10 Films With Glaring Historical Inaccuracies

Crushing dreams in Mulan wasn't enough, so here's another childhood film to ruin.

Pocahontas follows the titular character as the Native Americans are brought into contact with the British Empire, particularly the explorer John Smith. Both were real people, and the film does follow some of Smith's account of what happened. After landing in Virginia, he led the British expedition and found himself captured by the Powhatans and taken to their chief at Werewocomoco.

This is when things get a little shaky.

The film's portrayal of Pocahontas throwing herself across John Smith before he is executed is sort of true. At least, it's true that John Smith wrote that it happened that way, but this has been largely dismissed as embellishment, as Smith's first actual recording of meeting Pocahontas occurred ten years later.

One of the biggest issues is the portrayal of Pocahontas herself. John Smith landed in Virginia in 1606, when Pocahontas was only ten years old. She definitely wasn't in any position to be having relationships with men almost three times her age. The ending is made a bit more Disney-friendly. The real Pocahontas was married off, renamed Rebecca, and converted to Christianity before dying at the age of 22.

It's not hard to see why they didn't finish a film for children with that.