POCAHONTAS

From the time of its first appearance in the writings of John Smith and his contemporaries, the story of Pocahontas has provided the terms of a flexible discourse that has been put to multiple, and at times contradictory, uses. Centering around her legendary rescue of Smith from the brink of execution and her subsequent marriage to a white Jamestown colonist, the Pocahontas convention developed into a source of national debate over such broad issues as miscegenation, racial conflict, and colonial expansion. At the same time, the literary figure of Pocahontas became the most frequently and variously portrayed female figure in antebellum literature, serving as a prototype both for the beautiful Indian princess of the frontier romance and for the heroines of countless rescue narratives. In Pocahontas