summary of the chapter pocahontas
Answers
Answer:
SummaryAnalysis
Camilla Townsend imagines a clear day in the spring of 1607. A canoe, paddled by messengers bearing news, heads down a tributary among the rivers of the Tsenacomoco—the region known today as the Virginia Tidewater. They are headed toward Werowocomoco, the main settlement of Powhatan, their tribe’s paramount chief (or mamanitowik). Strangers have arrived in the bay on three great ships, and they appear to be seeking a place to stay. The messengers soon arrive in the village whose name translates to “King’s House,” hide their canoe, and proceed toward the village, which is hidden away from the bay in the forest beyond, to deliver the message to their regent.
In the opening passages of the book, Townsend uses a blend of historical record and empathetic imagining to reconstruct a scene that might have truly occurred. She is attempting to do justice to the native tribes of the Tsenacomoco by imagining their perspective rather than erasing it, as colonialism has done over the years.As fast as word ordinarily spread throughout the village, Townsend says, it likely wouldn’t have been long before the chief Powhatan’s nine-year-old daughter, Pocahontas, heard the news about the man in the great ships. Among the region’s tribes, boats like these are known and their arrival is even “anticipated.” Though they mostly just pass by or shelter in the bay’s calm waters for a few days before moving on, twice during chief Powhatan’s lifetime, strangers have come to stay. “Both times,” Townsend writes, “[their arrival] had boded ill.”
Rather than feeding into the myth that the Powhatan people were somehow excited or mystified by the arrival of strangers in their homeland, Townsend turns to the historical record to show that the native tribes were already familiar with stories and warnings about previous arrivals. Forty years ago, the strangers kidnapped one of Powhatan’s kinsmen and did not return him until 10 years later: he came back bearing the new name Luis, speaking the strangers’ tongue fluently. He warned his tribe that the strangers came from “a land of thousands” and should be killed—in response to “Luis’s” warning, his tribe killed all the strangers swiftly. More strangers came anyway, and confusedly attacked another tribe as vengeance. Twenty years ago, even more strangers arrived south of the Powhatan lands, where the Roanoke and Croatan tribes lived. These strangers were English, whereas the others had been Spanish. Their settlement in Roanoke failed, and they fled.
Townsend shows how racism and issues of communication led to punitive attacks on the wrong tribes—adding even more fuel to the fires of discord between settlers and natives. She also shows how hard it was for settlers, in spite of their superior weapons, to thrive in the New World—suggesting that the Indigenous population believed there were ways they might still triumph over the strangers who came to their land.Four years ago, in 1603, yet another incident occurred. An English ship arrived in the middle of the Tsenacomoco territory, where the Rappahannock tribe lived. They seized many Rappahannock men and left, and the werowance (chief) and Powhatan fretted together over whether they’d return with more men. Now, as the news of more ships comes to Powhatan, he and his people wonder if the same men have returned—and what they have in store this time. There is much, Townsend writes, that Powhatan did not and could not have known about the “larger geopolitical contest” motivating the arrivals of Spanish and English settlers.
Townsend reminds readers that with only part of the picture, Powhatan could not have known about the larger forces motivating English settlers—not just to journey to the New World, but to thrive in order to compete with the Spanish and establish superiority over them. The Powhatan were determined to get the settlers off their land, but the settlers were now determined to stay at any cost in light of past failures.