Essay on Pocahontas: A Great American Myth

Most of Smith's knowledge died with him. His plans to edit and publish his journals and have a master map constructed were never realized. Nevertheless, Smith was satisfied with his wilderness

John Smith was an agitated Indian man with the will to murder a selfless white man who has done the most damage. He held very close to his spirituality of his Indian ethnicity even though he did not know his tribe. John was impulsive of his

John Smith surprised many by becoming a significant leader and a ray of sunshine in an otherwise increasingly desperate situation. He strategically involved the Indians in order to increase the chance of survival of the colonists. This strategy caused him to develop personal relationships with Indians; some good, some bad. Although captured and sentenced to death twice by Chief Powatan, he was saved by Powatan's daughter Pocahontas. Many historians however, believe that Pocahontas did not actually save John Smith; they believe he was mistaking an adoption ceremony for his execution. David Price writes that there is no way to describe what happened other than an impending execution. "Nothing is known about seventeenth-century Powhatan adoption ceremonies, nor is any other tribe in North America known to have had an adoption procedure comparable to what was undergone by Smith."(pg.243).Either way, the romance between Smith and Pocahontas emphasized in children's stories is seemingly impossible; Pocahontas would have been eleven years old upon acquaintance with John Smith. Pocahontas

One of the lessons that the colonist learned was leadership. One of the acts of leadership for the colonies was an Englishman by the name of John Smith. On review page 21 its states that “He later recalled his vision of the opportunities that awaited those who settled the Americas. Smith would need all of his abilities to steer the new colony, Jamestown, through what turned out to be a disastrous beginning.” In this statement, this show that John Smith takes initiative to take leadership for the colonist in Jamestown. Some examples of his leadership would be on review page 23, its states “Smith held the colony together by forcing the colonist to farm and

As young children we are often misled to believe that the stories and movies we are exposed to are presumably based on factual history, but are in reality myths, keeping the truthful, important, and fair facts hidden. Amonute is an accurate example of learning the real events that occurred in a person’s life while the typical myth of Pocahontas saved an Englishmen from being killed by her father. In the beginning of the book we are briefly introduced to Pocahontas, the Powhatan people and the English colonists. As the book continues we follow Pocahontas when she is kidnapped, her married life, and her trip to London where she got sick because of foreign illnesses and died. Camilla Townsends “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma” wants Pocahontas’ true story to unfold because she is worthy of respect for her bravery and sacrifice and because “everyone subverted her life to satisfy their own needs to believe that the Indians loved and admired them” (Townsend, pg. xi). I also believe that the author was trying to argue that even though the Englishmen believed that the Native Americans were uncivilized and lived like savages, that instead they were wise people.

While many cannot picture Smith in any context other than with Pocahontas, he had a very active life before he even met her. As stated by Woolf, prior to even meeting Pocahontas Smith had been “in an army fighting the Ottoman Turks in central Europe, during which he went through several escapes, was seriously wounded, taken into slavery, after which he murdered his slave-master and escaped, along with being shipwrecked twice.”1 All of these exploits happened before Smith ended up in Virginia at the Jamestown colony, and met Pocahontas, the narrative of which most Americans are intimately familiar with or so they think.

Smith, however, was of the opinion that Mercantile System was deeply flawed. Firstly, as given in the Fourth Book (3) of the Wealth of Nations, he argued that the real wealth of a nation was “not in the unconsumable riches of money, but in the consumable goods annually reproduced by the labour of the society”. (4) Secondly, the balance of trade, as observed by him, often did little to enhance the wealth of a nation and instead served to create violent national animosity instead. He instead put forth the idea of a balance of annual production and consumption, which if it were unfavourable would have caused a decay of the wealth of a nation. Thirdly, Prof. Smith was a strong critic of the idea of colonialism; stating that, “To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight, appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are capable of fancying that they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure of their fellow-citizens, to found and maintain such an empire.”(5) The implication being that the idea of colonialism was of an extremely oppressive nature, beneficial only to the colonial

Although the author of John Smith’s testimony is unknown, it seems that the author is possibly a government official who is trying to figure out what happened for the

What are the differences in Smith 's story? In Smith 's story he wrote briefly about the journey to Jamestown. He wrote about how they only had half-pint of wheat and as much barley boils with water for a man a day. He only has to spend twenty-six weeks on the ship. He then wrote in great detail about his life on land. He wrote about when they got there they had to fend for themselves because the lost all of there help. The Savages (Indians) brought them the food that no one wanted. Then the Indians kidnapped John Smith. They kept him for six or seven weeks. Before the captured him they stalked him (with

John Smith was kidnapped in 1607 by the Indian chieftain Powhatan, his daughter Pocahontas saved John Smith from a mock execution by putting her head in between his and the war clubs of the native americans.

I did not know much about John Smith, but I learned that he was an artist that did watercolor studies of the Indians and their way of life.

Savages!” (songlyrics.com). There was an imaginary form of ideology being represented for the real conditions of existence by the Native American’s during this time (Althusser 155). “The starting-point is the simple one that ideology is read from film texts, consciously or unconsciously, and the relationship between each text and its culture are traceable to ideological roots.” (Turner, 1999, p.171) Pocahontas gives viewers a different picture of the Native Americans role during this time. In addition to Native American’s being criticized and misrepresented from their actual history, they were also portrayed as a Willow tree, Meeko, and Flit, whom were all objects in nature or animals. Because all Native American characters were the animals and the objects in nature, their heritage and people get pushed to the edge of society because they are made out to be different [to be objects and animals]. They are marginalized because they are different from the westerners. This impacts the ideology of social exclusion and misrepresentation of a social group. The Native American’s are misinterpreted through society today due to movies like Pocahontas portraying their people as animals, objects, or misinterpreting their role in history with negative connotations in the text. “Importantly ideological approaches reject the view of the film text as ‘unitary’ in meaning; that is, as making only one kind of sense, without considerations, exceptions, or variations in the

If a man had no hope of property, Smith thought, he would obviously work badly. He based his beliefs from experience of all ages and nations. "Work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves." That sentence was immensely influential in the slave labor plantation system. Smith's interpretation was taken exceptionally serious because unlike most who were opposes to slavery based on factors such as religion and moral belief, Smith never mention moral or religion regarding slavery as a factor in his book "Wealth of Nations".

An important aspect of Smith's views, were taxes. In one of Smith's many opinions regarding human nature, he explains that the rich, once placed in a position of power, maintain that power through their dealings within a civil government which employs men of inferior wealth, to protect the wealthy lands of the rich. In layman’s terms a community with the bare minimum has little violence since there is nothing to fight over, but one with plush property and wealth, has a plethora of people fighting over one another. This is where Smith's views of taxes comes into play. In his world, the government would impose taxation, with the intentions of discouraging improper or luxurious behavior which he believed did not benefit society as a whole. (Smith, pp.18-20) When discussing human nature in the sociological spectrum, Smith likens humans to animals, or dogs in particular. The typical reliance of animals, once they're matured,on no one but themselves (becoming independents), is a characteristic that humans do not follow. I believe Smith's

Barnett explains, "a number of unlucky Pocahontas figures populate the frontier romance, saving white beloveds only at the cost of their own lives" (93). Fortunately, Pocahontas's life was spared despite her willingness to sacrifice, although her later affiliations with a white man and Europe led to her death from disease. The notion of females rescuing white men and assimilating with their culture have traditionally been connected, which resulted in greater Indian deaths due to their exposure to a foreign culture from which they had not yet learned to protect themselves.