The Female American by Unca Eliza Winkfield (Anonymous)

This book combines elements of Robinson Crusoe and John Smith's account of the happenings at Jamestown--particularly the Pocahontas parts. A young woman, daughter of a Native American princess and an English colonist, is educated in England, but briefly returns to America with her father (her mother having died quite some time ago). Her father dies in America and Unca Eliza decides to return to England again, but she's left on a deserted island by a scheming captain. I'm particularly intrigued by the ways that gender play out in the text: she's left with a full set of instructions on how to live on the island (because how could a woman figure it out on her own?), but she ends up playing God to teach the locals about Christianity; she lives self-sufficiently and happily on the island and expresses to her cousin SEVERAL times her intention only to marry someone who can shoot the bow and arrow as well as she can (he, being an English cousin, cannot), and yet, when he shows up on the island with a convoluted story as to how he found her, she marries him anyway. Another strange point is that although Unca Eliza seems to have little interest in material wealth for herself (she chooses to remain as a missionary on her island instead of going home to enjoy the colonial wealth her father accumulated), she sends all the golden religious artifacts that she finds on the island home to her family--thereby stripping the island of its religious and material heritage. All in all, a strange and delightful book.