Few English people defended the way of life of foreign peoples, leading to generally defamatory accounts and, in some cases, justifying violence against them. By the time they arrived in Virginia, explorers such as John Smith had already created preconceptions about Native Americans. They idealized the Native Americans as an insatiable, wanton people who practically threw themselves at newcomers. The English often sexualized Native American women, and as Townsend writes, “The colonizers of the imagination were men—men with almost mystical powers. Foreign women and foreign countries wanted, even needed, these men, because such men were more than desirable. The English were eager to believe him, and writers such as Peter Martyr and Richard Hakluyt only served to inspire such fantasies of colonization. Even Smith himself produced half-truths about his capture and his experiences among the Powhatan people in order to be seen as the hero. There was obvious prejudice against Native Americans in European countries, and reports only affirmed the English of their contempt for these strange people. The first step taken by the English to destroy Native American culture was to discredit them as simple savages too uncivilized to properly use their lands or develop innovations on the scale that they themselves had..