Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea: Indian Women as Cultural Intermediaries and National Symbols
- ISBN-10
- 0806153598
- ISBN-13
- 9780806153599
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 368
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2015-10-20
- Publisher
- University of Oklahoma Press
- Author
- Rebecca Kay Jager
Description
The first Europeans to arrive in North America’s various regions relied on Native women to help them navigate unfamiliar customs and places. This study of three well-known and legendary female cultural intermediaries, Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea, examines their initial contact with Euro-Americans, their negotiation of multinational frontiers, and their symbolic representation over time. Well before their first contact with Europeans or Anglo-Americans, the three women’s societies of origin—the Aztecs of Central Mexico (Malinche), the Powhatans of the mid-Atlantic coast (Pocahontas), and the Shoshones of the northern Rocky Mountains (Sacagawea)—were already dealing with complex ethnic tensions and social change. Using wit and diplomacy learned in their Native cultures and often assigned to women, all three individuals hoped to benefit their own communities by engaging with the new arrivals. But as historian Rebecca Kay Jager points out, Europeans and white Americans misunderstood female expertise in diplomacy and interpreted indigenous women’s cooperation as proof of their attraction to Euro-American men and culture. This confusion has created a historical misrepresentation of Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea as gracious Indian princesses, giving far too little credit to their skills as intermediaries. Examining their initial contact with Europeans and their work on multinational frontiers, Jager removes these three famous icons from the realm of mythology and cultural fantasy and situates each woman’s behavior in her own cultural context. Drawing on history, anthropology, ethnohistory, and oral tradition, Jager demonstrates their shrewd use of diplomacy and fulfillment of social roles and responsibilities in pursuit of their communities’ future advantage. Jager then goes on to delineate the symbolic roles that Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea came to play in national creation stories. Mexico and the United States have molded their legends to justify European colonization and condemn it, to explain Indian defeat and celebrate indigenous prehistory. After hundreds of years, Malinche, Pocahontas and Sacagawea are still relevant. They are the symbolic mothers of the Americas, but more than that, they fulfilled crucial roles in times of pivotal and enduring historical change. Understanding their stories brings us closer to understanding our own histories.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2015-10-20
- 368 pages
- Paperback
- University of Oklahoma Press
Similar books
-
People of the Saltwater: An Ethnography of Git Lax M'oon
By Charles R. MenziesCover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1.
-
Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil: 1500–1600
By Alida C. Metcalf21 Zurara and Barros not only emphasize the importance of the communication provided by interpreters, but they recognize that the loyalty of the go-between was not certain and that go-betweens could equally well serve Africans.
-
True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History
The True Story of Pocahontas is the first public publication of the Powhatan perspective that has been maintained and passed down from generation to generation within the Mattaponi Tribe, and the first written history of Pocahontas by her ...
-
Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots
By Monique MojicaExplores the truth behind the myth and legend of the Indian Princess. This book lays bare the hearts and minds of Pocahontas, Malinche, Sacajawea and the uncounted Native women who first met and fought the European invasion.
-
Citizens of a Common Intellectual Homeland: The Transatlantic Origins of American Democracy and Nationhood
By Armin MattesPreparation of this volume has been supported by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Jeffersonian America
-
Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots: Two Plays
By Monique MojicaNewly released as a Women's Press Classic, this play artfully weaves together past and present, North and South America, history, documentary, and myth. Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots is...
-
Young, Well-Educated, and Adaptable: Chilean Exiles in Ontario and Quebec, 1973-2010
By Francis PeddieIn Young, Well-Educated, and Adaptable, Francis Peddie documents the experiences of twenty-one Chileans as they navigate their newfound identity as exiles.
-
Hubbell Trading Post: Trade, Tourism, and the Navajo Southwest
By Erica Cottamclerked at trader Henry Reed's store at Fort Wingate for a time, from which position he began to strike out on his own in business, entering into a contract to supply the Navajo agency with 100,000 pounds of corn, backed by Keam and ...
-
Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico
By Camilla Townsend"--Susan M. Socolow, Emory University "Camilla Townsend's text reads beautifully. She has a capacity to express complex ideas in simple, elegant language. This book consists of an interweaving of many strands of analysis.
-
Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States
By Kevin BruyneelAs an example of a liberal rationalist approach built upon an amnesia framework for the relationship of the present to the past, see Thomas McCarthy, “Vergangenheitsbewaltigung in the USA: On the Politics of Memory and Slavery,” ...