Matoaka, Pocahontas, Rebecca: Her Atlantic Identities and Afterlives. Edited by Kathryn N. Gray and Amy M. E. Morris

This collection of eleven essays brings together an array of interpreters of the past to contemplate the various and complicated identities and legacies—or “afterlives”—of Pocahontas, perhaps the “most well-known” and “least well-understood” Native American woman in American history (5). Placing her three different names in the title indicates from the beginning that there was—and is—so much more to this 17th-century woman than what John Smith, let alone Disney, has told us. Matoaka, her sacred name, reminds us that she was firmly integrated into her Native American community. Pocahontas, her nickname meaning “little mischief,” stresses how her identity became something shaped by others. And Rebecca, the Christian name she chose for herself, highlights the woman who made choices and actively shaped her own life.This set of writings honors Monacan poet and historian Karenne Wood, who strenuously worked to move Indigenous history and voices from the margins to the centers of American history, and it opens with two of her intriguing poems. All of the pieces, following Wood's lead, unpack the myths of Pocahontas, seeking to overturn the mythical, commodified, and animated version of her that so many of us think we know, restoring her to her historical context and sacred memory. The Pocahontas presented in this book was neither a “demure, motherly figure” nor an exotic “object of desire” (65).The editors purposefully chose to include contributions from both within and beyond the academy. Well-established scholars of Native American women's history, such as Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Helen C. Rountree, and Camilla Townsend, are joined by museum curators, art historians, poets, and artists who offer not only new research and insights into the life of Pocahontas, but fresh and crucial Indigenous perspectives about her continuing impact in American culture. Indeed, some of the authors even disagree with each other over significant moments in her life, such as her “saving” of John Smith, her captivity among the English (an event rarely discussed), and her relationship with her father. Many of the historical essays concentrate on correcting the narrative spun by Smith for his own self-promoting purposes or derived from the scanty records left by Jamestown and English officials or created by Disney.We come to understand that far from being a princess, she was the minor daughter among a multitude of children, of a prominent chief (who was neither king nor a villain), who performed ordinary female tasks. She was not the savior of English colonists, betraying her own people. Rather, she served as a mediator and intermediary by learning and living in two cultures, just as a handful of other children—both Native American and English—did in this period. We learn that she was a child of around eleven years old when she met Smith, and that she had a husband before John Rolfe. Eventually taken hostage by the English, Pocahontas, under the tutelage of a young Anglican missionary, converted to Christianity, became Rebecca, and married Rolfe—becoming a “good Indian” and, hopefully for the English, an “example to her people” in the process (49).Questions remain about how much choice or force was involved. Townsend's essay places the Rolfe marriage in its Indigenous context among other interracial relationships and highlights Pocahontas' strategic thought: “When an Indian woman in early colonial Virginia chose to have a relationship with a white man, she was not only making him kin, but also, or more specifically, attempting to set the very terms of that kinship” (96). In E. M. Rose's essay about the couple's trip to London, we discover that the main purpose of the trip was for the Virginia Company to lobby Parliament by using the celebrity of Pocahontas, or “Lady Rolfe,” to raise money for a Native American college. She may even have met that other celebrity Indian, Squanto, while there. As Rose finds, the Pocahontas presented in London “embodied English hopes—romantic, commercial, spiritual, and political”—for the “remaking” of America (137).Other pieces in the collection purposefully reassess traditional scholarly methods and the power of the archive. Contributors stress the necessity of upending both when analyzing Pocahontas or other Native American women. Since Indigenous voices—especially those of women—are marginalized or absent in archival records, Lucinda Rasmussen argues that we must question “the circumstances under which knowledge is produced” in order to “disrupt the colonial mindset that informs most peoples’ understandings about Pocahontas's identity” (76). Incorporating Indigenous women's knowledge help to deconstruct Eurocentric perspectives (both those of the 17th century and of current academics), and allow Pocahontas to be more fully understood. Looking at the use of Pocahontas’ image in nationalistic art in the 19th century, Graziella Crezegut demonstrates how Pocahontas lost her identity as a Native American woman in the service of creating origin myths for white Americans. The essay “Pocahontas Chic” reveals how, starting with Smith's published account and continuing into our era, Pocahontas' identity has been “appropriated and commodified” (208). The two final interviews of the collection discuss artistic work about or inspired by Pocahontas, reminding us how Indigenous artists can “make us see again and make us reconsider” (240).The diversity of authors and forms, while forming an eclectic collection, allows for a capacious and valuable rethinking of Pocahontas' historical persona and her enduring image. The authors implement interdisciplinary frameworks to give us as complete a picture as we can have of Pocahontas, even if sometimes we need to exercise some imagination. In addition, the examination of her “afterlives” is provocative and insightful. Though she would probably be amazed to know it, Pocahontas still matters.