Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma Term Paper

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In the literature the colonists had been exposed to before traveling to the Americas, Indians were characterized as savages who should be converted to Christianity, and the land they lived upon was seen as open land, ripe for the taking, because the Native Americans populated the lands like wildlife, rather than truly owning the country (90). Thus the founding of Jamestown was an openly colonizing act, designed to dispossess the natives from the soil. Ironically, one might argue, the reason for the failure of Jamestown as a colony was that the land took possession of the colonists and eradicated them from the inside out -- unbeknownst to the settlers, the water was filled with parasites, and was also unpalatably salty, and soon the death toll rose from what the colonists called "the bloody flux" or unceasing diarrhea (50).

Using the story of Pocahontas with which to present the Jamestown story is especially useful given that it exposes the sexual as well as the racial biases of the early settlers. The early settlers were fascinated by the marriage practices of the natives, and John Smith insisted that Powhatan put away a wife as soon as she had given him a child, in other words, that the tribal leader was polygamous (16). Townsend wryly notes "Pocahontas worked," taking care of her many younger brothers and sisters of her father. Amongst the natives, "everybody worked," even one of the favored king's daughters, unlike the settlers (17). This was viewed by the settlers not as uplifting to the soul however, but as a negative, given that they came from a society where those who did the least work, had the highest status.

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The hard work of the natives was seen as proof of their barbarity, just as much as their marriage practices.

The actual story of Smith's saving is somewhat enigmatic. Many scholars believe that Smith's death and saving was a staged ritual of friendship, after which Smith was taken into the tribe and adopted (56). Understood as such, the plea of Pocahontas for Smith's life was not a spontaneous act, but part of the understood motions she was supposed to go through, and the heightened tension of the moment was given for dramatic effect in Smith's later memoirs of the colony. However, there is no doubt that Pocahontas herself possessed a fascination with European culture that exceeded the boundaries of most women of her tribe, as she did later convert to Christianity and marry an Englishman named John Rolfe. Sadly, as the Englishmen succumbed to the unfamiliar parasites of the land of America, Pocahontas herself was felled by European diseases and died young, before she could tell her own story and shed more light upon the settlement of Jamestown. In the absence of Pocahontas' own words and writing, Townsend makes a commendable effort in given this formerly voiceless figure from American history a….....

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