When another world was possible

Dr Amy Morris (Robinson, NC 1990) focuses on early American literature, from colonial encounters to myths around Pocahontas. In these polarised times she aims to bring diverse voices to the fore and explore lesser-known elements of a contested history.

Across her career, University Associate Professor in English Amy Morris has explored early literature in what became the United States of America, and various attempts at mutual understanding, even close collaboration, between settlers and Indigenous people. It’s a tantalising glimpse of a time when another future was possible, with people forging a common future, before the settlement and expansion forced native communities from their land.

An early unfinished poem by an English migrant and Harvard scholar, who ended up minister of a frontier church, inspired her initial interest. Edward Taylor’s work reveals a surreal imagination, but also tentative attempts at connection. After encountering Indigenous mythology and huge fossilised mastodon teeth, which he thought were evidence of giants, he sees a convergence between Indigenous mythology and the stories of giants he heard in England. ‘He believed this proved that the stories he heard as a child were not made-up, but have a common source, evidenced in the appearance of the enormous teeth,’ Amy said. 

‘It's not that he was a maverick, he was a conservative Puritan church minister, but his work reflected a positive response to Indigenous culture. It points to a wider variety of responses to Indigenous people and their belief systems than the fear and conflict which became the dominant narrative.’ 

Much of Amy’s work has explored the contested area of encounters between Native Americans and settlers, looking at early literature up to 1800. It’s a field that has become increasingly polarised. ‘It’s difficult to navigate partly because the oral tradition means there were few documents except from settlers. But you can piece things together from different accounts. There is a value of literature as a historical record, even when it’s not great literature, for what it reveals of culture and beliefs,’ she said. 

Exploring Pocahontas

One of the most controversial stories Amy has explored is that of Pocahontas, who in the Disney film version is something of a poster girl for assimilation. She was a Native American, captured by English colonists during hostilities in the early seventeenth century. While captive, she converted to Christianity and was baptised Rebecca, later marrying a colonist, bearing their son and travelling with him to London. Here she was fêted, before dying on the voyage home in 1617. 

With another early American literature specialist, Kathryn N. Gray, Amy co-edited a book, Matoaka, Pocahontas, Rebecca: Her Atlantic Identities and Afterlives (University of Virginia Press, 2024). It features contributions from historians, anthropologists, established leaders in the field of Indigenous Studies and an artist. Amy describes it as a ‘sympathetic but difficult book, partly because it’s a difficult subject politically’. 

The collection of essays enables different perspectives to sit together, including the late Monacan poet and historian Karenne Wood, and is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on Matoaka (her Indigenous name). It looks particularly at the creation and perpetuation of her cultural image and how that is challenged by new archival research, interdisciplinary methodologies and contemporary creative practice. 

‘Some of the Native Americans we invited to the original conference did not want to come and talk about Pocahontas, she's anathema in some circles. But those who came said that once they got into thinking about her as a real woman living between two cultures, and what that meant, they were keen to reclaim the narrative. Not imagining her as a victim, but somebody who's making choices, surviving and figuring out how to navigate this conflict that she's in the middle of, between her father and the colonists,’ Amy said. 

Origin story

Part of the contested history is due to the way accounts from English explorers have used Pocahontas’ story as part of the national origin story of the USA. There is a large mural of her in the US Capitol building by John Gadsby Chapman, which was created in the nineteenth century at a time of the killings and land theft known as the ‘Indian removals’. In that mural she’s quite Victorian, in a beautiful white dress and with a ray of the Holy Spirit's light coming down upon her as she accepts baptism. Nearby are a crowd of disgruntled looking Native Americans. ‘There's sort of encoded politics there, saying: she's the model, assimilate and become like us and everything will be great. She is used to carry that narrative.’ 

By contrast, the Mattaponi tribe believe her marriage was forced and, rather than her dying of disease, they believe she was poisoned. It’s oral history, passed down for generations, whereas traditionally academic accounts have relied on archival documentation. But Amy points out that the documents, largely by a man called John Smith, were revised over time as the mythology of Pocahontas developed. To make sense of this contested history, Amy and Kathryn worked with Karenne Wood at the University of Virginia to bring in more diverse voices and artists. 

‘We were trying to slough off some of the mythology or at least engage with it critically and think, this has been used to underpin a racist takeover narrative. We tried to get as many different perspectives together as possible. Not to say this is how it was, but to sit with the elements which are unclear or contested; recognise it is inadequate to rely on documents, and instead invite other people in. There are ways to bring together traditions of scientific analysis with culture and oral literature,’ Amy said. 

Challenging perspective

Amy’s own experience living and raising a family between two continents gives added resonance to her work on cultural encounters. She met her American husband when she was a PhD student on a two-year Frank Knox Fellowship at Harvard, where he was working on medieval literature. He took a fellowship to travel to England shortly after and they have been studying each other's countries, partly from each other's countries, ever since. Their four children are American citizens and largely raised there, which has involved shuttling back and forwards, as well as extended maternity leave and long periods of remote working. 

‘I'm a resident alien there, so I understand the difference it makes to be from somewhere else – and my husband has the same experience here. But it gives you this amazing leverage; you can't rest easy in your own opinions and your own perspectives because you're in a group where there's a different majority view. Sometimes it's subtle, but you have a different set of norms and received ideas. It’s hard, but enriching,’ she said. 

Amy’s children are now teenagers and young adults, but when they were younger she worked part-time and even attempted to resign at one point, when the commute became too much. Talked out of it, she was grateful to join Newnham, initially as a Director of Studies and later a Fellow, and has valued being part of a supportive College. 

She is talking to colleagues at the Margaret Anstee Centre about her new project on translated bibles, an important element of encounters in the early American story. She found a group of bibles in the Cambridge archives which were bilingual, translated into the Native American language Algonquian, and is exploring the collaboration required to make them. ‘It helped to give native people the tools of literacy and the man who translated it obviously had a lot of help from Algonquian speakers. There’s a mutual meeting ground that is involved in translation itself, which requires recognition of the different ways of thinking in the language being translated into. It’s a collaboration,’ she said. ‘It feels uncomfortable now because of how the cultural takeover progressed, but uncovering that dialogue can help reconstruct that moment when the possibilities of engagement were still open.’

• Image shows detail from a portrait of Pocahontas, published by William Richardson, after Simon de Passe, line engraving, published 10 August 1793 (first published 1616) NPG D28135 © National Portrait Gallery, London. This portrait appears on the cover of the volume Amy edited, Matoaka, Pocahontas, Rebecca: Her Atlantic Identities and Afterlives