Paula Gunn-Allen, a member of the Pueblo Laguna Sioux tribe and a UCLA professor of literature, sees some advantages to DisneyвЂ™s retelling of the Pocahontas tale. вЂњShe became a real political volleyball,вЂќ Krumrey says of the historical Pocahontas, who died of smallpox at the age of 23. Most historians believe Smith fabricated the tale long after PocahontasвЂ™ death to capitalize on her fame.ДЄnd although John Rolfe, the English widower who ultimately married Pocahontas and fathered her child, publicly professed his enduring love for the Indian princess, Rountree and Krumrey say theirs was essentially a marriage of political convenience, designed to usher in a period of peace. There is no real evidence, for instance, that Pocahontas saved John Smith from the wrath of her father. In some ways the real-life Pocahontas-who ultimately was captured by the English, married to a colonist, baptized an Anglican, renamed Rebecca, dressed in elegant gowns and presented to London society as a вЂњcivilized savage'-was as much a cultural artifact as the legends that have grown up around her. вЂњAmericans need to retell the story of the first contact between Euro-English settlers and Native Americans to make it a loving, interactive and mutually satisfying encounter,вЂќ she said, вЂњto knit themselves into the landscape with a love story that would produce a true American progeny.вЂќ вЂњMost of the natives of Virginia claim to be descendants of Pocahontas: thereвЂ™s a reason for that,вЂќ said literary critic Diane Krumrey, who has done extensive research at Princeton University on the many ways the Pocahontas story has been told. Yet as the legend of Pocahontas and John Smith resurfaces in popular culture as a politically correct, eco-friendly romance, itвЂ™s clear that this fractured fairy tale of the first encounter between English settlers and tribal people reveals much more about the desires, virtues and values of the present than it does about the past. The вЂњIndian PrincessвЂќ canвЂ™t speak for herself now, so we should be wary of what is said in her name.DisneyвЂ™s animated morality tale may sidestep the historical facts, but few parents would object to its message that nature is good, greed is bad and the impulse to make peace is a paramount virtue. Pocahontas the person has long since disappeared into what Bell calls the вЂњcolonized body, filled with other voices and purposes,вЂќ a screen for projecting fantasies of AmericaвЂ™s founding by Europeans. And he evidently liked the idea of being rescued by вЂњladies of high rankвЂќ so much he claimed it happened to him on three different occasions. He hadnвЂ™t mentioned the incident in an earlier account of his time among the Powhatan. Did it even happen? If it did, was Smith misinterpreting it? Smith, after all, didnвЂ™t tell this pivotal piece of the Pocahontas legend until 1624, years after Pocahontas was dead. Bell writes that she entered вЂњhistory as the sexual objectification of Native defeat and colonial conquest,вЂќ continuing, вЂњthe body of Pocahontas and the body of America are the same contested site in the colonial enterprise.вЂќД®ven, as Gail Tremblay notes, the most famous incident in the myth of Pocahontas-her rescue of the soldier-of-fortune John Smith from certain death-is questionable. She was called вЂњLittle WantonвЂќ by Europeans shocked by her nakedness Native children only wore clothes in winter. Pocahontas is a metaphor вЂњfor the authorвЂ™s position on the colonial project.вЂќ Ten or eleven when she first met Europeans, Pocahontas is almost always presented as an adolescent in these encounters.

вЂњPocahontasвЂќ was actually only her nickname she was formally named Matoaka.Д«ell points out how many of theВ accounts of PocahontasВ reveal more about the authors than their subject. Betty Louise Bell gives a synopsis of what little is known about Pocahontas, вЂњher powerful fatherвЂ™s favored child, a tribal ambassador to the Jamestown settlement, the mediator between British colonists and indigenous peoples, the first Native woman to convert to Christianity, the third Virginian Native woman to marry a colonist, the mother of a new mixed blood race, and the first Native American to be honored by the Court of King James.вЂќ Pocahontas left no testimony of her own. The most famous incident in the myth of Pocahontas-her rescue of the soldier-of-fortune John Smith from certain death-is questionable.Д®ver since, Pocahontas has been romanticized and mythologized in more advertisements, as well as books, plays, poems, movies, cartoons, and dolls.

The real pocahontas