Most know Pocahontas from the 1995 Walt Disney animated film. However, the movie is not an accurate portrayal. She was only eleven in 1607 when the English arrived in Jamestown. When Captain John Smith was captured by the Powhatan Indians and about to be executed, she intervened until her father, Chief Powhatan, spared him. When relations between the settlers and Indians deteriorated two years later, she again saved Smith by warning him of a murder plot. Unlike the Disney version, there was no love interest between her and Smith. In fact, she wanted to call him father. In 1614, Pocahontas married John Rolfe. He was the pioneer who introduced tobacco to the Virginians. Pocahontas died three years later at the age of 22. This statue, by William Partridge, has stood at Historic Jamestowne, Virginia, since 1922.
