![]() Nor is there a firm basis for the tale of Pocahontas saving the English captain from execution by flinging her body across his. ![]() There is no evidence of romance between her and Smith (a lifelong bachelor, who, to judge from his own portrait, was far from handsome). Smith called her “A child of ten years old,” while another colonist described her as a “young girle,” cartwheeling naked through Jamestown. John Smith, an early leader in Jamestown, described her as beautiful in “feature, countenance, and proportion” and filled with “wit and spirit.”īut contrary to her depiction in films by Disney and others, Pocahontas wasn’t a busty teenager when the English encountered her. But she did attract special notice for her beauty and liveliness hence Pocahontas, a nickname meaning, roughly, “playful one.” This was also the name she was known by to the English who settled near her home in 1607. Powhatan had dozens of children, and power in his culture passed between males. She was born Matoaka, in the mid-1590s, the daughter of Powhatan, who ruled a native empire in what is now eastern Virginia. So which image is closer to the woman we know as Pocahontas? The inscription is also striking it identifies her not as Pocahontas, but as “Matoaka” and “Rebecca.” In short, there seems little to link this peculiar figure, peering from above a starched white ruff, with the buck-skinned Indian maiden of American lore. Only her high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes hint at her origins far from London. Made during her visit to London in 1616, the engraving depicts a stylish lady in beaver hat and embroidered velvet mantle, clutching an ostrich feather fan. The startling artwork (above), the oldest in the National Portrait Gallery collection, is the only image of Pocahontas taken from life. But this fairy tale, familiar to millions today from storybook and film, bears little resemblance to the extraordinary young woman who crossed cultures and oceans in her brief and ultimately tragic life. Pocahontas is the most myth-encrusted figure in early America, a romantic “princess” who saves John Smith and the struggling Jamestown colony. ![]()
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