- 2862 - POCAHONTAS - don’t change history, learn from it. Pocahontas might be a household name, but that wasn’t her actual name. She was born in 1596, her real name was Amonute, and she also had the name Matoaka. Pocahontas was her nickname, which depending on who you ask means “playful one" or “ill-behaved child.”
--------------- 2862 - POCAHONTAS - don’t change history, learn from it.
- Pocahontas was the favorite daughter of Powhatan, the formidable ruler of the more than 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes in and around the area that the early English settlers would claim as Jamestown, Virginia.
-
- Years later John Smith wrote about how she, the beautiful daughter of a powerful native leader, rescued him, an English adventurer, from being executed by her father. That was the picture above in this Review.
-
- This narrative of Pocahontas turning her back on her own people and allying with the English, thereby finding common ground between the two cultures, has endured for centuries. But in actuality, Pocahontas’ life was much different than how Smith or mainstream culture tells it.
-
- It’s even disputed whether or not Pocahontas, age 11 or 12, even rescued the mercantile soldier and explorer at all, as Smith might have misinterpreted what was actually a ritual ceremony, or even, just lifted the tale from a popular Scottish ballad.
-
- Now, 400 years after her death, the story of the real Pocahontas is finally being accurately explored. Representatives from the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia, the descendants of Pocahontas, offer expert testimony to paint a picture of a spunky, cart wheeling Pocahontas who grew up to be a clever and brave young woman, serving as a translator, ambassador and leader in her own right in the face of European power.
-
- There are truly hundreds of books over the many years that have been written about Pocahontas. Getting her story wrong goes back to John Smith who marketed their relationship as a love story.
-
- That story that Pocahontas was in love with John Smith has lasted for many generations. He mentioned it himself in the Colonial period as you say. Then it died, but was born again after the revolution in the early 1800s when we were really looking for nationalist stories. Ever since then it's lived in one form or another, right up to the Disney movie today.
-
- The reason it's been so popular, not among Native Americans, but among people of the dominant culture, is that it's very flattering to them. The idea is that this is a ‘good Indian.’ She admires the white man, admires Christianity, admires the culture, wants to have peace with these people, is willing to live with these people rather than her own people, marry him rather than one of her own.
-
- That whole idea makes people in white American culture feel good about our history. That we were not doing anything wrong to the Indians but really were helping them and the ‘good’ ones appreciated it.
-
- Pocahontas was a member of the Pamunkey tribe in Virginia. These native Americans for so many years have been so tired of enthusiastic white people loving to love Pocahontas, and patting themselves on the back because they love Pocahontas, when in fact what they were really loving was the story of an Indian who virtually worshipped white culture. They were tired of it, and they didn't believe it. It seemed unrealistic to them.
-
- So the lesson passed down by mainstream culture is that by leaving her people and adopting Christianity, Pocahontas became a model of how to bridge cultures. The lesson is one of extraordinary strength even against very daunting odds. Pocahontas' people could not possibly have defeated or even held off the power of Renaissance Europe, which is what John Smith and the colonizers who came later represented.
-
- They had stronger technology, more powerful technology in terms of not only weapons, but shipping and book printing and compass making. All the things that made it possible for Europe to come to the New World and conquer, and the lack of which made it impossible for Native Americans to move toward the Old World and conquer.
-
- So Indians were facing extraordinarily daunting circumstances. Yet in the face of that, Pocahontas and so many others that we read about and study now showed extreme courage and cleverness, sometimes even brilliance in the strategizing that they used.
-
- The notes that survived from John Smith that he was kidnapped by the Native Americans a few months after he got here. Eventually after questioning him, they released him. But while he was a prisoner among the Native Americans, we know he spent some time with Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas and that they were teaching each other some basic aspects of their languages.
-
- And we know this because in his surviving notes are written sentences like "Tell Pocahontas to bring me three baskets." Or "Pocahontas has many white beads." So all of a sudden, I could just see this man and this little girl trying to teach each other. In one case English, in another case an Algonquian language.
-
- Literally in the fall of 1607, sitting along some river somewhere, they said these actual sentences. She would repeat them in Algonquian, and he would write that down.
-
- In 1616, Pocahontas, baptized as "Rebecca," and married to John Rolfe, left for England. Before she could return to Virginia, she fell ill. She died in England, possibly of pneumonia or tuberculosis, and was buried at St. George's Church on March 21, 1617.
-
- Four hundred years after her death, her story is being told more accurately. What's changed? Studies of TV and other pop culture show that in that decade between the early '80s and the early '90s is when the real sea change occurred in terms of American expectations that we should really look at things from other people’s point of view, not just dominant culture's.
-
- Since the shift in mainstream scholarship there is this sense that it would help modern politics if more people understood what native peoples really went through both at the time of conquest and in the years after.
-
- Looking at any story standing in the other persons shoes. Was a life lesson my parents passed on.
-
- There's so strong a sense in our country, at least in some places among some people, that somehow Native Americans and other disempowered people had it good, they're the lucky ones with special scholarships and special status. That is very, very far from a reflection of their real historical experience.
-
- Once you know the actual history of what native Americans and African slaves have been through, it's sobering, and one has to reckon with the pain and the loss that some people have experienced far more than others over the last five generations.
-
- It would help everybody, both native and mainstream culture, if more people understood what native experience was really like both at the time of conquest and since.
-
- And note, that is history to learn from, but, move forward into a better future. Don’t destroy history, learn from it accurately and move on. The future has not happened yet and the past can not be changed.
-
- October 15, 2020 2862
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------ jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Thursday, October 15, 2020 ---------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment