Pocahontas and Topiltzin: Two Natives Lost in Translation

By Andrea D. Espinoza

[1] In the films The New World by Terrence Malick and La Otra Conquista by Salvador Carrasco, we meet two Amerindian nobles who go through extreme upset when their world comes into contact with that of European colonizers. They both experience a loss of their respective cultures and go through their own assimilations into the cultures of the Spanish and the English. Furthermore, both Pocahontas and Topiltzin experience a hard spiritual struggle during their assimilations. However, what sets them apart with their struggles is the cause of their struggles. While Pocahontas’s struggle ends with her complete assimilation into English culture because of the presence of romantic intimacy in her life, Topiltzin’s religious struggle ends with a merging of his Aztec past and his colonial present.

[2] To begin, both Topiltzin and Pocahontas have many similarities in their stories. The first similarity that comes to mind is the fact that they are both of noble birth. In La Otra Conquista, Topiltzin is the son of the leader Montezuma who is trained as the scribe that updates the codex. In The New World, Pocahontas is the beloved daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Algonquin tribe. She is the one who saves Captain John Smith from having his brains smashed out onto a rock. The fact that both of these characters are of noble birth is of extreme importance to their respective films, because it makes their foreshadowed struggles even more difficult for them to go through. This fact is a perfect example of the saying “The higher you rise, the lower shall you fall.” These two characters start out on the higher end of their respective social pyramids. In fact, the opening sequence of La Otra Conquista includes Topiltzin looking down at the destruction (caused by the Spaniards on his city of Tenochtitlán) and painting it in his Codex. Pocahontas’s evidence of her position in her tribe literally radiates off her. The fact that she is bathed in heavenly light the first time we see her serves to demonstrate her social position not only in her father’s eyes, but also in the eyes of her society.

[3] Another key similarity that Pocahontas and Topiltzin have between them is the fact that they both go through a hard struggle in order to find their place in the new European order of life. However, that very struggle which binds them together also sets them apart because their struggles are based in two completely different realms of human emotion. Topiltzin’s struggle is based in reconciling his love for Tonantzin, the “Mother Goddess” of the Aztec religion, with his growing love for the Virgin Mary of Spanish Catholicism. Throughout La Otra Conquista, we see scenes in which he constantly fights to keep the Aztec religious tradition alive in himself, even though he lives in the bastion of European Christianity, a monastery. The phrase that he constantly saysm even screams, is a perfect example of the religious struggle that is constantly ensuing within him throughout the film: “Saintly Mother! You may have my earthly body, but my heart and soul, never!”

[4] The struggle of Pocahontas, on the other hand, involves choosing between two men that represent two different parts of her life. Captain John Smith represents her Indian past, while John Rolfe represents her future. She essentially has to somehow choose one man without denying both her natural Indian ways and her newly acquired English ones. What is fascinating about these two men is how they treat her. Captain Smith has someone else tell her that he drowned on the way back to England, while Mr. Rolfe marries her for “the salvation of her soul.” Both of these actions essentially define her struggle to find her identity, because as aforementioned, these men are essentially physical manifestations of her spiritual and physical identity. To deny one of them would be equal to denying (a) who she used to be and (b) who she has become.

[5] Furthermore, another distinctive difference between these characters is how their struggle begins. The struggle of Topiltzin begins when he is a layman at the monastery under the care of Fray Diego, whereas the struggle of Pocahontas begins with the “death” of Captain Smith. Topiltzin’s struggle starts when he is at a religious crossroads in his life. Over time, however, he comes to understand that the beliefs of his culture and those of the European conquistadores are, in fact, more similar than the Europeans would like to believe. Arnold Carlos Vento writes the fanatical worship of saints and the Virgin Mary in Catholicism is evidence of the Catholic Church’s roots in polytheistic worship: “The cults of saints and relics had roots in a kind of paganism or fetishism; they saw the provincial West producing a kind of particularism, a fondness for the physical manifestations of the divinity, a desire to draw near the object of worship and possess it” (2). Vento’s argument supports Topiltzin’s view because he says that although Catholicism as religion professes to praise one most high God, the fact that it venerates different beings on equal status with God (under the guise of saints and the Holy Trinity) in a similar way that Carrasco highlights in the film shows that Catholicism and the beliefs of the Aztecs are not so different.

[6] However, Pocahontas’s struggle begins when she is tossed out of her tribe by her father, the chief. This highlights another key difference between the two. While Topiltzin’s father was killed in battle, Pocahontas is told to leave by Chief Powhatan because she has become a danger to the tribe. The loss of her tribe and identity effectively send her into a depression. Rolfe’s recollection of his first sight of her describes her accurately: “When I first saw her, she was considered to be someone who was finished.” Her struggle at first seems to be a struggle to exist. She goes through the motions of life, working in the tobacco fields, walks with Rolfe, and other such motions. However, the enthusiasm she felt for her life is gone. She no longer dances around. She is polite, but the spark in her eyes has gone. She does not play the same role, wildly exploring her surroundings like the happy young woman she should be.

[7] When Pocahontas marries John Rolfe and they grow into a routine, the spark slowly comes back to life, but she seems to be determined to keep it from growing. In the scene in which she is at the well and Rolfe pulls her to him and displays his affection for her, she says “I cannot do that . . . pretend something which I do not feel.” This is the point at which I feel she lied. Her voice-overs display her struggle. She points out the fact again and again that he gives her a home, a life, and a son. However, all of these things that Rolfe gives her are a part of her English life. There are no remnants of her former life, save for the scene where the Powhatan trader bows with great reverence to her in a commercial exchange. Even her name is gone. The people around her call her Rebecca, not Pocahontas. She still plays in the world, but her connection to it is no longer in the mere existence of life and nature, but the mechanical interactions of the people in that life and nature.

[8] Michael Tratner writes that the romance between Pocahontas (Rebecca) and John Rolfe was actually one between Pocahontas and Britain, with John Rolfe playing the representative of Britain: “Rolfe in effect claimed that what seduced Pocahontas was the glory of Britain, not him” (130). John Rolfe’s petition for marriage to Pocahontas effectively claimed that he was marrying her for the potential help that England could receive as a result of this union. However, as we can see in the film, it is definitely more than a gateway to future mercantilist transactions. He is affectionate with her, caring. He is patient with her and realizes that she must demonstrate her willingness to commit to him not only in the matrimonial bed and before the presence of God, but also in the heart and mind. I think that because she is given the freedom to do so, she actually decides to return. Furthermore, her meeting with Smith solidifies her view of her growth into a completely different person.

[9] Both Topiltzin and Pocahontas achieve endings that bring a peace to their soul. Topiltzin dies with the Virgin Mary/Tonantzin figure next to him, a symbol of the fusion of Aztec-Spaniard identities. Pocahontas acknowledges her past for what it has become -- her past -- and chooses to make a new life in an environment that gives her something that she has always valued: peace. These two characters go through struggles that are deeply rooted in different issues that define their identity: Tonantzin in the love of a female deity, and Pocahontas in a love of her past and present that is rooted in the hearts of two men. Although these characters go through many challenges that threaten to keep them in a quagmire of depression, they overcome these challenges to die at peace not only with themselves, but also the universe.

Tratner, Michael. "Translating Values: Mercantilism and the Many "Biographies" of Pocahontas." Biography 32.1 (2009): 128-36.