Sir John Ratcliffe

[swilhelm73]

So I was reading an article that was rather critical of Disney's 'history lessons', and in particular the article talked about Sir John Ratcliffe, a stock Dead White European Male (TM) badguy in Disney's Pocahontas.

Anyway, in the movie, Sir John Ratcliffe goes around generally oppressing the local indians and being all around mean.

In real life, he was supposedly nailed to a tree and skinned alive by the self same peaceful natives.

Anyone know if this is actually what happened to him? I know the historical Pocahontas has no relation to the Disney or historically revisionist one...

 

[unmerged(5503)]

I found a very good link to the history of Virginia,there you can read more about Sir john Ratcliffe.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mtjhtml/mtjvatm2.html timeline 1553-1743

 

[swilhelm73]

Hmm, well they do mention he was killed by the local natives, but not how...

Thanks anyway...

 

[unmerged(547)]

Yep, he payed the ultimate price for not being "PC" to the Native community in his day (from the native perspective that is )

 

[swilhelm73]

Does anyone know what he did that angered the natives so much? Or where they just in the mood to get medieval on a (soon to be) Dead White European Male (TM)

 

[unmerged(5503)]

Originally posted by swilhelm73
So I was reading an article that was rather critical of Disney's 'history lessons', and in particular the article talked about Sir John Ratcliffe, a stock Dead White European Male (TM) badguy in Disney's Pocahontas.

Anyway, in the movie, Sir John Ratcliffe goes around generally oppressing the local indians and being all around mean.

In real life, he was supposedly nailed to a tree and skinned alive by the self same peaceful natives.

Anyone know if this is actually what happened to him? I know the historical Pocahontas has no relation to the Disney or historically revisionist one...

Here I found a link referring to Pocahontas.

Pocahontas: History vs. Disney


http://www.olc.edu/olc/gjones/Pocahontas.htm

 

[swilhelm73]

Re: Re: Sir John Ratcliffe

Originally posted by Adler


Here I found a link referring to Pocahontas.

Pocahontas: History vs. Disney

http://www.olc.edu/olc/gjones/Pocahontas.htm

Interesting...This is at odds with some of the things I have read before:

John Smith managed to escape from the Powhatans, primarily on his own, due to his experience as an Austrian (vs Turks) single combat champion.

Pocahontas liked to infuriate the colonists by appearing before them naked.

This article hear talks about Smith's Turkish expedition:
http://sailor.gutenberg.org/etext98/4nmcg10.txt

but also states it was Pocahontas who saved Smith's life. I wonder how many people know he fought the Turk???

 

[Dark Knight]

AFAIK, the story of Pocahontas saving John Smith's life was first told by John Smith after Pocahontas had died, so it seems rather unlikely to be true.