Pocahontas real life biography of deodato

Pocahontas might be a household name, but the true story of her short, powerful life is buried in myths that have persisted since the 17th century.

First, Pocahontas wasn’t her actual name.

Born around 1596 in present-day Virginia, she was really named Amonute, and she also had the more private name Matoaka. Pocahontas—which translates to “playful one” or “ill-behaved child”—was her childhood nickname.

Pocahontas was the favorite daughter of Powhatan, the formidable chief of more than 30 Algonquian-speaking tribes that lived in and around the area claimed by English settlers as Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.

Years later, when few firsthand witnesses were around to dispute his version of events, an English colonist named John Smithwrote about how Pocahontas, the beautiful daughter of a powerful Native leader, rescued him from execution at the hands of her father.