Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

“Myths can lend meaning to our days, and they can inspire wonderful movies. They are also deadly to our understanding. They diminish the influence of facts, and a historical figure’s ability to make us think; they diminish our ability to see with fresh eyes. What has the myth of Pocahontas kept hidden? And if the real woman could speak, what might she tell us about our country’s inception?” 

Townsend lays out her book’s mission: to demythologize Pocahontas, seeking the story of a real human rather than a sanitized feel-good fable for colonizers. Myth has the power both to conceal and to reveal more than it intends to. The false story of Pocahontas unveils the anxieties of the English settlers who invented and disseminated it.

“Over the course of his life Raleigh brought about twenty Native Americans to [...] London, and hired tutors for them. Among his proteges were Manteo, a Croatan, and Wanchese, a Roanoke, picked up in 1584 on a reconnaissance mission in the Carolinas. When the two returned to Roanoke Island in 1585 with a group of English colonists, Manteo [...] remained friendly, but Wanchese [...] turned on the English and convinced his people to make war against them. He probably had never trusted the English, never even given them his real name: In Pocahontas’s language, which was closely related to his own, maro/wancheso simply meant “young boy.” 

The history of Native Americans’ early visits to Europe reveal the often glossed-over complexity of the interactions between these two worlds. Native Americans had no homogenous cultural response to the European settlers, especially since the colonist’s intentions to dominate and enslave the native people were only slowly revealed. The use of names to set tiers in a power structure also puts in a first appearance here; “boy” is a diminutive epithet that has often been used by white people to address males of color.

“When the baby girl was born, she was not considered particularly important, for by that time Powhatan had many other children by far more powerful queens. Still, she was the daughter of the mamanitowik and so received presents and food in abundance. Like all children, she was given two names: she was called Amonute in a ceremony before the village, and she was probably also given a private or hidden name, which her parents revealed to no one else. Everyone assumed that her mother or father would eventually give her another name reflective of her personality. By the time she was 10, the child was known as Pocahontas, apparently meaning something like ‘Mischief’ or ‘Little Playful One.’ It was understood that her deeds or experiences might cause her name to change again, just as her father’s had.” 

The famous name “Pocahontas” is a child’s nickname that was expected to change again and again over the course of her life. As a mature woman, Pocahontas would not have thought of herself as “Pocahontas,” yet history’s maintenance of her child name reveals much about colonial thought toward Native Americans: Theirs was an inferior way of life, and part of the colonial mission was to “parent” the Indians toward European culture and Christendom.

“Each man’s family planted corn, beans, squash, and fruits in their square of ground, intermingling the seeds so that the different species provided one another with what they needed—shade, varied nutrients, or trellises for climbing vines. The fields had to be small, as their only tools were digging sticks and wooden hoes, and each family had to provide all its own labor [...] Play followed work. Nearly every night after dinner there was singing and dancing or storytelling. The melodic, throbbing voices rose and fell, accompanied by rattlelike instruments in a range of pitches. If it was a special feast day or ceremonial event, Powhatan’s family wore the clothing that other villages’ tribute payments made possible. His honored wives were expected to make a grand showing [...] Most beautiful of all were the feathered cloaks, made from the rarest and most beautiful plumes. ‘The cloak,’ an English visitor would later write of one queen’s garment, ‘...[is] made of blew feathers so artificially [i.e. artfully] and thick sowed together, that it showes like a deepe purple Satten.’” 

Townsend uses a tone that is at once scholarly and evocative, imbuing her research with color to depict Powhatan’s way of life. The world she presents is tangible and vivid while also grounded firmly in the historical record.

“There is no question that John Smith and his peers [...] embraced a notion of an explorer as a conqueror who strode with many steps through lands of admirers, particularly admiring women. The stories never went the other way around: Later, when women settlers went along, there emerged no tales of Spanish or English women being met by welcoming Indian chiefs who courted their favors. No, the colonizers of the imagination were men—men imbued with almost mystical powers. The foreign women and the foreign lands wanted, even needed, these men, for such men were more than desirable. They were deeply good, right in all they did, blessed by God.” 

The myths of colonialism are not merely products of the modern imagination but baked in by the patriarchal mindset of the colonists. The New World allured as an imagined place of mythic and even biblical resonance: a promised land for a chosen people. The power fantasy of the already powerful reveals itself in a viewpoint of “natural” dominion: men over women, white people over people of color.

“After all, the enthusiastic proponents of colonization were only some of England’s people. Many others opined that no good could come of all this [...] Many also argued that God would not look with favor on their dispossession of the Indians. Even Robert Gray, the same pastor who envisioned the colonists as the army of God, acknowledged: ‘The first objection [to colonization] is, by what right or warrant we can enter in the land of these Savages, take away their rightfull inheritance from them, and plant ourselves in their places, being wronged or unprovoked by them.’”

Myth conceals the complex and heterogenous views that colonists had toward their mission. The brutality of colonialism, not merely a straightforward matter of spiritualized white male dominion, was in reality not lost on many contemporary thinkers.

“As part of the evolving belief that the Indians would be only too glad to become literal and figurative tribute-payers to the English nation, contemporary scholars had worked out an interesting theory: the indigenous Americans, they claimed, were very much like the ancient Britons—who had themselves been civilized by the Romans. This theory was both condescending yet at the same time beautifully unprejudiced. On the one hand, it justified the English insistence that they were superior in every regard at the present time; on the other, it acknowledged that there were no inherent differences between English and natives. The idea made some people distinctly nervous: if Indians could become just like Englishmen, then could not Englishmen also become just like Indians?” 

The need to maintain superiority in order to subjugate another people is built on anxiety and a rejection of a deeper understanding. If people are essentially the same, and their ways are malleable, it takes a serious effort at denial to assert that one’s own ways are naturally the most correct. 

“Everyone then read travel narratives for the entertaining blend of fact and fantasy that they were. Of course, one might choose to believe that beautiful young women really did throw themselves at the short, stocky, cantankerous Smith everywhere he went, but the idea strains credulity to such a degree that different explanations of what actually happened must be sought.” 

Part of the difficulty of understanding the past is knowing how to think critically about existing evidence. Where a modern reader might expect anthropological precision from the story of a journey to a new world, the English contemporaries of John Smith would have read his writings both for edification and entertainment. The mythic parts of stories often stay in the historical imagination because they are more appealing than the facts, and they reinforce underlying hopes and fears.

“The Algonkians had long believed in a universe revolving around struggle: unequal power, violence, domination, and tribute were a part of life. Recent events merely offered further proof of it. It was not fair, of course. They knew themselves to be just as deserving and just as intelligent as the newcomers, if not more so. For most of them, the Europeans’ technological strength did not mean that they should abandon the respected and beloved gods who had always done their best for them, and to whom they had committed themselves as young adults. An older brother-in-law of Pocahontas later told an Englishman wearily that he certainly would never do so. He advised his interrogator to try talking to the children, who were still free to choose their own paths and their own gods.” 

Writing that Pocahontas’s brother speaks “wearily” here, Townsend imagines her way into the scene, engaging in a little mythmaking of her own. Reading history often involves this kind of imagination; perfect objectivity does not exist when dealing with the past. Historians must make their reading as nuanced, grounded, thorough, and humane as possible.

“‘We can imagine,’ writes one historian, ‘a group of pale-faced Jamestown boys, overdressed in wool, being goaded into turning cartwheels by a brown-skinned Indian girl, scantily clad by European standards, whose acrobatic skills probably put them to shame.’ Yet they liked her. That is what comes through in all accounts. She was energetic and fun-loving, open and interested, adventuresome and smart. They liked ‘Mischief’ just as much as her own people apparently did.” 

Historical views of Pocahontas come through the notes and impressions of white men and thus contain bias, yet the force of her personality is apparent in just how many of those notes and impressions there are. Pocahontas comes across as both a strong and elusive character, both immortalized and concealed by the historical record.

“That winter other colonists who approached Indians demanding food were also killed. Warriors lost their lives in these skirmishes, but Powhatan’s policy had changed. He clearly wanted to convince the English to leave, or at least not to pursue his people inland. It nearly worked.”

It’s easy for the contemporary reader, who’s well aware of the eventual outcome of English colonization, to forget that the events of Jamestown were anything but a foregone conclusion. The eventual bloody fruits of colonialism were not foreordained; in reality, Powhatan initially had the upper hand.

“William Strachey later described the horror of attempting to come to terms with imminent death when the body is so racked by agonizing nausea and the mind so disoriented that even the simplest of thoughts seems nearly impossible: ‘It worketh upon the whole frame of th’ body and most loathsomely affecteth all the powers thereof. And the manner of the sickness it lays upon the body, being so insufferable, gives not the mind any free and quiet time to use her judgment.’”

Townsend’s use of primary documents makes the suffering of the Virginia Company sailors during the storm that almost killed them feel especially urgent and vivid. The immediacy of this record also contrasts with what’s lacking in the indigenous people’s story: records in their own words that would help readers empathize with their stories.

“Pocahontas knew the history of European kidnappings of those unwise enough to venture onto their boats; and she knew her father was at war with the English and considered by them to have committed great wrongs. Her hosts reminded her, however, that Argall had no way of knowing who she was or even of recognizing a king’s daughter when he saw one, and that he was friendly to the Patawomeck. Surely there would be no danger. She boarded.” 

The story of Pocahontas’s capture reveals the political complexity of the world she lived in. Betrayed by some of Powhatan’s disgruntled allies, Pocahontas was coaxed into boarding an English ship against her better judgment. The structures of the world she grew up in had changed so rapidly that even this smart and politically savvy young woman couldn’t navigate them safely.

“At first she said nothing: ‘She began to be exceedingly pensive.’ It was the diplomatic way in her world, to begin with a meaningful silence. Her father used the tactic. She had used it as a 10-year-old visitor to Jamestown, come to ransom prisoners [...] Perhaps she used the time to think, to sort out all she knew, to pray. Perhaps she was merely waiting for the others to grow silent and wait upon her words. For Pocahontas’s silences were never self-effacing; they were always preliminary to a rush of speech.” 

In this description of Pocahontas’s initial silence after her capture, Townsend gestures at the metaphor at the center of Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. Although historical records of Pocahontas are themselves “silent,” lacking any direct report in her own words, silence can be its own kind of speech. Finding “a rush of words” in Pocahontas’s silence is the project of the book. 

“She remembered Jamestown’s three streets, still laid out in a triangle, surrounding the open area where the market and the chapel were. She used to give her cartwheeling lessons there. But the houses looked different now: they were covered with tree bark, Powhatan style, to insulate against both winter cold and summer heat, for the colonists had finally learned that plastered walls, so effective in England, made the rooms inside ‘like stoves.’” 

Townsend again dips into Pocahontas’s imagined perspective. In the absence of primary documents, this speculation establishes empathy and a sense of immediacy for a person whose voice was lost. Townsend imagines Pocahontas seeing a Jamestown that has become both more alien and more familiar: The English have learned from the Indians even as they’ve warred against them.

“When Pocahontas entered Whitaker’s home, she was perhaps in his mind not so much a person as a long-awaited opportunity to demonstrate his precepts [...] Pocahontas would soon have found that Whitaker was not at all surprised by her quick intelligence; he did not expect her to be stupid.” 

Pocahontas’s time with Reverend Whitaker illustrates how history is a record of real people in real relationships. Whitaker was influenced by the argument that the Indians were like the Britons before Roman civilization—intelligent and capable people who were simply poorly informed—but Whitaker’s specific and memorable personality informed his actions as much as his preconceived notions. Thus, Townsend works to prevent modern readers from pigeon-holing historical figures as simple exemplars of a wider cultural attitude.

“[John Rolfe] eventually covered both sides of four sheets of foolscap paper pouring out the history of his love in a letter to Sir Thomas Dale, whose permission he needed if he was to ask Pocahontas to marry him. It is a remarkable document, written in the heat of passion [...] Rolfe says much that is honest and self-revealing, even airing his doubts about Pocahontas and her background. Some have quoted from the letter to prove his love was lacking, a stunted, grudging thing, with the implication that Pocahontas should have steered clear. All lovers have doubts about their partners, though. For Rolfe to have incorporated none of the fears and prejudices of his era would have been impossible. What seems more remarkable is that, given those fears and prejudices, he rose to the task of announcing to his social peers that he loved her.”

Rolfe’s dramatic account of his love for Pocahontas provides another instance of historical complexity. Rolfe’s genuine feelings are evidenced, not by some idealized purity, but by their expression alongside and in spite of the doubts his culture naturally instilled in him. This record of a sincere human passion has made much less of a mark on the popular consciousness than John Smith’s sensationalistic tale of Pocahontas as adoring femme rescuer.

“Looking back objectively [...] it is impossible to believe that Pocahontas had no independent agendas and desires of her own and that she worshipped unquestioningly the white male figures of our legends. Such a view demeans and objectifies her, in that it deprives her of the full range of human feelings and reactions. Unfortunately, the recent corrective to this misrepresentation has often failed to grant Pocahontas any real control over her own behavior. In the politically sensitive 1970s and 1980s it became popular in some quarters to focus almost exclusively on the fact that she was a prisoner and a hostage [...] But while Pocahontas had been a hostage for over a year when she married John Rolfe, she clearly retained some control over what happened to her.”

Townsend’s interest in trying to see as clearly as possible takes on not only colonialist mythmaking but also reactions against that mythmaking. Part of Townsend’s role as a historian is to identify the lenses through which she and her contemporaries view history; only by acknowledging their own perspective and prejudices can historians gain a more authentic glimpse of the past.

“Pocahontas left no secret diaries, but numerous other converted Indians throughout the hemisphere wrote or spoke of their experiences, and many pastors who came to know them better than Whitaker ever did analyzed the situation thoroughly. These other texts tell us that Indians who converted in the first months of contact were virtually always incorporating the Christian God into their previously existing pantheon. Even the story of a god’s spirit impregnating an unsuspecting woman was an old one in many of their cultures. Pocahontas almost certainly was agreeing to set aside her village’s okee in favor of Jesus Christ; she would have had to do something similar if she had been carried off by Iroquoian Indians or any other enemy.” 

Pocahontas’s conversion, easy to misread as a sign of acquiescence, was more likely a paradoxical instance of assimilation working in two directions at once. Pocahontas likely incorporated Christianity into the rubric of her own beliefs rather than rejecting her upbringing and converting whole cloth. Contrary to the ideals of colonizers, meeting cultures often intermingle rather than supplant one another.

“It would be too simple to say that she faced hatred. The British were fascinated by her, adored her exoticism. At first it probably seemed flattering. Only later would she have begun to experience the psychological costs of being a symbol rather than a person. All things Virginian were indeed the rage, as England struggled to become a colonial power, to dominate the mysterious world whence Pocahontas came. Shakespeare had written The Tempest within months of first reading the accounts of the wreck of the Sea Venture, which Rolfe had sailed on.” 

In Pocahontas’s visit to London, the reciprocal relationships of national myth, literature, history, and fashion become clear. That Pocahontas is still primarily remembered as a mythic paragon suggests the power of the stories first generated about her when she was the fashion of the moment. The story might complicate a contemporary understanding of “Merrie England” as much as of the colonial Americas.

“Certain elements [of her portrait] reveal distinct decisions that were made by Pocahontas and other involved in arranging for the sitting [...] The high capotein [hat], once worn only by men, had recently been adopted by some women. Queen Anne wore one, for instance. But such women were subject to criticism for being unfeminine [...] Pocahontas, apparently, had no desire to appear either frail or behind the times but would wear the hat of a man [...] Likewise, many noblewomen chose to have much of the neck or arms or hair exposed, but Pocahontas did not choose that path. Well aware of what was said about naked savages, she shows nothing but her face.” 

Townsend’s reading of Pocahontas’s portrait exemplifies her approach to the historical record generally. A full understanding of the portrait takes into consideration both context and custom, the nature of the artist (who, Townsend notes, was very young and might have felt a kinship for the similarly aged Pocahontas), and the nature of the subject. As Townsend imagines how the unusual portrait might have come about, she also reveals something about the nature of portraiture in general: The pages always reflect something of the shape of the book they’re in.

“‘[You] were [...] not afraid to come into my father’s Countrie, and cause feare in him and all his people (but mee) and [yet] feare you here I should call you father. I tell you then I will, and you shall call mee childe, and so I will bee for ever and ever your Countrieman. They did tell us always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plimoth; yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakin to seek you, and know the truth, because your Countriemen will lie much.’” 

Pocahontas’s tirade at John Smith appears just after the description of her portrait, and the juxtaposition of these two bits of the historical record—the closest things historians have to direct expressions of Pocahontas’s feelings—provide the climax of Townsend’s story. Townsend observes that Pocahontas’s address to Smith has been used to make arguments that she loved him, and that such claims misunderstand the nature of the kinship bonds that Pocahontas reminds Smith of so forcefully here. Pocahontas’s words show how language and storytelling can be easily used for deceit as well as truth-telling.

“It is fashionable in some circles to lament Pocahontas’s death, not for herself or her family or her people, but for the sake of history; it is said that had she lived, advocating for her people in the tumultuous decades that followed and encouraging more intermarriage, events might have turned out differently. Indian-white relations might have been more harmonious. It is naïve to think so.” 

In the last pages of the book, Townsend argues that a positive mythologizing of Pocahontas as a paragon and a heroine does her a disservice. Reading Pocahontas as a symbol places the onus for the destruction of Indian culture on Indians. Townsend again cautions against reading complex people as straightforward gods, myths, or symbols.