Everyone grew up loving all the movies Disney gave us, like Toy Story, The Lion King, Beauty and The Beast, and even all the movies they're still creating, but there's one movie which I have recently learned has a lot of false information in it. After taking a college course on Native Americans, I've learned some interesting things. Disney's Pocahontas which premiered in 1995 has a lot of things in it that the history books sitting in your classrooms would tell you are lies. Sorry for ruining your childhood, but here are some of those falsehoods.
1. Pocahontas' age
When John Smith arrived in Jamestown, Pocahontas would have been about ten or eleven... This doesn't look like someone who's ten. Plus, how would a ten-year-old fall in love?
2. Pocahontas' outfit
In the 1600s, Indians felt that females settling in American dressed "immodestly" for their tight dresses. Native Americans dressed very modestly in loose clothing.
3. John Smith DID NOT look like that
John Smith was known as a short, stout man who wasn't attractive at all, but Disney created a tall, blonde man with an amazing jawline to play the leading man.
4. Native Americans had seen "pale faces" before John Smith
The Spanish had landed in Jamestown decades before John Smith and the English did, so the Native Americans would have had knowledge about "paleface" settlers and their weapons, but this film depicts that this is the first time they have seen settlers.
5. Did Pocahontas even save John Smith?
The only recollection of these encounters between Smith and Pocahontas are from Smith's books; however, Smith had written that almost the EXACT SAME THING (a ruler about to kill him and a young maiden came to save him) happened on two other different
Though there are other things Disney does that depict Native Americans inaccurately, these are the major things Disney gets wrong in this film. Even though they had Native American experts on staff through the production of this film, Disney did what they wanted to in order to create a profiting film, not a historically accurate one.
