#also i'm not convinced the english/spanish/whoever would have won at all

[shanastoryteller]

sound the drums of war

okay so i’ve gotten a lot of requests to do a retold fairytale about pocahontas, which is a really reasonable thing to request since i’ve done so many retold tales about disney movies, but here’s the thing

pocahontas the movie is easily one the most messed up things that modern media has ever produced, and i’ll belt out color of the wind like nobody’s business, but that doesn’t change the fact that disney took a history about lying, abduction, rape, and torture and … turned it into a love story. which. what. who thought that was a good idea???

so. look. this is the only retold fairytale i have in me for pocahontas. i know it’s not what anyone who requested this actually wanted, so. sorry.

we’ll keep disney’s aged up premise and characters, because the truth is just too sad to touch at all. we’ll keep pocahontas as her name, because it wasn’t her real name (her real name was matoaka).

okay here we go

we have pocahontas, the young daughter of chief powhatan. she is spirited and flighty, having no fear of jumping off waterfalls or any other manner of dangerous things. what does she fear? growing up, responsibility, having to be a grown woman in her tribe and all that that entails, of being forced into a marriage she doesn’t want.

she grew up with kokoum, she knows him, he is a good man and a strong man, he will provide for her everything she could need or want – but she doesn’t think that’s a good enough reason to marry him. he’s a good leader, he’ll probably be elected to replace her father when the time comes, and she will move on from being the daughter of the chief to the wife of the chief.

something in her rankles at being the daughter of, the wife of, to being just ‘of’ anything.

she goes to grandmother willow often, lamenting her woes. and she’s no mystical woman, no shaman, but grandmother willow talks to her anyway. (she wonders if grandmother willow talks to kekata, the real shaman of the tribe, the man who speaks to things she doesn’t understand and knows many things she’d doesn’t. she never asks though, somehow afraid of what the answer will be.)

she is known for being clever, for being smart, but knowing too much and thinking too little, or perhaps the opposite, of knowing too little and thinking too much. her status allows her a freedom to pursue what she likes, and she’s one the most learned people in the village, going from master to master ever since she was a small child and soaking up whatever knowledge she can. she has a particular gift for languages.

sometimes she feels like nakoma is the only one who understands her, but even nakoma urges her to settle, to sit, to make herself small so that she fits in the place the world has carved out for her.

pocahontas is not a girl that knows how to settle.

so she meets john, and he’s so strange and different than her, and he has kind eyes and pretty smile. they don’t speak the same words, but she’s smart, and quick, and within a few months she’s speaking to him in his foreign tongue. she likes his light eyes and light hair and light skin, and thinks because he is kind to her then so must the rest of his people be kind.

she is wrong.

she should have known she was wrong in the beginning, when he called her stupid and did not know how food is grown or how to walk in the woods so that the animals are not startled. big and clunky and loud, like a baby, not like something she could love, or grow to love.

kokoum is – shot, is the word they use, with their strange weapons of metal. their weapons are like them, big and loud and imprecise. kokoum will live, kekata says, but it is a near thing. and pocahontas looks down at kokoum, the bear paw prints tattooed onto his chest to show his bravery, and thinks of the gun that shot him, that required no bravery at all.

pocahontas makes a choice.

it is not a choice that a child can make, it’s not even a choice that a woman of the tribe should make, not a daughter of the chief or the wife of the chief or even a chief at all.

but pocahontas makes it.

white men march to them, holding their powerful metal guns, and they are a small tribe. perhaps the pale men’s destructive power could be beaten with numbers, but they have neither numbers nor power. so when the time comes she throws herself over john, shielding him, and uses her clever tongue to plead his life from her father, from her people.

john does not die.

her people do not die.

the pale men with their guns leave.

this is unrest in the tribe, but she does not address it, does not listen to it.

that night, she goes to nakoma and says, “do you trust me?”

“i hate when you ask me that,” she answers, which is all that pocahontas needs.

they sneak down to the settlement that night, and sneak past their guards, the ones that are drunk on their supposed victory, their supposed peace. she steals every gun she can find as they sleep, silently tiptoeing into private room to take them. nakoma is smart, and she takes the bullets too, a stubborn set to her mouth as they fill baskets with their stolen good and balance them on their heads like baskets of corn on their trek back to the village.

as the sun rises, pocahontas and nakoma go to her father and place the baskets in front of him. “now,” pocahontas says fiercely, “now maybe we shall win.”

“i thought you did not court war, daughter?” the chief asks, looking down at these strange weapons.

“i don’t,” she says, “but neither will i ignore it’s call and have our heads be forfeit.”

and fearless, flighty pocahontas gathers the men, and she tells them grimly that it’s time, that the white men will come for them as soon as they realize their weapons are gone. her father is a peacetime chief, but he leads them into battle.

these pale men are not warriors. they don’t know how to fight without their guns, not really, and they are slaughtered.

pocahontas watches from high above as the battle happens, nakoma’s hand in hers. she flinches when john’s head is removed from his body, but she does not scream.

john was kind.

but one kind man is not worth her nation.

they bury the bodies and burn whatever they don’t find value in.

kokoum wakes to find pocahontas by his side. she is the one that tells him what happens while he slept, while he recovered. she tells him everything, all that she did, and he looks at her with solemn eyes and says, “there will be more. they will keep coming.”

“i know,” she says, and her voice cracks. “i did not think we could defeat them, i thought peace would be the best option. but they take and take and take, and kill what they cannot take. their people must have kindness in them, but it is not kindness they sent.” she takes a deep breath and presses her hand to the center of kokoum’s chest, and says, “teach me how to fight. i don’t want to have to spend the next battle standing by and watching.”

and there is an uproar at it, but the chief agrees to it. as soon as kokoum is healed, pocahontas becomes his student. finally the chief’s daughter has found her drive, her purpose, and it’s not the one he wanted her to have, not the one he wanted her to need to have, but it’s there, and it is hers.

they know their land is big, that the pale people could come from any direction, could find a tribe who would show them kindness and hospitality and suffer for it. so pocahontas, with her gift of languages, who already knows so many tongues of the tribes and nations besides her own, goes traveling. nakoma goes with her, and kokoum tries, but she tells him that he must stay here, that their tribe needs him. he can’t argue against that, because it’s the truth.

she spreads her knowledge as far as she can, spreads her message. these white men are dangerous. they must be stopped. be kind, but be wary. do not tolerate lies. do not allow betrayal. any pale man with a gun is an enemy.

she finds others who have encountered these people, some good, some bad. she gains a greater understanding of their language, learns how to speak and read the pale man’s language as well as her own.

pocahontas has always been charismatic and bewitching, someone who’s very presence is mesmerizing. she uses that charisma now to bring chiefs together, wise men and woman together, speaks to councils and urges them all to set aside their differences, just for now. the enemies they have within their borders can be fought once they have the defeated those outside them.

people come looking for jamestown. pocahontas is there this time, and she does not sit and watch. nakoma dresses her for battle and squeezes her hands and then pocahontas goes to stand next to kokoum, and as one they go roaring into battle.

after, kekata tattoos marks of bravery into her skin. her people elect a wartime chief, when it becomes clear that war is what they’re in now. pocahontas expects it to be kokoum, and she’s proud, proud of him and proud to continue helping him.

that’s not what happens.

instead the people elect her.

it’s far from traditional to have a female wartime chief, but when she says this they tell her this is far from a traditional war.

so pocahontas meets with the other wartime chiefs, and it’s a war that stops and starts but never truly ends. the pale men keep coming, looking for gold they don’t have, and they keep fighting back, luring them into their land where they know all and the clumsy pale men know nothing, and kill them there.

pocahontas comes back, dripping in blood that’s not her own, and nakoma is there, as she always is. she peels off pocahontas’s blood-soaked leathers and washes her skin and her hair, stitches up her wounds and gives her marshmallow bark to ease the pain. “one day i’ll have to do this one my own,” pocahontas says weakly, “when you get yourself a husband.”

nakoma looks up from where she’s soaking pocahontas’s clothes to prevent staining, and there’s a wry twist to the edge of her mouth. “i’ll get married when you do, pocahontas.”

that ends up being very true.

after the next battle nakoma loses her patience and is kissing pocahontas as soon as she’s close enough, and kokoum and the others are cheering and yelling. pocahontas has a gash across her upper thigh, and she blames that when her knees give out and nakoma has to hold her against her and dips her.

they get married the following year, and very little changes besides that.

at some point, the pale men figure out they can’t win this war by force, not when their body count keeps rising and not a single inch of land is taken. they send scholars and people with smarmy grins to negotiate, to ask for peace. except pocahontas was prepared for this, and she made sure everyone else was too.

all the chiefs speak the pale man’s languages, or have trusted advisor’s that too, and all the loopholes and tricks in their contracts are neatly found and picked apart.

finally, finally, the pale men accept that the people of this land cannot be fought, or tricked, but they can be negotiated with. so the war ends, and commerce and trade being. the tribes set up a council with representatives from each tribe to deal with the other people from other countries that come to them, since trying to explain that they are a people of many nations only seem to confuse the pale men.

it’s been decades, but the war is over, and they’ve won. pocahontas steps down as the wartime chief, and kokoum is elected as the peacetime chief. pocahontas serves on the council dealing with foreigners, and her curiosity is endlessly satisfied as she finally gets a chance to speak with and deal with the people from these foreign nations who are not soldiers or warriors or greedy beyond measure. she quite likes their craftsmen, their merchants, their scientists.

so begins a time of mostly peaceful trade and exploration between the foreign countries of the world. although this was thanks to many, many people, pocahontas is largely considered one of the most instrumental in ensuring the continued freedom and prosperity of her people, and all the other people living from her coast to the other.

she lives happily ever after with her beloved wife nakoma, and often visits her dear friend kokoum when given the opportunity.

hers is a name forever remembered in history.