The 'true story' of an American legend, Part 2

I did some checking on the sources I used in the previous post that caused me to make some changes to that piece. Though most of it remains intact, I have deleted references to Native American lore and replaced those references with a much more vague "some say." I also deleted the reference to some tribes having developed a written language because that implied contemporaneous written tribal accounts about Pocahontas. The writing systems did not come into usage until the 1800s.

Let me explain. As I mentioned, John Smith's account of the history of Virginia, meaning essentially his involvement in the settling of Virginia and the Jamestown colony, is often referenced as the definitive account. Modern retellings of the story familiar to people these days, such as the Disney film Pocahontas and a later movie, The New World, do what many modern films do -- romanticize and play with the facts for dramatic effects. These visuals tend to stick in the mind, though, and a goodly number of Americans likely think they know the story because they've seen the films. 

And numerous printed accounts, both histories and novels, purport to tell the true story as well. I suspect that the history books used in schools lean heavily on Smith's accounts, though I've no direct exposure to them. 

Now I referred to Native American lore in general because I came across numerous websites, including a couple that identify as being Indian that told very similar stories, all of which deviated most of the time from Smith's account. But I also read the National Park Service's entry on Pocahontas, in which they outline two different versions of the story, one being pretty much the story we know and the other based on the book The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History, published in 2007 and written by Dr. Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow and Angela L. Daniel, a doctoral student who assisted in the preparation of the book. 

Custalow was a physician -- hence the title "Doctor" -- and a member of the Mattaponi tribe, one of the tribes in the Algonquin confederation led by the chief we call Powhatan. His online obituary states that he was "the historian" for the Mattaponi.

His book is supposed to be based on the oral traditions of the Mattaponi and recounts their stories of Pocahontas. I have not read the book, but judging from the NPS summary and an extensive critique by Kevin Smith of Tsurumi University in Japan, lead me to believe that most of the websites I referred to in developing a general "Native American lore" about Pocahontas rely heavily on Custalow's book. Certainly the alternative account on the NPS website does. 

I found another source for alternative accounts -- an interview with Camilla Townsend, a Rutgers University history professor whose book on Pocahontas formed part of the research for a Smithsonian Channel documentary on Pocahontas. The book is called Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, published two years before Custalow's. An extensive review of the book is available at Schmidt on Townsend.

I'll come back to the point of giving you all the background on sources after I discuss some other stories about Pocahontas. One account pretty much everyone agrees on is that after Pocahontas had reached marriageable age, she married a man named Kocoum, who apparently had some status in his tribe but was not a chief. The two had a child, Pocahontas' first.

A few years after the birth of this child, she was kidnapped by Capt. Samuel Argall, who intended to use her as leverage to gain the return of some English prisoners and weapons from Powhatan. His attempt was successful for the most part, but Pocahontas was taken to Jamestown and later moved to a settlement called Henrico, near present-day Richmond. 

Here the accounts begin to vary again. In the English retelling Pocahontas was placed in the care of the Rev. Alexander Whitaker who taught her English and instructed her in Christianity and English customs. One account I ran across has Smith teaching her English as a child so she could be used as a translator. 

In the English account, Pocahontas was intrigued by Christianity and willingly converted, being baptized and given the name Rebecca. In the alternate accounts, she pretty much had no choice but to convert.

While in Henrico she met and wed John Rolfe, the man who made tobacco a major cash crop in Virginia. The romanticized account had the pair falling deeply in love. The alternative accounts say she married Rolfe out of expediency. The marriage provided a bridge for the English to reestablish good relations with the tribes under Powhatan leadership and gave Rolfe access to land without being harassed. The pair would have a child, whom they named "Thomas," who was and is well regarded in Virginia history and became the progenitor of several notable Virginia families. 

Another part of the alternate account of the Rolfes says that Pocahontas was already pregnant when she married Rolfe, having been raped by a prominent member of the community. The wedding gave the child "legitimacy" and having a child of mixed heritage aided in solidifying Rolfe's position with Powhatan. 

Everyone agrees that the couple, at the urging and financial backing of the Virginia Company came to England, along with some members of her tribe, and spent some time there. John Smith had returned to England after an accident but made no attempt to visit Pocahontas for several months. When he did decide to pay a call, she became upset and began to tell him off. She believed Smith had used her father for his own purposes and had threatened her people. She told him that after he left, the settlers told the tribes that Smith had died -- he never returned to America -- but her father did not believe them because, she said, "Your countrymen will lie much."

A year or so after their arrival, the Rolfes decided to return to America, but on the way to their departure point Pocahontas fell ill and died. She was buried in an unmarked grave in St. George's Church in Gravesend. She was 21.

The alternate account says she was poisoned, but how anyone would know that is anybody's guess. I read that some attempts were made to repatriate her remains, but they have proved futile because no one knows the exact location of the grave. This, of course, caused some to speculate that was the entire purpose in not marking the grave. 

So here's the point. Pocahontas never wrote or dictated any remembrances, so we are dependent on Smith's account and very few other contemporary documents. The modern attempts by Custalow and Townsend to recover the "true story" strike me as having modern motives -- to discount the English accounts and present Pocahontas as a woman who never betrayed her heritage who should be respected as an honorable member of her tribe. 

Until someone invents time travel, we'll never know the truth. And that's the thing with historical figures. We often look back on them and either use the lack of information about them to bolster our own viewpoints, or cherry pick from the available information for the same purpose.