Pocahontas Is a Great Hero Elizabeth Warren Should Embrace By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would do well to embrace our early American hero Pocahontas. She might even thank
Donald Trump for making the link.
With his signature sneering, leering sexism and racism, Trump refers to the Massachusetts senator with the name of this
real-life historic figure as if it were a put-down.
But Pocahontas is a true American icon. Unlike Trump, she was greatly loved by her people, and her character was
impeccable. She was deeply admired in England, where she travelled with her husband and young son and then tragically
passed away, having barely turned twenty.
Throughout her career, Senator Warren has referred to her lineage as including traces of both Cherokee and Delaware
tribal heritage. It seems to be family lore for which she has no firm documentation. There’s no indication Senator Warren has benefitted from the possibility she
may be part indigenous. Given her legendary serious demeanor, it’s extremely unlikely she made it up. But with
characteristic ugliness, the Republicans have turned it into a slur.
In fact, Pocahontas was born with the name Matoaka, probably around 1596. She was the much-loved daughter of the
powerful chieftain Powhatan, whose tribe occupied the tidewater region of present-day Virginia.
In 1607, as the first white settlers arrived at Jamestown, Pocahontas may have saved the life of the English adventurer John Smith. Allegedly Pocahontas’s father meant to put him to death. Legend has it Pocahontas saved Smith by stopping the
execution. It’s also rumored she may have saved another white man as well.
The stories are shrouded in mystery, and there’s much about them that makes little sense. Smith was a polarizing character. It would have been very much in
character for him to have alienated the Virginia chieftain, but the two men needed each other. Smith included the story
of Pocahontas’s alleged intervention in memoirs that were relentlessly self-serving and doubted by some historians.
Whatever the case, the story has stuck throughout history and is revered as one of the first instances of a positive
human connection between the indigenous Americans and invading Europeans.
There is no indication from Smith or any other contemporary that he and Pocahontas might have been lovers. She would
have been about eleven years old when she allegedly saved him. He was probably pushing forty. The anatomically
impossible characters in the Disney film are very far from credible.
In 1613, the teenaged Pocahontas was kidnapped by English settlers. While in captivity she converted to Christianity,
then married a tobacco farmer named John Rolfe. The circumstances were complex, though most accounts indicate the two
were in love. Their marriage prompted a “Peace of Pocahontas” between the colonists and the local tribes that lasted until her father died about a year after she did.
In 1615 Pocahontas and John Rolfe had a son they named Thomas. The following year Rolfe took the family to London, where
they met the king and were welcomed at various social gatherings. She also met Smith again in what he described as a complex and not entirely loving encounter.
In March, 1617, the Rolfe family embarked for Virginia. Pocahontas took sick and died at Gravesend, on the Thames. Some of the natives on board the ship believed she was poisoned. There have been attempts
to bring her body home, but the exact location of her gravesite at Gravesend has allegedly been lost.
Young Thomas returned to America. His descendants include First Lady Edith Wilson (married to Woodrow, also born in
Virginia), the astronomer Percival Lowell and the actor Glenn Strange. It’s widely asserted that Nancy Reagan was also descended from Pocahontas, although the evidence is sketchy.
Pocahontas is the first indigenous female to be honored on a US postage stamp. She was revered on both sides of the
Atlantic as a gentle, courageous woman of good character whose marriage helped inaugurate a rare time of peace between
whites and natives. The armload of articles, books, and movies about her always exude the welcome image of a great
heart.
Next time Donald Trump refers to Senator Warren as “Pocahontas,” she’d do well to proudly embrace the name and honor the
real-life woman who made it famous. Perhaps she could propose a special commemoration to the Senate — if they let her
speak.
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Harvey Wasserman’s America at the Brink of Rebirth: The Organic Spiral of US History can be had via www.solartopia.org. The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft, co-written with Bob Fitrakis, is at www.freepress.org.