THE WEDDING
Everyone in Jamestown was astir early one April morning in 1614. The
soldiers and the few children of the settlement, impressed with the
importance of their errand, had gone into the woods to cut large sprays
of wild azalea and magnolia to deck the church.
Sir Thomas Dale, and in truth all the cavaliers of the town, had seen
that their best costumes were in order, sighing at the moth holes in
precious cloth doublets and the rents in Flemish lace collars and cuffs,
yet satisfied on the whole with their holiday appearance. The few women
of the Colony, Mistress Easton, Mistress Horton, Elizabeth Parsons and
others, had of course prepared their garments many days before. It was
not often they had an excuse for decking themselves in the finery they
had packed with such care and misgivings back in their English homes;
and this was an occasion such as no one in the world had ever before
participated in. Here was an English gentleman of old lineage who was to
wed the daughter of a great heathen ruler, one in whose power it lay to
help or hinder the progress of this first permanent English colony in
the New World. In addition to making themselves as gay as possible,
they had prepared a wedding breakfast to be served to the gentry at the
Governor's house, and the Governor had provided that meat and other
viands and ale should be distributed from the general store to the
soldiers and laborers and the Indians, their guests.
The guard at the fort was kept busy admitting the Indians and bidding
them lay aside their bows, hatchets or knives; though in truth no one
that day looked for any hostile act, since Powhatan's consent to his
daughter's marriage had put an end to the enmity between them.
He himself had not come to the ceremony. He was not minded to set his
foot upon any land other than his own, but he had sent as his
representative Pocahontas's uncle, Opechisco, and many messages of
affection to "his dearest daughter." The elderly werowance wore all the
ceremonial robes of his tribe: a headdress of feathers, leggings and
girdle and a long deerskin mantle heavily embroidered in beads of shell.
With him came Nautauquaus and Catanaugh. The two wandered as they
pleased through the town, and Nautauquaus, seeing Rolfe arrive in his
boat from his plantation Varina, where he had built a house for
Pocahontas, stepped forward to greet him. His love for Pocahontas made
him desire to know her future husband better. Though this man was of
another world than his, though his thoughts and ways were different, he
was a man as he was; therefore the Indian brave tried to appraise him by
the same methods he used in judging the men of his own race--and he was
satisfied. Rolfe, recognizing him, shook hands heartily and talked for a
while, enquiring about those of his family he had known while a hostage
at Werowocomoco.
After Rolfe had left him to enter the Governor's house, Nautauquas
turned to find out what Catanaugh was doing, but could see nothing of
him.
Catanaugh had not felt the same interest in Rolfe as did his brother and
had strolled away towards Pocahontas's house. He had a question he was
eager to put to her while Nautauquas was not by. He found his sister in
her white gown, with brightly embroidered moccasins on her feet and a
circlet of beads and feathers about her head.
"Wilt thou not adorn thyself," he asked, "with the bright chains of the
white men?"
"Nay, Brother," she answered; "it may be that I shall wear the strange
robes some day, and the bright chains and jewels I will don to-morrow
when I am the squaw of an Englishman; but to-day I am still only the
daughter of Powhatan."
Catanaugh said nothing further, yet he still stood in the doorway.
"Enter," invited Pocahontas, "and behold how I live."
"I see enough," he answered, turning his head from side to side; "but
where dwelleth the white man's Okee?"
"The God of the Christians?" she asked, puzzled at his question; "in the
sky above."
"But where do the shamans call to him?" he continued.
"Yonder in the church, that building with the peak to it," she pointed
out.
"I will walk some more," announced Catanaugh and left her. When he
thought Pocahontas was no longer observing him, he hastened in the
direction of the church. During his former short stay in Jamestown he
had never been inside and had thought of it--if he paid any attention
to it at all--as some kind of a storehouse.
He found the door open and entered quietly, glancing cautiously about
until he had assured himself that it was empty. Then he pushed the door
to and fastened it with the bolt. This done, he set about examining the
building curiously. At the end, towards the rising sun, was an elevation
of three steps which made him think of the raised dais that ran across
the end of Powhatan's ceremonial lodge. This was lined with the reddish
wood of the cedar, and there was a dark wooden table covered with a
white cloth standing in it, and the sun shining through the windows
above made the vases filled with flowers glisten brightly. In the part
where he stood there were many benches and chairs, and everywhere that
it was possible to stand or hang them, was a profusion of fragrant
flowering branches.
The very simplicity of the church awed him; had there been a
multiplicity of furnishings, of strange objects whose use he could not
comprehend, he would have felt he had something definite to watch and
fear. His impulse was to flee out into the sunshine, and he turned
towards the door. Then he remembered his object in coming and stood
still again.
He listened intently, but there was no sound; then taking from the pouch
that hung at his side a lump of deer's suet, he smeared it about the
sides of the benches and the backs of the chairs. Then with a handful of
tobacco taken from the same receptacle he began to sprinkle a small
circle in the centre aisle. When this was complete he seated himself
crosslegged inside of it. Slowly and deliberately he drew from the
larger pouch slung at his back and covered by his long mantle, a mask,
somewhat out of shape from its confinement in a small space, and a
rattle made of a gourd filled with pebbles. He attached the mask to his
face as carefully as if he were to be observed by all his tribe, and
laid the rattle across his knees. All these preparations had taken place
so quietly that no one who might have been in the church could have
discovered the Indian's presence by the aid of his ears alone.
Catanaugh had not come to Jamestown with the sole idea of witnessing his
sister's wedding. It was not altogether of his own will that he was now
about to undertake a dangerous experiment. He was by no manner of means
a coward: his long row of scalps attested to his prowess as a brave;
but, unlike Nautauquas, he was one who followed where others led, who
obeyed when others commanded. He was fierce in fight, relentless to an
enemy, could not even dream as did his father and brother that the white
men might become valuable allies and friends. He would gladly have
killed them all, and he had grown more and more unwilling that
Pocahontas should unite herself to one of these interlopers, as he
called them, because he realized that her marriage would make a bond of
peace between the two peoples. He had hoped to discover that Pocahontas
was being forced into this marriage, in which case he had been prepared
to carry her off by some desperate deed at the last moment; but he could
not help seeing that she was happy and free in her choice, and would
never follow him willingly or go quietly if he tried to make her.
Catanaugh was a member of the secret society of Mediwiwin and he was one
who had great faith in medicine men and shamans. He never undertook
even a hunting expedition unless he had had a shaman consult his Okee to
decide if the day would be a lucky one. In every religious ceremony he
would take an active part, would fast if the shamans said it was
pleasing to Okee, would kill his enemies or save them for slaves,
whichever the shamans suggested. He was himself little of a talker
except when after victory he was loud and long in his boasting; but he
loved nothing better than to listen when the shamans told tales, as they
sat on winter evenings around a lodge fire, or as they lay during the
long summer twilights on the soft dried grass, of the transformations of
human beings into otter, bear or deer forms, of the pursuit of evil
demons, of magic incantations. And the shamans, sure always of an
audience in Catanaugh, made much of him, and in many ways without his
knowing it, used him as a tool.
Now, it was at their bidding that he sat there motionless, except for
his lips, which recited in a tone as regular and as loud as a
tree-toad's the words of an incantation they had taught him. And all the
time he, who had never trembled before an enemy, was trembling from fear
of the unknown. Of course, it was wise for the shamans to make this
trial, but he wished it had been possible for one of them to have taken
his place. But they knew they would never have got the chance to slip
unnoticed as he had done into the lodge of the white man's Okee.
He wondered how this strange Okee would answer his call, for answer he
knew he must. The incantation was such strong medicine that no spirit
could resist it, especially when he shook the rattle as he did now,
rising to his feet and lifting his foot higher and higher, as bending
over, he went round and round on his tiptoes, always within the confines
of the tobacco circle. The shamans had been determined to find out what
kind of an Okee protected the white men, and it was only in this spot
they could do so. The palefaces knew so many things the Indian had never
learned and which he must learn if he was to hold his own against the
terrible medicine of the strangers.
Catanaugh was afraid he might forget some of the magic words the Okee
would speak, which the shamans had told him he must hold fast in his
mind as he would hold a slippery eel in his hand. Even if he didn't
understand them he must just remember them, because they would be wise
enough to interpret them. He meant, too, if he only had the courage, to
try to make the Okee prevent the wedding.
He had been shaking the rattle gently for fear it might be heard outside
the church; but now, anxious to bring this dreadful task to an end, he
began to shake it with all his might in one last challenge to the
strange spirit.
Bim! Bam! Boum! BOUM! Bim!
Catanaugh jumped like a deer that hears the crackle of a twig behind it.
Here in the deep brazen voice of the marriage bells ringing out in the
belfry above him he thought he heard the answer his incantation had
forced from the white man's Okee. But the voice was so terrible, so
loud, that, forgetting the shaman's injunctions, forgetting everything
but his need to escape, he rushed to the door, unbolted it frantically
and ran, still pursued by the "him, barn, boum" till he reached the
fort, where the frightened sentries, who had no orders to keep any
Indian from _leaving_ the town, let the masked figure through the gates.
Dr. James Buck, who with Dr. Whitaker, was to perform the ceremony,
arrived at the church just as the wedding party was starting from the
other end of the town. His foot hit against something. He stooped and
picked up a rattle and his fingers were covered with brown dust. Hastily
seizing a broom which stood in the vestry-room, he swept the tobacco
down the aisle and into a corner. The curious rattle he hid with the
replaced broom, to be investigated later. Then he took his stand in the
chancel, where Dr. Whitaker soon joined him, and through the open door
the two clergymen watched their flock approach. Most of them were men,
cavaliers as finely dressed, if their garments were somewhat faded, as
though they were to sit in Westminster Abbey; soldiers in leathern
jerkins; bakers, masons, carpenters, with freshly washed face and hands,
in their Sunday garments of fustian and minus workaday aprons; and the
few women were in figured tabbies and damasks.
Now when the congregation had filled every seat and were lined up
against the walls, a number of Indians, all relatives of Pocahontas,
slipped in and stood silently with faces that seemed not alive except
for the keenness of their curious eyes. Them through the doorway came
Pocahontas and old Opechisco and Nautauquas.
A sudden feeling of the wonder of this marriage overcame Alexander
Whitaker. This Indian maiden who was a creature of the woods, shy and
proud as a wild animal, was to be married by him to an Englishman with
centuries of civilization behind him. What boded it for them both and
for their races?
Then with love for the maiden whom he had baptized and with faith in his
heart, he listened while Dr. Buck began, until he himself asked in a
loud, clear voice:
"Rebecca, wilt thou take this man to be thy wedded husband?"
After the feast was over the bride said to her husband, using his
Christian name shyly for the first time:
"John, wilt thou walk with me into the forest a little?"
And Rolfe, nothing loath to escape the noisy crowd, rose to go with her.
"Why dost thou care to come here?" he asked when they found themselves
beyond the causeway in the woods flecked with the white of the
innumerable dogwood trees.
"Because I feel Jamestown too small to-day, John; because I have ever
sought the forest when I was happy or sad; because it seemeth to me that
the trees and beasts would be hurt if I did not let them see me this
great day."
"'Tis a pretty fancy, but a pagan one, my child," said Rolfe, frowning
slightly.
But Pocahontas did not notice. She had caught a glimpse across the leafy
branches of the spotted sides of a deer, and she saw a striped chipmunk
peer at her from overhead.
"Hey! little friends," she called out gaily to them, "here's Pocahontas
come to greet ye. Wish her happiness, that her nest may be filled with
nuts. Little Dancer, and cool shade, Bright Eyes, in hot noondays." Then
as two wood pigeons flew by she clapped her hands gently together and
cried:
"Here's _my_ mate, Swift Wings, wish us happiness."
And John Rolfe, sober Englishman that he was, felt uprise in him a new
kinship with all the breathing things of the world, and he wondered
whether this Indian maiden he had made his wife did not know more of the
secrets of the earth than the wise men of Europe.
[Illustration: Decorative]