The Polish Pocahontas Story: The Life of „the First Pole among the American Indians” According to Bolesław Zieliński
Marek Paryż
(University of Warsaw)
ORCID: 0000-0003-1108-2892
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In the inter-war years, so-called „Indian novels” enjoyed immense popularity with the youngerPolish reading audience. The article analyzes a representative novel in this genre, Orli Szpon (Eagle Talon) by Bolesław Zieliński, as an example of a literary construction of Polishness based on a specific idea of racial difference. Its plot revolves around a love relationship between a Polish man and an Indian woman, therefore it brings to mind the story of Pocahontas as an important analogue. Reading Orli Szpon in the light of the colonialist implications of the story of Pocahontas shows the extent to which Zieliński’s novel relies on the schematic and biased imaginings about American Indians that dated back the colonial era and dominated American depictions of the Natives in the course of the nineteenth century.
The sample of Polish version of this article is available here: https://tekstualia.pl/pl/numery/zapomnianedwudziestolecie
