Pocahontas A Historical Drama in Five Acts; With an Introductory Essay and Notes Classic Reprint Robert Dale Owen 9781334488481 Books
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Excerpt from Pocahontas A Historical Drama, in Five Acts; With an Introductory Essay and Notes
Let us allow something for the point of the apothegm, and in substance it is not without truth. His power who legislates for the fancy, is greater than his who enacts statutes for the conduct; as much greater as the warm impulses of the heart are stronger than the cold dictates of the understanding.
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Pocahontas A Historical Drama in Five Acts; With an Introductory Essay and Notes Classic Reprint Robert Dale Owen 9781334488481 Books
This play is essential to understand the redemption of Pocahontas and the vision that is being built in modern USA. It is the second dramatic production after James Nelson Barker's The Indian Princess, 1808, both showing a positive Pocahontas. They both follow the example provided by John Davis in his Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas, an Indian Tale 1805. The general characteristic is the romanticism of these three references. Owen's play is supposed to show a feminist and anti-slavery rather pro-Indian position definitely advocating cooperation between the Anglo-Saxon Europeans and the American Indians.Note we are just seven years after the passing and signing into law by Andrew Jackson of the famous Indian Removal Act, 1830. That means this play is politically active in a hostile context. At first view it is not that striking, but in the period it was obvious, to actually speak of equality between men and women was a totally new reading of the US constitution that only spoke of men. In the same way the equal cooperation advocated between the two populations went against this very constitution that excluded Indians and against the context of black slavery advocated and defended by people like John Caldwell Calhoun who defended a democratic state including slavery as a basic institution on the model of antique Athens and Socrates.
R.D. Owen was to have a political career and this play was more a way for him to air his political ideas than to defend a real philosophy or even humanism. And the political context is a better explanation for the un-success of the production rather than some vague reference at a poor style or amateurish plot building.
Yet the play is quite "modern" in his time because of a few twists introduced in the story. First of all the settlers count one woman, Anne Burras who will marry young John Laydon. Women are not mentioned in the documents I have seen and read on this Jamestown settlement, at least not at first. Then the presence of a woman might be possible since we are situated in time after the second arrival of pioneers, and yet at the time of John Smith's capture by the Indians, even if most of the play is at least at the time of the later arrival that brought John Rolfe to Jamestown.
This is the second twist in the fabric. Though we do have the scene when Pocahontas saves the John Smith's life, we then shift to Pocahontas coming to Jamestown and John Rolfe is here. John Smith is clearly treated as her white father by Pocahontas, whereas John Rolfe is treated as her white brother. They both fall in love at first sight. So there is no `romantic love between John Smith and Pocahontas, meaning no intimate intercourse. The ambiguity of the relation between Pocahontas and John Smith is thus evacuated with elegance, even if not with much credible veracity.
Another twist is the mixing up of time periods. When John Smith comes back from the Indian village where he was nearly killed he is accused of treason by the people in Jamestown and is saved by the arrival of the second ship with Captain Newport who saves his life on the European side. But then we jump ahead and we have Captain Argall, the captain of a merchant ship, a private ship, who comes with a new commission from the Company of South Virginia that is financing the adventure and that commission supposedly brings Smith down from the presidency of the colony, though the commission is in the hands if Sir Thomas Gates and his ship has disappeared in some storm in the middle of the Atlantic. So Captain Argall with the help of Gabriel Archer who had been sent back to London for treacherous actions in the first year of the settlement and who is coming back now is trying to impose his will in Jamestown. That is called a putsch in standard political dialect.
They want to implement a commission they cannot produce, which is easy to turn down, but then they have captured Pocahontas and they are trying to use her as a hostage to get from the Indians what they want, food, and many other not clearly identified products, produces or services (we can think of servitude as it was testified by Samuel Purchas and Ralph Hamor in 1613 and 1615 before the arrival of the first black slaves in 1619) and to make John Smith and John Rolfe rebel against their decisions and then to accuse them of treason.
John Smith is faster and uses his fighting skills to save the situation, kill Gabriel Archer and save Pocahontas from imprisonment. He is wounded in that skirmish and is taken back to London by Captain Argall who sails back on the following day, a very improbable opportunity since he just arrived or nearly and has had no time to fill up the ship with profitable goods, if any were available.
But another twist happens here. Before leaving John Smith is able to bless Pocahontas and John Rolfe as well as Nomony, Pocahontas' sister, and Paspaho, a young Indian chief who is in love with Nomony and who Nomony is in love with.
The role played by the Indian women, Pocahontas and Nomony, and the one assertion of the equality of men and women by Pocahontas is important in 1837 but is in a way far from the power of women characters in Shakespeare's plays and is counterbalanced by the dubitative commentary from the Indians when they learn that the main Sachem of England is an old woman, an old squaw. But in the play that only concerns the Indians, since only a few of them are set out of a traditional deeply "primitive" ideology.
In the same way the extremely strong denunciation of Spanish brutal and bloody conquest of Mexico and Peru with allusions to real Conquistadores like Cortes and Pizzaro and the Indian victims of this colonization like Anacaona and Cuauhtémoc (Gautimozin in the play) by John Smith who directly compares these Spaniards with Gabriel Archer and those he tries to manipulate to impose his takeover is a political statement against the Spaniards in a time when the confrontation with the Spaniards or Mexicans is becoming frontal in Florida, in California and in Texas-New Mexico. Whether it is an argument to justify the Americans in their conquest of the West from anyone who is not Anglo-Saxon, or a real denunciation of the future genocide of the Indians already at work in 1837 is not clear and anyway if it were such a denunciation it would have been totally ineffective since the genocide went to its dire end and the removal of Indians was carried out without any mercy all along the trail of tears. The Christian morality invoked by John Smith is not exactly what happened when dealing with Indians.
On still another side we could wonder if there is any denunciation of capitalism that some critics have wished to see. The evocation of the future of the colony by John Smith is clear:
"With soil, as rich as India's self can boast;
Forests, might build a navy for the world;
And noble rivers, an untaxed highway,
Down whose wide-spreading waters, in rude craft,
The wealth of provinces may safely glide." (Act I, Scene I)
This implies a complete re-design of the land they are arriving in. This implies the Indians are no longer part of it and that there is only one mode of intensive exploitation of the land. This re-design is obviously the American project. In 1837 to add the integration of Indians in this project is purely either utopian or highly hypocritical, not to mention the existence of black slavery that goes against this beautiful humanistic sounding project.
We certainly must not throw the baby with the bath water and we have to see that this play makes Pocahontas an admirable person and the romantic tale becomes then the myth of the birth of a new nation from the alliance of these two peoples. But all that is very abstract, even at the time, and it will have to follow a long course through the nearly two following centuries to reach a real re-evaluation and a real "time for remembering, reconciling and recommitting ourselves as a people" (Statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on Native Americans, November 1991).
But it is true this is the melting pot in which the Walt Disney vision will be cast in 1995 and 1998.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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Pocahontas A Historical Drama in Five Acts; With an Introductory Essay and Notes Classic Reprint Robert Dale Owen 9781334488481 Books Reviews
This play is essential to understand the redemption of Pocahontas and the vision that is being built in modern USA. It is the second dramatic production after James Nelson Barker's The Indian Princess, 1808, both showing a positive Pocahontas. They both follow the example provided by John Davis in his Captain Smith and Princess Pocahontas, an Indian Tale 1805. The general characteristic is the romanticism of these three references. Owen's play is supposed to show a feminist and anti-slavery rather pro-Indian position definitely advocating cooperation between the Anglo-Saxon Europeans and the American Indians.
Note we are just seven years after the passing and signing into law by Andrew Jackson of the famous Indian Removal Act, 1830. That means this play is politically active in a hostile context. At first view it is not that striking, but in the period it was obvious, to actually speak of equality between men and women was a totally new reading of the US constitution that only spoke of men. In the same way the equal cooperation advocated between the two populations went against this very constitution that excluded Indians and against the context of black slavery advocated and defended by people like John Caldwell Calhoun who defended a democratic state including slavery as a basic institution on the model of antique Athens and Socrates.
R.D. Owen was to have a political career and this play was more a way for him to air his political ideas than to defend a real philosophy or even humanism. And the political context is a better explanation for the un-success of the production rather than some vague reference at a poor style or amateurish plot building.
Yet the play is quite "modern" in his time because of a few twists introduced in the story. First of all the settlers count one woman, Anne Burras who will marry young John Laydon. Women are not mentioned in the documents I have seen and read on this Jamestown settlement, at least not at first. Then the presence of a woman might be possible since we are situated in time after the second arrival of pioneers, and yet at the time of John Smith's capture by the Indians, even if most of the play is at least at the time of the later arrival that brought John Rolfe to Jamestown.
This is the second twist in the fabric. Though we do have the scene when Pocahontas saves the John Smith's life, we then shift to Pocahontas coming to Jamestown and John Rolfe is here. John Smith is clearly treated as her white father by Pocahontas, whereas John Rolfe is treated as her white brother. They both fall in love at first sight. So there is no `romantic love between John Smith and Pocahontas, meaning no intimate intercourse. The ambiguity of the relation between Pocahontas and John Smith is thus evacuated with elegance, even if not with much credible veracity.
Another twist is the mixing up of time periods. When John Smith comes back from the Indian village where he was nearly killed he is accused of treason by the people in Jamestown and is saved by the arrival of the second ship with Captain Newport who saves his life on the European side. But then we jump ahead and we have Captain Argall, the captain of a merchant ship, a private ship, who comes with a new commission from the Company of South Virginia that is financing the adventure and that commission supposedly brings Smith down from the presidency of the colony, though the commission is in the hands if Sir Thomas Gates and his ship has disappeared in some storm in the middle of the Atlantic. So Captain Argall with the help of Gabriel Archer who had been sent back to London for treacherous actions in the first year of the settlement and who is coming back now is trying to impose his will in Jamestown. That is called a putsch in standard political dialect.
They want to implement a commission they cannot produce, which is easy to turn down, but then they have captured Pocahontas and they are trying to use her as a hostage to get from the Indians what they want, food, and many other not clearly identified products, produces or services (we can think of servitude as it was testified by Samuel Purchas and Ralph Hamor in 1613 and 1615 before the arrival of the first black slaves in 1619) and to make John Smith and John Rolfe rebel against their decisions and then to accuse them of treason.
John Smith is faster and uses his fighting skills to save the situation, kill Gabriel Archer and save Pocahontas from imprisonment. He is wounded in that skirmish and is taken back to London by Captain Argall who sails back on the following day, a very improbable opportunity since he just arrived or nearly and has had no time to fill up the ship with profitable goods, if any were available.
But another twist happens here. Before leaving John Smith is able to bless Pocahontas and John Rolfe as well as Nomony, Pocahontas' sister, and Paspaho, a young Indian chief who is in love with Nomony and who Nomony is in love with.
The role played by the Indian women, Pocahontas and Nomony, and the one assertion of the equality of men and women by Pocahontas is important in 1837 but is in a way far from the power of women characters in Shakespeare's plays and is counterbalanced by the dubitative commentary from the Indians when they learn that the main Sachem of England is an old woman, an old squaw. But in the play that only concerns the Indians, since only a few of them are set out of a traditional deeply "primitive" ideology.
In the same way the extremely strong denunciation of Spanish brutal and bloody conquest of Mexico and Peru with allusions to real Conquistadores like Cortes and Pizzaro and the Indian victims of this colonization like Anacaona and Cuauhtémoc (Gautimozin in the play) by John Smith who directly compares these Spaniards with Gabriel Archer and those he tries to manipulate to impose his takeover is a political statement against the Spaniards in a time when the confrontation with the Spaniards or Mexicans is becoming frontal in Florida, in California and in Texas-New Mexico. Whether it is an argument to justify the Americans in their conquest of the West from anyone who is not Anglo-Saxon, or a real denunciation of the future genocide of the Indians already at work in 1837 is not clear and anyway if it were such a denunciation it would have been totally ineffective since the genocide went to its dire end and the removal of Indians was carried out without any mercy all along the trail of tears. The Christian morality invoked by John Smith is not exactly what happened when dealing with Indians.
On still another side we could wonder if there is any denunciation of capitalism that some critics have wished to see. The evocation of the future of the colony by John Smith is clear
"With soil, as rich as India's self can boast;
Forests, might build a navy for the world;
And noble rivers, an untaxed highway,
Down whose wide-spreading waters, in rude craft,
The wealth of provinces may safely glide." (Act I, Scene I)
This implies a complete re-design of the land they are arriving in. This implies the Indians are no longer part of it and that there is only one mode of intensive exploitation of the land. This re-design is obviously the American project. In 1837 to add the integration of Indians in this project is purely either utopian or highly hypocritical, not to mention the existence of black slavery that goes against this beautiful humanistic sounding project.
We certainly must not throw the baby with the bath water and we have to see that this play makes Pocahontas an admirable person and the romantic tale becomes then the myth of the birth of a new nation from the alliance of these two peoples. But all that is very abstract, even at the time, and it will have to follow a long course through the nearly two following centuries to reach a real re-evaluation and a real "time for remembering, reconciling and recommitting ourselves as a people" (Statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on Native Americans, November 1991).
But it is true this is the melting pot in which the Walt Disney vision will be cast in 1995 and 1998.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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