Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures by Frederic W. Gleach (review)

Book Reviews 131 of its day. It had no rivals in terms of size and speed, new technology, and lavish trappings. But there was a callous disregard, an underestimation of the power of nature. Freudian interpretations emphasize that male desires for conquest and control were subverted by the supposedly feminine powers of nature, powers that remain mysterious. Heyer covers a broad expanse of detail and interpretation in this valuable book. He succeeds in demystifying the myth by deconstructing the Titt1nic legacy into its many component parts. There is little disputing the strength of Heyer's contribution, not only in telling the story from a variety of umque angles, but in seeing the tragedy as an important landmark in the history of communications. After reading this fascinating account, one cannot help but agree with Heyer's assertion that the Tit,mic still "wields the memory of her fate with a jealousy that tolerates no rivals" (154). D1widTaras University of"Calgary Frederic W. Gleach. Powhatan's World and Colonial Vi1ginia: A Conflict ol Cultures. Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. ix + 211 ,rnd bibliography and illustrations. The Indian encounter with English colonists along the newly christened "JamesRiver"-and especially the legendary meeting of Pocahontas and John Smith-has long captured the American imagination. Over the past forty years that fascination has, to an unprecedented degree, engaged not only poets and playwrights but also historians and anthropologists. Nancy Lurie, J.Frederick Fausz, Helen Rountree, J.A. Leo Lemay, James Axtell, Martin Quirt, Kathleen Brown-these and other scholars have peered past the myths and read between the lines of the colonial accounts in order to take another look at that famous, fateful encounter. Frederic W. Gleach adds a new voice and fresh ideas to this scholarly conversation. Armed with anthropological theory and a willingness to offer "controlled speculation" where the record is sparse (13), GIeach believes that the heart of the matter is how the "world-view" of the two peoples, their "ideas and understandings," shaped their interaction (vii). Intent on offering "a more objective treatment of these two sides of the history of early colonial 132 Canadian Review of American Snid1es Revue ca11adienne cfetudes amencames Virginia," he suggests that native and newcomer were engaged in "mutual attempts to civilize each other" (2, 3). Having sketched portraits of the central elements in Powhatan and English societies on the eve of contact, Pou,hatan'sWorld tmd ColonialVirgi11i,1 then focuses on several key episodes, including the story of Smith and Pocahontas and the clashes of 1622 and 1644, when the balance of power at last shifted toward the newcomers. Gleach's retelling of this tale is full of intriguing insights. Among his contributions is his insistence that terms such as "war" and "uprising" be used carefully (or not at all), freighted as they are with European understandings and implications. His treatment of native martial culture, and what he calls an Indian ''tzestheticof warfare" imbued with "playful irony or wit" (47), sees rhyme and reason behind what colonists considered mere savagery. Arresting, too, is Gleach's imaginative take on Smith's captivity, which he reads as one long adoption ceremony, an elaborate ritual designed not only to transform Smith from outsider to insider but to make the entire Virginia settlement a colony of Powhatan's, not England's. The same fresh eye is evident in the analysis of the Indians' attack on the English in 1622. This was not, as so often claimed, a failed attempt to wipe out Virginia; rather, it was a "coup de main" carefully calibrated to check colonial expansion and teach colonists a lesson (4), to drive home the point that Indians were still in charge. That Virginians missed this point is clear; but so, Gleach argues, has everyone else in the centuries since. For all its insightful readings, ultimately the book's ambitious reachconspicuously careful use of words, objectivity, a thoroughgoing "revision" of "the basic categories of meaning'' involved (200)-exceeds its grasp. Gleach's commendable care with terms like "war'' does not extend to other loaded words such as "republican" (30), "conquest" (43), even "peace" (138). And his "controlled...