Hidden in a dense forest on the banks of the Pamunkey, was Uttamussac,
the greatest temple in Powhatan's kingdom. In every territory governed by
a "werowance" there were smaller temples and priests. Each of the petty
rulers under the great emperor had his spiritual adviser--some priest
or conjurer, wise in the sacred mysteries and beloved of the gods, from
whose decisions in spiritual matters there was no appeal. According to the
wealth of the werowance were the size and dignity of the temple, varying
from a small arbour of twenty feet to a structure a hundred feet long.
The door opened to the east, and there were pillars and windings within,
with rude black images looking down the church to the platform of reeds;
upon which, wrapped in skins, lay the skeletons of dead priests and kings.
Beneath the platform, veiled with a mat of woven grasses, sat "Okeus,"
an ill-favoured black demon, well hung with chains of pearl and copper.
He it was to whom children must be sacrificed, lest he blight the corn,
or cause briers to wound the feet and limbs of travellers through the
forests, or enemies to prevail, or women to be barren or false, or thunder
and lightning to destroy. He it was who had been seen leaping through
the corn-fields, crying "Ohé! Ohé!" just before some signal disaster.
There was also a far-away, peaceable God, variously known as "Ahone" or
"Kiwassa"--"The One All Alone." He too had once walked among them. Are
there not gigantic footprints five feet apart on the rocks yet visible
near Richmond at Powhatan? These are the footprints of the good god as
he once strode through the land of the great chief. To him it was, of
course, unnecessary to sacrifice, inasmuch as he was by nature benevolent.
But he was not as powerful as Okeus--Okeus, who sternly held the scales
of justice, and was to be placated by nothing short of their dearest and
best, their precious, innocent little children.
The pious men who emigrated to Virginia within the first twenty years
of its settlement firmly believed that Satan had here established his
kingdom; that the priests were his ministers, inspired by him to threaten
the people unless they held to the ancient customs of their fathers. It
was remembered that in all ages of the world this arch-enemy of mankind
had demanded human sacrifice from his followers,--from the times of
the ancient Carthaginians, Persians, and Britons. Now, in Florida, he
claimed the first-born male child, and in Mexico prisoners taken in war.
The priests of Powhatan failed not to instruct the werowances that if
the prescribed number of children were withheld, Okeus, who was sure to
prevail in the end, would then be appeased only by a hecatomb of children.
Nor would any sacrifice avert his wrath if a nation despising the ancient
religion of their forefathers was permitted to inhabit among them, since
their own god had hitherto preserved them and from age to age given them
victory over their enemies.
The conversion, therefore, of the Indian was next to impossible, unless
indeed the first step could be the destruction of priest and temple.
Chanco and Pocahontas, and possibly Kemps, were for many years the only
fruits of the labours of the missionaries. Taunted by the powers at home
with this fact, the colonists retorted that they had sent many Indians to
England, not one of whom returned converted to Christianity. The Indian
chief Pepisco was long an object of hope at Jamestown, because of his
apparently candid willingness to believe in the God of the Christian; but
the utmost he could attain was a belief that the Indian gods were suitable
for the Indian, but that the greater nation needed the greater God, for
whose good offices he was willing to entreat through the white man.
Had the fate of the Indian been to live in peace and friendship with his
white brother to this day, it is not probable he would have ever been
at heart a Christian. Druidism long survived, though in obscurity and
decay, the thunder of the imperial edicts. It did more than survive in
Ireland--it flourished until the fifth century, when it fell before the
Christian enthusiasm of St. Patrick. Long after the Druidical priesthood
was extinct, Druidical superstitions, Druidical rites, were dear to the
common people. Nor will they become utterly extinct until we cease to
gather the mistletoe and forget the sports and pastimes at Hallowe'en.
So grim and mysterious was the principal temple at Uttamussac on the
Pamunkey, that the trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it with
bated breath, solemnly casting into the waters pieces of the precious
copper, puccoon, and strings of pearls. In this temple, and in two others
beside it, were images of devils, and upon raised platforms the swathed
skeletons of their greatest kings. The place was so holy that none but
priests entered it. There they questioned Okeus and received verbal
answers.
[Illustration: "The trembling Indian in his canoe hurried past it with
bated breath."]
The chief priest and his assistants wore a sacred official robe ornamented
with serpent skins. Their faces were painted in the most frightful devices
they could imagine. Their heads were wreathed, Medusa-like, with stuffed
serpents, and in their hands they carried rattlesnakes' tails, as symbols
of their profession. Their devotion was in antiphonal chants or songs,
led by the chief priest, and often interrupted by his starts, passionate
gestures, and ejaculations. At his every pause the attending priests
groaned a sort of fearsome "amen." We may fancy the Indian on dark nights
hurrying past with muffled paddle as the weird songs and groans were borne
by the midnight breeze to his trembling ears!
They held the belief, common with all mankind, of the immortality of the
soul, of the home--ah! in all faiths, so far away--of the escaped spirit.
But this immortality was the reward only of the faithful. All others
passed into utter nothingness.
Many fables were taught by the priests to the ignorant. Captain Argall was
once trading with Japazaws, a Potomac chief who had been always friendly,
and the latter came aboard the pinnace one cold night, and seated himself
by the fire while one of the men read the Bible aloud to the Captain. "The
Indian gave a very attent eare, and looked with a very wisht eye upon
him as if he longed to understand what was read, whereupon the Captayne
tooke the booke, and turned to the picture of the Creation of the World in
the begyninge of the booke, and caused a boy, one Spelman who had lvyed
a whole yere with this Indian Kinge and spake his language, to shewe it
unto him and interpret it in his language which the boy did." The king, in
return, offered to relate his own articles of belief on the same subject,
and a string of marvellous exploits followed in which a wonderful hare,
an Indian "Brer Rabbit," bore the chief part. Captain Argall instructed
his interpreter to ask of what materials the original man and woman were
made, but Henry Spelman was unwilling to venture so much. Negotiations
were pending for his release after a long residence with the Indians, and
he dared take no liberties.
The persistent enmity of Powhatan to the English was planted long before
their arrival in 1608. Strachey and Purchas, men of high character
and great learning, consider it absolutely certain that he ordered the
massacre of both of the Roanoke colonies. He was said, in 1610, to be more
than eighty years old. He had been a daring, ambitious ruler in his youth,
perpetually on the war-path, enlarging his dominions by conquest,--like
Alexander, only quiet when there were no more worlds to conquer. He
"awaits his opportunity (inflamed by his bloudy priests)," says Strachey,
"to offer us a tast of the same cuppe which he made our poore countrymen
drink of at Roanoke. He has established a line of sentinels, extending
from Jamestown to any house where he holds his court, and news of any
movement by the English ships quickly passes from one to another and
reaches him wherever he happeneth to be. He is persuaded that the English
are come to dethrone him and take away his land."
Prophecies had been made by the priests that a nation would come from
the East which would destroy him and his empire, that twice he should
thwart and overthrow the strangers, but the third time he would fall under
their subjection. This then was the fateful third! "Strange whispers and
secrett, ran among the people. Every newes or blast of rumour struck them,
to which they would open wyde their eares, and keepe their eyes waking
with good espiall of everything that sturred; the noyse of drums, the
shrill trumpets and great ordinances would startle them how far soever
from the reach of daunger. Suspicions bredd straunge feares amongst them,
and those feares created straunge construccions, and those construccions
begatt strong watch and gard especially about their great Kinge, who
thrust forth trusty skowtes and carefull sentinells (as before mencyoned)
which reached even from his owne court down to our palisado gates, which
answeared one another duly."
The Indian, as we have noted, knew not how to express himself by any
kind of letters, by writing, or marks on trees, or pictures, as do other
barbarians. They had no positive laws, their king ruling only by custom.
His will was law. He was obeyed as a king and as a god. Traditional
laws and rules were well understood by his successors, for the descent
was not from father to son, but all the sons of one kingly father ruled
successively, then all the daughters, so the children of one father were
long the sole custodians and interpreters of the laws. The succession
was through the heirs of the sisters, not through the men of the family.
The ruling of the great Powhatan was most tyrannous, the punishment for
trifling faults cruel to an extreme. He personally superintended the
beating, the burning alive, the dismembering of those who displeased him.
The habitations of the Indians were all alike. They had but one style
of architecture. They usually built upon an elevation commanding a view
of their only thoroughfare, the river, and not far from springs of fresh
water. They built under the trees, for defence against winds and storms
and the scorching heat of the summer sun. They planted young saplings in
the earth and tied their tops together, covering all closely with the bark
of trees.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, beautiful arbours of fragrant
cedar were constructed after the Indian fashion as ornamental features
in Virginia landscape gardening--omitting the bark, and shaving close the
green foliage.
The walls of the Indian houses were lined with mats. A doorway was hung
with a skin or mat. There were no windows or chimneys. A hole in the
roof provided for the escape of the smoke from the fire kept burning
immediately beneath it. An old writer remarks that they were "somewhat
smoaky"! There was no furniture of any kind in these rude huts. All
around, in the best houses, ran a low arrangement of poles, forming
the sides of the sleeping-bunks, and within, on skins and mats, lay the
household of twenty or more, men, women, and children. One was detailed
to watch and replenish the fire while the rest slept. If more light was
needed, it was provided from a pile of resinous sticks--their only candle
or lamp. In these huts they lived all winter, cooking and working on their
household utensils and various articles of dress. They had no needles
or pins, no knives except sharpened reeds, yet they managed with strips
of deerskin to sew skins together for leggings and moccasins, embroider
them with pearl or shells, hollow the wooden blocks into bowls, and
weave mats from grass. Powhatan's favourite wife, Winganuskie, and the
Princess Pocahontas had no better home than this in winter. Pocahontas
knew no other except during the few years of her married life, and of her
captivity before it.
The men spent their time in hunting and fishing and in warfare and manly
sports. In time of peace, they exercised in out-of-door games. They
played "bandy" with crooked sticks, "an auncient game," says Strachey,
who indulged abundantly in the _parole_ of literary men, "as yt seemeth
in Virgil, for when Æneas came into Italy at his marriage with Lavinia, yt
is said the Trojans taught the Latins scipping and frisking with a ball."
The Indians also played a game described as "a forcible encounter with the
foot to carry a ball the one from the other, and spurne yt to the goale
with a kind of dexterity and swift footmanship which is the honour of yt;
yet they never strike up on another's heeles as we doe, not accompting
that praiseworthie to purchase a goale by such an advantage."
All the domestic labour was performed by the poor drudging women and the
children. They also cleared the ground for their gardens and cornfields,
planted corn, beans, pumpkins, "maracocks," and gourds, and kept the
growing plants free from weeds. They pounded the corn in wooden mortars
for bread, sifting it through baskets, and boiling the coarse refuse for
hominy. They dressed all the food and served it. They were also barbers
for their husbands, using two oyster-shells to grate away beard and hair.
Henry Spelman, an English boy who was sold to an Indian chief, lived as
a servant for many years among the savages. He relates an incident of
domestic life in the household of the king of Paspetanzy, who "went to
visitt another king, and one of his wives after his departure would goe
visitt her father, and she willed me to goe with hir and take hir child
and carye him thither in my armes, being a long days journey from the
place where we dwelt, which I refusing she strook me 3 or 4 blows." This
it appears was too much for the free-born Briton. "I gott to hir and puld
hir downe, giving hir some blows agayne which the other King's wives
perseyvinge they fell on me and beat me so as I thought they had lamed
me." It appears the lady's filial intentions were not carried out, the
heavy child being quite too much for her strength. All awaited the return
of the king, and the indignant Henry boldly told his side of the story.
There had been quarrels and fights before in the king's household, and he
knew how to deal with them. The remedy was at hand. Taking up a "paring
iron" he struck his wife and felled her to the ground, whereupon Henry, by
no means sure upon whom the instrument of domestic discipline would fall
next, fled to a neighbour's house and hid. His position was a perilous
one, his fate uncertain. The Indian baby settled the question. Henry had
been an affectionate nurse and perhaps bedfellow to the little pappoose,
who now lifted up his voice in loud lamentations, howling for his white
friend until midnight. The king was weary and longed for sleep. Search was
made for Henry, and at midnight the child was sent to him, as he says "to
still; for none could quiet him so well as myself."
The king, having had a good night's rest, was up early next morning to
interview Henry, and to assure him that no evil intent was cherished
against him, that his "Queene" was all right, that everybody loved him,
and none should hurt him; his Majesty content, as we all can understand,
to eat a good bit of humble-pie rather than lose a good nurse! "I was loth
to goe with him," says Henry, "and at my cumminge the Queene looked but
discontentedly at me, but I had the Kinge's promise and cared ye less for
others frownes." There is something very pathetic in the boy's narrative.
He was the son of an eminent scholar, Sir Henry Spelman, but, impatient
of restraint, had run away from a comfortable English home, and here
he was in the great wilderness, soothing the hunger of his heart in the
companionship of a savage baby.
The Indian knew no means of providing for the future, except the
husbanding, in great baskets, of his corn, drying persimmons on hurdles
and oysters on strings. He never herded wild cattle or tamed the wild
turkeys. Each season Nature brought of her abundance to these her
untutored children, fish, game, fruits, melons, and in the hardest times
acorns and roots. When famine seemed imminent, they would migrate in
great companies to hunt the deer, the women going before, bearing on their
backs mats, household utensils, skins for bedding, and even poles for the
temporary huts. They would stake out the camp and make all ready for the
men. Then in leisure hours the young maidens, round, pretty creatures with
small hands and feet, would freshly paint themselves a brilliant red, and
seated at the door of the sylvan arbour watch the young braves,--heavy,
thick-lipped, thick-nosed fellows, but active and straight-limbed;
magnificent and terrible in skins decorated with the dried hands of their
enemies, claws of beasts and birds; and with green and yellow snakes
thrust alive through their ears,--while they practised shooting arrows
at a mark. The straightest, surest marksman would find no trouble in
winning the prettiest maiden. Pretty maidens, all the world over, have
realized that they needed game, furs, pearls, and copper. The arrow won
them in 1607 as surely as a _coup_ in Wall Street or in trade wins them
in 1907. The comment of our historian seems to us as reasonable as it is
quaint: "Every man in tyme of hunting will strive to doe his best, for
thereby they wyn the loves of their women, who will be sooner contented
to live with such a man by the readyness and fortune of whose bow they
perceave they are likely to be fedd well, especially of fish and flesh;
for indeed they be all of them huge eaters, and these active hunters by
their continuall ranging and travell do know all places most frequented
and best stored with deare or other beasts, fish, fowle, roots, fruits,
and berries."
The Indians, like all barbarous people, danced to some kind of metrical
sound, either from a cane on which they piped as on a "recorder," or
drums stretched over hollow bowls or gourds, or rattles contrived from
shells. These accompanied the voice in "frightful howlings." They had
also "amorous ditties," and scornful songs inspired by their hatred of
the English. The historian Strachey gives a copy, in the Indian language,
of one of these, of four stanzas,--not rhyming but metrical, in which
they not only exult over the men they had killed in spite of our guns,
but they tell how Newport had never deceived them for all his presents
of copper and the crown for Powhatan; and how they had continued to kill
and take prisoners, "Symon" and others, for all their bright swords and
tomahawks, ending each verse with the chorus or cry, "Whe, whe! yah, ha,
ha! Tewittawa Tewittawa!" expressive of scornful, mocking exultation.
The Indian women, unless frantically insane from revenge, were tender and
gentle, especially to children. George Percy witnessed one of the horrible
sacrifices, when the women themselves with tears and lamentations gave
their babes up to the priests. The dead children were cast in a heap in a
valley, and the poor women returned, singing a funeral dirge and weeping
most bitterly. They were faithful, poor souls, to the instincts of nature.
Surely life held small compensation for them. A nurse was once captured,
and ordered to reveal the hiding-place of her foster-child, now her
mistress, or suffer death. She chose the latter, and her mistress escaped.
Vindictive and merciless as was Powhatan, he had his tender emotions and
even caressing words for his daughters.
But for the massacre of 1622 much might have been said in praise of the
Indian. That event proved that no kindness, no confidence, could eradicate
his deep-rooted hatred of the white man. For years he kept the secret of
the promised universal butchery, and rose as one man at the appointed
hour. He gloated over the mangled corpses, insulting, spurning, and
mutilating them, sparing none, not even the devoted missionary, Thorpe,
who was giving to their welfare, comfort, and instruction all his life
and energy. That massacre settled the fate of the Virginia Indian, and
yet to a Virginia Indian the colony at Jamestown was indebted for its
preservation. Chanco, whose master "treated him as a son," was visited on
the eve of the massacre by his own brother, with whom he slept that night.
The dreadful secret of the impending slaughter of every white man, woman,
and child was confided to Chanco, with the command of the chief as to his
own part therein. He was to rise at daybreak and not later than eight in
the morning murder his master and all his household! The brother then went
on his way with similar orders to the Indians residing near the settlers.
Chanco immediately awoke his master, and warning was given in time to save
Jamestown.