Matoaka

02.2023

For 15 odd years she’s been holding my eye liner, spot popping implement, two lipsticks and a pair of tweezers. I don’t know how this mug came to be in my possession, but it has always been there, in my room, on a shelf, by my bed, always on display. The mug is in the shape of Pocahontas’ head, the Walt Disney version of course. Plastic injection moulded, dishwasher safe, made in China, listed on ‘nowandthencollectibles.com’ as a 1995 limited edition rare collectible, going for $136.00 USD.

Pocahontas, the only character on screen I looked remotely like, I had the necklace, the fake arm tattoo, I sang the songs, perpetually rewound, fast forwarded, paused and played the VHS. It didn’t matter that her culture and mine were in no way akin. This mug was, and in some ways still is, a mark of my identity, being seen by the world. But when I begin to unpick the journey in which this mug came to be, and how the romanticised version of this indigenous woman’s story has been told, I start to see the loaded nature of this object.

Like the Frida Kahlo socks a friend bought me one birthday, I wonder what these women of historical significance would have thought of their faces, identity and stories, being appropriated for capitalist gain. ‘Appropriation’, defined by the Oxford dictionary as ‘the act of taking something that belongs to somebody else, especially without permission’.

Did First Nation American tribal chiefs permit white British women at Glastonbury’s pyramid stage to wear war bonnet headdresses imitating theirs? Or Pocahontas approve of her story being mistold for an American audience to feel less guilty about their history of stealing the land, resources, and more, of native americans?

Disney’s Pocahontas was released in 1995 and as a three year old, my critical thinking ability was disappointingly underdeveloped (I blame the advent of the teletubbies), so I took this story at face value. Growing older I began to have an inkling that Pocahontas had in fact been a real woman, that lived ‘in the olden days’. But I suppose it wasn’t until my teens that I began to have an inkling that the story Disney had sold to me wasn't strictly true. But this didn’t stop me from jumping at the chance to fashion a like-for-like Pocahontas costume for a Disney themed party at 16. It was a guilty pleasure, one that I could at last embody as an (almost) adult. My 97% white secondary school, to no surprise, had no problem with it either, one of the other 5 non-white girls of my year also came as Pocahontas, confirming that this disparate identity Disney had packaged for us, was for any or all of the non white female contingent growing up in this era.

The two stories, Disney’s and the real one, differ in a number of ways. My research, shameful google searches, leading to a messy plethora of open tabs from government bodies, native historical sites and reputable journalism sources, tell a few versions of her life. So I am still unsure of the true story of this unequivocally bright and brave woman. But these varying truths, their gist and conclusions come to evoke the same outcome, her story has been falsely packaged and is a lie.

For readers that don’t know the story of Disney's Pocahontas, in a nutshell, a hunky English blonde explorer named Jon Smith arrives on native American land, falls in love with this leggy, native woman, with beautiful flowing hair, she teaches him a few things about how we’re all connected to the earth that gave birth to us, they ‘run the hidden pine trails of the forest and taste the sunsweet berries of the earth’. When he needs to leave, she chooses to stay with her tribe, utters sweet nothings, ‘I’ll always be with you, forever’, and he’s off on his way. 3 year old south asian girls rejoice, as young adults we go on to sing the much famed songs in karaoke bars and in friends cars, until we reflect on our makeup holding mugs, ponder, and realise the following…

Pocahontas, also known as Amonute, and more privately known as Matoaka, did not marry Jon Smith, she was about 9 or 10, 16 years his junior when he arrived in Tsenacomoco (later known as Jamestown) in 1607. She did however save his life during an execution or appeared to do so whilst playing her role during an adoption ceremony and the two went on to be, what would now be known as, ‘language buddies’.

At aged 14, she married Kocoum, a fellow tribesperson, who she had her first child with. Later after being captured and possibly abused, by her English captors, she converted to Christianity, changed her name to Rebecca, or ‘her name was changed to Rebecca’. She had a son with an Englishman named John Rolfe, a tobacco merchant, whose success in the industry was likely attributed to his new spouse and her expertise of the land. Later the two would give birth to a son, Thomas Rolfe.

This mixed family, along with several others, sailed to England as a ‘political symbol, a show of peace between English settlers and Indigenous groups’ . This exchange of cultures, the experience of her son, Thomas, is the part of the Pocahontas story that is perhaps more pertinent to my own, but that’s a reflection for another day, that no mug has prompted me to write about just yet.

Once the parade of cultural exchange was over and it was time to return home, Pocahontas fell ill, and passed away, not yet having reached the age of 21. It’s likely her death was caused by the polluted air and water of London of the time, and many sources point to pneumonia or tuberculosis being the cause of her death. Her father, upon hearing the fateful news, requested her body be returned home, against his wishes, the body was instead buried by her husband Rolfe, at St. George's Church in Gravesend, England, in March 1617.

This ending, its injustice and the reality that this plastic mug in my bedroom has outlived the real Pocahontas, is sobering. Through writing this piece, my relationship with that object has changed, the innocent pride I had in it has certainly dissipated over this time. A touch of shame, self judgement and an element of ‘am I overthinking this?’.

Perhaps it deserves a place on my shelf, no longer with tweezers and eyeliner in it, but to stand alone, strong, like the woman it resembles.