Pocahontas and John Smith Essay

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Pocahontas
Disney’s Pocahontas is about man named Capt. John Smith, who leads a band of English sailors & soldiers to the New World to plunder its riches for England. Meanwhile, in the "New World," Chief Powhatan has pledged his daughter, Pocahontas, to be married to her village's greatest warrior. Pocahontas, however, has other ideas. She has seen a vision of a spinning arrow, a vision she believes tells her change is coming. Her life does indeed change when the English ship lands near her village. Between Ratcliffe, (the main protagonist in this movie) who believes the "savages" are hiding the gold he expected to be plentiful, and Powhatan, (Pocahontas’s father) who believes these white newcomers will destroy their land, Smith and Pocahontas have a difficult time preventing all-out war, and saving their love for each other.

This movie is historically inaccurate for many reasons. First off, it makes it seem like both Pocahontas and John Smith were both young adults when they met, when really Pocahontas was just eleven years old and John Smith was really twenty-eight years old when they met. It also says that Ratcliffe was governor of the colony, so he was in charge during the voyage, when really the colony did not have a governor for the first couple of years. It had a council with a president. Captain Newport was admiral and fleet commander during the voyage of 1607. After they landed, they opened the secret orders to see who was on the governing council. (It was Smith, Ratcliffe, Wingfield, Newport, Gosnol, Martin, and Kendall.) The council elected Wingfield as the first president. Ratcliffe was elected president in September, 1607. Captain John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown Virginia in 1608. In 1609, Smith left, and Percy became President. Thomas West (Baron De La Warre) was appointed the first Governor in 1609, but he did not arrive until 1610. The movie also depicts John Smith as a tall and clean shaven and wore tight pants and a little armor and Pocahontas as a beautiful young lady that had an amazing figure, and that she wore a leather mini-dress with one shoulder strap, but really John Smith was a short man with