Translating Values: Mercantilism and the Many "Biographies" of Pocahontas

Seventeenth century mercantilist economics is based on "translating": foreign wealth changes meaning or value in becoming domestic property. The Pocahontas story manipulates biographical evidence to mercantilist ends: she is "translated" by love and marriage into a British subject, "domesticating" her Indian lands into British/American property. Retelling this story keeps American mercantilism alive, reaffirming the mythic belief that the US is the inevitable end-product of all translation.