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heating, to be withdrawn for the baking of bread.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.
[Illustration: The Mirror in the Woods.]
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:--
"They say he bore a pleasant shew
But sure his heart was sad
For who can pleasant be, and rest
That lives in fear and dread:
And having life suspected, doth
It still suspected lead."
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.
[Illustration: "She rushed forward, 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.