The actor Edward Norton discovered that the Native American Pocahontas (1595-1617), daughter of the chief of the Powhatan territory, is her twelfth great-grandmother.
The American actor, screenwriter, director and film producer obtained this information during Tuesday’s episode of the genealogy history show. Looking for your rootson PBS television hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.
“This it makes you understand that you are a small part of the history of humanity“Commented Edward Norton after learning of the event during the broadcast of the program.
The family tree
Gates assured Norton that English colonist John Rolfe and Pocahontas were part of his family tree and that his great-grandparents had been married on April 5, 1614 in Virginia.
During the program dedicated to tracing the ancestral histories of celebrities, it was also revealed that Norton’s third great-grandfather, John Winstead, owned a slave family consisting of a man, a woman and five girls.
On this, the actor The Fighting Club (1999) confessed that he was not proud of that part of his story and that it was something that made him feel “uncomfortable”.
“It’s not a judgment on your own life, but it’s a judgment on the history of this country and you have to recognize it first and then you have to face it (…) When you read ‘Eight Year Slave’, you just want to die,” snapped the protagonist of the recent premiere Glass onion: a knife-edged mystery.
Some of Edward Norton’s best known works have been films such as primal fear (1996), by Gregory Hoblit, his portrayal of a former neo-Nazi leader in America Story X (1998), as well as her participation in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film, bird (2014), for which he respectively earned an Academy Award nomination.
Pocahontas story
Part of the story of Pocahontas became known thanks to the Disney animated film of the same name in the mid-1990s and other subsequent films, such as The new world (2005) by Terrence Malick.
Born in the 17th centuryPocahontas was a Native American, daughter of Chief Powhatanof the Algonquian Confederacy in Virginia. In her native language, her real name was Matoaka, but she was known by her nickname, Pokahantesú.
The English colonists pronounced it Pocahontas and so it went down in history. She met them when she was just eleven years old, when they came to her territory to build settlements.
The tribe to which the young woman belonged did not like the presence of strangers in their land, so they They decided to demonstrate by kidnapping one of their leaders. It was John Smith.
The Englishman was taken to Werowocomoco, one of the areas of the Powhatan Empire, and was sentenced to death. However, he was never executed. Pocahontas didn’t allow it. Legend has it that, at the time of his execution, the young woman jumped on him to protect him.
Difficult to know what really happened since the only version of events that has come down to our days is that of John Smith. Years and even centuries later, that version was challenged.
Be that as it may, what is certain is that a period of respect, rather than peace, began in which a friendship began between the natives and the English. In fact the latter, unaccustomed to the territory, became very hungry, so they the children of the tribe, together with Pocahontas, approached to offer them food.
However, this quiet trance didn’t last long, as the settlers put their ambition first and began to take over more and more land. As chief of the tribe, the girl’s father invited strangers to visit the city, but Pocahontas betrayed him and warned the English of his intentions: it was a trap to kill them.
For love? The truth is there is no historical reference to the version offered by Disney about the relationship between the girl and Smith. In fact, she was just a child when all of this happened.
Source: EFE
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Source: Clarin
