4) Pocahontas
I love “Colors of the Wind” just as much as the next guy, but there’s no denying the beating that actual history took so that Pocahontas could succeed as a heart-warming Disney flick for the little ‘uns. Sadly, history doesn’t paint nearly as jolly a picture for the titular Native American beauty (who was actually named Matoaka, by the way – Pocahontas is a nickname meaning “the naughty one”) and her tribe, the Powhatans.
For one, Disney completely fabricated the romantic aspect of Pocahontas’s relationship with handsome colonist John Smith. She was actually 10 or 11 when the settlers arrived, and, if she had any taste, Smith probably wasn’t her type anyhow. According to records from his shipmates, Smith was an abrasive, self-centered brute of a guy.
Even the film’s classic moment, when Pocahontas protects Smith from death at her father’s hands, is dubious, according to historians. Many claim Smith made it all up to gain sympathy and repute amongst his buddies.
At age 17, the real Pocahontas was kidnapped by settlers and held captive at Jamestown for over a year. She was then married to Englishman John Rolfe, converted to Christianity and taken across the Atlantic, only to fall ill and die at 22. Meanwhile, her people were decimated by disease and brutal ethnic cleansing at the hands of white settlers. Turns out, they shouldn’t have been so excited about what was just around the riverbend.
Published: Feb 20, 2014 12:24 pm