Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma “Pocahontas” is a well-known person from the early stages of American History. There are many stories of what she did to contribute to early settlements in America and the pilgrims, yet there is no written record to document these contributions. In the book, “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma”, author Camilla Townsend tries to tell the story of Pocahontas and her endeavors through a Native American perspective. Pocahontas’ story has been subverted to try and teach the reader a little about Pocahontas, and some about Americas fabled founding. The Native American girl, named Amonute, was changed into Pocahontas to serve the needs of settlers of James Town. Media, Poets, and Hollywood have manipulated the true story of Pocahontas. Camilla Townsend describes Pocahontas as, “brave as all her people- not a simple joyful worshipper of English men or power, but a real and complicated woman wither her own plans, goals and ideas” (p. xi). …show more content…
The author then details the early months after the settlement of Jamestown, as well as Pocahontas’s kidnapping, imprisonment, marriage, conversion to Christianity, and her death. Townsend tries to show these details not through and Englishmen’s point of view, but through Pocahontas’s and a Native American point of view. In each of these instances, Pocahontas and her people managed English colonialism according to their own desires and goals. Virginian Algonquians went to establish their relationship with colonizers in favor of Algonquian terms “real polite not inherent egalitarianism” (p.41) dictates the strategies employed by Pocahontas father within his chiefdom and his dealings with the