“She Pocahontas never spoke about herself, she never represented her emotions, her presence or her story. He [John Smith] spoke and represented for her” – Edward Said Orientalism 6Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Pocahontas, a Powhatan Indian princess, emerged from a culture of dark superstitions and improved her relationships with a small group of English settlers at Jamestown and English rulers in the New World. His father, Chief Powhatan, was a respected and influential leader who by the 17th century had made his people no less primitive, but certainly stronger and more formidable than before. In 1605, the English were just discovering the new country of America, and the Indians were discovering the Europeans. Young Pocahontas managed to maintain moral relations between the Powhatan Indians and the early English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia through John Smith and the English captain. Pocahontas was single-handedly responsible for one of the rare eras of harmony between the Indians and European settlers. John Smith and two of his troops were shot behind bushes and wounded by the Powhatans. John Smith took his gun and started shooting; killing four of the fifteen Indians, but the Indians supported Smith to a river. He fell into the water and could either drop his gun or drown. Smith dropped the gun and accepted help from the Indians. Pocahontas, whom Smith remembers as "a child of ten years old", witnessed this catastrophe and "took his head in her arms and placed hers on his to save him from death: the emperor was content to live to make it hatches. John Smith was brought before Chief Powhaton and questioned. Many historians speculate about the authenticity of Smith's story of "execution and salvation." His English forces landed at Jamestown, twelve miles from the Indian reservation. The Powhatons were a ceremonial people who welcomed important visitors in a formal manner with a great feast and festive dancing. However, it was not uncommon to put prisoners to death in a public ceremony, it was no more savage than the English customs of the public disembowelling of thieves and the burning of women accused of being witches. John Smith was captured and forced to lie down on two flat stones, then the little Indian girl came and stood on his body as if to say, “Kill me instead.” After she “saved” him, Smith and the Indians became friends for the next year. Smith remained in Jamestown, Virginia and Pocahontas visited him frequently. She carried messages from her father, and other Indians carried food, furs, and then traded axes and trinkets. The Virginia Company of London quickly recognized the enormous propaganda value of Pocahontas as an example of Anglo-Indian harmony, missionary success among the natives, and the prospect that Indians could be persuaded to adopt English methods. "If you were not afraid to come into my father's land, and if you did not make him and all his people afraid, and if you were afraid here, I should call you father: I tell you, I will do , and thou shalt call me child, and so I shall be for ever and ever thy countryman Pocahontas to John Smith Relations between the Powhatans and the English, however, remain fragile Captain Samuel Argall kidnapped Pocahontas in 1613 in hope. to exchange it for the return of the English prisoners, food and weapons that the Powhatans had taken. The plan failed when Pocahontas' father refused to meet their demands and..”