These are the readings and questions we gave you after we watched the two clips from Disney's Pocahontas. The first clip was the first meeting of John Smith and Pocahontas; the second was Pocahontas saving John Smith. Pocahontas: Her Life & Legend http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/pocahontas-her-life-and-legend.htm Pocahontas Revealed www.pbs.org/nova/pocahontas Pocahontas: Separating Fact From Fantasy http://www.dove.org/columns/1995/column9507.htm Pocahontas http://apva.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=26 Pocahontas http://apva.org/rediscovery/page.php?page_id=26 The Pocahontas Myth http://www.powhatan.org/pocc.html Questions to answer as you read: 1. Who wrote the articles you were given to read? 2. Do you think the opinion or beliefs of the writer make a difference about the story? 3. Based on your readings, what were some of the myths that happened in the movie? 4. Did you see anything that happened BOTH in the reading and in the movie? If so, what? 5. Did Pocahontas really save John Smith? 6. After reading the articles, does it change what you thought you knew about Pocahontas? Hopefully, you were able to see that sometimes historical fiction is more fiction than history, as it was in this case. You probably saw that Pocahontas and John Smith were not at all the characters we thought they were, and that the "saving" may have been part of a ritual to bring John Smith into the tribal family. At the very least, you should have picked up on the fact that there was not a Pocahontas and John Smith love story. She ended up marrying John Rolfe, and she died in England.