Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 68.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I am recording this on April 14th, 2022 in my bedroom closet in New Orleans.

If you are new to the podcast, we are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism.

This episode is about the kidnapping and ransom of Pocahontas in 1613, the romancing over her by John Rolfe, and their marriage in 1614 which

settled the first Anglo-Pauhattan War. My primary source for this episode is a very interesting

book written only in 2004 by Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas in the Powhatan dilemma.

Professor Townsend reads all the various accounts of Pocahontas's life skeptically, trying to

imagine which he must have felt under the circumstances, described by the various European

men who encountered her and wrote down what they believed happened.

Townsend's short book, which those of you who have stuck with our long series on

Jamestown might want to read, link in the show notes and on the website, is perhaps an example

of personal characteristics mattering in the writing of history.

Only a few of the hundreds of books written on Jamestown come from women.

In Townsend's telling, she calls for readers to stretch themselves

to imagine what Pocahontas must really have felt under various circumstances

described by the chroniclers of her life,

including John Smith.

Many of her characterizations struck me as probably true, and it occurred to me that even

modern male historians reading 17th century male chroniclers of a young woman's attitude might not have understood all the layers

of context as well as a female historian might. To be clear, none of this is to say that male

historians cannot write thoughtfully about women in history. It will surprise nobody that I do not accept the more extreme

idea that one need be a member of a particular demographic group to write about somebody in

...