In this multiple point of view, first person narrative, it is usually narrator reliability that may be questioned. Here, however, I find it points more directly to the creator of the many voices, that being Matthew Sharpe himself.
I just find it difficult to believe that the smartest most philosophical and practical person in the two groups (possibly three, counting the Manhattan characters left behind on this trip) is the nineteen year-old Pocahontas. With everyone running around killing each other as the main form of activity, and the return of her tribe to the old traditional forms of mating and communicating, I just don’t feel her character would have the insight:
But I love this day, which has shown that a big wooden wall around a small port of air can serve to make two folks work hard to say what they mean, and that one can sometimes understand what the other thinks and wants despite the great impediment of the matter between two minds. (p. 158)
There seems to be the writer’s touch here, and elsewhere, that endows only certain characters with any common sense. The rest, a parody of a society gone wayward by its own machinations. The only Indian of the tribe besides Pocahontas who was firmly but briefly rounded as a character was the short-lived scout, Albert. The rest seem to revolve around Pocahontas’ whims and reflections.
There may be some discrimination here as well since the Northerners have a bit more character–good or bad–built into them. Or maybe I’m just taking it all too seriously.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology