| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. By Helen C. Rountree. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. xii, 292 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-8139-2323-9.)

Helen C. Rountree wrote this book for a popular audience, to provide biographies of the paramount chief, Powhatan, and of his brother and successor, Opechancanough, and to put the life of the better-known Pocahontas in perspective. More generally, the author proposed to tell the story of the Jamestown colony from the indigenous point of view and thereby provide a complement to the writings of the colonists and of their modern descendants. As she stated, the task is challenging because we have almost no commentary from the Powhatan themselves; and the few statements that may reasonably be taken as quotations from Powhatan persons were recorded, almost certainly with distorting modifications, by the English. Thus any reconstruction of "the other side" is bound to depend on interpretation and interpolation, and the necessity of leaving some questions unanswered. Nevertheless, it is an enterprise well worth undertaking, one whose success would add greatly to our understanding of the events and consequences of first contact.

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