Pocahontas

Here's an excerpt from the Pocahontas paper Erik & I worked on together:

Pocahontas is an important figure in American culture, yet since little is actually known about her. Her story seems to be more of a fairy tale than actual proven history. Several perceptions have been created throughout the ages, strengthened with pop culture, poetic literature, and art such as the statue here at Gravesend. 

What we know about Pocahontas is based on the accounts of other people, such as John Smith, John Rolfe, and other settlers. She was eleven years old when she saved John Smith, who was twenty-eight. Pocahontas was captured and held hostage in Jamestown, where she was then converted to Christianity and baptized as Rebecca. John Rolfe gained the permission of Powhatan and the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, to marry her in April 1614. The union brought peace with the Native Americans for eight years. With her husband and several other Native Americans, Pocahontas went to England in 1616. There she was received as a princess and presented to the king and queen. In 1617, she took ill and died at Gravesend, where she was buried. There are no documents from Pocahontas herself. Even the accounts Rolfe and Smith have written of her are portrayals....

The Gravesend Pocahontas holds her beauteous head high. Her skin is an earthy bronze brown. She is one in a long line of Pocahontases. At the beginning was the real girl. Then comes her portrayal in historical documents, and the engraving as a fine English lady. A new, “noble savage” Pocahontas emerges from the wilderness and gets frozen in bronze at Jamestown. She is exotic and sexy. At Gravesend, she steps onto a pedestal and becomes a larger than life mother goddess. The Gravesend statue resembles Fig. 5 (a painting of Isis) in many ways. Both are idealized and perfected presentations. Draperies that emphasize breasts flow into nature. Both are ideas embodied as a figure more than a realistic portrayal of a person. That is the crucial point in the evolution of Pocahontas: she has gone from a flesh and blood human to an immortal icon of the feminine.