In Smithsonian Channel’s new documentary Pocahontas: Beyond the Myth, premiering on March 27, authors, historians, curators and representatives from the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia, the descendants of Pocahontas, offer expert testimony to paint a picture of a spunky, cartwheeling 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.Ĭamilla Townsend, author of the authoritative Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma and a history professor at Rutgers University, who is featured in Beyond the Myth, talks to Smithsonian about why the story of Pocahontas has been so distorted for so long and why her true legacy is vital to understand today. Now, 400 years after her death, the story of the real Pocahontas is finally being accurately explored. 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.

But in actuality, Pocahontas’ life was much different than how Smith or mainstream culture tells it.

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. Years later-after no one was able to dispute the facts-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. 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. Pocahontas was her nickname, which depending on who you ask means “playful one' or “ill-behaved child.”

Born about 1596, her real name was Amonute, and she also had the more private name Matoaka. To start with, Pocahontas wasn’t even her actual name. Pocahontas might be a household name, but the true story of her short but powerful life has been buried in myths that have persisted since the 17th century.

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