Carnegie prize-winning author Tanya Landman explains how a childhood love of westerns led her to uncover the hard truths behind the myth-making - and to write Buffalo Soldier, her YA novel of the African-Americans who fought in the Indian wars
It all started with Pocahontas.
I was born and grew up in Gravesend, Kent, where Pocahontas died and was buried in 1617 and where there’s a beautiful statue of her. These days there’s a shopping centre behind that statue, but when I was young she stood outlined against the cold grey expanse of the Thames with the industrial landscape of Tilbury in the far distance. There was something about her – standing alone, hands outstretched – that haunted and puzzled me. Her image was so at odds with everything else I knew about Native Americans.
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