Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat – An Extraordinary Biography from a Native American Perspective

by Paula Gunn Allen

In striking counterpoint to the conventional account, Pocahontas is a bold biography that tells the extraordinary story of the beloved Indian maiden from a Native American perspective. Dr. Paula Gunn Allen, the acknowledged founder of Native American literary studies, draws on sources often overlooked by Western historians and offers remarkable new insights into the adventurous life and sacred role of this foremost American heroine. Gunn Allen reveals why so many have revered Pocahontas as the female counterpart to the father of our nation, George Washington.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Indigenous, American History, Unfinished, Historical

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, lesbian activist, and novelist.

Born Paula Marie Francis in Albuquerque, Allen grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village bordering the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Of mixed Laguna, Sioux, Scottish, and Lebanese-American descent, Allen always identified most closely with the people among whom she spent her childhood and upbringing.

Having obtained a BA and MFA from the University of Oregon, Allen gained her PhD at the University of New Mexico, where she taught and where she began her research into various tribal religions.

Reviews

[Chad Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't come to this book feeling cynical, as it asks a lot from the average reader. It asks you to think of history in a completely different manner. Not the way it is objectively seen from the outside, but the way it might have been subjectively seen by Pocahontas. Included with the usual historical facts as recorded by John Smith and various members of the settler's community is a description of the spiritual and cultural influences that would have shaped Pocahontas' actions. Rather than paint her as hero or traitor, Gunn Allen delves deep into traditions to display a subtle character.

[Sara-Jayne Poletti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author tells Pocahontas's story non-linearly and in a somewhat repetitive nature, which reflects Native traditions in storytelling. She also incorporates many different traditional Algonquin tales (and tales from other Native American tribes) that help to clarify the lens through which Pocahontas may have viewed the world. While the storytelling mode was sometimes hard to get into making it a bit of a time commitment (I think perhaps it might be served better in an oral setting), I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it. I walked away with a deeper understanding of Pocahontas and the world in which she lived/HER perspective vs the white, male European one (radical, I know), pluuuus it really makes me want to read more from and about Native peoples. Solid A- from me!

[Charles Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Allen paints an amazing picture of the fabled woman. With every page, a surprise; making it a real page turner. As an American Indian, I gained a new understanding of her. The cadence of verse is truly poetic. This should be required reading! It's another for my 'favorites shelf'.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book is supposed to be a biography of Pocahontas, it is unlike any biography I have read before. Rather than recount what few facts we know about her life, (and, as Allen points out, most of those facts are filtered--several times--through a foreign lens), Allen seeks to provide a context for Pocahontas, to flesh out the world she came from, so that we can reinterpret who she was and what her life meant. And as far as that goes, I though Allen did a fantastic job. In fact, the context of Pocahontas' world turned out to be far more interesting to me than the woman herself, at least as described by Allen. Sometimes the book becomes quite repetitive (Allen says she does it on purpose, as repetition in the oral tradition is meant to emphasize important points), and sometimes she makes what seem to me to be long leaps of logic (though she says she is writing from a perspective outside of the world of rationality). Nonetheless, this book is well worth the read if you're interested in learning more about what a Native American worldview might have been like during a time when tribal cultures were still strong and intact throughout the continent.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was intriguing at times, maddening at other times. I really liked the way the author just laid it out there at the beginning that she was going to mix up traditional Western linear biography narrative with a cyclical-time-based spiritual understanding of history. Her opening chapter describing this is really brilliant. While reading the rest of the book, I felt that (on the one hand) she had some super insightful ways of envisioning Pocahontas' history. It never would have occurred to me that Pocahontas was a spy but it makes total sense when put in this perspective. On the other hand, I wanted to be more clear about when she was giving known historical (Western linear etc etc) fact, when she was looking from a more cyclical-time lens, and when she was speculating. And sometimes she got really too into the whole trip of Native Americans having a unitary philosophy/ way of seeing things. As a side note, I loved how she made parallels between Native American spiritual worlds and the pagan English alternative spiritual world (alchemy, ceremonial magic, fairies, etc). That was fun and unusual.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

My book club chose this book. Not one of us could finish it. The author seemed to circle back around to the many names Pocahontas wore through her life. But this was not even an interesting topic, those unfortunately were few. I wanted to love this book, but it felt more like banging your head against the wall.

[Kaye Salter · Rating 3 out of 5]

It remember a brief throwaway line about what happened in either Salem or Roanoke that was totally wrong. I'm writing this about 5 years after I read this book and the comment has still stuck with me. The book itself was a good read. Told in a beautiful way.

[Olivia Sonell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pocahontas by Paula Gunn Allen provides one of the most thought provoking biographies I've ever engaged with.

More than just a narrative of the "Mother of Our Nation", Allen's book incorporates the Algonquin worldview into the very fabric of her writing. Using Native Oral Tradition as her guide Allen tells Pocahontas's story alongside parallel myths and stories from Algonquin lore.

In addition to discussing how Pocahontas's life is reminiscent of Algonquin creation myths, she shows that Pocahontas was a spiritual adept - a medicine woman- and that her sojurns amongst the English and Johns Smith & Rolfe was part espionage for her people and the spirits of the land.

Native science is discussed and we learn how their magical-scientific worldview provided a more holistic understanding of the universe, than the modern western rational-scientific one.

This book has not only changed how I see Pocahontas, but how I see the world and all of its many parts.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paula Gunn Allen's thesis is that is impossible to assess Pocahontas's life without understanding the Algonquin world in which she lived. To this end, Allen takes the reader into the culture of the Powhatan people.

I have mixed feelings about this biography. Although I respect Allen's approach to her subject, too many detours into supernatural realms and too much guesswork about Pocahontas's motivations for her actions threaten to derail the book.

[Joan Porte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhere there has to be a good book about Pocahontas. This is not it

[David Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

The legend of Pocahontas must be somewhat familiar to most people–at least, the Disney movie, if nothing else–but even many academic works, it seems, still stick to a very Eurocentric version of events. Either they portray Pocahontas (or Matoaka or Amonute or Lady Rebecca, take your pick) as a silly girl in love or as a weak traitor who allowed herself to be absconded with and Christianized. However, Paula Gunn Allen’s biography reframes her story into one of an intelligent young mystic who operated according to the myths of the Algonquin people.

Allen, of course, recounts the famous incident where Pocahontas saved John Smith’s life, which was not out of her love for him but for the culmination of a long-standing prophecy. The encounter provides a perfect encapsulation of how cultural codes can dictate how people understand events. When the Powhatan leader raised a stick with some attached shells, Smith assumed it was a hatchet headed for his neck as it may very well have been had he been back in England. And while Pocahontas was the one who decided to save his life, she did so as a vigilant medicine woman (even as an eleven year old) and saw him as a cog in a massive historical transformation.

Beyond this, Allen spends a lot of time putting Pocahontas’ life into the context of her indigenous beliefs. She lived close to a spirit world, a manito aki, and in a structuralist reading that would make Joseph Campbell proud, Allen claims this is no different from the mythical England of King Arthur or the Redcrosse Knight’s Logres of The Faerie Queene. The protagonists of all these tales are all on their own journeys, Pocahontas’ just happens to be a journey to spy on England and uncover Christian theology. As Allen summarizes, “Far from being a ‘sell-out,’ as modern Nativist radicals have accused, she was intent on her mastery of her craft and deepening and expanding the Indian relation to the unseen powers that be.”

I enjoyed the alternate perspective Allen provides here, and it does seem that other historians may have been quick to fill in the gaps of the relatively scant evidence of Pocahontas’ life with their own western assumptions. Still, Allen relies so heavily on the Algonquins’ connection to the spirit world and its impact on reality, at times, I had a hard time swallowing some of her theories. She herself states, “The problem that Americans face in harmonizing our modern American consciousness with the ancient psyche of the land we inhabit is the dominance of a paradigm that assumes material, measurable existence to be all there is.” And I think this is the same problem I had.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography was hit or miss for me. I appreciated the insights into indigenous perspectives, but the writing was highly speculative and often got in the way. Some parts were oddly repetitive, while other parts skipped over vital information and presumed knowledge of later plots before they had been introduced. One highlight was the archetypal abduction narrative including Pocahontas, Sacagawea, and Malinalli.

“Their mission was defined, ignited, and energized by those forces or powers that lie behind, beyond, and beneath the mundane. They did what they did because they were how they were, because that was what time it was, and because their personal characteristics, combined with their training, social conditioning, and the astronomical-quantum standing wave that was the time/space they moved in, made it so. These women were born to be agents of change.”

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out to be a short history of the short life about 21 years of Pocahontas. I thought it might lead to new info or understanding of the title thought and was reading it for a book club choice. The author however does not give us the story in a readable logical way, but throws in the kitchen sink in the book: the life habits of Indians, their mystical belief of the creation and many of their celebrations, the story of the tribe and their links to other tribes in NA and a description of many of the tribes, and so many Indian related themes. I only got through by skimming part of the book and giving up. If you are looking for a textbook to read- this may be it. I was sorely disappointed.

[Dr. Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suffice to say that anything you thought you knew about Pocahontas is probably a “faerie” tale. Paula Gunn Allen does a remarkable job of dreaming up possibilities to go along with the few realities we know about her short life, but we do learn from Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat that there is much more to know and learn than we thought possible. The author attempts to add humor and modern language to what at times is a very dry account, but still many parts of the book will stay with me as I continue to organize my new knowledge of Pocahontas.

[Paula · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don’t choose this story of Pocahontas if you are looking for a traditional biography. In reading other reviews (from 1 star to 5) you will get a real feel for how her story is told. Not an easy read as sometimes there are great diversions from Pocahontas’s story to set some context for myth and oral tradition and the metaphysical. 2.5 stars because while the concept is appreciated, it is not very “readable”...

[Joan · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's the first biography that I simply couldn't make it through. I understood the desire to provide context, but I think the author got into those details too frequently and ended up with something closer to a (very dry) textbook than an entertaining or informative encounter with the title personage. Even skimming through the unread balance of the book, it seemed more about her time, place, and cultures (hers and the English) than about the short life of the woman most of us know as Pocahontas.

[Johanna Keim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit hard to follow at times but I enjoyed reading about Pocahontas or Matoaka in context of the native oral tradition with a thorough reading of events through that lens.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sorta weird.
Lots of repetitive information but also lots of unknown (by me) info.

[Anne]

It was a struggle to stick with this one, and I read it as a book club assignment. Much repetition and detail, but not intriguing.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was a little tiring to keep reading. But I finished it for a book club.

[Kathy Schmidt · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has good information, but the presentation was difficult for me to get through.

[Hannah Milano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book, very insightful and thought provoking. Well researched. Disney really did the reality of Pocahontas a disservice.

[Corri Flaker-Fraser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paula Gunn Allen is a beautiful writer!
I was so moved by this retelling of such a popular historical figure.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot more information than I was looking for but still relevant and very well written.

[Jeanne Barnum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mew. Written more like a college text.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've chosen not to finish this rich biography - this needs to be read with a Native American Historian

[Maggie · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very tough read. Some interesting information was presented however much of the book was more text bookish than pleasure reading. There were many passages that actually put me to sleep. If this book wasn’t a book club selection I would have given up on it early on.

[Raechel · Rating 3 out of 5]

We'll never know who she really was.

[Allison Thurman]

Library

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike any story you've been taught about her.