Pocahontas John Smith

The story of Pocahontas and John Smith is a story that has been told time and time again. Disney even made a movie about their story, teaching the importance of taking care of the earth. The real story is a firsthand account from John Smith. He says that in 1607, he was captured by an Indian tribe, at some point he meets Pocahontas and she feels sympathy for him and begs her father not to execute him, thus saving his life. There has always been questions bought up about this though, many question whether Smith was telling the truth about this encounter or not. Many believe that Smith’s story was true and that these events really did happen. They base this on it being common in Indian culture for women in tribes to taken in someone that was originally intended to be executed. They think that Pocahontas would have been able to take in John Smith without much hesitation from the tribe
He was not proven to lie in his manuscripts until after 1830, long after both previous manuscripts had been published. Also he wrote a letter to the queen in 1816 explain what happened, this is when the story of John Smith and Pocahontas started to circulate. Pocahontas was in London with the queen with this story was spreading if she did not agree with it she could have put a stop to the rumors then. The last thing that I found to be very convincing was the theory about why Pocahontas was not mentioned in Smiths original manuscript. The settlements were still very new at this point and many settlers were still coming over from England. If Smith really had published that the Indians were savages, cruel, and incredibly violent the settlers would not have come over in such large numbers anymore because they would have been afraid of the natives. While the opposing side had a very convincing argument, I think Pocahontas did convinve her father to let John Smith