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The Pocahontas Project The Pocahontas Project Northwestern University Native American Literature Group Project Representations of Pocahontas This entry was posted on March 12, 2013. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment Representations of Pocahontas “Pocahontas is a babe.” – Mel Gibson, voice of Captain John Smith in Disney’s Pocahontas (Edwards 147) (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/downloadedfile‑1.jpeg) Van de Passe, Simon. “Matoaka als Rebecca.” 1616 This engraving is known as the only portrait of Pocahontas done from life. Rayna Green describes this engraving, “The most famous portrait of Pocahontas, the only one said to be done from life (at John Rolfe’s request), shows the Princess in Elizabethan dress, complete with ruff and velvet hat‑ the Christian, English lady the ballad expects her to become and the lady she indeed became for her English husband and her faithful audience for all time” (700). Pocahontas is only depicted from life in European clothes rather than her Native clothes at her adult age, so this questions how accurate depictions of her Native side are because they all must be conjectures, considering the rest of the representations of Pocahontas were done after her death. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture.png) (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture.png) “Pocahontas.” (The Booton Hall portrait) c. 1700‑1800. This portrait of Pocahontas, surviving a fire, depicts “the little exile from her native forests of Virginia, pitifully stiff in her unaccustomed court dress” (431). A description of her representation comments, “The nose and chin are too heavy for beauty, the under lip has an almost Hapsburg overhang; the cheek bones are high and warmly tinted, as they might be expected to be; but the complexion, while dark, is not ‘red,’ rather is it that of the Gothic Spanish type which Goya loved to paint; and the hair is distinctly brown. It is, however, the lustrous almond shaped eyes, brown with gleams of chatain‑clair, and the delicately painted high arched brows, which give the face distinction. Those eyes have, indeed, a haunting aspect of melancholy which is consciously mysterious and aloof” (“The Pocahontas Portrait” 432). In contrast, the engraving by de Passe is condemned as an insulting caricature: “…it is the palpable original from which DePasse engraved the cruel caricature which ever since her death has passed current as the likeness of Pocahontas…” (“The Pocahontas Portrait” 434). Though the de Passe engraving may be a caricature of Pocahontas, the Booton Hall portrait displaces Pocahontas further from her Native culture by not only depicting her in western clothes but also rendering her with pale skin and lighter hair. The white appearance of Pocahontas in this portrait relates to the concept of the “Indian Princess,” an American figure that serves to represent America and its values (Green 702‑703). The Indian Princess is not rendered like other Natives. Green describes, “The Princess is ‘civilized’; to illustrate her native nobility, most pictures portray her as white, darker than the Europeans, but more Caucasian than her fellow natives” (704). The light skin of Pocahontas forces her into the role of the Indian Princess and associates her more closely with Europeans than with Natives. It serves to distinguish her as the savior of Europeans while still allowing for prejudice against Natives. She is unique; the other Natives are not necessarily to be revered through Pocahontas. Rather, she is the exception, allowing for continued beliefs in white supremacy, in art especially. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑2.png) “Pocahontas and Thomas Rolfe.” (The Sedgeford Hall portrait) c. 1750‑1800. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑1.png) Chapman, John Gadsby. “Pocahontas Saving the Life of Captain John Smith.” 1836 (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑3.png) Chapman, John Gadsby. “The Warning of Pocahontas.” 1836 (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑4.png) Chapman, John Gadsby. “The Baptism of Pocahontas.” 1840 Many art pieces focus on Pocahontas’s rescue of John Smith, but most gloss over Pocahontas’s kidnapping. Chapman’s painting depicts Pocahontas’ conversion from the white perspective, but it is questionable whether it is a depiction of “religious subjugation” or of “spiritual redemption” (Pocahontas Archive). It also serves to bypass focus on the “circumstances leading to that [conversion to Christianity].” Chapman’s painting, then, ignores the kidnapping that led to Pocahontas’s conversion, serving to present the whites in the best light. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑5.png) Ferris, Jean Leon Gerome. “The Abduction of Pocahontas.” 1910. Ferris’ painting is a unique attempt to address Pocahontas’ kidnapping, but there is a “deflective quality produced by the juxtaposition between Argall and the residents of Jamestown. Positioned on the left‑hand side of the painting, a smug Captain Argall stands proudly before his captive prize. On the right, a shocked crowd of Jamestown citizens, led by Sir Thomas Gates, listens to Pocahontas as she recounts the atrocity performed against her by the cunning privateer. While the painting does directly address the kidnapping of Pocahontas, it does so in a manner still attached to an imperialist agenda: it promotes the idea that the Jamestown residents were inherently virtuous in their own actions and that Pocahontas saw them as benevolent helpers rather than as the architects of her imprisonment” (Pocahontas Archive). So even though this painting address Pocahontas’s kidnapping, it isolates Argall as the villain, vindicating the other residents and thus whites. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑6.png) Rice, Daniel, and James Clark. “Pocahontas.” 1842 (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑7.png) Stearns, Junius Brutus. “The Death of Pocahontas.” 1848. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑8.png) Glass, James William. “John Rolfe and Pocahontas.” c. 1850 (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑9.png) (Green page 705) Pocahontas’s image was used for advertising as well. Tremblay notes, “Rolfe mourned her passing and used her image to market his tobacco” (123). Her husband was the first to use her image as a marketing tool. The above picture is an example of a Tobacco label. Describing the later trends in the use of Pocahontas’s image, Tremblay adds, “First there were tobacco ads, later plays, poems, musicals, and now animated features and dolls that eroticize her in the imagination of adults and children alike. And so, in America, yet another generation plays Indian, imagining native women’s bodies, all tits and ass; our Native cultures, a magic show‑ doomed to feed other people’s fantasies while we face being dehumanized by people who think themselves so supreme that they can own it all, define it all, take it all, and leave us with images only a few seem to have the sense to laugh at, to cry about, to loathe” ( Tremblay 123). This emphasizes that the focus is less on an accurate portrayal of Pocahontas but more on a sexual white conception of Pocahontas. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑10.png) White, Edwin. “Pocahontas Informing John Smith of a Conspiracy of the Indians.” c. 1852. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑11.png) Sully, Thomas. “Pocahontas.” 1852. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑12.png) Sully, Robert Matthew. “Pocahontas.” c. 1852. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑13.png) Brueckner, Henry. “The Marriage of Pocahontas.” 1855. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑14.png) Inger, Christian. “Smith Rescued by Pocahontas.” New York: H. Schile, 1870. After Edward Corbould. This painting is an example of the many that show Pocahontas saving John Smith. Green remarks, “Many paintings and drawings of this [Pocahontas with ‘her body flung over the endangered head of our hero’] exist, and it appears in popular art on everything from wooden fire engine side panels to calendars. Some renderings betray such ignorance about the Powhatan Indians of Virginia‑ often portraying them in Plains dress‑ that one quickly comes to understand that it is the mythical scene, not the accuracy of detail that moved artists” (700). This points out that not only is Pocahontas not necessarily portrayed accurately but neither are the Powhatans in general. The concern is again on the white conception of this scene and how white culture has mythologized the scene. Pocahontas is also depicted with fair skin here in a sexualized manner without a top. She is also rendered as a woman rather than a child. (https://nupocahontasproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/new‑picture‑15.png) Christy, Howard Chandler. “Pocahontas.” 1911. DiEdwardo describes Christy’s painting of Pocahontas in contrast to Chapman’s. She refers to Pocahontas in Chapman’s painting as the “slight, cool, motionless, passionless woman at the ceremonial moment of assimilation” (DiEdwardo). In contrast, she states, “Howard Chandler Christy’s 1911 Pocahontas is Pocahontas as “Christy Girl,” a phenomenally popular image of femininity in that period and one that was associated with the so‑called emancipation
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