The Powhatans and the English in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake by David J. Voelker

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Powhatans and the English in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake by David J. Voelker Rebecca M. Lush (bio) The Powhatans and the English in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake david j. voelker Oxford University Press, 2020 102 pp. The Powhatans and the English in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake is a teaching text designed for the undergraduate history classroom, but its selection of primary texts could also work well in an undergraduate early American literature course. Part of the "Debating American History" series from Oxford UP, this textbook reader takes an argument-model approach to historical study to encourage students to think like historians and engage in the methodologies of the field. Rather than taking a coverage model approach, where students are presented with an account of many events over a longer timeline and may accept those events at face value, the argument-model frames the study of history around key questions that invite deeper reflection on the accuracy of sources and source biases. In this volume the key guiding question, which the editor describes as the "big question," is "How were the English able to displace the thriving Powhatan people from their Chesapeake homelands in the seventeenth century?" The volume provides a general overview of historical information to contextualize this question and includes a glossary of Indigenous terminology. It also includes a timeline visualization of the key events that are [End Page 985] mentioned in the subsequent sources. The most useful section is the one titled "Debating the Question," where selections from primary texts are organized with "guiding questions" at the start of each selection and a "drawing conclusions" section at the end. The questions at the start and end of each primary text encourage student-readers to think critically and to see the archival materials as not offering any easy answers regarding how and why events happened. The selection of primary text includes the usual colonial accounts commonly covered in classes and appearing in other teaching anthologies such as Richard Hakluyt, Thomas Hariot, and Christopher Newport. The book also includes visual and material texts such as engravings and Powhatan's Mantle. Importantly, the primary text selection also includes the Mattaponi oral tradition more recently published by Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow and Angela L. Daniel "Little Star," giving students more than just colonial perspectives. Following the "Debating the Question" section filled with primary selections are two case studies. The first explores the subset question "Did Pocahontas rescue John Smith from execution?" and features primary sources by Edward-Maria Wingfield and John Smith with guiding questions for the student to note issues of inconsistency and credibility. The structure of case study 1 encourages students to form their own answers to the question. The first case study would also work well for literature courses that are already looking at this issue via various literary and media representations beyond Wingfield and Smith (such as James Nelson Barker's musical play The Indian Princess or even the 1995 Disney feature film). The second case study explores the subset question "What was the strategy behind the 1622 Powhatan surprise attack?" and features two scholarly essays by historians with different perspectives. The second case study is more fitting for a history classroom context than a literature one. However, the idea behind the structure of case study 2 could be used by instructors to select relevant literary scholarship to have students compare scholarly debate. The selections in this second case study also seem like comparatively older scholarly works, which can work well for a comparative approach to show how conversations in the field have changed. The subset section of case study 2 would have been stronger if it also included a more contemporary scholarly example to reflect the growing place of Indigenous and decolonizing methodologies. [End Page 986] Overall, The Powhatans and the English in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake is a useful supplemental text to literary study of early America since its argument-based approach complements the methods of the undergraduate literature classroom. The text also provides instructors with ways to think about how to frame classroom material to encourage active student learning and engagement. [End Page 987] Rebecca M. Lush California State University San Marcos...