When analyzing the "Disneyfication" of Pocahontas, it is important to review it differently than other Disney adaptations. The origin of the story is not fiction or a fairy tale, but a piece of history. Pocahontas physically walked this earth and had a life. The story we know comes from multiple sources and speculations. Pocahontas never had a chance to tell her own story, so we are subjected to the hazy, blurry one presented today. The legend of Pocahontas was risky to use as a basis for a Disney film and the historical fillers are evident when comparing the film to the sources available. Disney took what was there, added some songs and turned this historical figure’s life into a children’s movie.
The written account of John Smith has been scrutinized by many historians, questioning its accuracy. Their logic derives from the period of time in between the supposed meeting and the actual process of writing it down. One historian expresses, “he never saw fit to write about that rescue by Pocahontas until 17 years later and historians and anthropologists, journalist and cops usually trust accounts written closer to the incident” (Rountree). In Disney’s version of Pocahontas, they enhance the interactions between John Smith and Pocahontas. The climax of the film, is Pocahontas throwing herself on top of Smith as an act of love and peace, inherently saving his life. It is believed that the real Pocahontas had not met Smith before that incident, and acted for a different cause. One historian considers Indian adoption rituals as the cause, this includes threatening an outsider’s life through torture or execution and then offering a pardon at the last moment. His reasoning behind that theory is, “Indian adoption rituals place an awful lot of decision-making authority in the hand of women in which Pocahontas was playing her appointed role as the decision maker as to whether or not John Smith would be killed or adopted” (Silverm...