BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of the American Indian -- Exhibit: Americans -- Queen of America

DC -- Natl Museum of the American Indian -- Exhibit: Americans -- Queen of America:

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Description of Pictures: Americans -- Room: Queen of America: Why did Pocahontas captivate people in her own time and every generation that followed?
January 18, 2018 – 2022
American Indians represent less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet names and images of Indians are everywhere: military weapons, town names, advertising, and that holiday in November. Americans invites visitors to take a closer look, and to ask why. Featuring nearly 350 objects and images, from a Tomahawk missile to baking powder cans, Americans examines the staying power of four stories—Thanksgiving, Pocahontas, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of Little Bighorn—that are woven into the fabric of both American history and contemporary life. By highlighting what has been remembered, contested, cherished, and denied about these stories, and why they continue to resonate, this exhibition shows that Americans have always been fascinated, conflicted, and profoundly shaped by their relationship to American Indians.
Online exhibit: https://nmai.si.edu/americans/

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] AMAMQU_180120_001.JPG	[2] AMAMQU_180120_004.JPG	[3] AMAMQU_180120_007.JPG	[4] AMAMQU_180120_008.JPG
[5] AMAMQU_180120_016.JPG	[6] AMAMQU_180120_031.JPG	[7] AMAMQU_180120_037.JPG	[8] AMAMQU_180120_042.JPG
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. AMAMQU_180120_001.JPG: Pocahontas didn't save John Smith. She saved America.
2. AMAMQU_180120_004.JPG: 1607 America begins
3. AMAMQU_180120_007.JPG: Why did Pocahontas captivate people in her own time and in every generation that followed?
4. AMAMQU_180120_031.JPG: So wrong, yet so right In this official history of the United States, America begins with Pocahontas, her saving Captain John Smith, and by extension her rescue of Jamestown. The painting reveals many truths about Pocahontas and the interactions between Powhatan and the English colonists in the early 1600s. But historians doubt that the scene it shows -- Pocahontas saving the life of John Smith -- happened at all. Nonetheless Smith's dramatic account and its romantic retellings have had tremendous staying power.
5. AMAMQU_180120_037.JPG: Tobacco generated the wealth that saved Virginia In the 1600s, tobacco and Pocahontas were synonymous. It was her husband, John Rolfe, who secretly brought the first Caribbean seeds to Virginia. Probably grown and cured with Native horticultural knowledge, the seeds produced a strain that sold throughout Europe. It made England wealthy and Jamestown successful. The tobacco often was sold using imagery of a Native person.
6. AMAMQU_180120_042.JPG: Powhatan was a powerful indigenous leader The English colonists depended upon Powhatan for their safety, food, and access to inland peoples and places. Many negotiations took place not at Jamestown, but at Werowocomoco -- the political, ceremonial, and spiritual center of Powhatan's confederacy. It is likely that Powhatan wanted to draw the colonists into his extensive sphere of influence.
7. AMAMQU_180120_045.JPG: Pocahontas was in the middle of the action This painting portrays Pocahontas as bold and confident, but it also shows her as a young woman. In 1607, she was eleven years old, and she was not in the middle of a love affair with John Smith. But she was central to the geopolitical struggle between the English and the Algonquian Indians who dominated the coastal mid-Atlantic. A frequent visitor to James Fort, she brought food to starving colonists, and her 1614 marriage to John Rolfe ushered in a period of peace.
8. AMAMQU_180120_052.JPG: John Smith misunderstood and exaggerated what happened to him Smith was captured in December 1607 by Powhatan's men. Rather than threatening his life, Powhatan may have been making him the focus of a ritual performance, possibly to bring him into his confederacy. Smith was a boastful explorer who also traveled through Europe and to Africa. He published frequently and so dramatically about his adventures that many were suspicious of his tales.
9. AMAMQU_180120_063.JPG: No Indian in United States history has received as many official honors as Pocahontas
10. AMAMQU_180120_067.JPG: Presenting Pocahontas
11. AMAMQU_180120_070.JPG: Her so-called life
12. AMAMQU_180120_079.JPG: The face of the New World
13. AMAMQU_180120_084.JPG: Founder of America
14. AMAMQU_180120_094.JPG: Savior of Virginia
15. AMAMQU_180120_100.JPG: The cult of Pocahontas Blood descendants
16. AMAMQU_180120_110.JPG: Queen of America
17. AMAMQU_180120_121.JPG: Extraordinary measures
18. AMAMQU_180120_125.JPG: One hundred years ago, wealthy Virginians so treasured their biological -- and perhaps fanciful -- connection to Pocahontas that they rewrote a law to keep it intact. Pocahontas Exception Those with 1/16th Indian blood would be classified as white.
19. AMAMQU_180120_131.JPG: Ties that bind
20. AMAMQU_180120_133.JPG: The wedding is considered so pivotal that it was commemorated 400 years later with a year of public programs at Jamestown
21. AMAMQU_180120_143.JPG: The enigma of Pocahontas
22. AMAMQU_180120_153.JPG: Famous for 400 years and counting
23. AMAMQU_180120_156.JPG: "She must have been very beautiful to have won the heart of an Oxford scholar of independent circumstances at a time when the Indian race were regarded as savages and beyond the pale of the affections of a native of Europe." -- Robert Bolling, 1803
24. AMAMQU_180120_160.JPG: 1787 -- "Anecdotes of Pocahontas, an Indian Princess, from whom several respectable families in Virginia are descended." -- article in the Columbian Magazine The project of linking Virginia's elite to Pocahontas has lasted centuries and goes on today. 1803 -- Pocahontas is included in an enormous collection of the lives of women from all parts of the world.
25. AMAMQU_180120_167.JPG: 1809 -- In the early 1800s, American school-children learn to read from a book that includes Pocahontas's story.
26. AMAMQU_180120_169.JPG: "When I think of Pocahontas I am ready to love Indians." -- Herman Melville
27. AMAMQU_180120_171.JPG: 1862 -- During the Civil War, Pocahontas is claimed by both the Union and the Confederacy.
28. AMAMQU_180120_177.JPG: 1885 -- The Degree of Pocahontas, the women's affiliate of the Improved Order of Red Men, is founded. Such fraternal societies often knew little about the Native nations or people they were supposedly honoring.
29. AMAMQU_180120_182.JPG: "Captain Smith and Pocahontas Had a very mad affair When her daddy tried to kill him She said, 'Daddy, oh don't you dare!' " 1958 -- Peggy Lee records "Fever," a song by Little Willie John, with new lyrics about Pocahontas and John Smith. It sells millions and is covered by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, The Jam, and Joe Cocker.
30. AMAMQU_180120_185.JPG: 1974 -- Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter of one of America's richest men, is abducted at gunpoint. A letter to the New York Times compares her to Pocahontas. Both were kidnapped, and at times, nobody was sure where their allegiances lay.
31. AMAMQU_180120_191.JPG: 1995 -- Disney's Pocahontas premiers in New York's Central Park before an audience of 100,000. The film is a commercial success and a global phenomenon. "Colors of the Wind," featured in its soundtrack, wins an Academy Award for Best Original Song. [Note: According to https://www.boxofficemojo.com/studio/chart/?debug=0&view=parent&studio=buenavista.htm&p=.htm , the film is Disney's 80th top film. It grossed more than Good Will Hunting and Mulan. It grossed less than most of their other major animated films though.]
32. AMAMQU_180120_206.JPG: Landing of Columbus (1492)
33. AMAMQU_180120_212.JPG: Captain Smith and Pocahontas (1607)
34. AMAMQU_180120_216.JPG: Landing of the Pilgrims (1620)
35. AMAMQU_180120_223.JPG: Declaration of Independence (1776)
36. AMAMQU_180120_227.JPG: Discovery of Gold in California (1848)
37. AMAMQU_180120_230.JPG: Peace at the End of the Civil War (1865)
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