ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Anglophone Romantic women writers from Foster to Sigourney turned to the rescuing Indian maiden as a device for advancing women's political agency and historical significance. Pocahontas's story is, essentially, the stuff of fiction and, thus, appealed to the new group of Anglophone women writers conceiving a more emboldened and entertaining women's history. Sigourney covers the familiar terrain of Pocahontas's rescue of Smith, her capture and conversion to Christianity, marriage, trip to England, and a poignant final separation from her child and homeland as she dies in England. With so few colonial or Native women entering the public record, and with so few documents written by women themselves, the relatively well-documented Pocahontas affords Anglophone Romantic women writers a rare opportunity to envision women as agents in history. Non-Native women's interest and investment in Pocahontas as a historically significant political agent continues to this day, though not without debate.
