Powhatan and Pocahontas Dilemma

When we enable [Pocahontas’] own story to develop, we discover that not only was she more than we initially believed, but that she was also different from what we had been told about her at the time this country was founded. (xi).

Pocahontas has rarely been a figure of Native American capitulation to British colonialism, despite being as well-known in American folklore as the Indian woman who rescued Captain John Smith of Jamestown. Pocahontas is given a fiercely independent and pedantic existence both inside and outside of her country by the author, who seems to be speaking in a very monotone voice. In this uncommonly accurate and hypothetical history of Pocahontas, Townsend traces Pocahontas’s life from her childhood and youth “”when her strength and athletic ability rivaled the best of either sex“ (Townshend 14) to her impending marriage to John Rolfe and her move to England. Townsend acknowledges Pocahontas to be shrewd in fighting for her people’s best interests, self-assured and confident of her abilities to build the personal identity in a world dominated by powerful and imperialistic leaders. This paper thus seeks to discuss some of the achievements of Pocahontas both to her people and globally.

When we allow [Pocahontas’s] own story to unfold, we see not only that she was more than we thought but at the moment of this country’s inception was different from what we have been led to believe” (xi).

What did Townshend mean by these words?

Pocahontas was the daughter of King Powhatan who inherited six chiefdoms while still young. Despite the fact that she was an heir to the king, she was very hardworking, courageous and determined in her dealings. “She worked with her father’s other children and their mothers, negotiating her way successfully among them, earning or retaining her age, Little Playful One” (Townsend 17). She was known to be rowdy, and colonists have accounts of her playing necked in the village and such. Pocahontas even decided to get married at the age of twelve where she got married to a warrior by the name Kocoom. Besides her characters, she was very generous and sympathetic when she saved Jamestown from starvation and Indian attack. She brought food to colonists, acted as intermediary and sent a sounding warning to the English who were humiliating her people by threatening them with the impending ambush by her father. Pocahontas was undoubtedly a very bright and intelligent girl who was a resourceful translator, and her father Powhatan seldom used her skills to confuse the whites. According to Townshend, the Indians were well aware that the whites were harmful to their interests and had plans to take their territories. It was then just a question of how the whites should be handled. Neither naïve nor innocent, Pocahontas, confronted the vast power of the English with diplomacy, violence, and sophistication. Indeed, Pocahontas’s life is proof of the skillful intelligence that Native Americans, always vigilant of her material cons, brought versus the military power of the colonizing English. Collaboration, resistance, and deception, espionage: Pocahontas’s life is reflected in a road map to Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overpowering odds and the hope for a likeness of independence worth her name.

Both the Natives Americans and the immigrants tried various strategies to overpower Indians. The English were warned not to display the use of their weapons to Indians because if the Indians saw how the firearm worked, they would promptly steal it. Colonizers thought that Pocahontas could use her skills her expertise and master how the firearm was being operated. Bargaining with the “savages” (Townshend 15) seldom yielded little more than a few sacks of food and cooking pots as the natives struggle to get the white man’s weapons.

However, Pocahontas had her ways of negotiating on behalf of Indians. She often involving long, silent pause which was regarded to be a respectful consideration of what had just been said by the colonizers. Colonizers thought of intermarriage as a long game of besting one’s enemy. Traditionally, inter-related families would not war with one another. Therefore, the marriages of Pocahontas to the colonialists who were her father’s enemy, and Pocahontas trips to foreign regions, were considered as the part of a long-standing strategy, and not necessarily a show of any great love on Pocahontas part. Undoubtedly, as John Rolfe’s wife Pocahontas was a virtual prisoner, forced eat special foods, to wear uncomfortable clothing and as well as to work his land, run his household and to struggle to cope with a second language.

However, it seems clear from historical facts that she would have benefited from her adventures, blessed with a natural intelligence and curiosity that enabled her to dig deeply into the foreigner’s culture and traditions, even involving a manifest religious conversion. Townsend wrote the book in part to dispel the mythology about Pocahontas and her people, and to try to give the readers a realistic understanding of the dynamics between the conquerors and the conquered. She draws from a large variety of sources to illustrate her point - that the Indians were savvier than they are generally given credit for, and yet with all their cunning and their advanced degree of civilization, there was no way to stem the tide of white immigration or hold on to the wealth of forest and fauna they commanded before the incursion of the Europeans.

The sad fiction of Pocahontas’s connection to the English seems painfully evident in the reaction of her husband John Rolfe to her death, possibly of pneumonia, at an inn in England. He left their son behind and never saw him again, sailing on the next tide back to the colonies. As Pocahontas had said to him, not long before her demise, “Your countrymen will lie much” (Townsend 20). Up to the end, he called her by her childhood name, and she knew the truth of that - whatever his feelings for her, he would always see her and her people as children, inferior to himself.

Why do you think it is important that we know the “complicated” (xi) story of Pocahontas rather than the myth? Why is it especially important for our understanding of U.S women’s history?

To my opinion, it is important that we know the complicated story of Pocahontas story since it was necessary and relevant to the current United States’ current governance structure where women have been lawfully allowed to occupy different leadership positions in government. Pocahontas portrays few courageous and intelligent women who have gone beyond their boundaries to ensure change in the society as opposed to the traditional form of government where women were regarded as the minority and could not be allowed to take part in issues related to leadership. She represents women with authority to dictate men and even defend their land from intruders.

The text notes, “men ruled unless there was no male heir, but the power passed through women” (Townsend 15). So similar to the Iroquois, The Algonkian chief was not succeeded by his son, but by his younger brothers, a matrilineal succession. Following them in the next generation would then be his sister’s children. There was a definite advantage to this system, as large families of brothers and sisters remain united in power over the entire chiefdom. I believe the difference between Algonkian and Iroquois Confederacy, in matrilineal context, is that the Algonkian son would grow up and rule with loyalty to both maternal and paternal sides, versus the Iroquois clan mothers having the respect and power while electing their chief (LeMaster 20). Both of these peoples were different from the egalitarian Pueblos, who separated work and responsibility evenly, which goes hand in hand with power distribution. Pocahontas became the first woman to show that women could lead if given a chance by breaking the tradition of power being passed from father to son. Women ought to understand this concept since currently everyone is equal unlike before.

Pocahontas, although the daughter of the king, still worked like all others. “She collaborated with her father’s other children and their mothers, negotiating her way successfully among them, earning or retaining her name, Little Playful One” (Townsend 17). She was known to be rowdy, and colonists have accounts of her playing naked in the village and such. At the age of twelve, she did marry a warrior name Kocoom. Since her mother was not of political significance, she was able to choose her spouse. Historians are unable to decipher, though, for how long and how intimate their relationship was. She did eventually help save Jamestown from starvation and Indian attack. She brought the colonists food, acted as an intermediary and warned the English of an impending ambush by her father (LeMaster 20). John Smith lauded Pocahontas for this aid and gave her trinkets, but a few years later, the English kidnapped her and demanded a ransom of corn and captives held by Powhatan.

Work cited

LeMaster, Michelle. “Pocahontas:(De) Constructing an American Myth.” (2005): 774-781.

Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma: The American Portraits Series. Hill and Wang, 2005.