Today, some of the most well-known old myths and stories can attribute their world-renowned popularity and acknowledgment to one particular historian who took these old classic tales, some rooted in history, and renovated them through the magic of animation.
That man was Walt Disney, and those tales became the basis of some of his company’s most memorable movies.
Movies made for the general public, including children, and therefore movies that had to sort of hide the darker side of some of these stories. Especially the film about the Native American Genocide.
Pocahontas was a brave departure from the regular Germanic folk and fairy tales that Disney was well known for.
It wasn’t their first break from formula, but one that veered dangerously close to an uncomfortable reality. That being the dark past that American settlers had in dealing with the natives.
It drew from the existence of one such native, a young girl who became known as Pocahontas, and her relationship with one John Smith but kept it clean for audiences.
The real story wouldn’t fit children; it was hardly done for the adults of the time.
10 /10 Child Of The Chief
The many stories of Pocahontas recall her as the daughter of the Chief of the Pamunkey tribe of modern-day Virginia.
Her father, Chief Powhatan, ruled 30 tribes around what became Jamestown, Virginia, the first official English settlement in North America.
9 /10 The Hard Winter
One line of stories that have endured is that of the Natives actively helping the settlers they met, which is true.
Unlike the fiction, Chief Powhatan gifted food to the Jamestown settlers for the first two winters, and young Pocahontas may have been requested to help deliver rations as she was only ten years old at the time and would present no possible threat as a show of peace.