Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Chapter 3 includes the stories of three famous American Indians whose lives illustrate how Natives incorporated Europeans into their world. Although Pocahontas, Kateri Tekakwitha, and “King Philip” Metacom are all celebrated in popular lore, historical information about them is scarce.

For Richter, Pocahontas is the symbol of “a road of intercultural cooperation that tragically was not taken” (78). Her rescue of Captain John Smith defined her as an “intermediary between…two leaders and their communities” (71) and her later marriage to John Rolfe cemented a diplomatic alliance between English and Natives through which the two peoples became “fictive kin” (77). Pocahontas strove to create the conditions by which the English could live “in Indian country by Indian rules” (78).

Kateri Tekakwitha, a canonized Catholic saint, represents for Richter an Indian who “welcome[d] a European visitor to her country, willingly embrace[d] Christianity,” and left behind “a legacy of interracial harmony” (80). The saint bridged the chasm between Indian and Christian beliefs, two seemingly incompatible systems. For people like Kateri who joined Indian Christian religious communities, Christianity was “a way of making sense of their condition” and “mobilizing the spiritual power the missionaries…described as ‘grace’” (90).