Existing comment:
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. |