Not many Englishmen defended the foreign peoples' way of life, leading to generally defamatory accounts and in some cases providing justification for violence against them. Upon arriving in Virginia, explorers such as John Smith had already created preconceived notions about Native Americans. They romanticized Native Americans by claiming they were an insatiable, unbridled people who practically preyed on newcomers. The English often sexualized Native American women, and as Townsend writes, “The colonizers of the imagination were men – men imbued with almost mystical powers. Foreign women and foreign lands wanted, nay needed, these men, because such men were more than desirable. The English were eager to believe it, and writers like Peter Martyr and Richard Hakluyt only further inspired such fantasies of colonization. Even Smith himself manufactured half-truths about his capture and experiences among the Powhatan people in order to be perceived as the hero. There was a clear prejudice against Native Americans in European countries, and reports only confirmed the English's disdain for these strange people. The first step the English took in destroying Native American culture was to discredit them as mere savages, too uncivilized to properly use their land or develop innovations on the scale that they themselves would do..