The new world

The New World is a film that takes place in the year 1607 (17th century). The
cultural aspects that we see are diverse, starting from the beginning of the film, we
can see the English arriving in what were new American territories, they did not
intend to conquer the place, they simply wanted to have a new colony there,
Colonization led to the creation of Jamestown, known as the first English
settlement in the current United States, Jamestown was established on the banks
of the James River, a territory that we now know as James City, Virginia.

The protagonists of this film are characters that did exist in real life, first we have
Captain John Smith, who was an English marine soldier and writer, for which he is
known mainly for being in charge of establishing the first English colony in North
American territory. The other protagonist is a Native American woman, in the film
she is assigned the name Rebecca, but in real life she was called Pocahontas or
as it was in her language, Matoaka, she was the eldest daughter of Chief
Powhatan.

Another mention that we can see is that of the Powhatan ethnic group, which was
a tribe that extended from what is now Washington DC to North Carolina in the
United States, this tribe was established in around 30 towns and had a population
of between eight thousand and thirteen thousand people. The language with which
they communicated were the Algonquian languages, this term was the one that
was given to languages such as: Ojibwa, Cree, Kikapú, Fox, Shawnee,
Menominee, Mohican, Potawatomi, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Sauk and Mikmac. All
these languages formed a linguistic family among the American tribes.

The events that occurred at the beginning of the film are very similar to the events
told in real history, since Chief Pawhatan received the English with courtesy,
supplied them with food and taught them about growing food, all this in the period
of winter. Captain John Smith was captured a year after his arrival, to free him we
can see that it was at a request from Pocahontas, although this is really an event
that is not yet known with certainty how it happened.
The last aspect that I could notice was a habit that English people had in those
times, in the seventeenth century, the English used to spend a long time to take a
bath with water, what they did to keep clean and smell good was to put talcum
powder in their face and body.

Student: Gabriel De Jesús Cárdenas Paredes

Group Number: Cultura Americana 20