickly dismisses romantic notions about John Smith.
“One might choose to believe that beautiful young women really did throw themselves at
the short, stocky, cantankerous Smith everywhere he went, but that idea strains credulity
to such a degree that different explanations of what actually happened might be sought.”
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This image is a harsh contrast to both the brawny, suave John Smith presented in the
Disney film, and the handsome adventurer portrayed in Hillard’s account. The
discrepancy may provide a reason as to why John Smith fictionalized his account of
Pocahontas. Smith did indeed have a connection to Pocahontas, and no one to dispute a
fictionalized account. As a man who never married, it would have been easy for him to
falsify the account. Doing so probably ensured that his name would be remembered in
history.
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An enormous degree of Pocahontas’s fame is due to the legend that she saved the
life of John Smith, an event that Townsend questions through, “He [Smith] did not
mention the story in the report he sent back to England shortly after the events. He did
not mention it in either of the books he published on Virginia in 1612, which were
directed to a London audience parched for tales about the region. Nor did he mention it
years later, in 1624, in the wake of an Indian rebellion, at which point Powhatan’s
kindred were viewed as the devil incarnate, and Pocahontas was suddenly being
interpreted as exceptional among all her people.” 11 John Smith’s lack of reporting the
event, to either the public or his private journals casts doubt upon the situation, and it is
highly plausible that it never actually occurred. Smith’s inaccuracies lead historians to
question the true value of knowing the story of Pocahontas. She may very well be famous
simply because of the legends that later surrounded her life.
To the fan of the Disney film, learning that the real Pocahontas converted to
Christianity and abandoned her tribe would be a tragedy. Opposingly, Hillard’s followers
would see her conversion as a triumph for the “civilized” world. While most of the
common American world accepts the injustices that were committed against Native
Americans, our Capitol Rotunda is adorned with a painting of Pocahontas’s baptism. It is
a glorification of the event, as noted by the white light surrounding Pocahontas,
portraying her conversion as a divine event that was seen as a victory in the alliance
between the old and new worlds. However, Townsend’s account suggests the possibility
that Pocahontas accepted baptism and marriage as an alternative to captivity. This
discredits the idea that Pocahontas’s baptism was monumental and a victory for both
Christianity and the old world.
Townsend’s only bias was against incorrect accounts of Pocahontas. Her account
could have been written with or without Hillard, Disney, or any other of the vast amount
of writers who have documented the life of Pocahontas over the years. The only effect
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that the numerous other accounts of Pocahontas’s life have on Townsend’s book is
specific ideas to discredit. However, without the fanciful legends that captured our
imaginations, we may not have known who Pocahontas was. Yet, it may not have
mattered. It is doubtful that the world would know Pocahontas’s name without the
legends that surround her, because although she certainly lived a unique life, it truly
contained only a fraction of the drama that could satisfy a global audience for nearly four
centuries after her death.
Townsend, as a historian, may have found such incorrect accounts of
Pocahontas’s life particularly irksome. She may have found her twisted image somewhat
saddening, and made it her personal mission to do the real Pocahontas justice. In a
suitable description of Pocahontas’s 1624 sketch from life by Simon Van de Passe,
Townsend describes her regal pose: “In a most unusual pose for a woman, her large, dark
eyes look straight out, observing all the world. Portraits of men in that era often show
them doing just that; women more often tilted their heads down or to the side,
subserviently, flirtatiously. Pocahontas showed her straight-backed pride.” 12
Townsend’s observation directly contradicts the flowery, utterly feminine version of
Pocahontas that Hillard described. She was uncharacteristically bold for a woman, and
her steadfast stare was more of a representation of her willingness to leave her old life
behind. She hides none of her struggles under a façade of beauty; her gaze is hard, brave
and unflinching. Her names surround her portrait, and provide insight into her journey:
Matoaka had no concept of a new world. While Pocahontas was somewhat aware of it,
Rebecca became part of this new world, making her adventure astounding in it’s own
right.
Therefore, without the inaccuracies found in the Disney and Hillard accounts, as
well as other sources that falsify facts of Pocahontas’s life, Townsend’s book may not
have been written and the truth about Pocahontas’s life would be largely unknown.
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Although undoubtedly not the only correct record of her life, Townsend’s book accurately
acknowledges historical perceptions of Pocahontas in relation with reality. The
previously incorrect views of Pocahontas, from the Native American with the beauty and
charm of an English princess, to the earthy, wild adventurer who changed the heart of an
Englishman, both helped to shape Townsend’s argument and a long overdue portrayal of
Pocahontas for what she was: a young and impressionable Native who made the leap
across the pond for reasons that only she could reveal.
George S. Hillard, The Life and Adventures of Captain John Smith (Boston, MA:
Hilliard, Gray, and Co. 1834) 379.
2 Hillard, John Smith, 380.
3 Hillard, John Smith, 225.
4 History 100F (Discovering America), instr. Woody Register, August 24, 2011
5 Hillard, John Smith, 177.
6 Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (New York, NY: Hill and
Wang, 2004) 77.
7 Hillard, John Smith, 372.
8 Pocahontas. Video, dir. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg (Los Angeles: Walt Disney
Masterpiece, 1995).
9 Pocahontas, Video.
10 Townsend, Pocahontas, 54.
11 Townsend, Pocahontas, 52.
12 Townsend, Pocahontas, 153.
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