From leading the Underground Railroad to heading the Confederate Army, readers will learn about the courageous women and men who shaped the Civil War and helped America define the meaning of freedom.

The True Story of Pocahontas is the first public publication of the Powhatan perspective that has been maintained and passed down from generation to generation within the Mattaponi Tribe, and the first written history of Pocahontas by her own people.

The amazing story and alluring personality of Pocahontas (1595–1617) have endured the enlargement of legend and the distortions of time, as if waiting for Mossiker's skill, scholarship, and sensitivity to reveal Pocahontas as she was. This biography illuminates the dual world within which she struggled to identify herself, and her enormous impact on its leading figures: the first encounters and skirmishes between Indians and Englishmen in 1607; Pocahontas's dramatic rescue of Captain John Smith and her later abduction; her marriage to the Father of Tobacco, John Rolfe; the fateful voyage to England and her early death. The book also examines the myths and commercialization that have entombed Pocahontas through the centuries. In absorbing detail this vivid biography resurrects the real Pocahontas and unveils the uses—noble and ignoble—America has made of her.

Discusses the life and people of Pocahontas, her involvement with the Jamestown settlers, her trip to England, and her death. Includes activities, sidebars, a map, and a chronology.

Pocahontas (Matoaka, and later known as Rebecca Rolfe, c. 1595-1617) was a Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the paramount chief of a network of tributary tribal nations in the Tidewater region of Virginia. In a well-known historical anecdote, she is said to have saved the life of an Indian captive, Englishman John Smith, in 1607 by placing her head upon his own when her father raised his war club to execute him. The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, first published in 1906. Elmer Boyd Smith (1860-1943) was an American author. He was born in St. John, New Brunswick, raised in Boston and educated in France. He worked for the Riverside Press in Boston then he travelled to Paris where he studied drawings and paintings. In 1896 he wrote and illustrated his first work entitled My Village. In 1898 he returned to Boston where he illustrated books for Houghton Mifflin.