Pocahontas the star of Jamestown's 400th 

Daniel said Pocahontas would not have been at the ceremony as depicted by Smith and represented in sandstone on the Capitol Rotunda.

"No children would have been allowed in that ceremony," she said.

Smith had a reputation as a braggart but was generally agreed to be fearless and was much more inclined to engage the Indians than his fellow settlers. That did not extend to his purported romance with Pocahontas, a coupling promoted in director Terrence Malick's dreamy film "The New World" and the Disney animated film that bears her name.

Daniel, Townsend and other critics contend that Pocahontas played a key role in Jamestown, though perhaps not as dramatic as Smith and his fellow settlers would have us believe. The child, Daniel writes, was the embodiment of peace the Indians sought with the newcomers.

As her father's favored daughter, she often would accompany Powhatan to Jamestown fort.

"Virtually, Pocahontas became the Powhatan symbol of peace, both as a child and as an adult," Daniel wrote.

Townsend argues much of the familiar Pocahontas story is simply feel-good history.

"The fictional version has been resistant to change because white Americans love it so much," she wrote.

Rasmussen is an unabashed fan of the unvarnished Pocahontas story. "Why would you want to renounce the legacy?" he asks.

Still, he acknowledges the Jamestown story and its principal players are part of history subject to who is recording it or interpreting it.

"The story of Pocahontas has had enormous appeal ... and the theme that runs through it is her story has been adapted to whatever agenda was on the table at the moment," Rasmussen said.

Daniel says that the book she wrote with Custalow reflects the version of Pocahontas from the Mattaponi point of view. The Mattaponi comprise one of the original core tribes of the Powhatan Chiefdom.

Because of discrimination against Indians and fears their version of events would be ridiculed, "we would not have considered telling the true story of Pocahontas," Mattaponi Chief Carl "Lone Eagle" Custalow, the brother of Linwood Custalow, wrote in a letter published in the new book. "People have not looked through our cultural lens at history. It's time to look at the other side of history, the sacred history of the Mattaponi."

He says that "The True Story of Pocahontas" is the first written history of Pocahontas by her own people and "is vastly different from the history you have been taught in school, in novels, or in movies."

The book and exhibit likely will not be the last word on Pocahontas.

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