Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma
The American Portraits Series
Farrar Straus & Giroux · Print & ebook · September 7, 2005
Camilla Townsend's stunning new book, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, 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 British but to ourselves.
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- Who it’s for
- Camilla Townsend recasts Pocahontas’s life through the intelligence and agency of her people.
- Genres
- Indigenous Lives, Colonial America (to 1775), Native American History
- Published
- Farrar Straus & Giroux, September 7, 2005
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Camilla Townsend's stunning new book, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, 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 British but to ourselves.
Continue reading
Neither naïve 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 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 here shown as a road map to Native American strategies of defiance exercised in the face of overwhelming odds and in the hope for 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.
Agency Under Pressure
Camilla Townsend recasts Pocahontas’s life through the intelligence and agency of her people.
Come here for
- A biography that treats Pocahontas and Powhatan as politically astute actors
- A sharper view of Native strategies against English colonial power
Expect
- Diplomacy, resistance, espionage, and collaboration under colonial pressure
- A portrait spanning Chesapeake childhood, Jamestown, and London
Where it sits
| Colonial America (to 1775) | 80% |
|---|---|
| Indigenous Lives | 49% |
| Native American History | 43% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Indigenous Lives
- Native American History
- Colonial America (to 1775)
- Authors
- Camilla Townsend
- Publisher
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Published
- September 7, 2005
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Indigenous Lives