The 'Enamored Indian Princess' Narrative: Race, Sexuality, and Ancestry in the Stories of La Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawe

This dissertation examines the intersection of folklore and history through what I term the "Enamored Indian Princess" tale type, an Americanized version of a medieval European tale type called the "Enamored Moslem Princess". This story is a way of framing cultural contact as a romance between a European male and an exotic female, in this case a Native American woman. As case studies, I focus on the narratives associated with La Malinche in Mexico and with Pocahontas and Sacagawea in the United States. Although these three are historic women, their narratives have been folklorized, having taken on the characteristics of folk narratives. In some cases folklorization means that they have been embellished with incidents that cannot be verified with historical data, and in some cases it means that inconvenient details are omitted. I show how these narratives act as national origin stories and have been integrated into ideas of nationalism, post-colonialism, and cultural identity. The narratives surrounding these three women share a long list of commonalities, but have been represented in very distinct ways. I explore the reasons for those distinctions, concluding that they stem from the ideologies of cultural contact associated with each narrative, whether that is conquest, colonization, or manifest destiny, as well as the position the teller and audience see themselves in relation to the story. Since Americans identify with the Europeans or Euro-Americans in the narratives of Pocahontas and Sacagawea, these women are portrayed as heroines, whereas Mexicans are more likely to identify with the indigenous peoples killed and subjugated by the Spanish, so Malinche is seen as a traitor. I examine the ways these narratives have been represented in literature, art, and film as well as more traditional folkloric genres such as festival and folk speech in order to highlight the interplay between folklore and elite and popular culture. I consider the sexual dimensions of colonization as expressed in each of the three narratives and demonstrate how all three women have come to be seen as mythic ancestors by their respective nations.