Camilla Townsend's Pocahontas And The Powhatan Dilemma

Camilla Townsend’s book, “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma,” describes the detailed story of Pocahontas’s life and how the various Natives lived in sixteenth century Virginia. The Natives lives were ultimately altered when English colonists arrived. The English had specific intentions in mind; colonize the area, become great merchant traders, and convert the Natives to Christianity. The colonists were willing to achieve these even if it meant overwhelming and destroying the Indian culture around them.
The English wanted to form a colony that they could live in. The justification for the taking of the Native land, was that the Indians had not fully established it, therefore they did not own it. The English wanted to develop a “peaceable colony in a waste country, where the people doe live but like Deere” (Townsend 90). The colonists Insisted that the Indians lived foolishly and uncivilized, and believed that they would acknowledge this, “if they had any braines in their head.” (Townsend 90) The self-seeking English, decided that they …show more content…
Since a major reason for the English coming to the U.S. was for trade, John Smith and the other colonists had a deceitful strategy for trading with the Indians. “Smith said, in effect, that he did not care if they did not want to trade: if they would not give him corn in exchange for the trinkets he chose to give them, he would just take it and call it his revenge for their having allowed him to be captured in their territory the previous year.” The colonists devised the perfect plan. Give the indians useless trinkets, in exchange for all the corn they could eat. The greedy colonists just wanted to take all of what the indians had, and give anything back, knowing that corn was the Indians major source of food. This attitude alone shows how heartless the colonists were and how ruining the Indians harvest was a part of their plan. (Townsend