"Rountree is certainly right in questioning the literal nature of the rescue, but her dismissal of it "from an anthropological viewpoint" is mistaken; lacking a larger framework as developed here, she dismisses the entire event as ritual. After describing the successive gathering with Powhatan and his men painted black, she writes: [see 1990 quote from Rountree above] Rountree does not explain why she trusts Smith to recognize a ritual from a foreign culture when she does not trust his account of the rescue. Furthermore, Smith's interpretations of meanings and reasons are far more likely to be wrong that the simple facts he chose to record. Any observer - or even participant - can misunderstand or only partly understand the meanings of and reasons for an event; this is particularly true of ritual events and is even more likely if the observer is unfamiliar with the culture in which the event is embedded." p. 119
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