Sorry Disney: Pocahontas and John Smith Did Not Have a Romantic Relationship
The 1995 Disney film Pocahontas is an almost perfect Disney movie. It has a great soundtrack, beautiful animation, and strong characters. There is a reason it is still popular with kids even thirty years after its release.
However, this is one glaring problem that always bothers me. It is the romantic subplot between Pocahontas and John Smith. In the scene where Pocahontas saves Smith from execution by her father, it isn’t because of some sympathy for an innocent man, but because she was in love with him.
There are a couple of problems with this scene and subplot. First, the only account we have of this incident is from Smith writing about it seventeen years after Pocahontas died of illness in 1617. This raises questions on if he made that story up, as he does not mention it in an early account of his life in Virginia in 1608. He mentions meeting Pocahontas, but not this incident that would have happened earlier. In his later version, he also mentions similar incidents in his other adventures worldwide, questioning the truth.
The second problem is that the real Pocahontas as between 10 and 11 years old at the time. Pocahontas would later marry another Jamestown colonist, John Rolfe when she was 17 or 18 (her exact birthdate is unknown). John Smith was in his early 30s. Needless to say, any romantic relationship between the two would have been unacceptable even in the 1600s.
Disney is not the only offender putting in a fictional romantic subplot between Pocahontas and John Smith, but probably the most well-known. Like Disney, many film and stage productions depict Pocahontas as older to create this romance. The most recent offender was the 2005 film The New World. It is a beautiful and accurate depiction of life in the early years of Jamestown and the life of Pocahontas; if only they had cut out the possible romance between her and Smith.
Pocahontas’s (her real name is Matoaka, Pocahontas was a nickname) story is still a great story of a Native American girl doing her part to create positive relations between her people and the European settlers. So why do filmmakers still perpetuate this myth? Why not keep her actual age and make her the strong-willed adolescent she was?
We have author John Davis to thank for this myth. In his 1805 book, Travels in the United States of America and Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas: an Indian tale, he gives the first account of a romantic relationship between the two. It is possible he supplanted the relationship Pocahontas had with her husband John Rolfe for the more exciting tale of her and Smith.
Since Davis’s writing, other writers have seen the opportunity to spice up the story with the possibility of romantic motivation of Pocahontas’s actions with Smith. Depending on the creator’s intent, her age can be stated anywhere between 8 and 14 years old. Davis claimed she was 14 to allow for the possibility of romantic intent on her saving Smith’s life.
While there is evidence that the two had a friendship, there is little evidence that anything further went on between the pair. One incident that has also fueled whispers of a romantic relationship was when Pocahontas visited England in 1616 and met Smith at a social event. She had not seen Smith since a gunpowder accident in 1609 forced Smith to leave Virginia. The settlers told her that Smith had died, and she reacted emotionally to seeing him alive.
These minor incidents have been enough to fuel the myth that there was anything more between the two. Also, there isn’t any evidence that there wasn’t a relationship that has been enough for writers since the 1800s to keep this myth going.
In conclusion, it is unlikely that Pocahontas saved Smith from death though they did know each other. Given her age, it is doubtful there was anything romantic between the pair. She brought supplies to the struggling colonists and helped bring peace between her people and the colonists through her marriage to John Rolfe (though it would not be a lasting peace).
While the tale of a young Native American girl saving the life of a brave English explorer because of her love for him is the stuff Hollywood loves, it is bad history. Does it make for a good story? Sure, but the real story of Matoaka, aka Pocahontas, is just as intriguing.
We need a movie telling the whole truth. I’d buy a ticket.
