Pocahontas (Part 1) & John Smith

Pocahontas was just a young girl when she met John Smith, and despite some more animated accounts, the two never actually had a romance! But their relationship did represent an uneasy truce between England and the Powhatan tribe. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to stop the English from, well, you know...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Hello, Hey everybody. How's it going. That's good, it's good.
What are you asking me for them? Well? You, I
guess because they can't answer. Oh well, I am doing
pretty well. That's good today. Yeah, yesterday was rough. Yesterday
first hangover I've had since eighteen maybe seventeen possibly, is

(00:22):
that true? I mean yeah, I mean I almost never
drink enough for a hangover. I'm not I'm not a
big drinker generally speaking, um, certainly not to that extent.
I don't know how to take care of myself. I'm
over thirty. Yeah, we'll just leave it at that. But yeah.

(00:44):
Then we went to our friends Stephanie's birthday party, um
at a bar owned by a couple of our friends,
a brother sister team. Yeah, if you're in Atlanta, it's
in Kirkwood. It's called Bob and Harriet's Home Bar. And
it's awesome. They're the best ever. And yeah, they proved
it by giving us too many free shots. Oh my god,
if you can call that a shot ted, I'm talking

(01:07):
to you. Who comes in like, oh yeah, everybody gets
a shot at tequila and he slams down like a
sixteen ounce thermos of altos and I'm just like, sure,
shots a shot, chug, chug, chug. Well, and it was
a blast, a really good time. But yeah, but the
next day was definitely a day. Yeah, I've forgotten about

(01:28):
two grown people, yes, who don't drink much. Well, very
excited to have you all this week. It's uh, it's Thanksgiving.
It's American Thanksgiving. I hope everybody's getting to spend some
time with people they are thankful to be associated with,
whoever that may be. But yeah, hopefully everybody has an
awesome holiday weekend planned whatever your traditions are. Um, but yeah,

(01:53):
we want to spend I guess our first Thanksgiving episodes, Um,
not on the first Thanksgiving, but rather tackling that famous
American love story, John Smith and pocahont Is. According to
the American Public School System and or Disney, John Smith
was an handsome, intrepid explorer who arrived on the shores

(02:15):
of Virginia hoping to find riches and a home in
the New World. Pocontes was a young, beautiful native princess
who became fascinated with the white foreigners. When her chieftain
father Powe Hotton, captured John Smith and ordered him executed,
pocahon is flowing herself and his body, saying Daddy, I
love him, And because she was powe Hatton's favorite, he

(02:37):
acquiesced and then everything was fine until the trail of tears.
I guess I'm pretty sure that's how it goes public
education from the Texas Instruments. Well, it turns out that
you know, that story is not so much true. O'cahons
was actually just a child of ten or eleven when

(02:59):
John Smith met her, and they never even had a romance.
Pow Hotton didn't try to kill John Smith, and if
he had, Pocahontas wouldn't have been there. During her life
and in death, Pocahontas became more of a piece of
propaganda than an actual woman with agency. So we figured
we get together here and across two episodes we're going

(03:21):
to talk about the complicated and true story of Pocahontas.
So buckle your steep oat, flash pilgrim hats, and can
get ready for a while ride through colonial America. Hey,
their friends come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some
stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, no romantic tips. It's

(03:42):
just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type
of person at all, and abstract concept on a concrete wall.
But if there's a story were the second glance, we'll
show ridiculous Rolettance, a production of iHeart Radio. So yeah,
we we tapped quite a few sources to try and
put this whole story together. But for the Indigenous side

(04:04):
of the story, we pulled from a book called The
True Story of Pocahontas, The Other Side of History by
Dr Lynwood, Little Bear Costello and Angela L. Daniel silver Star. Now,
this is based on the Sacred Matta Pony oral history
passed down from Pocahonas relatives through the generations, and we
want to call out this source specifically because it really

(04:26):
seems to be the only source for an indigenous side
of this story, but it is also disputed. Many scholars
who study Native American history refused to comment on it,
But you know, it feels wrong to dismiss it completely
because there is a lot of information that even fills
in some of the gaps here. So as we go
through the episode, we're going to point out where these

(04:49):
stories really diverge and how differently the events were seen
or recorded depending on which side you're standing on, or
whose perspective you're looking at. Yeah, so we may not
know by the end of these episodes the full exact
truth of exactly what went down with Pocahonus, but challenge there.
I think by the end of these two episodes, we

(05:10):
Diane and I will definitively decide the true story of Poke. Yes,
we're gonna heard it here. First, we're going to decide
which facts are true and which facts are not true.
We spent a whole day and a half researching these
and we we were pretty confident that we have the answers.
We figured it out. But it is kind of interesting

(05:32):
to just see it that way. Just says how differently
people write things down, or how differently they see an event,
or how differently they want to frame it for later generation.
I mean, you know, all that is also historically valuable.
So you have learned and talked about many times on
this show that the shaping of history is a cultural
tool that people use in their favor very often, whether

(05:54):
you're disgracing a single person that you just didn't like,
or a leader that was terrible that you're just like
make up some horrible stories about, or you were for
a random example, a colonizing country that came in and
took a bunch of land from other people. You might
present that story a little differently than it really happened.

(06:15):
So yeah, just something to keep in mind as we chat.
But let's begin. So pow Hotton was the paramount chief
of Senacomico, which is now called Virginia, and this was
an alliance of Algonquin speaking tribes. When pow Hotton came
into power, he inherited control over the course six tribes,
which were the pow Hottan tribe, the NaNs, the Mattaponys,

(06:39):
the Monkeys, the Arahtecs, and the Apatomax. And through a
combination of force and diplomacy, by sixteen oh seven, Santacomico
had grown to about twenty eight to maybe thirty two
lesser chiefdoms and tribes, all of whom paid tribute to
pow Hotton. So he, you know, throughout his lifetime was
very good at creating an nation around him of what

(07:01):
used to not be one, you know, And each tribe
had its own chief or where all wants who was
on powe Hotton's council and advised him, and pow Hotton
would also marry women from each of the tribes, because yeah,
we've seen before. Easy way to make someone your friend
is to make them in your family. I guess leaders
love marrying women from far off tribes to be like,

(07:25):
now see, now I married your daughter. That means our
people and your people are basically married. And by the way,
you have to do everything. I'd say, we're good now,
and you can just hope that I like her enough
to take care of you for her. So yeah, it's
a little bit like a kind of some of the
harems we've covered maybe in your but the difference being

(07:47):
that with Powe Hotton, the he would marry the woman
from the tribe, they would come live with him in
his capital city until she had a child, and then
the child and mother would go back to the mother's
tribe until the kid was weaned, and then the kid
would return to Powhatton's capital to live in his household.
And that is when it basically meant the wife was

(08:09):
free to remarry, so she didn't have to stay as
like part of a harem her whole life and all
this stuff. Like she was He's like basically like, we
have connections. Now we're good. You can go back home
and do live your life as you see fit. It
was just basically incubating a child in you essentially just
a little incubator. But you know what, although I'll say,

(08:31):
of all the history where people do that, we're just like,
I'm marrying you to just for the sole purpose of
creating a child that unites our tribes. At least he did, like,
you know, say, all right, go to live your life. Yeah,
I'm not gonna lock you up in a tower. Yeah
it sounds better. Like at least he's like, I know
you don't love me and I don't love you, but
you don't have to be miserable our whole lives. Go
out and go please fall in love. I want you

(08:52):
to have more children and for your tribe or whatever.
Being honest, you know that, Like, look, we both know
what we're doing here exactly right. But we'll have a
lame with with this kid and it'll be great. I
can get down with that, I should say I can
get down with that if they were willing, well yeah, yeah,
I would hope. So yeah, And we don't know. I'm
not going to speculate as to you know, what the

(09:13):
nature of these marriages was, but just in general, it
sounds fair, it sounds fine. As long as all participants
were down. We're down. Yeah, so yeah. According to the
other side of history, his wife of choice, his first
and favorite wife, the wife that he stayed married to
for a long time. Her name was Pokehontas, and they
had several children together, but she died while giving birth

(09:37):
to pow Hatton's daughter in fifteen nineties six. They named
the baby Mattawaka, but pow Hotton called her Pokehontas, which
translates to playful one, and he called her that after
her mother, and she quickly became his favorite child because
she reminded him so much of his departed wife that
he loved so much. They were very similar in looks

(09:57):
and in personality, so he was like, this, this is
my kid right here. So she was sent to the
Matta Ponies to be weaned by her mother's relatives, but
once she was old enough to walk and eat solid food,
as was tradition, she went back to where with Comaco
Powhattan's capital to join her father. Everyone worked in the tribe,
even Potton Polcahontas would have learned the women's work, which

(10:19):
was definitely separate from the men's work, but it was
not looked down on. You know, all this work was
essential for everyone in society. Women built the houses, They
did all the planting and the harvesting. They did the cooking.
They collected water for cooking and drinking. They collected firewood
and maintained the fires. They wove mats, they made baskets,
they made pots, utensils, and platters. They were also the

(10:41):
barbers for the men, and they would process the meat
that the men brought home and tan the hides and
make clothing. Pocahunas also would have learned how to identify
and gather edible plants in all seasons. I mean, what
a workload. Yeah, girls get it done, you know. That
was that was their slogan. They it around with their
arms akimbo for a nice photo shot. But yeah, I

(11:04):
kind of liked that. They were like, we yeah, there's
women's work and there's men's work, but no work was
better than other work. It was just like, obviously, this
work is not less than I'd like to eat food
and like live in a nice house when mat on
the floor and whatever. Like, how weird to look down
on a gender's work, right anyway, I go to an

(11:24):
office and jibber jabber with other men all day. But
you just cook food that I can eat when I
got home for sustenance. You just make the house nice
or whatever, which is of course in this household very
much not the case. Diana works probably more hours than
I do, and I cook food for our substance, and

(11:46):
neither of us keeps the house clean exactly, very much
a gender equality going around here. We both live in Squalor.
By sixteen o seven, when poke Honus was ten or eleven,
plenty of tribes had already been dealing with Europeans. Okay,
Spain had established itself pretty comfortably in Florida and the Southwest,

(12:08):
and they were growing tobacco. France had established trade post
through Maine, Massachusetts, and upstate New York, but England only
had its vague claim on Virginia, and it's fishing and
trading interests there culminated in like semi permanent encampments in
the Chesapeake region, so it wasn't anything spectacular going on there.

(12:30):
In five they tried to establish a more permanent solution
with the Colony of Roanoke, but that ill fated colony
did not farewell. Eventually every colonists disappeared, leaving a mysterious
encryption on a nearby tree. Croatoan and that's the name
of the nearby island where the crow a Toone tribe lived.

(12:52):
So there are tons of theories about what happened to
the Roano colonists. All right, Um, maybe the crow Tones
killed everyone, right, Or maybe the colonists moved to the
island and integrated into the tribe, right. Or maybe the
colonists all died from starvation or disease. That's pretty a
normal thing to happen to colonists, right. It's it's possible

(13:13):
that the colonists tried to leave on a ship and
they got swept away in a storm, never to be
heard from again. A lot of theories, a lot of theories.
But now I heard I heard that it's possible that
a time lord showed up in a phone booth and
warned them all of some impending do took the two
most camera friendly and energetic people with him, went on

(13:37):
an adventure across basin time. Where's the episode of Doctor
who were? Virginia dares his companion and she's like one
years old and he's like Toddler. I haven't seen every
episode that might exist. I think that somebody let us
know if Tom Baker ever grabbed up Virginia Dare. But yeah, unfortunately,
no one knows definitively exactly what happened into these colonists.

(14:01):
Um In, some archaeologists found a map and unearthed some
artifacts and ceramics at a spot fifty miles west of
Roanoke that they believe was a second fort. So they're
kind of like, we think we might have solved this mystery.
The colonists just moved to this other spot and lived
there for a while. They're like, wow, this whole colony disappeared,

(14:24):
and then one day someone turned around and was like,
oh wait, no, it's over there. We didn't try to
go like a few feet up river and see if
anything whatever. But but yeah, we we don't know for
sure that you know, they haven't there, you know, scientifically
Pear reviews. That is hot, hot new research, hot archaeologically

(14:47):
from right here, from ridiculous romance. You heard it here first,
unless you heard it before, in which case you're hearing
it here like third or fourth probably. Um So, yeah,
we're not sure. We'll see how that solve pans out.
But essentially the mystery of the missing colonists just meant
that by sixteen o six not a single English settler
occupied the New World. Well, that sounds like curtains for England.

(15:12):
No uh, no English speaking people in the colony, fully
Spanish and French colony. Well, we'll have to see how
that pans out. Um. England's confidence was boosted after they
defeated the Spanish Armada in sixteen four and King James
was able to negotiate sort of an uneasy piece with Spain,
and then merchants began to form joint partnerships to fund voyages,

(15:35):
and they established the Virginia Company. The time was ripe
to try again, so they around it up everything they needed.
They got three ships with a hundred and five colonists
and in sixteen o six England shipped them off to
the New World, or around two and one of the
guys on board was a fellow named John Smith. This

(15:58):
guy was twenty seven whole, He was a commoner, and
he was an adventurer who had already been on three continents.
He's he's given us real strong braun from Game of Thrones.
Vibes kind of real tough guy, mercenary, quick thinker, loyal
to no one, you know, just doing doing the job,
doing it well, and and really looking out for himself

(16:20):
first and foremost. Yeah, John was a braggart. He was bombastic.
He often exaggerated his accomplishments or outright lied about them.
He had set sail at sixteen when his father died,
and he became a pirate and a mercenary soldier and
an artillery expert. In Hungary, he fought three consecutive duels
with three Ottoman challengers, and he decapitated each of them.

(16:44):
This caused the Hungarians to name him Prince of Transylvania
and give him a coat of arms adorned with three
turks heads. I just think of that scene in Game
of Thrones when Braun fights the guy like you've didn't
fight with honor, and he's like, well that guy did, like,
but I'm alive. That's I think John Smith probably said

(17:04):
something something, something witty like that, you know. Soon after,
in six two, he was wounded and captured by Crimean
tartars and sold into slavery in Constantinople. But he claimed
this fair mistress fell in love with him, and he
had a great time with her until she sent him
to serve her brother in Tartary, who made John into

(17:25):
a degradated field hand. He was being abused in the
field one day when he was just like, you know
what this, and he beat his master's brains out with
a threshing bat. He stole his clothes and his horse
and got out of there. Speculation stations. Do you imagine

(17:46):
that John Smith was like beating up the field like
the overseer or whatever and all every he couldn't have
been alone? Like do you think all the other slaves
were like when do we like, did they also leave
with him? I'm curi is. Yeah. Then he wandered through Muscovy,
the Baltic and through the Holy Roman Empire before ending

(18:07):
up on a pirate ship off the Barbary coast. And
when he got back to England in sixteen o six,
he got involved in the Virginia Company's plan to establish
the Jamestown Colony. This was not an easy journey that
the colonists took from England to Virginia. Right, of course,
they immediately hit foul weather, which delayed their fleet. They
had to stop in the West Indies to resupply themselves

(18:29):
with water and provisions. And around then is when John
was accused of plotting a mutiny and put under arrest,
and Captain Christopher Newport, who was in charge of all
three of the ships, planned to execute John as soon
as they got to the New World. He's like, I
mean literally, we're gonna pull you off their ship and
you're You're dead, buddy, You're dead. It's nice of them

(18:50):
to wait. I don't really understandable. I wonder why they decided.
Why didn't they just throw him overboarders, right or something?
But I think you know, Jed pirate Roberts, Yeah, good night.
John's well, I'll most likely kill you as soon as
we get to land. I wonder if it was just
like they were feeling so much like they had to
legitimately set up government punishments and and all that that

(19:13):
they're like, well, we have to start as we mean
to go on. Yeah, once we get to the shore,
i'll see you know what I mean, like a civilized folk,
and I'll kill you on dry land. That's right, we'll
have a trial or something. Out of trial, let me
gather up twelve year peers. So they landed at Cape

(19:36):
Henry in late April seven and Captain Newport I mean
was probably having the gallows constructed when he unsealed the
orders from the Virginia Company about who would be in
charge of the colonists on land. Seven men were named,
Six of them prominent well connected figures in their late
forties early fifties, and Captain Christopher Newport was one of them,

(19:59):
but a seventh was John Smith. John Smith probably held
out his risk like so, yeah, I want to take
these off now because it turns out I'm in charge now.
Speculations Station. I have to ask you, how do you
think John Smith got his name on this list, the
short list of leaders. Well, it would have been sent separately, right,

(20:23):
I think he was sent with until they got there
to open, until New World was written on the envelope. Um.
I mean, I I considered possibly that when they're writing
these lists, they're like, all right, definitely these six guys,
and then I feel like I'm forgetting someone. Who could
it be? And they always say, just right, john Smith,

(20:46):
there's probably one there, and they'll just use him. I
was like, maybe, like, does he have something on the
merchants that started the Virginia Company, Like showed up like,
remember this nudy painting that you pose for, Well, I
have it now, smot scandal scandalous. So they picked a
spot to build on, which seemed like the perfect place.

(21:08):
It was about thirty five miles up river in this peninsula,
and it had deep enough water that they could more
their ships to the trees, and it was covered in
abundant wild flowers and strawberries, and it was just a
beautiful paradise. Best of all, it was uninhabited by the
native Indians, so maybe that should have been a clue

(21:30):
that they picked a ship place to build, because the
tribes knew better than to settle on this swampy land.
They still hunted there, though, and they saw it as
their territory. So as soon as the English arrived, they
were attacked and two of their men were killed, one
of them while he was taking a ship, which is
just not fair, you know, cold blooded. You could wait

(21:52):
wait three minutes for the guy to finish reading the
Sunday Times folding it up. Oh larious, Garfield Today, I
hate Monday. But honestly, even though they got attacked, the
English were doing a pretty good job of killing themselves

(22:12):
because this peninsula they had chosen, which the Indians specifically
didn't go to, didn't have any springs or brooks, so
they drank water from this river that was always brackish
and sometimes literally poisonous. One colonist wrote that at low
tide the water was quote full of a slime and
filth growth drink it. I mean, what there are options

(22:36):
do we have? So they boil advisory and effect for
the peninsula. So they were getting dysentery and typhoid fever
and salt poisoning from drinking this water. Colonists George Percy
wrote quote men were destroyed with cruel diseases as swellings, fluxes,

(22:57):
burning fevers in the more their bodies trailed out of
the cabins like dogs to be buried. Um what dogs
trail out of their cabins to be buried? I know,
like weird. What do you talk about, George, You've got
a weird life, George. I think people were okay with
doing the dogs back then. They're always execute him like

(23:18):
a dog, and I'm like, what are you doing to dogs?
So cradle him softly while I'm weep. But these colonists,
I mean, they were also suffering from heat stroke and
something called clencher, which was this tropical delirium that made
men jump into the sea thinking that it was this

(23:38):
beautiful grassy meadow. Why all does it's like sounds like
that zombie fungus that gets ner brain. Oh my god,
It's just so weird to me to be on a
ship and be so far gone with some delirium that
like you're just like, I guess we're just on land
now for some reason. The ship is in the middle
of this wonderful prairie. I so desperate for land, solid land.

(24:02):
I guess that like I'll jump out of the ship.
And I mean, I know people who would pay good
money for that trip. Yeah, very true. In Tony Horwitz's book,
A Voyage Long and Strange Um, this is a very
good book, by the way, I totally recommend it. It's
a book specifically about early America, and he talks about

(24:22):
the Vikings from like the hundreds of years into the
early colonists of six and it's really fascinating to kind
of see how the conquistadors entered the country and how
the Vikings entered the country and all the different tribes
and their experiences and everything. So anyway, just saying great book,
read it. And in his book he says, quote Virginia's

(24:44):
assault on newcomer's health, not just that first summer, but
for years to come, was so remorseless that the English
referred to a process of seasoning. Colonists landed, fell ill
and either died or became seasoned to their in ironment.
But you know what they say about the English, they
ain't great with seasoning, Tony writes, quote of the more

(25:10):
than twenty thou English sent to Virginia during the colonies
first decades, roughly three quarters perished. This death rate, notes
the historian Edmund Morgan, was comparable only to that found
in Europe during the peak years of the plague. So
if you were coming here, well, I guess they either

(25:30):
didn't tell you that, or you were very wealthy and
thought that you are important so you won't die, or
you came unwillingly yeah, or your ship is so desperate
back home you'll take your chance. Like that. I mean
that says a lot, because, yeah, if anyone knew any
thing real about what was going on with some of
these folks, I can't imagine that they were like, yeah,
let me get let me get a ticket to the

(25:51):
new world, which definitely in hindsight, Like if I'm a
ruler of a country and I look around and I say, wow,
things are terrible here. Look at all these people harving
and dying because of our leadership and the way we
manage things. Uh, let's go do it more places. Does
not sound like that. Maybe fix your ship at home,
you know, take care of yourself before you go try

(26:12):
and influence others. And that's a lesson everyone can take
home today. So Thanksgiving. On top of the natives and
the environment, the English were also fighting amongst themselves. Of course,
the Council's first president was quickly overthrown for being stingy
with supplies and hoarding food. His successor was exposed as

(26:35):
an impostor hiding behind an alias, and the guy who
blew the whistle on him was sentenced to death for treason.
What a mess. As Tony writes, he was quote the
first of many who would be shot, burned, or tortured
at Jamestown. Part of the problem here was some of
the colonists, like George Percy, were lords back in England,

(26:57):
and they expected the same level of deference and preference
that they got at home. Right, they're like, but by jove,
nobody wants to work anymore. Right, But there's there's nothing
to eat, the water is slimy. But but is it
too much to ask to get some service with a smile? Hello,
you look like you're dying like a dog, But do

(27:17):
you mind polishing my ship? Exactly so. Most of the
other colonists besides these rich folks, were debtors or drunken
sailors and soldiers or convicts released from prison, or laborers
who had been pressed at ports around the London streets.
Tony said, quote, this mob would have been hard for

(27:38):
anyone to motivate and control, and the gentry appointed to
do so we're spectacularly ill suited to the task. So
within four months of the colonies founding, over half of
the original settlers were dead. The remaining settlers were starved
and sick. They were utterly defenseless, And if he had

(27:59):
wanted to power, Haddon could have annihilated the entire colony
then and there. I mean, they had nothing going for them.
They could have con in mode them down quickly and
dipped out and maybe never heard from him again. I
don't know, history would be very different if they had,
because instead they showed up with a bunch of food.
And we'll find out what the hell that's all about

(28:20):
after this commercial break and welcome back to the show, Turkeys.
Historians have wondered for centuries why the natives chose to
save the colonists, a question that in retrospect is even
more burning. Yeah. Right, so they're kind of like, maybe,

(28:44):
you know, maybe the natives thought the colonists were more
valuable alive than dead because while they were there, English
ships showed up with all kinds of cool stuff like
copper kettles and axes and weapons Nintendo switches that they
were kind of like, Oh, I'm interested in this school it.
I would like to be able to trade for it. Um.
They may have also kind of been like, oh, these

(29:05):
colonists have cannons and muskets and all these big weapons
that they didn't have, and they were like, if we
can align with them, we can use their weapons against
other tribes and we'll have you know this backup. Um.
Maybe they've just felt bad because they were watching a
bunch of stupid babies flail around who are not able
to feed themselves and are drinking shitty water. So they

(29:28):
were maybe like, look at these dumb asses, like we
could suppress them so easily and get out of hand later. Right,
let's help them now, and they they'll you know, they'll
be forever thankful. Yeah, they probably have a whole day
about how thankful they are for everything we gave them,
and they'll be really nice to us forever. That's that's it,

(29:50):
That's what happened. Whatever the reason was, they brought, as
recorded by George Percy, quote bread, corn fish, and flesh
in great plenty, which was the adding up of our
feeble men. Otherwise we had all perished. I mean so
right there, he's admitting that without them they would all died. Yeah,
we were feeble. We sucked. Thank goodness, they showed up

(30:12):
with a bunch of food, and they were probably like, mommy,
a bunch of birds, like we're we have for ever
in your debt, and we will be a totally thankful
and have a whole day about you know how we do.
So refreshed, the colonists were all looking around like, hey,

(30:32):
who's still alive around here? Can I get a roll call?
And amongst the leaders who were still around was John Smith,
and he was put in charge of resupplying the fort,
and he immediately set off through the chest Speak waterways
to get some trading going with the native tribes. Over
the next two years, he would explore eastern Virginia, Maryland,

(30:57):
and possibly even Delaware, creating a man that was useful
to explorers for over a century. Now. In five when
the Roanoke Colony was established, they had settled among some
relatively small tribes and they were peacefully accepted. But this
time the Jamestown colonists had placed themselves like smack in
the middle of the most powerful and populous society on

(31:19):
the eastern seaboard. How Haughton's capital was only twelve miles
from Jamestown. Uh. Like we mentioned, he collected tributes from
dozens of tribes and over fifteen thousand natives. It's kind
of like the colonial equivalent of planting a flag in
the middle of Manhattan and being like, now, give me
all your food on The natives were like, uh no, bro,

(31:42):
Like I'm walking here, I'm living here, I've already been
settled for centuries. Yeah. So John Smith had to be
pretty canny to get what the colonists needed. When he
approached a tribe asking to trade. He wrote that they
offered only quote small handfuls of beans or wheat for

(32:04):
a hatchet or a piece of copper, because they were
pretty sure the colonists were starving and desperate, which of
course they were. The exchange rate was very weighed in
the natives favor. I'll give you three ships and thirty
men for you know, a couple of apples. Yeah right,

(32:26):
I mean right. And so John Smith of course knew
that this is not a great place to start negotiation,
to show up, you know, like I'll take whatever you'll give.
So he would scoring their initial offer and he would
anchor nearby and then run his boat on shore, shoot
off some muskets, and march on the village. Unbelievable, very
rarely got to actual combat or like warfare, you wouldn't

(32:50):
call it. But he was definitely like roa, like you know,
he was kind of trying to be like a bear
and show him that big and powerful. Wow scary. It's
like going to getting being like PS five is how
much and going outside and shooting your gun in the
air and be like, now, how much is it? And
the poor seasonal employee at target is like is the same, sir,
Like I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't set

(33:14):
the price, sister. But yeah, after john Smith would kind
of try this gunboat diplomacy. It usually worked. The natives
would offer venison and corn at favorable rates of exchange.
The Virginia Company had been pretty clear to quote, have
great care not to offend the naturals. But john Smith

(33:35):
kind of scoffed about these what he called tender educats
trying to tell him what to do from thirty miles away.
You know, Americans hate England telling them what to do once.
We also hate educated people, like we're just like, I'm
so sick of these book learners telling me what to
do right now. Tony writes that that's kind of a

(33:55):
bunch of bullshit because john Smith himself was very well
read and admired Machiavelli um, So it wasn't about like
boots on the ground decision making. It was more that
he felt that if they were being too soft on
the natives, they would seem weak and easy to defeat.
But the colonists were weak and easy to defeat, and

(34:16):
he had to somehow kind of proved that they weren't,
so he reached into his Soldier of fortune bag of
tricks to make himself look stronger than he was. Tony
writes quote, he fired his boat cannon into a tree
full of icicles to magnify the shots impact. He used
rivers and encircling woods to create terrifying echoes, and he

(34:36):
stuck soldiers helmets the top sticks to make us seem many.
He also reprised his gladiatorial skills, besting several chiefs in
solo combat. So he's using everything he learned over the years.
You know, he's pulling out all the stops full John
Smith to make them, you know, to make us seem

(34:56):
like a bunch of badasses, despite the fact that I'm
probably the only badass here right everyone else is the
soft lord fishing for a butter dish. Imagined like a
training montage of him trying to get them to march
in time, all these soft, rich folks starving marching. I
also love that he used so many like stage magic,

(35:19):
theater to be like, fire the shot here, because then
the echo will make it seem like many shots were fired.
Like that's such a theater thing to do, And I
love it, Like he was really theatrical guy. Right, He's like, watch,
I can remove my own thumb and they're like, whoa,
this art is nails took my nose. Know that the

(35:42):
day of people were not stupid. No, no, I don't.
He was just a yeah. No, he was just a showman.
And yeah he knew how to how to make it. Yeah.
I have wonder I mean, I know this comes from
Tony's book, but I have wonder which tactics worked and
which didn't. Like the Natives like, yeah, we know what
an echo sounds like. We've been running these rivers for

(36:02):
a long time. We know what it sounds like when
somebody's over there and there's only one of them. We
also use echoes. Yeah, you're not special, but you know
speculation station. But the thing is John was also very shrewd.
He traded strategically, he spread goods among villages to stoke
demand without dampening prices. And he was also a skilled

(36:23):
linguist from all of his travels, so he started to
compile an Algonquin dictionary, including enduring words were still here
today like moccasin and tomahawk, and a term for friend
cham a, which may be the source of the word
chum yeah, which is cute because I just imagined, like
the English start using the word chum right, and it's

(36:45):
like for them, it's like, oh this fun native word,
like sean, where did you get that word? Oh? Well,
I stole it from the natives, just like everything else
I have here. Jolly good. I think I'll steal it too.
What else can we steal? Nothing? We've got it all.
I also wonder if speculation station if this is how

(37:07):
he got him himself on that list of leaders, like
if he went to the Virginia countries, like, so, I
see your list of leaders. They all are great anyway,
do any of them speak another language? And there are
another language? Is there another language? Hey, Steve, is there
another language besides English? Oh? Apparently there is. Maybe he
convinced them by blowing up some icicles and he was like, oh,

(37:29):
do you have any you got room for another leader
on there? How about now? And they were like, WHOA
get him on the illusions. In late sixteen o seven,
John Smith was captured by Opachan Paw, Hotton's brother, who
was a warrior who would not once but twice strategically
outthink the English and defeat them in battles in the

(37:51):
years to come. But right now though, pow Howton had
just sent him to grab John Smith and bring him
over for a little talk. Threw him in the back
of a van. Yeah. According to Smith's account, he dazzled
opachan Kana with a compass quote whereat he was so
amazingly admired as he suffered me to proceed in a

(38:13):
discourse of the roundness of the Earth, the course of
the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Which is so funny
to think of John Smith having like an astronomy lesson.
Maybe in the back of that he's got a little
model out He's like, actually, this is set. Then John
was taken on a tour of Indian villages, and according

(38:36):
to the Mattaponies, this was to demonstrate to each tribe
that the English were as human as they were, because
they did not know that. They really were not sure
what was going on with guys, very very different looking creatures. Yeah, yeah,
which is funny because you know, it seems that the
English knew, of course that the natives were human, just
didn't see them on the same level as human. And

(38:58):
I wonder if that's the same thing going on here,
Like they're he might be they're hum annoyed, but they
might be aliens. Like who knows where these guys came from?
And then they're just showing them their blood and flesh
just like you. And watch when I kick him in
the nuts, he falls over else I wish they that
would be amazing. It's like, what's this? Everyone that incredible?
Like they took him to every inning village and just

(39:19):
kicked him in the balls to prove he was human.
And then he was like, I'm gonna write that you
guys tried to kill me. And then they finally brought
him before Powhatton, who was around sixty years old at
this time, and Smith describes him as quote grave and majestical,
wearing chains of great pearls about his neck, and seated

(39:42):
on an elaborate day, is surrounded by wives and retainers.
They really pulled out all the stops to show their
wealth and elegance and power to this guest. And in
Smith's first account of the meeting, published in sixteen o eight,
he wrote that pow Hotton welcomed him with good words
and platters of food. It just seems like a lovely
little time together that they had. It wasn't until seventeen

(40:04):
years later that John Smith would write the story about
Pocahonas saving him from execution that so many of us
are familiar with it today. Um. He said at that
time that they brought two huge stones, and they placed
his head on one stone and then lifted the other
to bash his brains out with it. And that's when
Pocahons ran in and placed her head on top of

(40:27):
his to prevent them from hitting him with rocks. Right.
But according to the Mattapony Oral History, if pow Hotton
had intended to kill John Smith, there's no way Pocahontas
would have been present to save him. As an eleven
year old girl, she was still a child, and children
weren't allowed at certain ceremonies and religious rituals. But they

(40:48):
also say that pow Hotton never did intend to kill
John Smith at all. Instead, he was welcoming him as
a chief or aware of wants of the English tribe,
essentially making the Lish part of the existing pow hot nation.
Like now you guys are another tribe here. Cool, You're
not going to stay. You gotta operate just like all
the other tribes do. Um, that's great that you have

(41:10):
ship that you're bringing from home, But we got a
system in place here. He told John Smith that in
return for quote too great guns and a grindstone, how
Hotton would forever esteem him as his son, not to quote,
he also gave the English a better spot for their
settlement on the York River, like he's He's like, hey,

(41:31):
I couldn't help, but notice that you guys put your
fort in a swamp full of disease, and most of
you died. So I can't have a son of mine
looking stupid. So how about a how about a change location?
You'll feel okay with that? What if I just show you?
Let me just escort you a few feet this way here?

(41:51):
This one won't kill you much nicer. But Encyclopedia Virginia
says that John refused because he was loyal to King James,
and therefore he couldn't also be a subject of pow Hotton's.
So communications started to break down almost immediately. How Hotton
saw the English as his subjects as long as they

(42:13):
were in his country, which you know makes sense, I
get it, I get it. But John Smith saw Powe
Hotton as a subject of King James, which makes less
sense this one. I'm not connecting the dots. I mean again,
just imagine today fly into France, landing on the coast

(42:33):
and saying, all right, you're all Americans now, I mean yeah,
you would get laughed, yeah, off the face of the continent. Insane.
It's it's very weird and it you know, you have
to think that John Smith and his contemporaries really believed
that the king was selected by God. I'm I guess,

(42:53):
and so they were like, well, he's did the divine rulers,
so you might think that you're the king whatever whatever.
But as soon as King James decided that this was
going to be an English colony, that's when you are
now his subject, which is again just so weird to
just bend over, especially when you're already got traded with
so many other nations that you're not. They're not subjects

(43:14):
of King James, So how come they they are? And
they're like, I'm sorry, you said God singular, what are
you talking about? But Pocahontas and John Smith did hang
out together while John was either being hosted by or
held hostage by Powe Hotton, depending on how you see things.
Camilla Townsend, author of Pocahontas and the pow Hotten Dilemma,

(43:35):
and a history professor at Rutger's told Smithsonian Magazine that
in john Smith's surviving notes, there are sentences like tell
Pokehontist to bring me three baskets, or Pokehontas has many
white beads. So she was kind of like, this is
this kind of woke up her imagination a lot to

(43:55):
read that, because she's like, clearly they were sitting next
to each other's, side by side, trying to learn in
each other's language. Like he would write a sentence in
English and then she would repeat it in Algonquin for him,
and that's probably how he managed to compile his dictionary.
That's how she started learning English to sort of. She
kind of was serving as an interpreter later on in life.
And it represents how much the natives were trying to

(44:18):
assimilate the English into their nation. You know, they're like,
we'll learn your language, you'll learn our language. It's going
to be great. Once john Smith was accepted by the tribe,
they established kind of a study abroad type program where
English guys would join the tribes to learn their ways
and vice versa. The natives would send men to join
the English and learn their ways, and so they would

(44:38):
kind of have an exchange of information. I say, study abroad,
but it was like a few miles up river. They
were like, go a few hundred feet rest it felt abroad.
I'm sure they were like, it feels like a whole right.
Probably took them as long to get there as it
takes us to fly to Europe. Right, It's true they
did have to walk, right. So anyway, Pocahonas and John

(44:59):
Smith were certain friendly. They definitely knew each other, But
no contemporaneous sources talk about a romance because again Pocahonis
was just a child. She's ten or eleven at this time.
The first claim of romantic involvement actually was written by
a guy named John Davis in eighteen oh three, so
nearly two hundred years later. So nobody around this time

(45:21):
was that making up this story. Yeah, beautiful busty princess
or right, And it's like two hundred years plus after
that before we're getting around to debunking it here. So
let's take a quick commercial break and we will be
back in less than two d years. Thank god. Welcome back,

(45:43):
Gordon's and pies. So around this point, thanks to death
and deposement, John Smith had risen to become the President
of the Council. Right away, he got strict with the
listless colonists, declaring quote, he that will not work, shall
not eat, for the labors of thirty or forty honest
and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a

(46:07):
hundred and fifty idle loiterers. So he's basically saying, from each,
according to their abilities, contribute, and to each you will
get what you need according to your needs. In some ways,
everybody works, no one sits around, everybody eats. That sounds

(46:28):
all right, um, but remember he's trying to whip up
these lazy, rich guys and get them to finally contribute
to the colony, which, of course not all of them liked.
They were like were as one of the hundred and fifty.
I'm fine with what we've been doing. You know, everything's
working out great, except for how many people keep dying

(46:48):
and no one will clean up their bodies. George Percy,
for example, said Smith was quote an ambitious, unworthy and
vainglorious fellow attempting to take old men's authorities away from them.
Probably I listened to a couple of recordings from the

(47:08):
time that it's a spot on impression. Yes, but under
John Smith, the fort prospered. Colonists performed military drills, they
built houses, and dug a well of quote excellent sweet water. Finally,
instead of drinking out the river, they were like, what
if we freaking built a well? And, as Tony writes

(47:32):
in a Voyage, Long and Strange Quote, what made Smith
exceptional was his recognition that survival in America meant learning
to live as Americans. That's when he started to disperse
settlers among tribes to learn their ways. And they also
were guided by Indian prisoners on how to order and
plant their fields and clear land, which natives did by

(47:55):
cutting notches into tree trunks and stripping the bark, which
caused the trees to rot, and then they could just
push them over. I love it because you, I mean,
you can't imagine maybe the English colonists like hacking away
with an axe and the natives being like, you know
that they'll just rought on their own, right, Like why
are you doing so much work? It takes a little longer,
but you know they're they're right there. English hated waiting

(48:17):
for ship. Yeah. Well, the natives were way more patient
in their processes and more natural too. Yeah, but they
also didn't build houses the same way or anything like that,
so you know, they needed trees for different reasons. But
still it was a good thing to learn. And yeah,
John Smith also decided to stop caring so much about
finding gold and other like mineral wealth, which had been

(48:40):
the main motivation for settling America. Um Tony writes, quote
America's true promise, he believed lay in its soil, timber, fish, game,
and other resources, and tapping this wealth required patient and
humble labor. But unfortunately, the Virginia Company was still obsessed
with gold, so they were just sending metal refiners and

(49:02):
like perfumers to the fourth Like a perfumer got to
the got to a perfumer showed up to Jamestown and
was like, well, it does smell bad here, but otherwise
I don't see what the uses of me and my skill.
What's your trade, sir, Well, I make wonderful smelling lavender perfume.
He's like, cool, Great, I need you to go cut

(49:23):
down these trees. I guess you can collect all these
bodies up. That will make it smell better around here.
That's sort of an ancillary skill. At one point, Smith
actually wrote to the Virginia Company that they could send
him a hundred of those guys if they would just
also quote, send but thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmith's, mason's,

(49:44):
and diggers up of trees. Yeah, just yeah, I don't care.
Send me all the perfume guys you want. Just for
the love of God, can I have someone who can
pick up an act? One person who knows how to
work with a damn hand. Just someone who knows how
to build a fire, for God's sake, somebody who can

(50:05):
pick up a knife and cut a piece of meat
without chopping their fingers off. Because these people and Smith.
John Smith also thought it was a great thing to
inherit wealth and honor. But he wrote quote that which
is got by prowess and magnanimity is the truest luster.
And during his one year tenure almost no Englishman died,

(50:28):
which was an unprecedented success at this point, and that
wasn't just because of John Smith though um It was
also because pal Hotton made sure to send the settler's
food in the winter of sixteen o seven to sixteen
o eight. This is partly because you know, he considered
them one of his tribes, so he's like, let me
help you out. I see you're struggling. Um. But also
because the English promise to provide metal tools and weapons

(50:53):
in exchange for their gifts of food. This is really
important to understand the native culture at the time and
maybe today too, I don't know, but how Hotton culture
was very much based on gifts. There were certain gifts
you got that had certain messages attached to them, you
know what I mean, you got a certain thing, it
was actually like shape up or ship out, you know
what I mean. It wasn't just like take this and go.

(51:15):
And then also if you were given a gift, it
was really important to reciprocate with another gift otherwise like
you're being a real asshole, right, So not like me
and how I do birthdays because well I don't yeah,
I don't don't get me stuff, guys, I I never remember,
please don't. Um. And also yeah, if they didn't get
the gift that they were promised in return, they would

(51:36):
just go take it because to them it already was owed.
Do you understand that. So anyway, that's really important to understand.
It's something the colonists did not understand and it was
part of the big problem. But gifts, the gift exchange
was very serious and had a lot of meaning attached
to it, and the English had promised to give these
things in exchange for the food. So how Hottons like, great,

(51:58):
I'll send food. This is all going to work out
one to fully. And these food gifts were often brought
by a number of tribesmen accompanied by Pokehontas, because she
was like a symbol of peace to the English. If
she was there, everything was dope. And the settlers wrote
about her, describing her as a naked child doing cartwheels
around the fort with the other young English boys, you know,

(52:19):
the other children. Um, so again they're talking about a child.
No one in the time period was thinking about no
sexy stuff with Pocahonas. Another time, Pocahonas was sent with
envoys to negotiate the release of Indian prisoners. So the
English knew her, and thanks to the tight security that
always traveled with her, they knew that she was very

(52:41):
important to pow Hotton, and they certainly took note of that.
But through sight things began to sour between the Powhattan
tribes and the English. There had been two years of drought,
so the natives didn't have a lot of extra food despair,
but the English would ceaselessly demand more and more, seeming
not to care if the Natives were left with nothing

(53:02):
as long as the English needs were met. They also
renegged on promises to send metal tools in exchange for
the gifts of food already given, And so the Natives
were just taking them through theft instead, because again that
they were like, these are owed to us. You said
we could have them, so we're just gonna come get them. Yeah,
to to them, they already belonged to them, right, So
it wasn't theft, but to the English it was theft. Right.

(53:23):
So pow Hotton decided to stop trading with the English,
and he told his tribes to go ahead and attack
them whenever they wanted. John Smith paid an uninvited visit
to where Racomico to talk it out. How Hotton scolded
him for how the English had been acting and expressed
a desire for peace. According to John Smith, when negotiations
between them broke down, pow Hotton excused himself in the meeting,

(53:46):
which was assigned to his warriors to execute John but
Pocahontas warned him about her father's plan to kill him,
thereby saving his life. But again this account differs from
the Mattapony oral history, which says there was no plot
to kill John Smith at all, and if there was,
Pocahonas would not have been able to give any kind
of warning to the English at all, because she was

(54:07):
still just a kid. She was very carefully supervised. In
sixteen o nine, pow Hotton moved his capital further away
from Jamestown and forbade Pocahontas from visiting anymore, marking the
beginning of the First Anglo pow Hotten War. And despite
his successes as a leader, the rich guys, John Smith
was put into work. We're plotting against him. Tony writes

(54:30):
that in sixteen o nine they engineered Smith's removal as
leader and maybe even tried to assassinate him. During one
of his many river trips, Smith was asleep in his
boat when his gunpowder bag quote unquote accidentally ignited, which
quote tore his flesh from his body and thighs nine
or ten inches square in a most pitiful manner that

(54:54):
sounds horrible. He was unable to stand and near bereft
of his senses, according to colonial accounts, and a ship
was about to depart for England, so John Smith got
on it, sailed home and never saw Jamestown again. And
pow Hotton was told that John Smith died on the
voyage home, but he didn't really believe that story because

(55:15):
you know, when the first lie he had heard from
from the white man, so he kind of he put
a pin in that for later. Yeah, because powe Hotton,
for all their differences, I think he kind of had
like a respect for John Smith and he appreciated the
way that he was doing things. And then this shift
in leadership was going to create a real problem for
the relative peace between the pow Hotton tribes and the

(55:36):
English settlers. Pow Hotton mistakenly thought that making a deal
with John Smith amounted to making a deal with the English,
but the English, of course, they didn't see it that way. Now,
George Percy became the new leader of Jamestown. Time for
me to take over and finally get something done around
Jill Noble working in the field for us rich folks.

(56:00):
Someone run me a bath. I'm in charge now, I'd
like a bath. Please, Someone get that lavender perfumer. Yes, right,
more perfumers. That's what we need. Stop sending all these
laborers and tradesmen. So, of course, unlike John Smith, George
Percy was not willing to work with the Indians. He

(56:21):
wanted to subjugate them. So they ramped up their campaign
of terror, and they burned villages. They were looting tombs
of dead kings. They cut off heads and limbs, and
forced tribes to hand over their food. Tony writes quote Smith,
for all his harshness, knew that such tactics would invite retribution,

(56:43):
and sure enough Natives responded by massacreing trade parties, in
one case stuffing the mouths of English corpses with food
as a warning to any others who should come to
seek for bread and relief among them. I mean they
were like, we would rather put this in your corpses
now to keep you away from us than to eat
it ourselves. Or or oh you want food, fine, here's

(57:06):
what you get when you come take a bite of
our food. Yeah, yeah, I mean brutal. But uh, you
know who started it? Ye? Who started it? George Percy
also neglected to store grain. He led fishing nets rot
he piste off the native so much that they killed
hundreds of hogs that John Smith had bread as a

(57:26):
reserve of food supply. So thanks to George's shitty leadership
and ask holarly to the Powhattan nation, the English found
themselves at the end of sixteen o nine, right back
where they started two years before, starving sick, huddled within
their wretched fort, except now there were five times as
many settlers that needed feeding. This would begin a long

(57:49):
winter known as the Starving Time. A voyage long and
strange describes their terrible situation. Quote when ration ran out
colonists eight horses, dogs, cats, rats, and mice. They ate shoes,
cooked starch from their collars into a gluey porridge, and

(58:10):
devoured excrement. When nothing else remained, they ate each other.
Oh my god. Some simply disinterred already dead corpses for
for dinner, which I guess is the best way quote
unquote to do that. But one guy killed his pregnant wife,
chopped her up into pieces, and salted her for food.

(58:32):
What are we going to do? Their story? I was like,
what's his name, give me the names, but I feel
like it's a short sat episode. So consider this a
bonus non romance of this poor lady who got packed
up by some dude and then he decided to eat her,
and George Percy extracted his confession by hanging him from
his thumbs and then orders his execution. Might be the

(58:54):
only good thing that George Percy did. When John Smith
left to sail back to England in the autumn of
sixteen o nine, he left five colonists behind. By the
following May of sixteen ten, under George Percy's leadership, only
sixty were still alive. That's like of them died. He

(59:16):
I mean, would you not at some point in the
course of your leadership be like, maybe I'm fucking up?
Like is there no sense of like, I don't. I
don't understand George Percy. I just don't get it. It's
an idiot. He's like, we're all dying and maybe more perfume,
I know, someone draw me a bath. That help now.

(59:38):
A delayed supply ship which had been shipwrecked in Bermuda
for ten months, which by the way, was an event
that inspired Shakespeare to write The Tempest. Yes by the way,
Shakespeare and Pocahonas lived at the same time. That I mean, yes,
obviously because of numbers and years, but I did I
never connected those two in my uh. Finally, this ship

(01:00:01):
had been shipwrecked, but they finally arrived and found the
Jamestown colonists so starved and crazed that it seemed like
the colony wasn't even worth staying in. And on June seven, sixteen,
the incoming governor ordered an evacuation and everyone got on
the boats to leave. But just then another supply ship arrived,

(01:00:21):
carrying a hundred and fifty fresh new settlers and a
year's supply of provisions quote, whereupon Percy wrote, we all
returned to Jamestown again. I love the idea of the
They'm all board in the ship, maybe even like their
way an anchor. What I mean, They're about to head out,
and they're like, oh, oh hey guys, well ship, Um,

(01:00:42):
how about guess just to grab your trunks? Everyone, Oh wait,
we don't have anything, let's go. I mean, how about
these hundred and fifty settlers who showed up. We're like
the New World, so full of promise, and they get
there and there's these starving, dying people. Sixty of them
left trying to leave, and they're like, oh, never mind,
you're here. Cool, we'll just stick it out. I know

(01:01:03):
that sounds good. Let's turn around. Let's just turn around.
Also like, all right, when I hear a delayed supply
ship with shipwrecked in Bermuda for ten months, I'm thinking,
all right, Yeah, they found Bermuda and they were like, oh,
let's stay here a while, crystal clear water, sunny beaches,

(01:01:24):
they got something called rum, got coconuts, Oh, let me
just send a letter. Oh bad, shipwreck, can't make it
gonna be a little late. And after three months are like,
do you think we should probably get going? They're probably fine, Yeah,
they Percy's there. Yeah, he was a great dancer. I'm
sure he's going to be doing a great job. So

(01:01:46):
that is the true story of Pocahonis and John Smith,
and truly the most ridiculous romance we've covered so far
because it wasn't even real, and it would have been
really gross if it was. But we are far from Finnish.
With Pocahontas in sixteen ten, you know, she's just coming
to age. She had two great romances to come one

(01:02:08):
with a pad of Womack tribal warrior named koku Um
and another with the Englishman John Rolfe. But we will
save that story for part two. Right, So go eat
your big dinners, think, think about what you've done America
and uh and and then we'll hear the second half

(01:02:29):
of this. Uh. It really is amazing to have learned
the real story. I mean, you know, obviously I knew
even when I saw it that the Disney movie was nonsense, right,
I mean, totally fictionalized. I hope everyone knows that. But
the main thing that I just was thinking today was

(01:02:49):
like when I was a kid and I saw the
Pocahonas movie, that was a thirty three year old woman,
you know what I mean, Like Pocahons was a full grown,
fully developed, very huge, powerful, dominant, amazing woman, and she
was just like twelve year old girl, also amazing. But

(01:03:11):
but just that alone is such a disconnect from reality,
Like why did you even choose this story? Guys, come
on up front, you have to change it that much.
Just go just find something else. I know, it's it's
interesting too with with you know, the native side of
of I guess the native perspective of the story is,

(01:03:32):
you know, Pocahons is not a very popular character among
Natives because of the way her story has been told
so much that just like us, many of them grew
up thinking she preferred a bunch of white people time.
And you know, now we're finally getting around to being like, actually,
that was a bunch of bullshit. But also when the
movie came out, it was seen, it was very popular,

(01:03:54):
and it was seen as such a great step forward
because she was the first indigenous princess princess. It was
like the first fully indigenous you know people on screen
that you were seeing and they did draw them well
and stuff like that. But like it is so weird
to just I mean, you know, Disney is not history.
They shouldn't have you shouldn't you know, hold them to

(01:04:16):
academic standards, right, But it did manage their movie, did
manage to really like perpetuate pretty harmful myth. Oh yeah.
And I mean beyond that, it's a very self a
grandizing version of the story where it's kind of like, well,
mostly it was just a misunderstanding, and the English and

(01:04:40):
the Natives were all, you know, they just if it
worked for that bad guy, they would have gotten along
the whole time, and everything would have been fine. And
at the end of the day we all held hands
and we're happy, and we're have a straight to video sequel,
and and you know, it's it's just this very falsified account.
Even even Johnson, I don't remember the movie super well,

(01:05:01):
but I'm like this version of the story. I'm like, Okay.
John Smith was like, he got ship done, he knew,
he knew how to strategize. And while he shouldn't have
been there in the first place, declaring the land for
his own and to these people being subjects of the king,
at least his strategy wasn't well, I'll just kill you

(01:05:21):
until you join me. Maybe I'll scare you until you
make your ship cheaper, but not necessarily, uh you know,
genocide was not so he didn't think that was a
smart tactic. Yeah, but of course that was basically, you know,
his relative kindness and I'm using enormous quotation marks here

(01:05:42):
was his sort of weakness to the other English people
who thought, while this guy is not willing to get
his hands dirty, so I will, which is so crazy
because it seems to me that the reason how Hotton
and the other natives respected John Smith that he used
very similar methods that they did. I'd be like, I
mean again, just going back to the very very beginning

(01:06:03):
of the episode, we talked about how pow Hotton got
all these tribes to become part of this one nation.
It was partly forced and partly diplomacy, which is exactly
what John Smith was doing. He used a little bit
of force to be like, Okay, you can respect me.
I can hurt you. Um, now we can. We're equals
in this conversation and we can have an equal exchange.
But I'm not going to just come in and take

(01:06:24):
all your ship. That doesn't work for me, because if
I did, who's saving us multiple times from our own folly? Um,
these guys that have the food and already know how
to do all the agriculture, they already know how to
live here, why would you kill them all? Like they're
they're going to be the only reason that you survive.
So it's just, you know, I feel like they were

(01:06:45):
kind of like, oh yeah, he shot his muskets and stuff.
He had some you know. He was like, hey, chief,
you fight with me, and if I win, will we'll
go forward with this deal? And if if if I lose,
I'll get the funk out of here. And they were like, sure,
I can. I like that, I'm with that, I can right,
I can deal with that. And they were like those
tactics worked for me, and yeah. Then Percy's like, well

(01:07:05):
just run them through with a store yeah, and again
just to pop out of the clarity closet here. Um.
That's not to say John Smith was doing everything right
and a good guy. It was just like, you know,
of of the many approaches that the English took um,
his was at least, you know, somewhat sensible within the

(01:07:26):
context of what they were doing, which was horrible. Yeah,
and it's not to say that if he had stayed
he would have been awesome the whole time. When changed
his tactics once they got a little more comfortably established again,
he was totally like, y'aller subjects of my king as
far as I'm concerned. So he might have just come
in colonizing spirit fully intact, you know, but was just like,
I'm going to use you as long as I can.

(01:07:48):
I don't mean it to be like he's a great guy, no, no, no,
But or it may have been a situation where it
was like that subjugation you don't know is happening kind
of for that's sort of like I'm not going to
come in and use my military force to destroy you,
but I'm gonna make it so that before you know it,
you're dependent on me, and therefore now I now I
do rule you, you know, which is another tactic the

(01:08:10):
English have employed many times, and even the Americans look
at we In the last episode we talked about the buffalo,
I was just about saying, yeah, same same tactic there,
like just take all their food and then they'll have
to do whatever you say, yeah, and then come in
and say, well, all your food's gone. Sorry, So you
better try and be friends with us. Well, and it's
really hard to be our friends the cool tible. You've

(01:08:31):
got to try it ready hard. So yes, Pokontas and
John Smith. Uh, fascinating story. Yeah, um, far different than
what we heard than what was sang to us by
Vanessa Williams. You know that music video is when I
fell in love with Vanessa Williams. Oh really Yeah, she
was an early crush of mine. She is gorgeous, totally

(01:08:52):
understandolutely what she's up to, right, It's just stunning. She
had those really light blue eyes right or something. I
don't know. She has had a really cool look. She's
she's beautiful. So if you're Vanessa Williams or anyone you know,
feel free to reach out. We'd love to hear your
thoughts or or how Vanessa Williams is doing. Please shoot

(01:09:14):
us an email. UM. You can get us at Romance
at i heeart media dot com, or on social media
on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm
at Oh great, it's Eli and the show is at
ridic Romance. Of course, we'd love to hear from you.
On Apple Podcasts, you can drop a review UM, or
you know, hire a skywriter to tell everyone in your
neighborhood about our show. That sounds good. If you do that,

(01:09:36):
please seek a picture and tag us and that we
can be incredibly nertally excited about it. Well, thanks for
tuning in, everyone, and we will see with part two
of the Pocahona Story Pocahontas and John rolf Uh just
after Thanksgiving and we cannot wait. Enjoy your food and
family and friendship and fellowship and all the other great

(01:09:56):
things that this holiday brings. Do you s so long friends,
It's time to go. Thanks O, listenin to our show,
tell your friends, neighbor's uncles, and danced to listen to
a show. Ridiculous well Dance