Love and Hate in Jamestown
David Price's reason for writing Love and Hate in Jamestown is to demystify the historical legends of John Smith and Pocahontas, and portray both as the reason why the Jamestown colony survived in the New World. Price supports this thesis by describing the people that inhabited the New World with the settlers at Jamestown, describing the leadership skills Smith possessed, and describing his method for saving the colony from disaster. Price wants to portray Smith and Pocahontas in the correct light, and correct the common misconception that the two were romantically involved. Price expresses this through an excellent narrative telling the story of the ship's voyage across the Atlantic, the settlement of the colony, and the interactions that take place with the native peoples. As I have stated, Price's reason for writing this book is to finally tell the true story behind the colony of Jamestown. Many stories have been told of the colony, and Price has been exposed to them just as we have. He notes the Disney animated movie Pocahontas early in his text, "the imaginative 1995 Walt Disney Co. movie, for example, endowed Pocahontas with a Barbie-doll figure, dressed her in a deerskin from Victoria's Secret, and made her Smith's love interest." (Price 4) The trouble behind this tale was that Smith and Pocahontas were "never romantically involved", Price says. This is just one example of many that Price describes that show how the story of Jamestown has been altered by modern Americans. Price goes on to describe Pocahontas as the daughter of the great Chief Powhatan, a leader of a group of Indian tribes present in Virginia at the time of the Jamestown settlement. Price describes how Pocahontas' ability to tug on her father's heart strings was the reason John Smith's settlement was saved from disaster at the hands of Indian warriors. Also, the romantic relationship falsely attributed to the pair is down struck by the fact that Pocahontas was a young girl of