RedHanded - ShortHand: The Real Pocahontas

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Long before the ‘90s cartoon version painted with all the colours of the wind, a real Native American woman named Pocahontas inspired a romantic tale that would endure for centuries…But how much of her story is fact – and how much is a convenient colonial fiction?Featuring gold-hunting colonists, grisly cannibalism and more than a splash of imperialist violence, let’s just say the true story isn’t exactly a Disney fairytale. --Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

If your millennial childhood was anything like ours, you probably think you know all about Pocahontas and Pocahontas too, featuring John Rolth, who she actually married. Ah. The Native American princess who saved a nation, with just her flowing locks and trusty raccoon sidekick. And, of course. And even before she got the Disney treatment,

her legendary story became the heart of the United States origin story, repeated in textbooks and classrooms for centuries. But who was the real Pocahontas? Well, there's the story that we've been told, and there is the reality. Which, let's just say, involved less whimsical frolicing and grandmotherly trees, and a whole lot more plague, cannibalism,

and good old colonial violence. It doesn't matter if you're ready or not, we're going to meet the woman behind the myth. This is the childhood destroying shorthand. Oh. First of all, yes, Pocahontas was actually a real person. She was born in around 1596, in what we now know today as Virginia USA. To the indigenous peoples who'd lived there for thousands of years before, the region was known as of...

Sena Komoko. Sena Komoko. I buy it. Thank you. It was home to a political... alliance of around 30 Al-Konguean-speaking tribes, known by historians as the Powhatan Confederacy. Pocahontas's father, Wahun Sanaka, better known as Chief Pawentan, was the paramount chief of this entire network of tribes. So yeah, it was kind of a big deal. And his little bundle of joy? Well, Pocahontas

wasn't actually her real name. Her fissual name at birth was Amalunute. According to the Powantan custom, she had another secret name known only to her. But then who gave it to her? Says her community. Oh, right. Finish the sentence. And then you'll find out. Known only by her community. Mahatoka, which means flower between two streams. So where the hell did Pocahontas come from? It turns out that it was just a childhood nickname. I used to call it Pokey Ponk. That's adorable. And this childhood nickname, Pocahontas, historians think it roughly translates to little playful one.

And she was said to be Chief Pauantan's delight and darling as his only surviving daughter and the child that he had a special soft spot for. Which leads us on to the big question. Was Pocahontas a princess? Yes and no. As a daddy's girl to the head chief, Pocahontas most likely had special freedoms and privileged. within her tribe. But she wasn't exactly wearing a tiara or lounging about on a throne. Pocahontas would have been expected to learn women's work just like all the other girls in her tribe. Childcare, cooking, foraging, gathering firewood, a million other jobs to keep things running smoothly while the guys were out hunting and battling rival tribes. And for the Powhatans, the succession

system was nothing like the European courts. Power would pass first to the late Chief's brothers and then his sisters in order of age and then his oldest sister's children of both genders. In other words, Pocahontas wasn't an heir to any sort of throne in the way that we might see it. Not that any of that stopped the English from projecting their own ideals of royalty onto her later, but we'll get to that when we get to it.

So Pocahontas spent the first 11 or so years of her life as the beloved daughter of a powerful chief, known for her cheerful smile and cartwheels around her village. But playtime would soon be over. Because the English were coming, just around the river bend. In April 1607, the first English colonists knocked up on Powhatan shores. Chartered by King James I and finance by the London-based Virginia Company, these lads had one goal, to milk the eastern coast of the New World

for as much tasty gold and resources as they could find. About 100 explorers, trade people and mercenaries built a fort they named James Taylor. on the marshy banks of a river in Powhatan territory. And look, we know the ending here, the effective genocide of the indigenous peoples and rapid colonization across the North American continent. But back then, the Powertans didn't see these pasty impostors as much of a threat. They were utterly clueless about farming this strange soil,

and pretty quickly their fort was crippled by a lack of resources and disease outbreaks. Some Powertans took pity on the newcomers doing trade and offering food. Others were more hostile, with several skirmishes breaking out along the river. Out of this uneasy atmosphere stepped a guy you just might have heard of, mainly because he's got the most boring name in the world. John Smith. We hate to disappoint you, but as usual, John Smith wasn't actually a romantic Disney prince. Described by the Smithsonian Museum as a short, brash soldier for hire,

Smith was a bit of a Marmite character. He'd actually arrived in the New World in the brig after getting into fisticuffs at sea, and he wasn't exactly popular with his fellow colonists. Still, he stepped up as a bold volunteer leader for the struggling colony, searching for food and resources beyond the safety of the fort walls. In December 1607, Smith was staking out an area on the Chickahominy River when he was captured by a group of native hunters. They paraded him from village to village like a curiosity.

before dumping him in front of Chief Powhatan to decide what to do with him. And what John Smith says happens next defined the Pocahontas legend forever. In his 1624 book, a general history of Virginia, John Smith described how Chief Powhatan and his men laid his head between two large stones and raised their clubs,

poised to bash his coloniser brains in, until Pocahontas, the chief, what was he called up? Poki, Pocy Pocke, Pong. The Chief's beautiful and kind daughter intervened to save his life. As he put it, quote, Pocontas, the king's dearest daughter, when no entry could prevail, got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death.

But here's the awkward part. We're not sure that this ever happened. In fact, we're pretty sure it didn't. Boo! In his letter home afterwards, Smith didn't even mention his close shave with death. Instead, his initial accounts described a great feast and long chat with Powhatan, who ended up calling Smith, son, and asked him to call him father in turn. Maybe he's just like, I don't want to worry everybody.

It's going great, guys. Definitely didn't nearly get my head bashed in. The earth is not a dead thing you can claim. Quite. I know every rock and tree and creatures. has a voice, has a spirit, has a name. I could go on. I think we just sat the script off.

When all these hard words to pronounce and Hannah sings us, the songs from Poggy Pong. I easily could. Great. So at this meeting, Chief Powhatan, allegedly, offered Smith an area of land called Capu-Hawasik for the English to use as a healthier location for their fort. And as for the whole sticks and clubs thing, well, historians now believe it might have all been part of some sort of tribal adoption ceremony, with Chief Powhatan welcoming Smith into the Powhatan Confederacy to act as a local chief under his fatherly command, with the aim of keeping the

English under control. But then why wouldn't you mention that in the letters? If we're being nice, perhaps the story Smith later told was based on his misunderstanding of this adoption ceremony. But the part where Pocahontas swooped in and saved him from the jaws of death, that bit is most likely completely bollocks. For a start, historians believe that Pocahontas, aged about 10 or 11, was way too young to have even been in attendance at such a thing. And even more damningly, John Smith had actually told this identical story before. There are similar accounts in his tales of his adventures around the world with a local

princess figure saving his life, just as he thought he was toast. Was Smith just the unluckiest colonist ever? Or was he a liar? Probably a liar. Cecile Gansiam of the National Museum of the American Indian calls John Smith a well-known fabulous, who embellished his tales for dramatic effect and fame. And to be honest, back then, you just would.

No one can prove shit. Yeah, I know. You'd think, though, that you'd, like, make up a better title for the book? That's true. You're, like, lying about all these, like, potentially lying about all these, very, like, interesting things that are happening, and then you call it a general history of Virginia. Whether Pocahunter saved Smith's life or not,

She did become a VIP for both sides. As a tween, she built a good relationship with the colonists visiting Jamestown regularly with food and even playing with the kids that were there. Most notably, she caught John Smith's eye. He called her the only non-parriol of Chief Powertans County in wit, spirit feature, countenance and proportion. Now you might be side-eyeing him for this weirdly gushy description and with good reason, because she was 11.

and he was 27 at the time. I mean, come on, why are we talking about proportions with an 11-year-old? Yeah, not great. But with that said, the suggestion of an explicitly romantic link between Pocahontas and John Smith only came up after their deaths in semi-fictional interpretations of the story. What we do know is that Pocahontas taught Smith bits of her language, giving him the ability to better communicate with her father.

and his council. As the only English settler with this skill, John Smith naturally became the top dog among the English, and Pocahontas essentially became like a child ambassador. But this tenuous peace couldn't last forever. The winter of 1608 brought a brutal drought that affected the harvest and meant that the Powhatans started to lose patience with the constantly scrounging colonists. Since the English were forbidden by the Virginia Company to trade firearms, the one thing the Powhatans were most interested in, but were still demanding food and resources. The native people naturally just felt short-changed by the whole arrangement.

To put it bluntly, the Brits were taking the piss and they had outstayed their welcome. In 1609, John Smith's luck ran out and he was injured in a friendly fire incident. Afterwards, he sailed back to England to receive medical treatment, and Chief Powhatan and Pocahontas were told that he died. after this Pocahontas stopped visiting Jamestown and relations between the tribes people and the English broke down altogether conditions were rougher than ever inside the colonists' fort

with archaeological evidence showing they resorted to eating rats and each other there's the kicker we're talking skeletons with like norm marks on them by the end of that winter nearly 75% of the colony had kicked the bucket and the Virginia Company sent another fleet of

ships with fresh blood and supplies, only for them to get caught in a hurricane on the Atlantic that destroyed a lot of their stores. Over 500 new settlers arrived with not enough food for everyone. The cherry on top. They brought the plague with them too. Oh bummer. Things at Jamestown were bleak and they were only getting worse. The arrival of a new commander, Lord Delaware, kicked off what became known as the first Anglo-Powartown War in the summer of 1609. Around this, This time, Pocahontas reached marriageable age at around 14. And according to some tribal oral history accounts, she got hitched to a warrior named Coakom. Cocoaum.

Should I marry Cocoaum? Cocoaum. Yeah. How do you remember this? When was the last time you watched Pocahontas? I've got autism. Okay. That meme.

Why is it always you're autistic instead of thank you for singing me all the songs from Pokemon? Some also believe that they had a child together, although archival evidence is lacking here, since it was the early 1600s, and the indigenous people didn't actually keep written records. Single or married by 1613, however, Pocahontas was staying with the Patomex, a local tribe linked to the Powhatan Confederacy. After learning this, Captain Samuel Argel plotted to kidnap her as a political hostage. It's thought that he bribed a Powermec chief, named Japplesias and his wife into luring Pocahontas onto his ship.

Once captured, she was taken to the English fort and stayed there for almost a year, whilst ransom negotiations took place. As the Smithsonian puts it, she became the currency that paid for the colony's survival. We don't know much about Pocahontas' life during this hostage period. While colonial history books claim that she was treated with respect and even reverence as a tribal princess,

some Native American historians speculate that she may have been raped and forced to give birth to a half-English child. Frustratingly, it is impossible to know what Pocahontas herself was thinking and feeling during her imprisonment because there just aren't any written records. But one thing is clear. Pocahontas was of huge importance to her English captors, not only as a political hostage, as the daughter of a great chief, but also as a pet project for the pious Christian settlers. And we all know today that colonisation was really about making money

and pillaging foreign lands for resources. But the settlers also needed a moral cause to justify what they were doing. With the Spanish converting most of South America to Catholicism, these guys saw the opportunity to spread the good word of the spanking new Church of England overseas. Pocahontas was the perfect guinea pig, with a heathen soul ripe for the saving. That year, Pocahontas was given Bible lessons and baptized,

becoming one of the first indigenous people in the English New World to convert to Christianity. She took the Christian name Rebecca, which fittingly means mother of two peoples. I didn't know that was what it meant. Oh, there you go. And when the stalemate between the Powhatans and the English came to her head in March 1614, the story goes that Pocahontas chose to stay with the colonists. Hurt that her former kin valued her less than the weapons that they were locked in fierce negotiations for, she allegedly said that she wanted to stay with the English who loved her.

It's a part of the tale that has led some indigenous people to call Pocahontas a traitor, but honestly, it's a bit more complicated than that. Modern historians have drawn comparisons between Pocahontas and heiress Patty Hurst, whose in 1974 kidnap led to the popularization of the term Stockholm syndrome. Did Pocahontas really choose to betray her former tribe? Or had she been brainwashed into accepting her captor's beliefs as a sort of James Town syndrome. In April 1614, Pocahontas, now Rebecca, married English widower John Rolfe, like in Pocahontas

too. Yeah. Pocahontas too straight to VHS, I didn't know that. Oh. Having only just lost his wife and daughter in a shipwreck off Bermuda on the way to America, John Rolf moved on very fast. Clearly smitten with Pocahontas, he wrote that his hearty and best thoughts were entangled and enthralled with her, which...

In colonial terms, pretty spicy stuff. And while we'll never know how Pocahontas felt, her dad, Chief Powhatan, agreed to the match, as he was keen to forge an alliance with the English after years of war. And their marriage brought about what was known as the Pocahontas piece, a stretch of eight years where the colonists and the native tribes coexisted in relative harmony. And the colonists' fortunes were about to turn in a new way. Having failed to find actual gold in the new world, John Rolf realized the real money was in tobacco.

Fun fact, the native tobacco seeds in North America apparently tasted like absolute shit to smoke, which was especially irritating since the Spanish had made a killing from the smoother seeds in the continent just below. Despite it being a capsule offence to sell those seeds in Virginia, Rolf got his hands on them and started cultivating a new southern strain on his plantation. The iconic Virginia Golden Leaf Tobacco was born and it sold like crazy back in Blighty.

Pocontas even featured on the packaging, becoming the literal poster girl for the success of the Virginia colony. I didn't know that. That's quite interesting. I used to smoke Virginia gold all the time. Oh. Thanks, Pocypong. Fancy a Pocke Pong.

In January 1615, Pocontas gave birth to a son she called Thomas Roth. But her maternity leave was abruptly cut up. short a year later when the Virginia Company declared that she had a new job to do, sailed to London with her husband as an ambassador for the colony in a bid to lobby for more financial support from their British backers. Pocahontas made the voyage along with John Rolfe, their baby and several high-ranking Powertans who wanted to report back about English society. They arrived in Plymouth in 1616 in June and headed to London by coach. From there the myth of Pocahontas well and truly took off. In London, Pocahontas was welcomed like a celebrity.

Shakespeare had recently released The Tempest, inspired by the shipwreck that killed John Rolfe's wife and kid in 1608. No way! I also did not know that. Oh, there were all the facts for you guys. So anything to do with the new world was in vogue. Pocahontas was presented to the king and attended a swanky ball at Whitehall Palace. Wow.

Sheak Shakespeare and Pocahontas, Matt. I choose to live in a world where they did. That's crazy. They definitely do in Pocahontas too. But Pocahontas wasn't just there for a holiday. Her presence was a strategic move on the part of the Virginia Company, who were keen to prove that their efforts to colonise abroad was a success worthy of more investment.

The English people had been fed stories about the indigenous people across the Atlantic being irredeemably non-Christian, and basically an alien species. So, for the Virginia company, Pocahontas was their prize jewel, a walking-talking example of how the heathens across the pond could be moulded to be just like them. Dressed in the finest European-style dresses in speaking fluent English, she was paraded in front of society as an awe-inspiring example of the so-called tamed savage.

And most importantly of all, Pocahontas was a bona fide princess, at least in the eyes of the English audiences. Her status might not have quite translated, neatly to her Powhatan origins, but so what? It was all about the symbolic narrative, and that was coloniser catnip. Pocahontas stayed in England for a year, living between rural Middlesex and Rolf's ancestral home in Norfolk. In 1617, a ghost from her past was resurrected when she ran into John Smith, of all people, at a party.

There's some sort of fucking rom-com, what's going on? Was she pleased to see her old friend back from the dead? Not really. While John Smith might have been hoping for some sort of tender reunion, Pocahontas reportedly had a go at him for betraying her father, who had once welcomed him as a son, noting how he had bullied and threatened all of the Powhatan people except for her. She sassily added that she wasn't that surprise to find out that he wasn't really dead

because your countryman will lie much. Sickburn. Leaving John Smith with his tail firmly between his legs, Pocahontas boarded a ship back to Virginia. in March 1617 with her family. But tragically, she'd never make it back home. The ship only got as far as Gravesend in Kent, and it was here that she fell ill and died, age around 21. Pocahontas's official cause of death is unknown,

but take your pick, smallpox, dysentery, pneumonia, tuberculosis, it could have been any of them, could have been all of them. But if you're feeling really suspicious, some people believe that Pocahontas might actually have been poisoned. Some native oral histories claim that after dining with Captain Argyll, who remember was the same guy who kidnapped her three years before, Pocahontas started convulsing and dropped dead, despite showing no signs of prior illness.

Whether Pocahontas's death was due to natural causes or something more sinister, we'll never truly know. But we do know what happened her body. Despite the Powhatan's requesting for her remains to be brought home, Pocahontas was buried as St. George's Church in gravesend. end on the 21st of March 1617. And if you visit today, you will find a bronze statue of Pocahontas in the churchyard. John Rolfe returned to Virginia, but left his sickly toddler Thomas with his family in England.

After Pocahontas's death, Chief Powhatan reportedly died of grief within a year, and the peace of Pocahontas unraveled. Chief Powhatan's successor, his brother, his brother, never mind, took a more aggressive stance against the English colonists. The so-called Indian massacre of 1622 killed about a quarter of the colony, triggering another all-out war between the settlers and the indigenous population.

And after Nevermind's capture and murder in 1646, the colonists imposed a treaty that forced the native people onto defined lands, placing them under English authority and effectively dismantled the Powhatan Confederacy forever. And we all know how that story ends. Despite her premature death, Pocahontas' mythical power only grew.

John Smith published a count of how she allegedly saved his life sparked countless romantic fanfix, turning their cross-cultural friendship into a full-blown romantic saga. Starting with John Davis' book in 1803, travels in the United States of America, all the way up to Disney's iconic animated adaptation in 1995. So why did the story catch fire with the American imagination? Well, historians reckon that in the fight, for independence from British rule, the American people needed a distinct origin story. And Pocahontas fit the bill to a tea.

He had war, drama, and even a Romeo Juliet-style romance. What more could you want? Noah Webster, yep, the dictionary guy, included the tale in a textbook that would go on to be taught in most American public schools for centuries. As historian, Camilla Townsend put it, once a whole generation is told a story they love, it tends to last. The tableau scene of Pocahontas laying down her life for John Smith is even featured in the iconic rotunda of the US Capitol building.

Wow. Today, Pocahontas has a complicated legacy. For some, she represents the toxic way colonial history has tried to whitewash the real story of how the new world came about. We're looking at you, vengeful Walt Disney. I know you're frozen. He's coming back. Mark my words. Well, for others, Pocahontas is an inspirational figure who bridged two warring cultures.

Looking back on her story today, we can see that Poe Contas was a teenage girl in an impossible situation. And she most likely just did what she could to survive. That's it, guys. I learned loads in that episode. Hopefully you did too. And we'll see you next week for another short hand. Bye. Bye.