Pondering Pocahontas | National Portrait Gallery

with Paul Chaat Smith

Pocahontas is a Native American heroine celebrated in the Disney animated movie for her pet raccoon and her free spirit. So why is she dressed like European royalty in her painting at the National Portrait Gallery? Curator and author Paul Chaat Smith separates out what we know and what we think we know about this iconic figure-- a woman who married the Bill Gates of her time and became "Queen of America."

Man in a dark suit standing against a beige wall

Paul Chaat Smith as featured at the Walker Art Center, Aug. 31, 2017

Read more about the portraits:

Pocahontas, illustration in Baziliologia A Booke of Kings,/ London, Compton Holland, 1618 / Simon van de Passe (1595 - 1647) / Engraving on paper, 1616 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / NPG.77.43
Pocahontas / Unidentified Artist, Copy after: Simon van de Passe, after 1616 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, 1942 / NPG.65.61
Baptism of Pocahontas at Jamestown, Virginia / John Gadsby Chapman / Oil on canvas, 1839, placed 1840 / Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol / Image courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol

More by Paul Chaat Smith:

Kindred Spirits: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art by Carter Ratcliff and Paul Chaat Smith, Peter Blum Edition, 2011
Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong by Paul Chaat Smith, Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1st edition (April 14, 2009)
Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, The New Press, 1997.

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