Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma: The American Portraits Series
by Camilla Townsend
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"Camilla Townsend's new book differs from all previous biographies of Pocahontas in capturing how similar seventeenth-century Native Americans were - in the way they saw, understood, and struggled to control their world - not only to the invading English, but also to ourselves." "Neither naive nor innocent, Indians like Pocahontas and her father, the powerful king Powhatan, confronted the vast might of the English with sophistication, diplomacy, and violence. Indeed, Pocahontas's life is a show more testament to the subtle intelligence that Native Americans, always aware of their material disadvantages, brought against the military power of the colonizing English. Resistance, espionage, collaboration, deception: Pocahontas's life is shown here as a road map of Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope of a semblance of independence worth the name." "Townsend's Pocahontas emerges - as a young child on the banks of the Chesapeake, an influential noblewoman visiting a struggling Jamestown, an English gentlewoman in London - for the first time in three dimensions, allowing us to see and sympathize with her people as never before."--Jacket. show lessTags
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This is an interesting factual look at a story many of us has come to know through fictional accounts. Pocahontas did marry John Rolfe, but probably did not convert to Christianity or visit England out of love for the English. More likely, she was engaged in acts of preservation for herself and her people. It is unfortunate that more information about her is available, but this book provides insight into her life not as a symbol, but as a real person.
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Author Information
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Camilla Townsend is Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is the author of numerous books, including Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, and The Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive (OUP, 2016), which won show more multiple prizes, among them the Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Pocahontas; Powhatan; Captain John Smith
- Important places
- Jamestown, Virginia, USA; London, England, UK
- Dedication
- To my mother and father
- First words
- The canoe bearing the news skimmed rapidly over the water.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)In the summer, wildflowers grow at the edge of the water, and Pocahontas's people can still catch a faint smell of the sea, just as they could in 1606.
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Statistics
- Members
- 219
- Popularity
- 148,421
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.86)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 2
