Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30543 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-07
• Released on: 2005-08-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Famous in American legend as the Indian woman who saved and then married Captain John Smith of Jamestown, Pocahontas has often been a symbol of the capitulation of Native America to British colonialism. Historian Townsend, working from a very fragmentary record, gives Pocahontas a fiercely independent life, within her own nation and outside it. In this often pedantic and speculative biography, Townsend traces Pocahontas’s life from her childhood and youth (when her strength and athletic ability rivaled the best of either sex) to her eventual marriage to John Rolfe and her move to England. Townsend presents her as shrewd in working for her people’s best interests, and self-assured and confident of her abilities to construct her own identity in a world dominated by powerful and imperialistic others. Unfortunately, a paucity of information results in too many conditional statements ("we can never really know," etc.); many readers will prefer genuine gaps.
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The Real Pocahontas and Powhatan finally revealed. Superb!
I have finally come to the end of this fine book and am delighted to share my views. Unlike the one other reviewer here at Amazon (Mohroy), I found the book to be richly rewarding on every possible level. Camilla Townsend's academic background is well known and she is highly respected in her field. Her ability to write a compelling narative is smartly coupled with a rich list of footnotes, so many of which come from original documents. In some cases highly academic books can be a bother when you are flipping back to the footnotes; not with this book. Each note was worth the attention and always added a deeper dimension. When you consider that Townsend was building a picture of these people that was not always the mainstream her reliance on her reseach more than convinced me of her perspective.

What is the overall impression of the story she paints? I'll tell you, that when I first discovered this story, through the lens of the very emotionally moving movie, "The New World", I had very little knowledge of the real story. In following up on my initial reactions to the movie I endeavored to read what modern historians have to say. I read one book which I can also highly recommend and then I found Townsend. The first was "Captain John Smith: Jamestown and the birth of the American Dream" by Thomas and Dorothy Hoobler, November 2005, published by Wiley. This was a sensational revelation and spurred me on to know more. Townsend has filled in the missing pieces and is essential in my view for anyone who wants to know the story shed of all of it's mythology.

"The New World" is a fine movie and entertainment and I will always treausre it. But, it is about 50% fiction, which is a shame, because Malick had all of this material available just about the time he wrote the script. Oh well. The real people, the real story is so very much more tragic, depressing, sad and dark. The first successful European settlers to the East Coast of the USA signalled the beginning of the destruction of much of Native America. Those that did not die of disease brought by Europeans that they had no immunity to, died as a result of wars with the Europeans. Townsend's insight into this is interesting to consider. The much longer development of farming among Indo/Europeans had better prepared them on a technological level to successfully take America away from Natives. She attributes this line of thought to the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It is worth consideration; the Powhatan natives took too long to realize that the founders of Jamestown had outgunned and out-equipped them by many factors. When Uttamatomakkin came back from his trip to London with Pocahontas and he reported that it was hopeless to fight the white man he was scorned and ignored by his fellows. This resistance to reality lasted far too long before they were finally demolished in several devastating wars.

The real Pocahontas? Much younger at her introduction to Smith than all films or other books portray. Probably had not reached puberty yet. She was so young that when in the Jamestown fort would do hand cartwheels revealing her naked torso for all to see. When she had reached puberty that would have stopped completely. Did she have a romantic relationship with Smith? Not a chance, it would seem. Even more, she had already been married off to a native from another village; nothing much is known of his demise and it is assumed that he died after only a few years of marriage. It is also not known if she had born a child by him, though Townsend thinks it less likely. Pocahontas was no fool and knew that she was being used by her father in a delicate series of political chess, some of which were with the English, some with other native communities. She learned rudimentary English and carried herself with the dignity she felt the English were expecting of her; they viewed her as the daughter of a King and she accepted the role as princess. Townend scores an important point by showing us clearly how little we really know of this woman; someone who did not leave a word of her own in any manner. We imply and infer and guess based on so little. She cautions us throughout the book about this tendency.

What of her father, Powhatan? Already experienced with other white men from Europe before John Smith lands, he already knows that they are dangerous but makes one tragic blunder: he underestimates their resolve to make a permanent place in America until it is too late. He sees the colonies start up and then watch as the ill equipped Europeans fall sick and die, time after time. He sees Smith and company as just another botched attempt at racial transplanting and is not too worried. He is wrong and his people eventually pay the price. What could he have done instead? The hot heads among his people urged him to kill all the white people in Smith's group before they turned against them. He refused. From the native perspective it was a mistake. From the European perspective it would only have bought time and would have enraged them more. In due course, white Europeans were going to come and that was that.

John Smith is both given his proper respectful acknowledgment and is also taken to task as a teller of tall tales. Smith embelleshed for his English audience and without a live Pocahontas to ask whether this or that fact was true, Smith got away with the story he painted. Were the main facts of his being saved by a nubile Pocahontas beliveable? Probably not, given the place of young girls in the presence of adults in her society. It is not impossible but much more improbable than Smith tells us.

This is a book that strips away layer after layer of myth, poor or incomplete research and hasty or prejudiced conclusions. Her work is constantly referred back to urtext sources and where she does not know something she says so right up front. If the real story of Pocahontas is so much fuller, complicated and sadder, it is a story that is entirely integral at the dawn of white society in America. It is also integral to the beginning of the end of native people across the same landscape. A tremendous scholarly achievement, not to be missed.

Not Very Good
I needed this for class and I thought it would be an actual version of Pocahontas with real evidence but it's mostly just another speculative book that adds more problems that it solves. The main problem is that Townsend tries to add all sorts of "historical" pretexts to Pocahontas but at the same time she tries to get into the head of Pocahontas and refute every single thing that the British have written about her. Now I understand that the British weren't the nicest people but at the same time she tries too hard to make it seem as if Pocahontas was nothing like what we know essentially refuting every single thing that the English wrote and what pop culture believes about Pocahontas but at the same time I couldn't help but feel like this was just another version of the story that lacks just as much as the Disney movie, (which I happen to like but I don't take it seriously), and that her analysis is lacking to the point were I couldn't take her seriously and had to just put the book down. My problem though is that unlike Disney, Townsend wants you to take her analysis seriously and that's a bit off putting to me. Considering that Pocahontas has no true facts about her other than what the English wrote about her no matter what you think about it that's all there is. It's not a very good to apply speculation and assumptions to her because they'll cause more problems.

2/5. If this were a story then it would've got a 4/5 for being a different look on Pocahontas. It didn't get a 1/5 because Townsend does bring facts that are lacking in Pocahontas encounters. Overall, I'd read it if you have to read it. I wouldn't recommend it for research.

Not the worst biography of Pocahontas, but...
A brief history of Jamestown and a very sketchy and alomst contentless discussion of Powhatan and the Powhatan Confederacy from the "perspective" (scare quotes intentional) of Pocahontas.

I learned a couple of new facts from this but on the whole I can't reccomed this book. The author tries to get in the head of the legendary Indian Princess but the authors very poitically correct assumptions of what Pocahontas would feel are far from convincing, interestingly enough I had never previously believed in the John Smith-Pocahontas love story at all until I read this, but her disavowal of it was so unconvincing I am now not nearly so sure... The same can be said of several of her other psychological insights which have a very shallow basis, that seem to reflect the author's own feelings without any appearance of critical reflection.

On the positive side it is nice to see such a sympathetic view of John Rolfe, who the author seems quite taken with, but by this point I was rather weary of the whole thing. Luckily it was very short, and even though I actually spent a fair amount of time checking endnotes and even checking a couple of sources, reading the book took only a few hours. I bought it at lunch and went out to dinner that night having finished it.