The Emperor Powhatan was now living at Werowocomoco, twelve miles from Jamestown. This had been his favourite residence until the arrival of the English, but he soon "tooke so little pleasure in their neighbourhood—seeing they could visit him against his will in six or seven hours—that he retired himselfe to a place in the desarts at the top of the river Chickahomnia."

In all the countries which had come to him by inheritance he had houses "built after the manner of arbours"—of saplings, thatched with boughs of trees, and lined with mats. Some of these houses were a hundred and twenty feet long, and at every house provision was kept for his entertainment when it pleased him to make a royal progress through his dominions. Besides these, he kept for his own use a treasury building at Orapakes, filled with skins, copper, pearls, beads, bows and arrows, also a store of the precious red paint, with which the ladies of his court adorned themselves. At the four corners of this house were four images rudely carved out of the trunks of trees—one represented a dragon, another a bear, the third a leopard, and the fourth a man, signifying that the great Emperor was lord of beast and man. Indeed, his power was absolute. He had under him inferior kings of his own kindred, and all paid him tribute. Eight of ten parts of everything they acquired—game, corn, skins, beads, dye-stuffs, and the precious copper—were reverently laid at his feet. At his least frown they trembled with fear, for cruel and ingenious he could be in devising tortures for the punishment of those who offended him. The arrow and the tomahawk were his most merciful agents in despatching them. Before the door of his rural palace many a victim had been, in the presence of his women and little children, flayed alive, dismembered by degrees, thrown alive into a pit of fire.

On this fifth of January some such divertisement was keenly anticipated. His family and retainers were awake early, and bustling about in preparation for an unusual event.

There was to be a great gathering of the neighbouring chiefs,—Opechancanough and Opitchipan, his brothers and successors, and others. Early in the morning fires were kindled all over the settlement, and before them haunches of venison were spitted for the slight roasting deemed essential before the boiling, according to the invariable custom of the Indians in preparing flesh and fowl. Beneath the fires flat rocks were heating, to be withdrawn for the baking of bread. Some of the loaves were laid in the ashes, as they are to-day by the Virginians, who are indebted to the Indian, not only for his corn, but for his peculiar methods of cooking it. Now, as then, the "hoe-cake" is baked before the fire, and turned to brown on both sides; the homelier "ash-cake" is washed as soon as withdrawn from its humble bed of ashes, and dries immediately from its own heat. Now, as then, the Indian corn is beaten into "hominy," and boiled for food. We have not lost its Indian name, nor the Indian's name for the small loaf. He called it "pone"—where did he find a word so near kin to the Latin panis and the French pain?

Every morning men, women, and children ran down to the river and plunged into the ice-cold water. There were no bathing-houses for an after-toilet. They were unnecessary. Then, at the first peep of the sun, the entire assembly would turn, with uplifted hands, eastward, and in a wild chant of invocation worship the rising luminary, the men strewing the water with powdered tobacco as sacrifice. The Indian, as we have seen, worshipped no God of mercy! If God was good, why, then, it was unnecessary to placate him by adoration or sacrifice. He feared and worshipped "Okeus." And he also worshipped strength and force,—the fire that burned him, the water that drowned him, the great mysterious orb that was the source of the destroying fire.

When an Indian made a solemn oath, he laid one hand on his heart, raising the other reverently to the sun. "These people," says Percy, "have a great reverence to the Sunne above all other things; at the rising and setting of the same they lift up their hands and eyes to the Sunne, making a round Circle on the ground with dried Tobacco; then they begin to pray, making many Devillish Gestures with a Hellish noise, foming at the mouth, staring with their eyes, wagging their heads and hands in such a fashion and deformitie as it was monstrous to behold." Thus they ever strove to avert evil.

The settlement at Werowocomoco was a large one. Besides Powhatan's own house with many rooms, there were houses or arbours for his bows and arrows, and for his granaries, and stores of dried fish and venison. He had ten or twelve wives, and a number of young women of inferior position always in attendance upon him. He had many children around him: Nantauquas, "the handsomest, manliest savage ever seen," and his brothers; Matachanna, Pocahontas, and Cleopatre, and other princesses whose names do not appear. Matachanna was married, or about to be married, to Tocomocomo, "a wise and knowing priest." Pocahontas was a small maiden about ten years of age; Cleopatre (where did Powhatan get the name Cleopatre?) was destined to figure in history as soon as she reached the marriageable age of twelve. None of these young people lived with their own mothers. Powhatan never kept a wife after the birth of a child, but made a present of her to some chief or captain. But he was extremely fond of his own offspring, a sentiment which civilized man deems a high virtue, but which is shared with keen intensity by savage man, and savage beast as well.

Powhatan's favourite wife at this moment was Winganuskie, his favourite child Pocahontas. She was doubtless a mischievous maiden, active, adventurous, and daring. Strachey calls her "a wanton daughter of Powhatan." We read, among other adventures, of her attempting to swim across the Piankatank River, of her rescue by one of the Englishmen, and the consequent gift by Powhatan of Gwynne's Island to the colony; of the wild entertainment she devised and led for her friend, Captain Smith, all before she was a year older than at the time of which we are writing. She was small, slender, and graceful. Of her beauty a few years later, my readers are able to judge for themselves from the authentic portrait we present in this book. These, with all the other wives, and attendant females of a more doubtful position, with Matachanna and Cleopatre, and the minor princesses, made haste, upon coming up from their bath, to array themselves for the coming ceremonies. They had no mirrors of polished steel or glass, but the Indian woman must have been a very dense woman indeed if she had failed to recognize and regard critically the picture reflected in the pool or bowl of water. In their dark hair they fastened pompons and aigrettes of white marabout feathers (down), after the manner of modern dames. They painted themselves freshly with brilliant red "puccoon," faces and all. On their arms above the elbow they had long worn elaborate bracelets tattooed into the skin, and just below the knee were others, quite as elaborate and quite as durable. On certain wider spaces of their bodies were ornaments of similar material—lizards, serpents, turtles, birds. All these their enlightened sisters wear in emeralds and diamonds. The Indian could, however, rival her civilized sister in pearls. Many chains of these hung from their necks—large, fresh-water pearls—somewhat discoloured, it is true, by rude boring. They wore brief aprons of skins, and moccasins on their feet. Besides these,—rien de tout!

My chivalrous friend, John Esten Cooke, the Virginia historian, takes the liberty, after the manner of latter-day society reporters, of arraying the lady he describes according to his own taste. He has dressed Pocahontas on the occasion of Captain Smith's reception in a robe of doe-skin, lined with down from the breast of the wood pigeon, with coral ear-rings, coral bracelets on wrists and ankles, and a white plume in her hair, the badge of royal blood. Thus my friend saw her, casting his eyes backward two hundred and seventy-five years; but John Smith, who saw her face to face, has, in his picture of the scene which made her famous, presented her clad in her own charms and in these alone. Before the age of thirteen, the early historians[31] tell us, Indian children wore no garments. Their mothers rubbed into their skins ointments which rendered them proof against "certaine biting gnats such as the Greekes called scynipes that swarm within the marshe,"—our snipelike long-billed mosquitoes,—and also against extremes of heat and cold. The paint-pot could furnish the little maid with a new dress every day, if she desired it—red, white, or even black! I am afraid the little princess whose statue is to adorn the Jamestown Park, fared like the rest of her people, unless the severe cold constrained her to encumber her active limbs with a "mantell of feathers."

When a loud shout announced the approach of the escort conducting the distinguished prisoner, Powhatan made haste to put himself into position to receive them. Forty or fifty of his tallest warriors stood without and formed a lane through which the captive was conducted. Within, the emperor was discovered lying in an easy Oriental fashion before a great fire, and upon a dais a foot high covered with ten or twelve mats. "He[32] was hung with manie chaynes of great Pearles about his neck, and covered with a great covering of raccoon skins and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side the house two rowes of men and behind them as many women with all their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds but every one with something; and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. Powhatan held himself with such a grand majesticall countenance as drave me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage. He is of personage a tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke. His head is somewhat gray, his beard so thinne it seemeth none at all. His age neare 60,[33] of a very able and hardy body to endure any labour. This King will make his own robes, shooes, pots, bowes, and arrows; and plant, hunt, or doe anything as well as the rest."

At the entrance of the escort with their captive all the people cheered and shouted. The Queen of Appamatuck was ordered to bring him water to wash his hands. Another queen offered a bunch of feathers to be used as a towel. These ceremonies concluded, platters containing food were served of which we may well believe he partook with an anxious heart. The rhyming Docteur of Divinitie quaintly comments upon the situation:—

After the dishes were removed, the captors stated their case in several heated orations and then held with the emperor a long consultation. Smith had ample time to look around him. He was always gentle to children, giving back to them in the starving-time half the corn he had been compelled to exact from their parents,—"the bravest are the tenderest,"—and it may be that his eyes softened as they fell upon the little Pocahontas so gravely silent and observant. She probably thought him the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. At all events, when two great stones were brought, and she saw the certain reËnactment of scenes to which she was familiar, she implored her father to spare his life, and when he was dragged forth and his head laid upon the stones, she rushed forward, gathered him into her arms, and laid her own head upon his.

The Indians are extremely superstitious. Anything contrary to nature, as they saw nature,—such as madness or idiocy,—they construed into a manifestation of supernatural agency. Evidently John Smith was destined to be spared, and for the sake of the little maiden. To her service he was accordingly assigned, "to make her bells, beads, and copper." He was retained some days as the guest of the emperor, who soon put to him the crucial question, "What was the cause of the coming of the Englishmen?"

Captain Smith must have had command, not only of his feelings but of the Indian language. He quickly invented a plausible story.[34] He told the emperor that being in a fight with the Spaniards (Powhatan's enemies) and being overpowered, and almost forced to retreat, they had, because of extreme weather, made for the shore, and landing at Chesapeake been received with a flight of arrows. At Kequoghton,[35] however, the people had been kind, and in an answer to their inquiry about fresh water, had directed them up the river to find it. The pinnace had sprung a leak, and they were forced to stay and mend her to be ready for Captain Newport when he came to take them away.

But the shrewd old emperor was not satisfied. He had something more to ask: Why had they gone up the river to the falls? That was not the way to mend a pinnace or take on fresh water! The captain was ready with a perfectly satisfactory reply. His father Newport, in that fight with the Chesapeakes, had a child slain, whose death they intended to revenge. They attributed the murder to the Monocans, the enemies of Powhatan, etc., etc.

"A lie," defined the Sunday-school boy in answer to a catechism question, "is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in time of trouble." Powhatan saw no reason to doubt the plausible statements of Captain Smith, and entered upon a friendly discourse about the South Sea and other matters of interest, the Monocans and tribes beyond the mountains, and his own very great power and grandeur. His whilom captive made good use of his opportunities, admired the greatness of Powhatan, and flattered him into an avowal of friendship, with the promises of corn and venison in return for hatchets and copper.

All this seems marvellous in view of the difficulty in understanding the uncouth Indian tongue. But Captain Smith seems to have instructed himself. He has been accused of colouring his narratives too highly, indeed, of inventing some of them. For myself I admire him too much to concede more than the cum grano salis, with which, alas, we daily and hourly season much that we hear.

He has given us a practical illustration of his success in mastering the language of the Powhatans. After a short list of Indian words, he has given us a whole sentence, which doubtless he used on this occasion when parting with Powhatan, and inviting him to send his daughter to visit him. It is this: "Kekaten pokahontas patiaquagh niugh tanks manotyens neer mowchick rayrenock audowgh," which means, "Bid Pocahontas bring two little baskets, and I will give her white beads to make a chain."

The captain was not allowed to return to Jamestown without a further trial to his nerves, and another opportunity of noting the family likeness between kings. It must be remembered he saw all these fearful things at night—but without the help, in Powhatan's camp, of sack or aqua vitÆ.[36] The night before he left, Powhatan caused him to be brought to a great house in the woods, and there upon a mat by the fire to be left alone. Not long after, from behind a mat that divided the house, came the "most dolefullest" noise that was ever heard. Presently Powhatan, who had hidden (like King James behind the arras), appeared, painted more like a devil than a man, and with two hundred men painted black like himself. After sundry fearful contortions and wild antics,—seeing he could not smite the captain dead with fear,—he expressed himself in a friendly manner, and offered to be a father to him, and esteem him as he did his handsome son Nantauquous, also to give him the country of Capahowsick in return for two great guns and a grindstone.

I have told you this story as it was told by Captain Smith. "The Newes from Virginia," which he wrote immediately upon his return to Jamestown, contained no word of complaint of the Indians. On the contrary, it is full of grateful appreciation of their kindness. Nor does it relate the incident of Pocahontas as the saviour of his life! "The Newes from Virginia" was carefully worded to encourage immigration. He could not frighten away immigrants by stories of bloodthirsty savages; he could not tell of the heroism of Pocahontas without revealing the fact of his own imminent danger. He told the whole again and again afterward. None of the early historians questioned it. All repeated, accepted, and admired it,—Hamor, Strachey, and Stith, who read every written word, and knew every tradition relating to the subject. The later historians—John Burke, Bishop Meade, Gilmore Simms, Charles Campbell, and John Esten Cooke—accept the story without any thought of questioning its truth. So do James Graham and Edward Arber, in England. There seems to have been no adverse suggestion until a few years ago. Those who incline to doubt the truth of John Smith's story will be strengthened by reading Doyle's "English Colonies in America," and "The First Republic," by Alexander Brown. These are only a few of the writers pro and con upon this interesting question. Melvin Arthur Lane in The Strand, London, August, 1906, thus bewails our possible loss of the beautiful romance: "For years antiquarians and other iconoclasts—worthy men, no doubt, but terrible shatterers of other men's ideals—have taken from us, one by one, the historic objects of our love and scorn. Henry VIII, they tell us, was a very good fellow, much less black than he was painted. Richard III likewise was a perfect gentleman. He sent the little princes to the Tower that he might be near them and take a kindly interest in their welfare, as became such a benevolent uncle. Paul Jones, whom we have just reinterred with great honour at Annapolis, is said by some people to have been the bloodiest of pirates, most cruel of men. Captain Kidd may soon turn out to have been a distributer of tracts, Columbus a lifelong landsman, and Bluebeard a model of all the domestic virtues."

He might have made his list longer, and included George Washington and many others whom we have been taught to honour and revere. John Smith, like all strong characters, had good haters as well as devoted lovers. He had the misfortune of living in an age which did not appreciate him. But one must belong to the former prejudiced class, and be a very good hater indeed, to believe him capable of weaving a romance "out of the whole cloth," and retailing it in a dignified letter to his Queen; at a time, too, when Pocahontas was at court and could herself have contradicted it. It is not possible that the attendants upon Queen Anne's Court should have been ignorant of the interesting feature in the letter from John Smith, or failed to refer to it in conversing with Pocahontas and her husband. Nor is it possible that the Christian woman would have assented, even by silence, to a falsehood.

For myself, I see nothing improbable in her action. A reckless, impulsive child will face dangers and take risks that appall those of mature years. Nor was she the only Indian maiden who saved the life of her father's enemy.[37] Hakluyt tells of "John Ortiz, who was captured in Florida in 1528. The Indian chief Ucita was about to have him put to death, but at the intercession of an Indian princess, one of Ucita's daughters, his life was spared. Again, when her father was about to sacrifice him to their god (they being worshippers of the devil), the same maiden rescued him by night and set him in the way to escape, and returned because she would not be discovered." She would have been quite capable of daring even more had she been a little child of ten or eleven years.

I do not believe Pocahontas was an inspired maiden, like Joan of Arc, nor that she was actuated by purely lofty and unselfish motives. I believe that she was a very ardent, impulsive child, fond of trinkets, grateful for favours, absolutely uncontrolled, and with plenty of wild Indian blood in her veins. Whether or no she saved John Smith's life, she deserves our homage for her kindness in warning him of danger, in rescuing Henry Spelman, in bringing food to the colonists during the hard winter of 1608-1609. She knew John Smith for only sixteen months, and yet in that brief time the two have occupied the stage to the exclusion of many noble and good men, such is the eagerness with which we welcome the romances that enliven the prosaic pages of history. She owes much of the interest attending her life to the fact that the child of a savage should be presented at court, and receive attention from the highest lords and ladies in the land. The Beggar-maid was as nothing compared with her, and Cophetua a very humdrum prince indeed beside Captain John Smith.

In his usual style, he was wont to repeat that but for her succour when the colonists were starving, the enterprise would have probably come to naught. The colonists were in worse condition two winters after John Smith left them, and Pocahontas never entered Jamestown after he departed. The colony did not "come to naught." God had planted it; and although it was watered with blood and tears, forgotten often by its friends, constantly threatened and devastated by its enemies, and more than once in peril of utter extinction, it grew and prospered. Never was the prophetic declaration that "a little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation," more wonderfully exemplified than in the planting and rearing of this colony.