Pocahontas Myth

In 1995, Roy Disney decided to release an animated movie about a Powhatan woman known as "Pocahontas". In answer to a complaint by the Powhatan Nation, he claims the film is "responsible, accurate, and respectful."

We of the Powhatan Nation disagree. The film distorts history beyond recognition. Our offers to assist Disney with cultural and historical accuracy were rejected. Our efforts urging him to reconsider his misguided mission were spurred.

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. The legend is that she saved a heroic John Smith from being clubbed to death by her father in 1607 - she would have been about 10 or 11 at the time. The truth is that Smith's fellow colonists described him as an abrasive, ambitious, self-promoting mercenary soldier.

Of all of Powhatan's children, only "Pocahontas" is known, primarily because she became the hero of Euro-Americans as the "good Indian", one who saved the life of a white man. Not only is the "good Indian/bad Indian theme" inevitably given new life by Disney, but the history, as recorded by the English themselves, is badly falsified in the name of "entertainment".

The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again by Disney. Disney even improves upon it by changing Pocahontas from a little girl into a young woman.

The true Pocahontas story has a sad ending. In 1612, at the age of 17, Pocahontas was treacherously taken prisoner by the English while she was on a social visit, and was held hostage at Jamestown for over a year.

During her captivity, a 28-year-old widower named John Rolfe took a "special interest" in the attractive young prisoner. As a condition of her release, she agreed to marry Rolfe, who the world can thank for commercializing tobacco. Thus, in April 1614, Matoaka, also known as "Pocahontas", daughter of Chief Powhatan, became "Rebecca Rolfe". Shortly after, they had a son, whom they named Thomas Rolfe. The descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe were known as the "Red Rolfes."

Two years later on the spring of 1616, Rolfe took her to England where the Virginia Company of London used her in their propaganda campaign to support the colony. She was wined and dined and taken to theaters. It was recorded that on one occasion when she encountered John Smith (who was also in London at the time), she was so furious with him that she turned her back to him, hid her face, and went off by herself for several hours. Later, in a second encounter, she called him a liar and showed him the door.

Rolfe, his young wife, and their son set off for Virginia in March of 1617, but "Rebecca" had to be taken off the ship at Gravesend. She died there on March 21, 1617, at the age of 21. She was buried at Gravesend, but the grave was destroyed in a reconstruction of the church. It was only after her death and her fame in London society that Smith found it convenient to invent the yarn that she had rescued him.

History tells the rest. Chief Powhatan died the following spring of 1618. The people of Smith and Rolfe turned upon the people who had shared their resources with them and had shown them friendship. During Pocahontas' generation, Powhatan's people were decimated and dispersed and their lands were taken over. A clear pattern had been set which would soon spread across the American continent.

Chief Roy Crazy Horse

It is unfortunate that this sad story,
which Euro-Americans should find embarrassing,
Disney makes "entertainment" and perpetuates a dishonest and self-serving myth
at the expense of the Powhatan Nation.

Dawse Rolls- History of the 5 dollar indian

Khmers- From Kemet to Asia

Of all the kingdoms of early Southeast Asia, one of the most recognised and magnificent has to be Angkor, located in northern Cambodia. Angkor’s beauty is illustrated by thousands of lavish temples, wonderfully built with laterite, brick and sandstone, and a massive hydrological system of reservoirs and lakes, all of which cover a huge area of some seventy-seven square miles.¹ The people responsible for building these tremendous structures were an industrious Black Africoid people known as Khmers. Roland Burrage Dixon, an anthropologist at Harvard, described the ancient Khmers as physically “marked by distinctly short stature, dark skin, curly or even frizzy hair, broad noses and thick Negroid lips.” ²

“In remote antiquity the Khmers established themselves throughout a vast area that encompassed portions of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos.” ³ In addition, some of the earliest Buddha statues from neighbouring regions such as Thailand and Vietnam have clearly discernable African features, such as broad noses, thick lips and woolly hair in cornrows, they have the appearance of any African found in sub-Sahara Africa today. This was at a time when the region was not subject to foreign domination and race infusion, and it had reserved the purity of this type.



 

The builders of the earliest kingdoms in Southeast Asia, the Funanes, who were essentially the same as Khmers, were described in a Chinese historical document as “ugly and Black...their hair is curly.” The men were described by the Chinese as “small and Black.”⁴ There are, however, much more complimentary descriptions from earlier Chinese records. The Chinese chronicler Nan Ts’i Chou more flatteringly and probably reflecting earlier and less prejudice times, expressly stated:

“For the complexion of men, they consider Black the most beautiful.  In all the kingdoms of the southern region, it is the same.”⁵
From as early as 192 A.C.E. the people of the Southeast Asian kingdom Champa (Vietnam), known to the Chinese as Lin-yi, which meant the “land of Black men” were described by Chinese scribes as possessing: “Black skin, eyes deep in the orbit, nose turned up, hair frizzy.”

Chinese scribes also stated that the people of Cham adorned themselves:

“In a single piece of cotton or silk wrapped about the body...They are very clean; they wash themselves several times each day, wear perfume and rub their bodies with a lotion compounded with camphor and musk.

The Last Aztec Emporer

Cuauhtémoc (c. 1495-1525) was the last emperor of the Aztec city-state of Tenochtitlan, ruling from 1520 to 1521. Only 25 years old when he came to power, he was immediately thrust into a desperate defense of the city against the invading Spanish conquistadors. Today, Cuauhtémoc is considered to be one of the most important symbols of Mexico, also representing the indigenous people of the area.

Early Life

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It was thought that Cuauhtémoc was born in 1495, although the exact date is not known. His bearing impressed many who saw him. The Spanish writer Bernal Diaz de Castillo wrote in his book, History of the Conquest, that he was “elegant in his person” for an Aztec. Since Spaniards often denigrated the appearance and abilities of the Aztecs, this was notable praise.
Cuauhtémoc was the nephew of two previous emperors, the renowned ruler, Moctezuma II, and his brother, Cuitlahuac. Since Cuauhtémoc had previously married Princess Tecuichpo, the daughter of Moctezuma, he was also that ruler’s son-in-law. He is known to have had military experience from a young age, although again the precise details are lost. He is also said to have burned with a fiery hatred for the Spaniards.

Rising to Power

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The first incident through which Cuauhtémoc became more widely known is not definitely attested by reliable sources, but has come to be seen as indicative of his character. The royal palace of the Aztecs had been taken by the Spaniards, and Moctezuma had been captured by them. At this point, two rival groups of Spanish soldiers clashed, an incident which resulted in the death of the emperor.
The Spanish governor of Cuba, Diego Valazquez, had become jealous of the conquistador Hernán Cortés and ordered a force to Mexico to overthrow him. Cortés took some of his soldiers to repel this attack, but left a substantial force behind in Tenochtitlan. After returning, he was shocked to find out that Pedro de Alvarado, his lieutenant, had had six hundred members of the Aztec nobility killed.
This brutal action pushed the Aztecs into full-scale rebellion, and their forces laid siege to the palace. Cortés told Moctezuma that he must command his subjects to cease their assault, but the people instead showered him with stones. Some of these hit Moctezuma, giving him injuries that he later died from. Legend has it that it was Cuauhtémoc who had provoked the stone-throwing by defiantly waving a javelin towards Moctezuma.

Rise to Emperor

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After Moctezuma’s death, Cuitlahuac became emperor. The new ruler did not share Moctezuma’s fear of Cortés, since he did not believe the legend that the Spaniards had been sent by Quetzalcoatl, a god who had fair skin and a beard. Cuitlahuac then died after only four months of his reign, possibly by smallpox – a disease which had been imported to the Americas by the Europeans.
Despite his short tenure as emperor, Cuitlahuac was successful in clearing Tenochtitlan of the conquistadors. In July of 1520, on the Noche Triste (sad night) the Spaniards were driven from the city. Shortly after this, the emperor died and Cuauhtémoc was chosen by a council of nobles to rule in his stead. His most pressing task would be to defend Tenochtitlan, which Cortés was already preparing to attack again.
The Spanish invaders had made an uneasy alliance with the Tlaxcalans, who had an ancient enmity with the Aztecs and allowed the Spaniards to base themselves in their territory. Cortés’ plan was to build ships and launch a large-scale naval attack on the city, which in the 16th century was on the shores of a substantial lake. Before launching the attack, Cortés have Cuauhtémoc a final opportunity to surrender to the Spanish.


 

John Horse Seminole War

The slave rebellion the country tried to forget

• For quick facts, quotations, and documentation of the Black Seminole slave rebellion, see the information toolkit and bullet-point summary.

Imagine that the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history had gone unrecognized for more than a century and a half, even by the country's leading scholars. Imagine further that the rebellion was not some obscure event in a rural backwater, but a series of mass escapes that took place in conjunction with the largest Indian war in U.S. history and that resulted in a massive, well-documented destruction of personal property. How could scholars forget such an event? And what would such an oversight say about the country? A country that had robbed generations of the story of its most successful black freedom fighters. A country that had taught its children a lie, that over the first American century, only white men fought for freedom and won.
There is no need to imagine such a scenario, because the scenario is true.

Slave Uprising: Six story panels on the uprising's peak in 1836.

The rebellion
From 1835-1838 in Florida, the Black Seminoles, the African allies of Seminole Indians, led the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history.[1] The uprising peaked in 1836 when hundreds of slaves fled their plantations to join the rebel forces in the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). At the heights of the revolt, at least 385 slaves fought alongside the black and Indian Seminole allies, helping them destroy more than twenty-one sugar plantations in central Florida, at the time one of the most highly developed agricultural regions in North America.[2]

	Three enemies, one war
	During the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), the U.S. fought rebels from three distinct communities: Seminole Indians: The largest enemy force and the only one the South preferred to acknowledge. Black Seminoles: Black allies with established ties to the Indians, known as maroons or Seminole Negroes. Plantation slaves: Recent recruits who fled plantations at the outset of the war.

Amazingly, one would hardly know any of this from the country's textbooks. For over 150 years, American scholars have failed to recognize the true size and scope of the 1835-1838 rebellion. Historians have focused on the Indian warriors of the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), with some attention to the maroon fighters (the Black Seminoles) but almost none to the plantation-slaves.[3]
The omission fits a general pattern in American history. In a trend dating back to the country's earliest national histories, scholars have tended to downplay all incidence of slave resistance. Contemporary scholars may believe that they have overcome this legacy, and yet their failure to identify the country's largest slave revolt speaks to the contrary.
Why did America forget this rebellion?
The Black Seminole slave rebellion was not only the largest in U.S. history, it was also the only one that was even partially successful. During the Second Seminole War the U.S. Army could never conclusively defeat the black rebels in Florida. After three years of fighting, the army chose to grant freedom to the holdouts in exchange for surrender -- the only emancipation of rebellious African Americans prior to the U.S. Civil War.[4]
It might not matter much that the country forgot a slave rebellion, but why the largest? And why the only one that was partially successful?
Certainly in the 1800s, it was never in the political interests of the white South to admit defeat at the hands of black rebels. But how did the censorship of the nineteenth-century become the amnesia of the twentieth? It remains something of a mystery how the country's largest slave rebellion has remained unrecognized for so many years even by the country's leading scholars of African American studies.
For more on the mystery, and for facts on the rebellion, check out the two original essays on this site, "The Largest Slave Rebellion in U.S. history" and its follow-up, "The Buried History of the Rebellion."
More on the rebellion:

• Information toolkit on the rebellion: Information for skeptics including quick facts, sources, select quotations, and a tally of slave rebels.
• Essays
• Slave Uprising: Six story panels on the events of 1836.

The Spanish Conquest and Aztec War

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u1wmzc1d7r6fmvs/LAJ%202007_70-83.pdf?dl=0

John Horse - Black Seminoles