Dan Snow's History Hit - Pocahontas: The True Story

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Despite her being a household name, how much do we really know about Pocahontas? Where did she come from? How old was she? And what was her real relationship with the colonists?Don is joined for this episode by Camilla Townsend, a Historian of Early Native American and Latin American History at Rutgers University. Camilla is the author of 'Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma' and, most recently, 'Indigenous Life After the Conquest: The De la Cruz Family Papers of Colonial Mexico'.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Siobhan Dale. The senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BLACKFRIDAY sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail].

Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I want to share one of my sibling podcasts with you now. It's from the wonderful Don Wildman, part of his American History Hit, the chart-topping US history hit podcast. It's all about Pocahontas, the true story. She's a household name, but how much do we really know about her? In this episode, Don is joined by Camilla Townsend. She is a brilliant historian. She's been on History Hit a few times.

A historian of early Native American and Latin American history at Rutgers University. She's the author of Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, and most recently, Indigenous Life After the Conquest, the De La Cruz Papers of Colonial Mexico. She's a star. You're going to love this conversation. Enjoy. It's June 10th, 1995. Somehow, we've scored free tickets to the premiere of Disney's newest blockbuster, Pocahontas. 100,000 Disney fans have piled into Central Park in New York City for this special premiere on four 80-foot-high screens. Most Americans won't see it for a couple more weeks, but we've been hearing the Colors of the Wind number since it was released last year. Hard to say who's more excited, the kids raving about the movie or the adults hoping for a peek of Mel Gibson, who's rumored to be in attendance.

It's Disney's 33rd animated feature, a musical about John Smith traveling to the wilderness of North America and falling in love with a Native American beauty. And it's all based on factual history. Maybe. Greetings all, I'm Don Wildman, and thanks for checking out another episode of American History Hit But unlike those imaginary Hollywood heroines, Pocahontas was a very real human being who lived in the lands of what would one day become Virginia. She was a member of the Poetan people, a native society with numerous tribes and a growing population. And then she fell in love with a British adventurer, John Smith, a colonizing visitor to her shores.

Saved his life, in fact. Or so the tale is told. It's a story we explore today with Professor of Early Native American and Latin American History at Rutgers University, Dr. Camilla Townsend. Welcome, Camilla. Nice to have you. I'm so glad to be here. Thank you. It's an amazing story that deserves the absolute truth. So let's give it a shot here. No less heroic is this woman than what is suggested by the movies. Am I right? I think her life, her real life is actually much more interesting than the movie versions that we've been given or the story, the children's book versions that we've been given. She had a very tough role to play. She really was the daughter of the higher paramount chief

of the collection of indigenous peoples in Virginia, known as the poet. And as you said, and she really did go and live with the English people, but not by choice. She was kidnapped and was their prisoner. And so she was forced to become an intermediary, which she did quite successfully. And we can go into that. But my point is, she had to live through the most stressful, dangerous period of loss that her parents experienced right on the front lines, being the one who actually dealt with the enemy, with the newcomers. She should be revered as someone who showed bravery and smarts, a real savvy in her dealings with them and not thought of as a sort of a silly girl who ran off and fell in love with an English boy. This is one of those fundamental stories we learn as children, not unlike Squanto of the colonizers, the descendants of the

victorious people. Our culture is the culture that has always loved Pocahontas. I was raised by my mother to think what a darling, what a sweetheart she was, and what a good Indian, quote unquote, she was, and how much she loved the white people. When I first broached this project to the Virginia Indians, because there are still descendant communities there. They sort of shuttered yet another white woman who wants to write another obsessive book about Pocahontas. When they read the manuscript that I was actually producing and gave me feedback on it, several of them on the Virginia Council of Indians really liked it, because finally someone was taking her side of this story seriously. But we just need to keep in mind that the story that has been so popular has been popular because it's so flattering to white people. She loved us. She loved our religion. She

loved our boys more than she loved her own people. And for that same reason, it's a very painful story to Native Americans. And they're often delighted to find out it's not true at all. She really was doing what her father wanted her to do when she served as an intermediary. So Camilla, let's get her biography straight. Born in 1596, am I right? Tell me about her name. She was born in about 1596. We can't be absolutely certain, but that is when we think. Her name changed throughout her life, and that would have been quite normal. She would not have been at all distressed by that. Almost all Native Americans, and certainly for the poet and people, it was normal practice to have one's name change in keeping with one's experience and one's evolving personality. So we believe that she was called Amonute when she was born, and then later was called Pocahontas, which means little mischief, in effect, little mischievous one.

Later, when she did, in fact, marry an Englishman, not John Smith, but another Englishman, she took the baptismal name of Rebecca. So throughout her life, her name changed. She also had a secret name, as most people in her tribal affiliation did. And later she told the English that that name was Matoka. We're not certain what it means, but it seems, looking at the root and other closely related languages, that it means like little shining one, almost like a candle or a fire burning. Tell me about her world. The Poetan society really is made up of many tribes. Yes. Pocahontas was born into a very complex political situation. Her father, known to us now as Poetan, had inherited power over various tribes, both through his father and his mother,

because some of the local peoples were matrilineal and some were patrilineal. So through a strange confluence of events, he had inherited power in six or seven chieftainships. This gave him a real leg up in relation to his neighbors. He had more warriors under his control, and I shouldn't say control, because everything was decided through consensus. But let us say, who responded to his influence and to his suggestions. So he was able to lead large parties of warriors, which meant that he began to conquer suggestions. So he was able to lead large parties of warriors, which meant that he began to conquer others. And then just the threat of conquest caused other groups to join. We wouldn't say that it actually became a formal state or nation. The technical term is a paramount seat. It was a paramount chieftainship, his chieftainship

more powerful than others, and they paid tribute or taxes and effects to him. And we think he had over 20 of these tribal groups paying tribute to taxes and effects to him. And we think he had over 20 of these tribal groups paying tribute to him and sort of understanding themselves to be part of his kingdom, as it were. It's as if we're watching the beginnings of the formation of a nation state. The same sort of thing happened long ago in Europe. So Pocahontas was his daughter, but she wasn't a princess because her mother was nobody important. That is, in a society like that, where one man could marry many women and did, he would have had a wife from each of these various tribal affiliations. Only certain wives were understood to mother princes and princesses.

Others were more akin to what we might think of as palace women or concubines even, although I don't like that word. So her mother was nobody important, probably, in fact, was simply a prisoner taken in a conquest. So she had no expectations of inheriting power. She was never referred to as her father's favorite. That's a common line in our stories about her. In fact, he, in the literature that we have, things written down by the English at the time, he explicitly says that different daughters are his favorites and are the ones who are going to inherit power. But she was his daughter, and she lived there in Rokomoko, the village where her father lived, and was there when the English arrived in 1607. I'm correct to call them the Poet and People, right? Because there's also the Pamunkey

Nation, yes? Yes. So this group, this paramount chieftainship governed in effect, or at least influenced, over 20 different groups, among them the Pamunkey, the Matapanai, the Chesapeake, there were many different tribal groups within this. But yes, the term that we scholars use, and we think that they used from some of the things that were said in the records was the Poetan people, at least they were unified in their relation to outsiders, due to the fact that they were governed by this one high chief, whose name was also Poetan, that is very typical. That is, he had another name when he was born,

but high chiefs often took the names of the peoples that they governed or the unities that they governed. How long had they been settled in this area as an organized society before 1607, before the Europeans come? That's actually a complicated question. The unity, the paramount chieftainship was very young. It was a product of Pocahontas' father's political actions. However, the people that he ruled, in effect, had been there for centuries. Now, their lives had changed quite a bit about 200 years before, when through long-distance trade, you get corn and beans arriving in the area. Once the people had those two crops, they could grow protein.

Because corn and beans together, they each have amino acids. And between them, they provide what we call a complete protein, like you're eating a hamburger. So once they had both corn and beans, they could become really much more dedicated to farming than they ever had been before. So about 200 years prior, they had become settled peoples for at least half of each year, often longer, and living largely on corn and beans and other vegetables. They were still hunting part of each year, and they were still gathering wild plants as well. Europeans, as you know, had been sedentary farming people for many thousands of years. Some people would argue that they were the cultural heirs of people who had been farming

for about 10,000 years. So Europeans had a greater population, more technology, all the things that come with thousands of years of sedentary living. The Poetan people had only about 200 years of sedentary life. But it was a peaceful society, well-managed network of tribes, I imagine, into which this European incursion happens. Well, I would only quarrel with one word. I wouldn't say peaceful. It was well-managed, as you said, well-organized, tightly knit. Her father was clearly an expert governor. On the other hand, it was a society of warriors. The reason that her father had been able to acquire so much power was that he was so good

at waging war. And at the edges of his paramountcy, wars were continuing. In fact, some people, me included, would argue that he was very interested in the English precisely because he could obtain tools and weapons that he could use against his own enemies further to the west. But it was not a chaotic warlike situation. It was not a situation where you would find rampant violence, uncontrolled violence. We mustn't imagine that sort of thing. So who is John Smith in all of this? Remind me of his role in the settlement.

John Smith was one of the settlers who came in 1607 with other representatives of the Virginia Company. There were investors in England who had been trying to settle somewhere on the coast of North America. They had tried Canada, they had tried the Sagadoc River up in Maine, and they had the idea that they would try this Virginia, named for their virgin queen. He was nobody important when they arrived, although later he was elected to be the quote president of their little settlement. And he served in that capacity for over a year before he was injured and returned to England. He also drew the short straw at one point before he became quote president, when they were trying to figure out who was going to go off and try to trade with

the Indians to get more food because they had run out of food. You know, the English are famous for starving in Jamestown. And he drew the short straw and he went up the Chesapeake River. He actually went up and traded successfully a couple of times. But then on the fourth try, they captured him. And he was paraded around from village to village before he was brought to Wairuakomoko, where he met Pocahontas' father and Pocahontas herself. And there, he and Pocahontas taught each other some of their languages. They used pantomime, but they also wrote down some words. We have the words that John Smith wrote down in his notebooks,

and in those words, we have evidence that she was his teacher because he quotes her. But then he came back to the settlement and tried to serve as someone who would help make peace between the Indians and the English. You mentioned something important here that a lot of the story comes from John Smith's version of this reality through his journals, which were published, I suppose. Yes. Yes. John Smith had hoped to make a lot of money as an explorer and settler. That did not happen.

But he ended up doing quite well by writing about his experiences. We do also have a letter, a long letter that he wrote back to the Virginia Company very early on, right after his period of captivity in 1608. And that letter was actually published, although he did not know that it was going to be. That may, in fact, have been what gave him the idea. In any event, several years later, he began to write and publish quite copiously about his experiences. And there we do find many exaggerations. In fact, that is where he invented the famous story of the Indian people having wanted to bash his brains in, but the daughter of the king, you know, leaned over and saved him. He left people to imagine that she was a young girl, you know, a half-naked, nubile young girl. In fact, she had been a child at the time, and there was no record in what he wrote earlier that anything like that had happened. So we do have to take with a grain of salt the things that he wrote later in life when he was trying to make money off his publications. But some of the earlier writings are very useful. It's pretty dramatic. I mean, that is a real

story well told, if that's all it is. He's captured by Pocahontas's uncle. And then it becomes very specific. He's kept prisoner. He's going to be executed. There are two stones brought out. I remember this from fourth grade i mean it really was pummeled into my head or else i was just particularly excited about it i don't know but a warrior is going to raise his club and at that point young pocahontas comes and puts her head on top of his and that's what saves his life this is totally fiction this is totally fiction as far as we know he never mentioned anything like that in his original writings that he didn't expect to be published it It would have been counter to their culture.

Big political decisions were not made by young girls. It is very obvious from what actually happened that the indigenous people wanted to use him as a hostage and then later an intermediary that they had no desire to kill him. That wasn't going to help their situation. And probably the clincher is that John Smith wrote a similar story in every single work that he produced. So everywhere that he went, when he went to Asia, Africa, etc., he always wrote about it. And he always put in a near-death experience in which he was saved by a half-naked young woman. And a friend of mine who's a medievalist says, this should not surprise us, because in fact, apparently, it was a very popular theme going way back to medieval times. A guy knew that a girl really loved him if she was willing to die for him. I asked this friend, did it work

in reverse? Did the guy have to die for the girl? He said, oh, no, not at all. So John Smith knew his audience, right? He knew what they wanted. I can just imagine the scene in some London publishing office with some cynical old agent who's like, oh, we got to get one of those scenes in there about the girl and just rewrite this thing, put some juice in this story. But he does have a relationship with her. And that is a reality, yes? Well, yes, they work together to try to teach each other the language while he was a prisoner. Again, we have written proof of that, in effect, the notebooks, a transcription of some of the notebooks that he

kept. But there is another form of the relationship. We also have a statement that he made when he was being investigated later by the Virginia Company, in which he said, yes, maybe I did touch her, in effect, when she was a little girl. She might have been as old as 13, but certainly no older. Maybe I did make moves on her in effect, but it wasn't what you think. I wasn't trying to marry her and usurp power over the colony because he pointed out quite rightly, it wouldn't have worked anyway as she was not her father's heir. He was, in other words, saying to his fellow English people, yes, what you're accusing me of did happen. I may have groped her, but you must not imagine that I was doing this because I was trying to get her as a wife and therefore, you know, usurp the rights of the English king. I was just having fun. As he

said, I was in my cups. Anyway, in this statement, we do find out that he did do what we would now call molest her. Again, she may have been just hitting puberty at the time or may have been even younger than that. We don't know. But there is nothing in the record that would indicate that she liked him, that this child welcomed anything like this from this 30-something-year-old man. And in fact, the only statement that she made to him in the presence of other English people who then wrote it down happened in London. And she said, you English men do lie much and expressed a great deal of anger. So we have no reason to think that she even liked him, quite frankly. It might have been all about putting a good face on things because essentially

she's kidnapped eventually, right? Right. That is, after John Smith is brought back to the English colony, they struggle on. There's a period when they think they're all going to have to go home, but then Lord Delaware arrives with a little fleet of supplies and the Virginia colony survives. Well, a few years later, when Pocahontas is actually already married to an indigenous man or has been, he seems to have died or they possibly divorced. Several years later, when she is definitely a young adult, the English, or specifically a captain named Samuel Argo, kidnap her up on the Potomac River. And they do this on purpose. They received instructions from the English king, we have those instructions, they survived, that they should try to kidnap important young people, because they can then use them as hostages and intermediaries in just the way that the Spaniards have been doing, as the English king's office says. So Argo kidnaps her, and she is brought to Jamestown, probably kept prisoner upriver in Henrico with a particular English minister named Alexander Whittaker. And for a year, they try to convert her, and she rejects their conversion efforts. This is quite interesting, because she's so famous in the

stories made up by Americans as having wanted to be converted, but she rejected those efforts. A year later, the English are going upriver to make war against her people because her people have been making war against them, and they bring her with as a hostage. And at that point, John Rolfe, who seems to have been her English tutor, offers to marry her as a way of making peace, and they send messages to her father asking, is this what you would like? And he sends messages back, yes, that is a good plan. Because in his world, often the daughters of chiefs or sisters of chiefs marry with the enemy to bring peace. So that is why she agrees to marry an Englishman. And in fact, it's only three days after she agrees to this marriage that she agrees to the baptism and takes the name

Rebecca. So it's pretty clear that her conversion to Christianity is really a way of sealing a political deal. The series of events indicate that Pocahontas was doing exactly what her father wished her to do and what was in fact quite culturally normal or typical. And a duty, in fact. A duty, that's well put. She was not having a good time with her English beau. She was doing her duty by her people and agreeing to marry one of these men. Let us hope that she had nothing against John Rolfe, that he had never hurt her. Again, we don't know that he was her English tutor. There is some evidence to suggest that clearly he knew her or he

would not have wanted to do this. He says in the letter that he wrote to the governor that he knows very well that she has still rejected all offers of Christianity and that the king is going to think he's just doing this to satisfy his carnal lusts, but that in fact, he does really like her and he promises that the children will be raised Christian. So that gives you some sense of the nature of their relationship. This is not some English romance. He knows very well he's marrying a Native American who still thinks of herself as a Native American. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

Wherever you get your podcasts. in 1616 she is brought to london is she still married to john rolf at that point yes so she agrees to marry him does marry him they have a little boy thomas rolf and then two years later as you say 1616 they agree to go to go to London at the expense of the Virginia Company, in effect, to act as sort of walking advertisements for the company to try to convince people to invest or to be willing to come and settle. We must understand that she would have had her own reasons for going. That is, the Virginia Company and perhaps John Rolfe wanted this little expedition to happen because they wanted her to serve as an advertisement. But Pocahontas would have conceived of herself as leading a sort of fact-finding expedition. And the reason I'm so sure of this is that she took with her several people who were close

advisors to her father. These would not have been people who would have gone to England in order to serve as her child's nurse. There were a couple of people who did go in that role, but there were others who went who clearly would have gone only at the behest of her father. So it makes perfect sense that there were sort of two agendas on that boat as they sailed over to England. There would have been the Virginia Company's agenda, but there were also the Indian people's agenda. They needed, they really needed more information about this situation. There's an extraordinary picture. I mean, you can even see it on Wikipedia, a portrait of her, or at least a drawing of her in the full English ruffle and the whole thing. I mean, how celebrated was she or what was the interest taken in her back in London?

The people in London were very interested in her. She was quite a celebrity. And yes, that engraving that you mentioned was taken from a drawing that was done then. Simone van der Paas, a Dutchman, was sent to do the likeness, and then they turned it into an engraving so that they could pass it around, probably sell it, you know, for a half penny or something, so that she could become famous and serve as a better advertisement. And she appears in various people's letters and diary entries. She was taken to meet the monarchs. She was taken to see a mask or a play. They really wanted her to become well known so that people in London would say to themselves, oh, it's working. We have a successful colony. We have a

native princess married to an Englishman. Peace has been established. We can go or we can invest money. They also used her to collect money from various charitable organizations, Christian evangelical organizations. Although very interestingly, through her husband, John Rolfe, we know that at one point she said, okay, we'll take this money, but you must understand that it's to be conceived of as a thank you gift for the souls we've already saved and not as any kind of down payment or promise on future souls. In other words, I refuse to continue to badger my people to become Christians. Don't expect necessarily that there will be more conversions. What happens to the Poet and People? I'm curious.

Pocahontas would have come to know when she had seen how many people and how many ships and how many cannons and how many microbes there were in London, she would have come to understand that her people had a big problem, bigger than they had first realized. And indeed, those who survived the trip to England and made it back home are known to have traveled through the Powhatan villages, the various tribal entities, warning people that they had a bigger problem than they had known. And indeed, a few years later in 1622, there was a great rising. Indigenous people coordinated up and down the James River and killed a number of settlers, trying to convince them that they should contain themselves to Jamestown

or possibly even to leave. So there definitely was a sense from early on, and Pocahontas was part of the fact-finding mission that came to know this, that they had a big problem. At first, they withdrew to the woods. There were a couple of decades in which they lived, the Poet and People lived inland and away from the English, but of course that just created warfare with their neighbors to the west. So they ended up having to rise again in 1644 in an effort to sort of stake out some land for themselves, but it was a disaster and the

various leaders were taken prisoner by the English. Most of them either died of the diseases and of the warfare or joined other tribal entities. However, a couple of tribal entities did survive. The Pamunkey and the Mattapanai did survive in little tiny enclave communities. And in fact, we're given reservations, which are still there to this day, just a few square miles, just a few people, but they are there, the descendants. Pocahontas' so-called adventure in London lasts only a year. They do settle briefly, but then she's heading back to Virginia in 1617. Am I right? And then things go all wrong. That is right. They are there for about a year. And then in the spring of 1617, am I right? And then things go all wrong. That is right. They are there for about a year, and then in the spring of 1617, just as you said, they get on a ship heading down the Thames River

in an effort to go home. But she and many on board are already very sick. They have some sort of a lung ailment, some relative of the flu or some sort of coronavirus, probably, although not COVID-19, obviously. And she dies. They take her off the ship and into an inn at Gravesend, which is just at the mouth of the Thames. And there she dies. So many of the others in their company, the other indigenous people, are sick that John Rolfe decides he has to leave his little son behind. As he says, those who were to nurse him, meaning to care for him, have need of nurses themselves. So he leaves him behind to be raised by his brother.

And the rest of them do get on the ship and go home. We don't know how many of the indigenous people died there in London and how many made it home. But at least a handful did make it back to Virginia, including a leading advisor of her father's named Uta Matamakan. And so there is a funeral for her at St. George's Church in Gravesend. Her grave is there. Can you visit it? Yes. Now, they don't actually know where the body is because, as is so often the case, later the churchyard was dug up and, you know, various bones were dumped here and there. However, there is an entry in the church record of her burial, and so there is a plaque there now saying that, you know, somewhere in this vicinity lie the bones of Pocahontas. And you can visit the church. I did when I was there a few

years ago. And it really is a very moving experience for an American. In concluding this story, it is very important to note that none of this comes from Pocahontas. There were none of her thoughts recorded. She never wrote anything down about this. That's the saddest part of the legacy, isn't it? Yes. The reason that we haven't had better stories or better histories of Pocahontas, I think, is that the pen was always in the hands of the English men. So what got repeated were sort of silly things that English men had said. So for instance, one man in his diary in London wrote, oh, she's not very pretty. You know, she's got a swarthy complexion. I bet she just loves being here and doesn't want to go back to her own people. So that got repeated over and over again that Pocahontas loved England and didn't want to go back to her own people. But

obviously, it's just a sort of derisive statement of an Englishman who didn't even know her. All that we really have, besides various comments and statements and facts recorded by the English, all that we really have are, well, I guess I would say two branches or two styles of information. One would be things that other indigenous people said, either about her or about similar situations, you know, a few decades later in other colonial contexts. We can't assume that her feelings were the same, but we can at least ask ourselves if they might have been. So for instance, many people who converted didn't really throw out a belief in their own gods. They just added Jesus Christ to the pantheon. They had a pantheon.

So we can guess that that is probably what she was doing, too. And then we do have statements that she made implicitly. And I looked hard for those and tried to include every one that I could find. So, for instance, when Simone van der Pas made his engraving, all around the edge of it, they gave information that only could have come from an indigenous person. And she was the only one in the room. So, for instance, rather than saying that she was the daughter of Poetin, you know, the Indian king in Virginia, they said she was the daughter of Poetin, the monarch of Tsenakomako. Tsenakomako was the name of the kingdom in her own language.

You know, John Rolfe didn't know that. The English sailors didn't know that. So we know that she was there insistently saying, no, you know, don't call it the Virginia Colony. Call it the kingdom of Tsenokomoko. And there are other times, I mentioned one of them. For instance, when she and her husband, she and John Rolfe, accept money from a Christian organization. John Rolfe says, but you must understand that this is a thank you gift and not a promise for future conversions. That's not something an Englishman would have said as he took money from an evangelical group. That's something a Native American person would say. So we do get some sense of her thoughts and feelings. Other English people record that she was very angry at John Smith and called him a liar. So

we know something about her. But yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had her letters, her diaries, and we don't, and I'm sure never will. If they existed, they would have been found. So much of this kind of storytelling, this sort of imposition of a European perspective on settling this continent is about the assimilation, this hope that we would just come and be welcomed and we would bring this better way of life and all of this. Obviously, this has been unpacked so much in our generation. What do you think's on the other side of this process? There are two ways to think about it, I think. Well, probably many ways, but two ways that I've thought about it. On one hand, we simply learn more about the human experience. We learn more about what the situation felt like from the perspective of the Native Americans. And having another voice, hearing another voice, helps us

get a more complete picture. That is valuable in its own right. But I would argue that we get something else as well. That is, once we understand that the stories that we have told ourselves about the past, not only are not true, but we're very self-serving, we're flattering, we're created in a sort of unconsciously self-serving project. I think we learn more about history as a whole and about ourselves. We learn more about the motivations, sort of the mindsets of the colonists and of their descendants, most Americans. And that is valuable too. I don't mean that it isn't valuable to learn about the perspectives of Native Americans. That's probably the primary thing that we get out of all of this. But it's also valuable, I think, to think to ourselves,

how do we look at history in general differently once we add this other perspective. And I think we do learn much about not only why people wanted to colonize, what they were getting out of it, but also about what the descendants told themselves, chose to tell themselves about those experiences, so they wouldn't have to face any guilt or remorse and could simply feel pride and build up their nation. And it helps us all, I think, as human beings to get past that by recognizing these many stories that are part of our joint history as human beings. And it's so much more poignant to consider it in the person of this rather innocent person, this Pocahontas child, really. Yeah, thinking of how it was experienced

by this one young girl who, as you say, was innocent, asked for none of it, deserved none of it, and actually handled it so well with such strength of character. Boy, there's so much value in retelling this story, although I can imagine all these Disney executives with their heads in hands. Camilla Townsend is a historian of early Native American and Latin American history at Rutgers University. Her most intense focus is on the writings left to us by Native American historians. Her book on this subject is Pocahontas and the Poet and Dilemma. Thank you so much, Camilla, for joining us. I really enjoyed it.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.