One very recent day, Edward Norton woke up without imagining that he would find out that he is a relative of Pocahontas. Or at least of the woman from the true story that inspired said character and the known stories about it. This was stated by a television program that is dedicated to tracking the ancestry of famous people in order to learn the most curious data.
This television program is called Finding Your Roots and the special guest of his last contribution was the actor of fight club. During the footage of said episode (via) Edward Norton was told that the woman known as Pocahontas is a twelfth great-grandmother.
Norton comments that such a story is told regularly in his family, but he always thought it was nothing more than a legend. “Pocahontas is in fact your 12th great-grandmother,” historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. told her.
“John Rolfe and Pocahontas were married on April 5, 1614. Shakespeare died in 1616, just to put this in perspective,” the historian told him. “Pocahontas died sometime in March 1617 at Grave’s End, England, and John Rolfe died about March 1622.”
The Powhatan woman was the daughter of the leader of the tribe of the same name, during the 17th century. The settlement of said Native American population was located in what is now the vicinity of Richmond, Virginia. The history of this tribe has been told in various ways through the Pocahontas legend.
Through the Norton program he also learned about other issues. Like some of his distant relatives include a civil war soldier who wrote letters to Abraham Lincoln; a 19th century union activist; and that her third great-grandfather owned slaves. To be more exact, she had “seven human beings in captivity,” along with a 55-year-old man, a 37-year-old woman, and five girls, ages 10, 9, 8, 6, and 4.
“The short answer is these things are uncomfortable, and you should be uncomfortable with them, everyone should be uncomfortable with it,” Norton said upon learning of it. “It is not a judgment on you and your own life, but it is a judgment on the history of this country and it must be recognized first and foremost, and then it must be faced.”
Edward Norton can currently be seen in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The movie is now available on Netflix.
Luis Angel H. Mora My most stable relationship is with the movies, parties and music. I love writing about cinema, meeting new people and sharing ideas. Idealistic in every way, I guess that’s my Ascendant Aquarian trait.