Beyond Disney: The Real History of Pocahontas in a 1616 Portrait

Thanks to the Walt Disney Company, Pocahontas is likely the most recognized Native American figure from the 17th century. The animated movie, released in 1995, depicts her early life with scenes of her talking to a willow tree, befriending animals, and singing about "the colors of the wind." It also portrays a romantic relationship with Captain John Smith. This film created a lasting visual image of Pocahontas for many Americans. While the movie included some details from history, much of the story was pure fiction. Smith was indeed an English colonist who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, shortly after its founding in 1607. However, Pocahontas’s father, Wahunsonacock, is a different matter. Colonists and Disney referred to him as Powhatan. He was the paramount chief of the Powhatan people, who lived in communities along the edges of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.

Only one portrait of Pocahontas from her lifetime exists. This single image stands in sharp contrast to the Disney-drawn image most people know. The portrait speaks volumes about how the English viewed colonization and Indigenous peoples.

Wahunsonacock was the most significant political figure in early Virginia. The land that the Powhatans called Tsenacommacah was controlled by him through personal alliances and strategic skill. He led approximately 30 communities along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. His power was derived from these extensive networks, making him a central authority in the region.

Pocahontas, also known by the names Matoaka and Amonute, was likely about 10 or 11 years old when she first encountered Smith in late 1607. At that time, Smith was a captive of her father. Smith later wrote that Wahunsonacock was about to execute him. Although many scholars believe Wahunsonacock was likely putting Smith through a ritual adoption ceremony rather than preparing for execution, the colonist claimed that Pocahontas saved his life by intervening. This account became a central part of the mythology surrounding their relationship.

In 1613, the English took Pocahontas captive during a conflict known as the first Anglo-Powhatan War. After securing her freedom in 1614, Wahunsonacock approved her marriage to John Rolfe. Rolfe played a leading role in the colony’s emerging tobacco economy. Pocahontas also converted to Christianity. Sometime between 1615 and 1617, she gave birth to their son, Thomas. This marriage and her conversion were seen by the English as signs of peaceful relations and cultural assimilation.

Two years after her marriage, Pocahontas and Rolfe sailed to England. There, she played a leading role in her father’s diplomatic mission. During her stay in London, which included a meeting with King James I, Pocahontas sat for a portrait by the artist Simon van de Passe. This portrait was not merely a likeness; it was a carefully constructed image intended for a European audience.

Her clothing and pose echoed portraits of other elite English women of the era. The image emphasizes her tall stovepipe hat, an ample lace collar, a dress with detailed embroidery or brocade, and a pearl earring dangling from her left ear. In addition to her English clothing, Pocahontas holds a quill pen, suggesting that she had learned to write. Since Europeans considered literacy a crucial marker of civilization, the engraving highlights English hopes that Indigenous Americans could rapidly embrace the colonists’ culture. The portrait was designed to show Pocahontas as a civilized Christian woman, bridging the gap between two very different worlds.

The engraving of Pocahontas was not the first image of Native peoples from the mid-Atlantic coastline circulating in England. Illustrations in one widely reprinted book played a crucial role in convincing the English to establish settlements in North America. In the late 16th century, advocates of English colonization understood that descriptions of North America could make foreign territory more enticing to potential migrants. They wanted to demonstrate to English men and women that they could create profitable economies and coexist with Native peoples.

Some promoters recognized that watercolor images painted in 1585 by the artist John White could generate interest and investments. These images depicted the Carolina Algonquians of the Outer Banks. Promoters, who had ties to leading figures in the English court as well as to printers, also saw the benefits of an in-depth study of the region by the young English mathematician and writer Thomas Harriot. His book, titled A Briefe and True Report of the Newfound Land of Virginia, was published in 1590. Promoters worked with the Flemish printer Theodor de Bry to produce an illustrated version. This volume contained engravings based on White’s paintings.

The volume described the practices of the Carolina Algonquians and enumerated commodities that could be extracted for profit. Some of the Native Americans depicted in these pages are clad with only a deerskin loincloth. Some of the women wear skirts but not tops. To Europeans bred on the idea that clothing an entire body was a marker of civilization, these Algonquians’ appearance was significant. People who colonizers considered “savages” were often depicted nude, like the Tainos whom Christopher Columbus encountered a century earlier. English men and women reading the book about the Algonquians, on the other hand, saw them as a people who would, under the right tutelage, adopt English-style culture, including Protestant Christianity.

“Some religion they have already,” Harriot wrote in A Briefe and True Report, “which although it be farre from the truth, yet being as it is, there is hope it may been the easier and sooner reformed.”

To make the point that Native Americans could be converted to European culture, the engravers added depictions of ancient Britons, allegedly based on an old chronicle. Three of these images of Picts depicted them as nude, bearing tattoos more extensive than the Algonquians’. These individuals are also portrayed as more violent. A Pict man holds a head still dripping blood, with another head at his feet, while a Pict woman brandishes spears and a broadsword. These contrasting images helped shape English perceptions of Native peoples as either savages or potential converts.

When Pocahontas sat for Van de Passe, his portrait did more than create a resemblance of the young woman. She would die the following year, soon after leaving London, felled either by disease or, as a Virginia tribe’s oral history suggests, poison. Her death marked the end of a brief period where Native Americans were seen as willing participants in English cultural and religious transformation.

Like the images popularized by Harriot’s book, her portrait suggested that Native Americans would soon embrace English ways. Pocahontas herself, as the words on the engraving noted, had become Rebecca Rolfe after her marriage. In his writings, her husband celebrated her conversion to the Anglican faith. The proof of the model of cultural conversion seemed to be on plain view in the portrait. The image served as propaganda, reinforcing the belief that Indigenous peoples could be assimilated into European society.

However, this belief was shattered by subsequent events. Pocahontas’s father died in 1618. Four years later, the Powhatans launched a rebellion against English colonists. On March 22, 1622, under the direction of a war captain named Opechancanough, they killed approximately one-fourth of the colonists in Virginia. The English labeled the violence a “barbarous massacre” and launched a war of vengeance. This war included a mass poisoning of Powhatans in 1623, an action that the English at the time knew violated the emerging law of war.

Seeing Pocahontas poised on a chair, wearing an elegant hat and holding a quill pen, the English had assumed that Native Americans would embrace the colonizers’ ways. March 1622 proved them wrong. The portrait remains a powerful artifact, not just of Pocahontas, but of the English desire to rewrite history and justify colonization through images of assimilation.