Invited to the show “Finding Your Roots”, the American actor Edward Norton discovered that Pocahontas was his 12e great grandmother.
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“Pocahontas is effectively your twelfth great-grandmother. In an excerpt from the American show Finding Your Rootswhich could be translated as “Find your ancestors”, broadcast on the American channel PBS, an extract which was relayed on Twitter, actor Edward Norton discovers that the family legend was true: he is indeed one of the descendants of Pocahontas .
“You are his direct descendant”, assures him the historian Henry Louis Gates Jr, for whom this filiation is “no doubt”. The historian studied the actor’s family tree to come to this conclusion. “It makes me realize how much we are only a small piece of history,” said the actor recently on the poster of Glass Onion.
Through a direct paper trail leading to Pocahontas and John Rolfes’ 1614 marriage certificate, @EdwardNorton learns that his family lore appears to be true. His 12th great-grandmother is Pocohantas!
Tune in TOMORROW night on @PBS at 8/7c for the Finding Your Roots premiere!! pic.twitter.com/54sTTt2YKY
— Henry Louis Gates Jr (@HenryLouisGates) January 2, 2023
Later in the show, however, Edward Norton made a less exciting discovery: his third great-grandfather owned seven slaves, including five girls aged 4 to 10. “Those things are hard to hear,” he sighed. When you read “slave at 8”, it makes you want to die. »
One of the founding myths of the United States
Pocahontas was an Indian born in Jamestown, Virginia in 1595, who was enslaved by the English and then forced to marry a tobacco planter named John Wolfe in 1614. Returning to her native lands, the English then used his wife to extol the benefits of colonialism, presenting Pocahontas as “a princess of the New World who renounced her barbaric culture to adopt Christian civilization”, explains the magazine. Geo.
His story has since become one of the founding myths of the United States, and his life is the source of many legends and literary and cinematographic adaptations, the most famous of which remains the Disney studios film released in 1995. However, the legend that she would have saved John Smith – and who inspired the Disney studios for their cartoon in 1995 – would only be a simple myth imagined by the famous British sailor to serve his own image…