The Pocahontas Slur and Lessons We Should Have Learned

By Bob Ferris

Pocahontas

President Trump’s recent comments about Elizabeth Warren and her potential connections to the Cherokee and Delaware tribes touch all of us, because all families tell stories about who they are. Many of them are simply tales, but are often deeply believed.  In my family there have always been these swirling rumors of Amerind blood.  Look at those cheekbones!  And with nearly four centuries of exposure on this continent it would seem that sometime and someplace there would have been some exchange of genetic material.  This hope or idea is not supported by research or DNA, yet still it persists.

But the Pocahontas comment from the President, whose own family closet is not so free of skeletons, stings also because it is in part a slur casually belittling those that were here before the mass of us came as immigrants, and in many cases as refugees or unwillingly.  The characterization casts a negative dint on Native Americans at a time when they valiantly work at Standing Rock to hold the line on what they see as their treaty rights against the oily juggernaut that threatens our not only our political system but the likelihood that our economic, social and biological constructs will survive for future generations.  This is all part of the idea that if you degrade and belittle an enemy it makes it easier to destroy them later.

Depiction of Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock.

But before I charged down this corridor of thought I wanted to see what swamp or moral high ground my own family might hold.  Through my mother’s and father’s sides of the family I descend through two passengers on the Mayflower, James Chilton and Richard Warren, respectively.  So my family got off to a rocky start in terms of relationships with the tribes.  We were the ones who took what was not ours and needed welfare to survive.  Sure it was nearly four hundred years ago, but it bears remembering.

Benjamin Church

From Plymouth Rock forward in nearly all the colonies and Canada my family seemed to make friends and enemies of those who came before us in nearly equal measure.  For example, I descend too from Benjamin Church who famously made friends with some natives and adopted their combat techniques to fight against other warring tribes in the King Philip, King William and Queen Anne Wars.   Benjamin is credited with forming the idea of the American Rangers and these adopted techniques have been instrumental in this country to this day.  He seemed a person who could make war or friends with Native Americans as the situation demanded.

Commemorative coin honoring Penelope Van Princis Stout (front and back). 

I also descend from Penelope Van Princis Stout who is often called the Mother of Monmouth. She was shipwrecked along with her ill husband on the New Jersey shore.  Her husband was killed by natives and she was severely wounded in the attack and left for dead only to be rescued by an Indian who took her to New Amsterdam and safety.  Much mystery surrounds this early settler but her experience with native peoples was certainly mixed.

Announcement in here.

And that is what I find mainly when I look through pages and pages of interactions.  Mary Ball Munro's father and her siblings were killed in an Indian raid in 1675.  Marie Jeane Guie was shot with an arrow during the Battle of Frenchtown in 1813.  The sons of James Robb and Margaret Barr(e), David and James II, fought  Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe along with their brother-in-law John Waller whose father John “KW” Waller had been held captive by the Indians in Kentucky for a period of two years before escaping.  And Colonel Thomas Gales served as a well-respected Indian Agent in Louisiana until he was felled by a combination of disease and depression following the death of his young wife (see above).

General William Walton Morris

Perhaps the distillation of this family tendency towards situational relationships with Native Americans is best illustrated by General William Walton Morris who graduated the Goat of his class at West Point in 1820.  Morris was a young lieutenant in charge of the artillery (two field pieces) during the fight against the Arikara in August 1823 under Henry Leavenworth and Bennet Riley alluded to in the recent movie The Revenant.  While at West Point, Morris befriended fellow classmate David Moniac who was a member of the Creek tribe and the first Native American graduate of that institute.  Moniac was killed fighting the Seminoles in 1836.  Morris fought alongside Creeks in his own battles against the Seminoles in Florida during that same conflict.   Of note too Grandson Lt. Colonel Joseph Gales Ramsay latter served at Ft. Riley in Kansas named for his grandfather’s former superior officer when it was the home base for a certain George Armstrong Custer.

Book illustration of the 1675 Lancaster Massachusetts raid where John Ball, Mary Ball Munro's father, was killed along with her siblings.

The bottom line of this historic and genealogical ramble here is that my ancestors killed, were killed and befriended Native Americans depending upon what seemed to serve their or the Indian's purposes at that time.  But, of course, this same statement could be made for my ancestors and pretty much any members of a particular race, creed, or country they came in contact with.  And maybe that is really the important point and lesson here.  The critical variable here is not race, creed, or country of origin but how we treat and view one another and whether or not we offer a hand or a fist to others.  Walls versus tables send similar messages.

Jane Rolfe Bolling daughter of John Rolfe and Jane Poythress.

So back to Pocahontas whose son John Rolfe married Jane Poythress daughter of Francis Poythress the Immigrant and my many generations removed great-grandfather.  We should not stand for Pocahontas' name being used in this manner.   All of us should grow from these collective experiences and get beyond this sort of behavior.  And given that San Jose is in many places underwater at this point and the oceans are going through massive changes, maybe it is also time that we listen to what these phenomenon are telling us rather than what pipeline interests and their politically-installed advocates say.  Perhaps too it is time that we speak to those at Standing Rock with our mouths and brains rather than with water cannons and troops.  Maybe it is too late, but you never know when this often taught lesson will finally be absorbed.