Покахонтас: Американдық пароди және мәдени өзгерістер

Po ca hon tas, or The Gentle Savage (subtitled "An Original Aboriginal Erratic Operatic Semi civilized and Demi savage Extravaganza") is a two act musical burlesque by John Brougham (words) and James Gaspard Maeder (music). It debuted in 1855 and became an instant hit. Po ca hon tas remained a staple of theatre troupes and blackface minstrel companies for the next 30 years, typically as an afterpiece. The play parodies the Indian narratives that were popular at the time in the United States, particularly those featuring Indian heroines in the Noble Savage mould. The burlesque is usually credited with bringing the fad for Indian narratives to an end.

The piece was reinvented in London at St James's Theatre, where it opened on 27 November 1869 as La Belle Sauvage, with music arranged by W. H. Montgomery. Mrs John Wood played Pocahontas, Lionel Brough was Captain Smith and A. W. Young appeared as Count Rolff (sic).

This prevalent success of Brougham upon the genre of American burlesque sits mainly on his choice to take a spin off of such a specific American topic. Po Ca Hon Tas appeared to surpass the usual guidelines of burlesque, lampooning up to the minute dramatic formulas and characters. Po Ca Hon Tas was also “specifically linked to the social and cultural transformations that were taking place in America” during this nineteenth century period. In the heat of century, there was a revolution of sorts happening between the Native Americans and the United States settlers due to the unrest concerning territory and authority. There were some groundbreaking Americans who believed that Indians could embody “what once had been, or yet could be, if only America’s overpowering drive to conquer and contaminate could be reined in”, but regardless of this view, the culture of the Native Americans took on a considerable amount of damage over the course of the nineteenth century. After winning independence from England in 1776, the new United States’ government began taking possession of Indian territories that lay west of the Appalachian Mountains, even though the United States did not yet manifest past that frontier. From this seizure on, there was a rapid fire of treaties and court cases between the American government and the Indian nations. Treaties were considered “legal agreements between two legitimate governments” – in this case, the United States and an Indian Nation. Whenever an Indian Nation would sign a treaty, it consented to “give the federal government some or all of its land, as well as some or all of its sovereign powers” in exchange for the government's “protection, benefits, and rights” to the Native people. Almost none of these agreements ended well for the Natives, as “Indians saw their lands greatly diminished between 1763 and 1889” and eventually all Natives were forced to relocate to relatively minuscule Indian reservations. Not only did the United States government greatly impose on the Indian's geographical boundaries, but their cultural boundaries as well. The newly created and crammed reservations became a hub for government officials to “civilize Indians” and “prepare them for inclusion into the U. S. polity” – a concept that Pocahontas’ story specifically highlights.

In the early 19th century, there was a huge infatuation with Indians, especially Pocahontas, as her story was a prime example of Jacksonian democracy: ‘expansion (nationalism), antimonopoly (egalitarianism) and white supremacy’ The Jacksonian democracy, an era that defined American beliefs in the early 1800s supported the “Manifest Destiny” (1840), which extended the belief that the United States should extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. Jackson battled Congress in order to pass his Indian Removal Act (1830), which would authorize removal of Native Americans west of the Mississippi River in order to increase United States territory. This only added to American's practice of white supremacy and superiority over inferior races. There was pride in this idea of the eventual submission of the Indians to the whites’ colonizing/ ‘civilizing’ power. People idealized this story as proof that they could change the Indians and win them over to the white side, the “right side.” Pocahontas was this legendary figure, the famous Indian Princess who willingly renounced her own people and culture, converted to Christianity, and married the English colonizer Nevertheless, Brougham did manage to write “no fewer than 126 plays, including burlesques, adaptations, Gothic melodramas, tear jerkers, Irish plays, and social satire." Brougham was one of the first to bring a bit of the action of his plays into the auditorium. According to Moody, “He was genial, jovial, hearty, handsome, immensely popular, dashing, clever, and always stylishly dressed.”