ABSTRACT
The Pocahontas-Smith-Rolfe story has all the distinctive features of an American origin myth. Of much significance is the era when what had been a colorful local story achieved nationwide popularity. The mythopoeic treatment of the Pocahontas-Rolfe episode confirmed later American intentions to include native peoples in their Melting Pot ideology and policies—to solve the Indian problem by fusing the latter's identity with their own. The actual experiences of the Algonquian tribes of coastal Virginia after the death of Pocahontas offer some striking contrasts to the sentiments embodied in the later Pocahontas myth. In 1880s the Pamunkey began to use the Pocahontas story to validate their Indian identity in the eyes and minds of their contemporaries: White, Black, and Red. Given the importance of the Pocahontas-Smith story and play for the Pamunkey around 1900, it seems odd that none of the anthropologists who did fieldwork among the Virginia tribes during the twentieth century paid any attention to it.
