Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

Camilla Townsend's stunning 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 to ourselves. 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 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.