Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma

by

Camilla Townsend

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Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma Themes

Themes and Colors
Cultural Myth vs. Historical Fact Theme Icon
Colonialism as Erasure Theme Icon
Language, Communication, and Power Theme Icon
Women, Agency, and History Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Cultural Myth vs. Historical Fact

Camilla Townsend is a renowned historian whose work relies heavily on the contextualization and interpretation of primary resources—firsthand documents such as letters, diaries, books, and articles. As such, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma bridges the gap between fact and fiction surrounding the settling of the Jamestown Colony and the Virginia Tidewater area, known to the native tribes of the region as Tsenacomoco. As Townsend sifts through the historical record, she seeks to annihilate the…

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Colonialism as Erasure

In Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, the ravages of colonialism in the New World have only recently begun—but the violence and genocide to come haunt even the early meetings between the Algonkian tribes of the Tsenacomoco (now known as the Virginia Tidewater region) and the English settlers who arrive on their land in 1607. When the Virginia Company—the private company chartered by King James I of England to establish a colony in Virginia—arrived…

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Language, Communication, and Power

Throughout Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, Townsend seeks to show her readers how communication between the Algonkian tribes of the Tsenacomoco region and the English settlers who arrived on their lands in the early 1600s functioned—and failed. In addition to examining the practical challenges of communication and language, Townsend also dives into the power imbalances which result from the fact that the Algonkian tribes had not yet developed a formal written language when the…

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Women, Agency, and History

In Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, Townsend creates a new portrait of the woman most people know as Pocahontas—a widely-known historical figure whose agency, feelings, personality, and very words have been lost to history while other people’s accounts of and assumptions about her have proliferated through the ages. In telling Pocahontas’s story, Townsend seeks to restore justice and indeed agency to the Algonkian “princess.” Throughout the book, Townsend uses the story of Pocahontas…

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