Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

by

Camilla Townsend

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Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw Character Analysis

Pocahontas’s father, Powhatan—who was born Wahunsenacaw but adopted the name of his tribe as he consolidated power—was a politically savvy and powerful man who brought 30 tribes and over 20,000 people under his command throughout his lifetime. Powhatan was the mamanitowik, or paramount chief, of the Algonkian tribes of the Tsenacomoco (now known as the Virginia Tidewater region). In this role, he used violence and cunning strategy in equal measure to secure control, respect, and fealty. With the arrival of the Virginia Company in 1607, Powhatan’s stronghold over the region faced its first serious outside threat—and as the English colonized the Algonkian tribes’ homeland, Powhatan did his best to employ peaceful negotiation tactics in the face of violence, extortion, and senseless cruelty. Whereas cultural myths about Powhatan suggest he felt reverence toward or fear of the English, Townsend attempts to set the record straight. She portrays Powhatan as a singular and unmatched political mind who struggled for much of his adult life to keep the massive confederation of tribes he’d created afloat, in spite of the fact that (for reasons beyond his control) he and his people had already lost to the “strangers” who came to invade their lands.

Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw Quotes in Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

The Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma quotes below are all either spoken by Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw or refer to Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Myth vs. Historical Fact Theme Icon
).
Preface Quotes

The mythical Pocahontas who loved John Smith, the English, the Christian faith, and London more than she loved her own father or people or faith or village deeply appealed to the settlers of James­town and the court of King James. That Pocahontas also inspired the romantic poets and patriotic myth-makers of the nineteenth century, as well as many twentieth-century producers of toys, films, and books. With one accord, all these storytellers subverted her life to satisfy their own need to believe that the Indians loved and admired them (or their cultural forebears) without resentments, without guile. She deserves better.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw , John Smith, King James I
Page Number: xi
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1 Quotes

Many people in the modern world like to imagine that Native Americans were inexplicably and inherently different from Europeans—kinder, gentler, more spiritual—and that they instinctively chose not to deploy power in the same way. It is wishful thinking. The Indians were not essentially different from Europeans. Powhatan, who showed a sense of humor in his dealings with the newcomers, might well have laughed at our modern notions—if he did not use them to his advantage first.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

It must be asked if anything remotely resembling what John Smith described could have occurred that December day in 1607. Unfortunately, the issue was thoroughly clouded by academics before it was eventually clarified by them. In the nineteenth century it became fashionable, amidst a certain circle of dignified white gentlemen scholars […] to denounce Smith as a braggart and a fraud. This caused those who loved him and his legend […] to rally to his cause and insist on his absolute veracity in every particular.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw , John Smith
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:

One element is beyond debate: at no point did Powhatan, Poca­hontas, or any of their people look on the strangers with wide-mouthed awe or consider them gods. Hernando Cortés never claimed that the Aztecs thought he was a god— as they almost certainly did not—yet the flattering notion became wildly popular in the after-the-fact accounts that appeared later in the century, several of which were widely available in England.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Was she really the one then closest to Powhatan’s heart, and did he believe that Smith would know this from his days of captivity and thus recognize her presence as a white flag? Or was she, as the daughter of a commoner and without claims to political power, among the children he could most afford to lose, and thus the one whose safety he chose to risk? Or did he as a shrewd statesmen simply choose the daughter in whose abilities he had most confidence?

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

Namontack convinced Powhatan to accept the gifts… […] “But a fowle trouble there was to make him kneele to receave his crowne.” Smith asserted that this was because the Indian did not know the “meaning of a Crowne,” but in fact he probably understood only too well the gesture of kneeling to receive a crown at the hands of another. He himself, after all, liked the practice of anointing tributary werowances who were bound to do his bidding. “At last by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and Newport put the Crowne on his head.”

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw , John Smith, Captain Christopher Newport, Namontack
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis:
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Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma PDF

Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw Quotes in Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

The Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma quotes below are all either spoken by Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw or refer to Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Myth vs. Historical Fact Theme Icon
).
Preface Quotes

The mythical Pocahontas who loved John Smith, the English, the Christian faith, and London more than she loved her own father or people or faith or village deeply appealed to the settlers of James­town and the court of King James. That Pocahontas also inspired the romantic poets and patriotic myth-makers of the nineteenth century, as well as many twentieth-century producers of toys, films, and books. With one accord, all these storytellers subverted her life to satisfy their own need to believe that the Indians loved and admired them (or their cultural forebears) without resentments, without guile. She deserves better.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw , John Smith, King James I
Page Number: xi
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 1 Quotes

Many people in the modern world like to imagine that Native Americans were inexplicably and inherently different from Europeans—kinder, gentler, more spiritual—and that they instinctively chose not to deploy power in the same way. It is wishful thinking. The Indians were not essentially different from Europeans. Powhatan, who showed a sense of humor in his dealings with the newcomers, might well have laughed at our modern notions—if he did not use them to his advantage first.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

It must be asked if anything remotely resembling what John Smith described could have occurred that December day in 1607. Unfortunately, the issue was thoroughly clouded by academics before it was eventually clarified by them. In the nineteenth century it became fashionable, amidst a certain circle of dignified white gentlemen scholars […] to denounce Smith as a braggart and a fraud. This caused those who loved him and his legend […] to rally to his cause and insist on his absolute veracity in every particular.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw , John Smith
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:

One element is beyond debate: at no point did Powhatan, Poca­hontas, or any of their people look on the strangers with wide-mouthed awe or consider them gods. Hernando Cortés never claimed that the Aztecs thought he was a god— as they almost certainly did not—yet the flattering notion became wildly popular in the after-the-fact accounts that appeared later in the century, several of which were widely available in England.

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Was she really the one then closest to Powhatan’s heart, and did he believe that Smith would know this from his days of captivity and thus recognize her presence as a white flag? Or was she, as the daughter of a commoner and without claims to political power, among the children he could most afford to lose, and thus the one whose safety he chose to risk? Or did he as a shrewd statesmen simply choose the daughter in whose abilities he had most confidence?

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Pocahontas/Amonute/Matoaka/Rebecca , Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:

Namontack convinced Powhatan to accept the gifts… […] “But a fowle trouble there was to make him kneele to receave his crowne.” Smith asserted that this was because the Indian did not know the “meaning of a Crowne,” but in fact he probably understood only too well the gesture of kneeling to receive a crown at the hands of another. He himself, after all, liked the practice of anointing tributary werowances who were bound to do his bidding. “At last by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and Newport put the Crowne on his head.”

Related Characters: Camilla Townsend (speaker), Powhatan/Wahunsenacaw , John Smith, Captain Christopher Newport, Namontack
Page Number: 78
Explanation and Analysis: