Pocahontas cover art

Pocahontas

My Own Story

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Pocahontas

By: John Smith
Narrated by: Jonathan Reese
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About this listen

 In the early 17th century, Captain John Smith led a company of English settlers to found the colony of Jamestown in Virginia. Here is Smith's own account of his adventures there and his relationship with the beautiful Indian princess, Pocahontas.

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of about 30 tribes of Indians living in Virginia. When Captain John Smith was captured by these Indians in 1607, he was brought before Powhatan, who sentenced him to death. Sixteen-year-old Pocahontas convinced her father to spare Captain Smith's life, thus becoming a friend of the settlers and eventually influencing her father to be friendly, too. Years later, she saved the lives of the entire colony by secretly warning Captain Smith of another intended attack.

Public Domain (P)2008 Tantor Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Americas Colonial Period Historical Indigenous Peoples United States
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Firstly, this isn't Pocahontas's "own" story, it's the story of the white settlers who she met. I hadn't expected her to have written it, but really, her name must have been used at the time to sell the book because she appears just every now and then in the narrative. She doesn't have a voice, she's just a very minor character used for the author's purposes.

On one hand I think this book is important because it's a pretty detailed description of Virginia in the 1600s but also if you want to understand the full, shocking, horror of what the white settlers/invaders were up to at this time, this gives a very open run down of it. Casual mentions of slaughtering indigenous people, exploiting them (indeed, given the title the exploitation starts before the book begins since this isn't really about Pocahontas but her name is being used to sell the book) and various derogatory terms for indigenous people, and ideas about them abound in this short book. What's more amazing is, is that at no point so any of the contributers see anything they do as wrong. Justification for colonization and stealing land and exploiting other people are just inherant in them. I think if you want to understand the depths of man's shocking callousness, this is an interesting book to read. All of it made me sad and angry, not the least for Pocahontas.

Pretty shocking from start to finish

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