The Pocahontas Stakes is a Grade III American Thoroughbred horse race for two-year-old fillies over a distance of 1+1⁄16 one mile on the dirt scheduled annually in September at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.
The race was first held on Thanksgiving Day, 27 November 1969, and was fittingly named for Pocahontas, the daughter of Native-American chief Powhatan, who aided the early American settlers, and the same-named Pocahontas, the 19th-century British-bred thoroughbred mare, who had a great influence on the breed.
[1] The stakes race remained a Thanksgiving Day event until 1982, when it was moved to the early weeks of the Fall Meet.
[5] The new scheduling allowed the Pocahontas to become a major prep for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies.
[6] The Pocahontas is the first step on the annual Road to the Kentucky Oaks, a points system to qualify for the Kentucky Oaks at Churchill Downs in the spring of the following year.