How About A Trivia Question For Pocahontas (Part 1 of 2)

The first successful, ongoing English colony in the New World was established in Jamestown in 1607. There was a popular animated movie that was made in the 1990s where an Englishman, John Smith, married an aboriginal woman. We know where John Smith was from and the language he spoke, England and English. Yet who can state the aboriginal tribe or nation the movie was named after? Or the language Pocahontas spoke? How can the star of a major motion picture be so poorly known? Something seems missing here.

The Pilgrims who sailed on the famous Mayflower in 1620 and settled at Plymouth Rock are also poorly known individually as one cannot name a famous Pilgrim. The internet can quickly give an answer, but not an answer your neighbour will know.

We all know what it means to be called a Puritan nowadays, it refers to someone who sees something wrong with having fun, or, seeing others have fun. From Puritan we get the word puritanical, which means prim, priggish, prissy, straight-laced, prudish or a killjoy. The first famous Puritans in the New World came and successfully settled off the east coast in 1629 at Massachusetts Bay colony. Like Pilgrims, Puritans are individually anonymous despite being successful early pioneers of the United States. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, several colonies perished on the east coast, their success was not a foregone conclusion.

The Indian who assisted the Pilgrims in their early struggles to survive, Squanto, has a similar problem. What aboriginal tribe or nation was Squanto from?

Pocahontas and John Smith

A few decades into the history of the 17th and 18th centuries, other pre-Columbian residents of the New World make it into the media. There are the Iroquois, known for being part of the Six Nations Confederacy. One of the Six Nations, the Mohawk, have a haircut named after them which is also called a rooster tail. Football players like to wear the Mohawk because they believe it makes them look fiercer. Punk rockers like it because it makes them look more wild. The Mohawk is a strong fashion statement. Yet try to name a Mohawk or Iroquois person.

Canada is a country that has many Indians, but few stand out. Most draw a blank because none has fame in Canadian history, despite supposedly decent and what many think better treatment of them over the centuries than what they received in the United States. Canada did not have Indian wars but this did not enhance their status in the country.

In Canada during the French regime one cannot name a famous habitant, a Canadien settler who lived along the St. Lawrence River from the 17th to 18th centuries. Voyageurs and coureurs de bois, who engaged in the fur trade from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay to the Atlantic Ocean also have a low profile. Men from France who spoke French loom much larger prior to 1762, such as the intendant Jean Talon and the explorers Jacques Cartier; Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle; and Samuel Champlain. They come to mind fairly quickly when thinking of this geographic area and period in history.

Canada, which became a British possession in 1762, and whose head of state still resides in Buckingham Palace in London, as the Queen of England, seems to maintain a system of keeping Europeans more popular in the country than people born in it. Which could partly explain the poor knowledge many Canadians have of their history, Canadians seem to play a secondary role in it.

There is more complete information about Indians, people born and raised in North America west of the Great Lakes.