Pocahontas Thesis

As a the “old woman” in the class, I remember when the Disney movie Pocahontas hit the movie theatres. I took my baby sister to go see it, and had many days listening to the VHS copy being rewind over, and over. While the wild tale in the film is more fiction than fact, it did peek my curiosity as a teen, I had to check out books. What struck me was that she was a child, even during the time period, that she is said to have saved John Smith. Without trying to sound like I knew more than I did before furthering my studies, the simple facts that I knew back then were as follows.

Pocahontas is a nickname given to her by her father, it roughly means lovable scamp (wanton). Her given name is Matoaka, and her father was one of the chiefs of the

To understand the relationships between Native populations, the French, and the English, the views of each needs to be taken into account. The English saw the New World as an opportunity for wealth that the landed gentry saw in their homeland. Land is important for the English, it enabled the owner to toil the land for their own wealth rather than the wealth of others. Land is a symbol of power and control of their own lives. They wanted complete ownership, building towns and farmsteads. The inconsistency of the transactions between the English and the Natives left much to misunderstanding. Times where ownership of the land left the traditional use of the tribes to remain intact, while others it did

This relationship is shaped by the views of the French on the role the colony plays. For the French, as referenced in the lecture and the text, New France is a place of natural resources, and the Native population is there to trade with for those resources. Fur was the greatest of the resources, specifically beaver. The fur trappers and traders befriended the peoples, including intermarriage. The French looked upon the Native population as more equal including sending their children from intermarriage to live with their mother’s tribe to learn her language. Where the English interacted with Native populations with suspension and formed alliances to meet common