MARK BY WORD: `POCAHONTAS' PARAPHERNALIA ASCENDS ON US ALL

America is one big wigwam these days.

Disney, that Big Mouse of a media giant, is invading our lives again with "Pocahontas."

The full-length cartoon hasn't even reached movie theaters, and already this Indian has conquered America.

Sitting Bull never had this kind of publicity even after he wiped out Custer and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Pocahontas is a doll. She's athletic shoes. She's sheets and pillowcases, not to mention everything from soundtracks to toothbrushes. If the Indians had had this much to sell centuries ago, they would still own Manhattan.

What was once a footnote in colonial history has become big business.

Since it is a federal law that you have to take your children to see all feature-length Disney cartoons, "Pocahontas" should do well.

It is already big with the sheet set.

And Burger King plans to give away 50 million "Pocahontas" figurines, which will end up scattered across America's living room carpets, along with the thousands of other plastic give-aways.

The next thing you know, we will be setting up teepees in our living rooms.

Disney even has a traveling, hands-on exhibit called "The Pocahontas Animation Discovery Adventure."

It has been touring the wilds of America's shopping malls since February.

Barbie and Ken may be in for a scalping. Mattel's unveiling Pocahontas and America's favorite settler, Capt. John Smith.

"Pocahontas" is Disney's 33rd animated feature, but the first to be based on historical figures. Translation: Pocahontas was an Indian woman and John Smith was a white guy.

Beyond that, the facts get a little sketchy.

It's unclear if Pocahontas really saved Smith's life in Virginia in 1607 since there were no talk shows back then to document the legendary act.

Smith wrote that Pocahontas intervened as her father, Chief Powhatan, was preparing to smash him with a stone war club.

This apparently upset Pocahontas, who immediately lobbied for club control.

Pocahontas was reportedly 12 years old at the time of the incident. Smith was 27. That was old back then, particularly in Jamestown, a swampy place where settlers generally died of starvation because there were no food stamps or pizza parlors.

In the movie, Pocahontas is accompanied by Meeko, a mischievous raccoon and Flit, an excited hummingbird.

There were no leash laws in those days so raccoons and hummingbirds could play together.

By 1608, the Indians and settlers were at war. Pocahontas was lured aboard a British ship and held captive for a time, where she was forced to listen to Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

She ended up marrying Thomas Rolfe, a settler who started the tobacco industry and lung cancer in colonial America.

She was later baptized. Since credit cards hadn't been invented yet, she and her husband had to travel to London to raise money for the colonists.

She died of smallpox before she could return to Virginia to do cigarette commercials.

History like that makes you want to get out the peace pipe and smoke it, preferably before you see the movie.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.