Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma Themes

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…

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…

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…