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For many Americans, this weekend feels like the start of summer – an odd time to think about the first day of school. But today’s article by historian Peter Mancall had me digging out an old photo, snapped on the patio of my childhood home just before the first bus of the year arrived. Maybe 7 or 8, I’m holding two very ‘90s accessories: a Pocahontas backpack and lunch bag.

Pocahontas’ Disney-fied face was everywhere at the time, and some aspects of the film have been celebrated. But it takes liberties – to put it very lightly – with the facts of Pocahontas’ own story. Bigger picture, the movie romanticized Native American cultures and downplayed the violence of colonization.

Mancall uses the only surviving portrait of Pocahontas to tell a different story – one that better reflects colonial history and how the English viewed Native Americans. In sharp contrast to her screen persona, the black-and-white engraving is almost severe: a young woman in a heavy, full-sleeved dress, who wears a massive lace collar and holds a quill pen. The engraving highlights English people’s mistaken assumption that Native Americans would “rapidly embrace the colonists’ culture,” he writes.

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