Reviewed by Michelle LeMaster | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.4

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Reviewed by Michelle LeMaster | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Pocahontas: (De)Constructing an American Myth

Michelle LeMaster, Eastern Illinois University

Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. By Camilla Townsend. American Portraits. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. 234 pages. $25.00 (cloth), $14.00 (paper).

Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown. By Helen C. Rountree. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. 304 pages. $29.95 (cloth).

Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. By Paula Gunn Allen. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003. 366 pages. $26.95 (cloth), $15.95 (paper).

Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Heart of a New Nation. By David A. Price. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. 305 pages. $29.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).

She is one of white America's most familiar heroines, the subject of countless biographies, school lessons, and a Disney animated feature film. Yet the historical person of Pocahontas remains mysterious and controversial. Two books, by Helen C. Rountree and Camilla Townsend, try once again to uncover the woman behind the myth. This task is difficult, and one that requires creative readings of the scant sources, informed use of ethnography, and a significant amount of inference. Both books accomplish the task remarkably well and complement one another in many ways. In addition books by David A. Price and Paula Gunn Allen, aimed at popular audiences, also address the life and myth of Pocahontas.

The four books cover many of the same events but from vastly different perspectives. Consider the varied ways in which the authors treat the story of the rescue of John Smith by Pocahontas. Price maintains that the rescue happened exactly as Smith said, claiming that contemporary writers with experience in Virginia praised Smith's book (though none of them referred to the famous rescue in their comments). For Allen the rescue was really part of a huskanaw ceremony, a "ritual death and remaking" (52) in which Smith was "'remade' as an Indian, named Nantaquod, and designated weroance" within the Powhatan confederacy (53). Rountree and Townsend reject these interpretations, arguing instead that the famous rescue never happened. Both authors emphasize that Smith did not write about the incident until 1624, some sixteen years after the event supposedly occurred and long after Pocahontas (and most other people who had been in Virginia at the time and could have confirmed or denied the story) had died. His earlier writings do not mention it at all. Even the 1617 letter to Queen Anne, which ostensibly told of the rescue, does not survive in the original but only in Smith's 1624 Generall Historie. Rountree and Townsend also note that Smith told similar stories in his writings about his adventures in other parts of the world. As Rountree aptly puts it, "he seems to have had a knack for getting into drastic situations and then being rescued by high-ranking females" (80). Rountree adds that had the Powhatan intended to kill Smith, the method he records (being hit over the head with a club) would be unlikely; high-ranking enemies were tortured to death by the women soon after their arrival in town, not clubbed after a welcoming feast. She also points out that, as a prepubescent child with little diplomatic importance, Pocahontas probably was not even at the feast to save Smith's life. Rountree also rejects the adoption hypothesis, arguing that the details Smith records do not fit the adoption procedures of any Eastern Woodland tribe.

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