Conception and writing . Following his directorial debut with
The Rescuers Down Under (1990),
Mike Gabriel happened upon an image of
Pocahontas in a history book and decided that he wanted to pitch a film about her to Disney executives. Feeling that he was not adept at drawing women, he went to the pitch meeting with a
Xeroxed image of
Tiger Lily from
Peter Pan (1953) which he added animals to. His one sentence pitch for the film was: "An Indian princess falls in love with an English settler, then is torn between her father's wish to destroy the settlers and her need to help them." When Disney executives asked Gabriel to summarize Pocahontas' character, he replied: "She's a girl with a problem." Inspired by
William Shakespeare's play
Romeo and Juliet, the film's directors Mike Gabriel and
Eric Goldberg wanted the story of
Pocahontas to feature two characters of very different backgrounds falling in love. Story supervisor
Tom Sito, who became the project's unofficial historical consultant, did extensive research into the early colonial era and the story of
John Smith and Pocahontas, and was confronted over the historical inaccuracies from historians. Already knowing that in reality Pocahontas married
John Rolfe, Gabriel explained it was felt that "the story of Pocahontas and Rolfe was too complicated and violent for a youthful audience" so instead, they would focus on Pocahontas's meeting with John Smith. While the real Pocahontas was eleven or twelve years old upon meeting John Smith, she is depicted as being around eighteen or nineteen years of age in the film, according to her supervising animator
Glen Keane. Keane explained that this change was made because a film wherein a thirty-year-old Smith falls in love with a child would be "sleazy". Disney sought to consult Native American actors and a Native American organization in an attempt to accurately portray Indigenous culture onscreen. Elaine Dutka of the
Los Angeles Times theorized that this decision was made due to the negative reception of
Aladdin (1992) by the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Disney denied Dutka's theory. Native American activist
Russell Means who plays Pocahontas' father
Powhatan in the film, suggested that Pocahontas say she was "honored" by a gift Powhatan gives in a scene of the film to reflect the ways that Native Americans talked; Disney changed the film's script in accordance with Means' suggestion. Michael Eisner pushed for Pocahontas to have a mother, lamenting that "We're always getting fried for having no mothers." The writers countered that Powhatan was polygamous and formed dynastic alliances among other neighboring tribes by impregnating a local woman and giving away the child, so it was believed that Pocahontas herself probably did not see her mother that much. Storyboard artist
Joe Grant would conceive the idea of the swirling leaves to represent Pocahontas's mother. Pocahontas became the first Native American
Disney Princess and the first
woman of color to be the lead character in a Disney film. As of 2014, she remains the only Disney Princess to be based on a historical figure. The film's crew met with Ray Adams, the chairman of the United Indians of Virginia, and showed him ten minutes of unfinished animation and the song "
Colors of the Wind" to see if they had portrayed Pocahontas in a way which would be more accurate to the
Powhatan culture. Adams felt that the character's outfits were an accurate representation of Native American clothing and commented that Pocahontas was shown as "very beautiful and very intelligent and very loving, which the Native Americans are. We usually aren't portrayed as being loving, but the settlers would not have survived the first three winters if we had not been loving and helped them." Following the demands of
Jeffrey Katzenberg to make the title character "the most idealized and finest woman ever made", Keane first began to seek inspiration for his depictions for Pocahontas from Shirley 'Little Dove' Custalow-McGowan and Devi White Dove, women he had met during the research trip to Virginia. Keane recalled meeting the women: So I turned around and there's this beautiful Indian woman walking up; a Native American. She said 'Are you Glen Keane? The animator that's going to do Pocahontas?' I said 'Well, yeah.' And then from behind another tree another woman came up and she said, 'Well, my name is Shirley Little Dove, and this is my sister Devi White Dove, and we are descended from Pocahontas.' And as they stood there, I mean I took a picture of both of them, and between their faces was Pocahontas' face in my mind – I could see her. Other inspirations were
Christy Turlington,
Natalie Belcon,
Naomi Campbell, Jamie Pillow, white supermodel
Kate Moss, Charmaine Craig, and
Irene Bedard, who provided the character's speaking voice. Keane also looked to a 1620 depiction of Pocahontas from a history book, though Keane would state she was "not exactly a candidate for
Peoples 'Most Beautiful' issue [so] I made a few adjustments to add an Asian feeling to her face." Pocahontas and all her tribesmen were depicted
barefoot in the movie, presumably to signify their connection to nature. Due to the complexity of the color schemes, shapes, and expressions in the animation, a total of 55 animators worked on the design of Pocahontas' character alone, including
Mark Henn and
Pres Romanillos. Dyna Taylor, a Filipina college student, was paid $200 to model for the character. She claimed that she was the main model for Pocahontas' face, and had four sessions with Disney animators over three years. At one point she says she was surrounded by 15 animation artists sketching her facial features. She was given an image of the character that Keane autographed with the words "To Dyna, with gratitude for the inspiration you gave us." Disappointed that she was not credited in the film, Taylor considered suing Disney but was advised against doing so by a lawyer she consulted. Keane told
The New York Times that he deemed Taylor's contributions to the film unworthy of a screen credit. Keane felt that the final version of the character was akin to a tribal version of
Eve and less sexual and more athletic than an animated character like
Jessica Rabbit. ==Themes==