Mirrored Archetypes : The Contrasting Cultural Roles of La Malinche and Pocahontas
2008; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 67; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-811X
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
ResumoAs teenagers they played pivotal roles in early contact between European and indigenous American cultures. Both mothered sons that became among the first documented children of mixed European/ Indian ancestry. Neither is believed to have survived until age 30 and most remember these women by names that were not, in fact, their own. The women known as La Malinche and Pocahontas share startlingly similar stories but serve very different cultural roles. Growing far beyond their historical personages, the figures of La Malinche and Pocahontas stand at the center of narrative traditions and have become cultural archetypes. Social, historical, and demographic differences in these women's countries have resulted in different readings of similar events; Malinche's name has become synonymous with traitor and whore while Pocahontas has come to represent the untouched American frontier and the civilizing process that the Europeans claimed to bring to the Native Americans. In both instances the stories created have more to do with the position and motivation of the teller than with the woman about whom the story is told. The differences in the archetypes created around each one originate in the fact uiat Malinche's story arises from a period of conquest while that of Pocahontas comes from a time of colonization. La Malinche is the name used to refer to the indigenous woman who served as translator for Cortes during his conquest of Mexico. Born to a Nahuad speaking group she lived as a slave among the Chontal Maya and consequently spoke the language of both groups. Cortes had among his company a priest, Geronimo de Aguilar, who spoke Maya and Spanish as the result of landing on the Yucatan peninsula following a shipwreck, but Cortes needed Malinche to communicate with Montezuma or any of the Nahuad groups. She eventually had a son with Cortes, converted to Christianity, and married one of Cortes' officers. The circumstances of her death are unclear but it is almost certain she did not live beyond the age of thirty (Karttunen 1994:4). Almost one hundred years later a young Algonquin girl called Pocahontas served a similar role as unofficial emissary. She was the daughter of Powhatan, who led the Algonquin group in Tidewater, Virginia when the Jamestown setdement was established. In 1608, when she first encountered Europeans she was around age ten or eleven. She was eventually captured by the English who hoped to trade her back to her father but when he refused to ransom her she setded in Jamestown, eventually marring an Englishman, John Rolfe. She had a child, Thomas, by Rolfe and traveled to England with him where she died in 1617 (Faery 1999:83). HISTORICAL CONTEXT To understand the radically different forms of the folklore surrounding these women, it is necessary to look at key differences between them and the settings from which their stories originate. Few concrete facts survive about the two women's brief lives, but it is certain that neither was born to the name they are most widely known by today. Scholars still debate the birth name of the woman known as La Malinche. An oral tradition, now written down extensively, states that her birth name was or Ce-Malinalli, in accordance with Mesoamerican tradition, after the day of her birth. Most Mesoamerican cultures believed that the date of one's birth predetermined their destiny. If she was indeed born on Malinalli, the twelfth day of the Aztec calendar, this belief seems to have proved true; children born under Malinalli are said to be rebellious, unlucky, and to have their children taken away from them. In eerie similarity to this proscribed fate, Malinche defied convention, lived through adversity, and had her son taken away by his father. While some scholars treat Malinalli as her factual name, others see this tradition as probably created after the fact, originating in the similarities between the day name and the names Malinche and Marina and the appropriateness of its symbolic qualities (Lanyon 1999:41-43, HerreraSobek 2005:113). …
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