Pocahontas is perhaps the most widely-known figure in Native American history, popularized in fiction and romanticized by Hollywood as a beautiful and demure American Indian “princess” who sacrificed herself to the interests of British colonials and ultimately saved England’s first Virginia settlers from “death, famine and utter confusion.”
Likely, none of that is true.
Born Amonute, she was the daughter of Pamunkey Chief Wahunsenaca, who led an alliance of about thirty Algonquian-speaking tribes and bands in eastern Virginia at the time British adventurers first arrived in 1607.
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