Case Study: Pocahontas
Controversy- a discussion on a history that has two sides. However, only one side made it into the history textbooks. Should the other side be told? For your follow up essay, analyze history that some say was covered up (see below). A new history was written by the Mattaponi Indian tribe concerning the life and death of Pocahontas. Please read the The Pocahontas Archives. Also watch; https://www.c-span.org/video/?202747-2/true-story-pocahontas. Pocahontas′s story– if you questioned a Mattaponi about the story it would sound more like a murder mystery than a rescue love story. Remember, daughters of chiefs were sought by the English to guarantee land and protection. Some historians claim that Pocahontas was a needed insurance policy for plantation farmers like Rolfe. Her death was a necessary evil to protect the assets of the English Tobacco industry. (unique_solution)The Mattaponi tribe claims in their new book that Pocahontas was captured, raped and impregnated before her marriage to John Rolfe. To cover up this English abuse, John Rolfe agreed to marry Pocahontas in order to prevent war over her treatment and to protect his tobacco crop. The tribe also claimed that Pocahontas was already married to a Mattaponi man named Kocoum and had a son, but the Colonial government viewed the marriage null and void since it did not occur in a Christian Church. She was forced to travel to England in order to help Rolfe save his people and keep hers from annihilation. Follow up- Research in the library, in the OER : Case Study: Pocahontas (provided in file) and use at least one academic source, to critically analyze this new development in the Pocahontas story. Summarize what you learned from the Mattaponi tribe and include in your analysis the debate between historians of European descent and those that are Native American about how to write the history of Indian peoples.