BONUS: Who Was Pocahontas, Really?

with Paul Chaat Smith

These last few weeks brought jolting discoveries at residential schools in Canada— unmarked grave sites thought to contain the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children who went missing. The news was a visceral reminder that systemic racism and discrimination can literally bury the past.

So we decided to revisit an episode about a woman who— unlike so many Indigenous people of her time— was celebrated by Colonial America, and actually had a portrait made: Pocahontas.

Curator and author Paul Chaat Smith sifts through what we know, and what we think we know, about this iconic figure.

bust-length black and white photo of a Native American man

Photo credit: NMAI Photo Services, Smithsonian Institution

Read more about the portraits:
  • Pocahontas, illustration in Baziliologia A Booke of Kings,/ London, Compton Holland, 1618 / Simon van de Passe (1595 - 1647) / Engraving on paper, 1616 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution /  NPG.77.43
  • Pocahontas / Unidentified Artist, Copy after: Simon van de Passe, after 1616 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, 1942 / NPG.65.61
  • Baptism of Pocahontas at Jamestown, Virginia / John Gadsby Chapman / Oil on canvas, 1839, placed 1840 / Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol / Image courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol
More by Paul Chaat Smith: