Pocahontas: The True Story

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite her's 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 'Pocohontas 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. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's June 10th, 1995.
0:05.0	Somehow we've scored free tickets to the premiere of Disney's newest blockbuster, Pocahontas.
0:11.0	100,000 Disney fans have piled into Central Park in New York City for this special
0:17.4	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.
0:27.0	Hard to say who's more excited. The kids raving about the movie or the adults hoping for a peak of Mel Gibson, who's rumored to be in attendance.
0:35.0	It's Disney's 33 animated feature, a musical about John Smith traveling to the wilderness of North America and falling in love with a Native American beauty.
0:44.9	And it's all based on factual history.
0:47.6	Maybe. Greetings all, I'm Don Wildman, and thanks for checking out another episode of American History
1:07.2	hit.
1:08.2	So glad you did. One of the most famous and iconic figures of early American history is Pocahontas, and that was before she joined the pantheon of Disney princesses,
1:17.0	Ariel, Jasmine, and Snow White to name but a few.
1:20.0	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.
1:28.3	She was a member of the Poetin People, a native society with numerous tribes and a growing population, and then she fell in love
1:35.1	with a British adventurer, John Smith, a colonizing visitor to her shores, saved his life in fact, or so the
1:41.4	tale is told.
1:42.8	It's a story we explore today with Professor of Early Native American
1:46.1	and Latin American history at Rutgers University,
1:48.4	Dr. Camilla Townsend.
1:49.8	Welcome Camilla, nice to have you.
1:51.3	I'm so glad to be here, thank you.
1:52.9	That's an amazing story that deserves the absolute truth.
1:56.7	So let's give it a shot here.
	...

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