1. Pocahontas Fact and Fiction
Mrs. Abbott
OPHS World History

2. The World of Pocahontas
Notice the shape of North America?

3. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!
The Age of Exploration
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue!

4. Why are Native American’s called Indians?
The Age of Exploration
Why are Native American’s called Indians?

5. The Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America…to…make money! They were looking for gold and silk worms in the new world!

6. Then why was she called Pocahontas???
Daughter of Powhatan, chief of 30 tribes in VA
Member of the Algonquian
Born: 1595 (ish…)?
Given Name: Matoaka (other names: Amonute and Rebecca)
Then why was she called Pocahontas???

7. Jon Smith Born 1580 leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown)
Met Pocahontas sometime in 1607 when she may or may not have saved his life…

8. Pocahontas and John Smith …love story?
The story goes something like this: Pocahontas saved John Smith’s life when her father was about to kill him by laying her head on top of his…she did this because she loved him so much!!! OMG isn’t that romantic!!!
Why do we romanticize everything?
Click Here!

9. Pocahontas and John Smith …love story?
The real story is more like this…maybe…she saved him because he was her friend and she didn’t want him to die…OR….

10. Pocahontas and John Smith …love story?
The real story is more like this…maybe…Rather than the near victim of an execution, he may have been subject to a tribal ritual intended to symbolize his death and rebirth as a member of the tribe and Pocahontas was just acting out her part…OR…

11. Pocahontas and John Smith …love story?
The real story is more like this…maybe… None of it is true!!! Oh John Smith and your conflicting stories…

12. Pocahontas and John Smith …love story?
The romanticized love story between Pocahontas who was about 13 and John Smith who was in his late 20’s wasn’t told until the 1800s…hundreds of years after their deaths.

13. Pocahontas’s Life
Pocahontas was a favorite of her father's -- his "delight and darling,” according to the colonist Captain Ralph Hamor -- but she was not a princess in the sense of inheriting a political station. (She did chores like everyone else)
The Native American culture she was raised in was a matriarchal society…what does that mean?

14. Why does the source matter?
Pocahontas’s Life
Delivered food to the American settlers.
In 1609 she was taken prisoner by settlers in Jamestown
There she: Converted to Christianity.
According to English sources, Pocahontas told her family that she preferred to remain with the English rather than returning home.
Why does the source matter?

15. While in England, she even met the king!
Pocahontas’s Life
She met and married John Rolfe…(first recorded interracial marriage)…he had to get permission!
They traveled to England where she was an example of a “civilized savage”.
She died in England, just as she was about to return home.
While in England, she even met the king!

16. Pocahontas and John Rolfe
Rolfe, a pious farmer, had lost his wife and child on the journey over to Virginia. In a long letter to the governor requesting permission to wed Pocahontas, he expressed both his love for her and his belief he would be saving her soul through the institution of Christian marriage. Pocahontas' feelings about Rolfe and the marriage are unknown.

17. Why do we know so little?
The accounts we have were all written by John Smith, John Rolfe and Captain Ralph Hamor and other ENGLISH people…why does who are information is from make a difference?
Only contemporary picture of Pocahontas. What does contemporary mean in this case?