little girl and by her likeness to her valiant father. “We will have her
and only her for our queen!”
“Better yet, brothers,” cried Lars Larsson, now her most loyal
supporter; “she sits upon the throne of the kings; let her be proclaimed
King of Sweden.”
And so it was done. And with their wavering loyalty kindled into a
sudden flame, the States of Sweden “gave a mighty shout” and cried as
one man, “Hail, Christina, King of Sweden!”
There was strong objection in Sweden to the rule of a woman; and the
education of this little girl was rather that of a prince than of a
princess. She was taught to ride and to shoot, to hunt and to fence,
to undertake all of a boy’s exercises, and to endure all a boy’s
privations. She could bring down a hare, at the first shot, from the
back of a galloping horse; she could outride the most expert huntsman in
her train.
So she grew from childhood into girlhood, and at thirteen was as bold
and fearless, as wilful and self-possessed as any young fellow of
twenty-one. But besides all this she was a wonderful scholar; indeed,
she would be accounted remarkable even in these days of bright
girl-graduates. At thirteen she was a thorough Greek scholar; she
was learned in mathematics and astronomy, the classics, history, and
philosophy; and she acquired of her own accord German, Italian, Spanish,
and French.
Altogether, this girl Queen of the North was as strange a compound of
scholar and hoyden, pride and carelessness, ambition and indifference,
culture and rudeness, as ever, before her time or since, were combined
in the nature of a girl of thirteen. And it is thus that our story finds
her.
One raw October morning in the year 1639, there was stir and excitement
at the palace in Stockholm. A courier had arrived bearing important
dispatches to the Council of Regents which governed Sweden during the
minority of the Queen, and there was no one to officially meet him.
Closely following the lackey who received him, the courier strode into
the council-room of the palace. But the council-room was vacant.
It was not a very elegant apartment, this council-room of the palace
of the kings of Sweden. Although a royal apartment, its appearance was
ample proof that the art of decoration was as yet unknown in Sweden. The
room was untidy and disordered; the council-table was strewn with the
ungathered litter of the last day’s council, and even the remains of a
coarse lunch mingled with all this clutter. The uncomfortable-looking
chairs all were out of place, and above the table was a sort of
temporary canopy to prevent the dust and spiders’ webs upon the ceiling
from dropping upon the councillors.
The courier gave a sneering look upon this evidence that the refinement
and culture which marked at least the palaces and castles of other
European countries were as yet little considered in Sweden. Then,
important and impatient, he turned to the attendant. “Well,” he said,
“and is there none here to receive my dispatches? They call for--houf!
so! what manners are these?”
What manners indeed! The courier might well ask this. For, plump against
him, as he spoke, dashed, first a girl and then a boy who had darted
from somewhere into the council-chamber. Too absorbed in their own
concerns to notice who, if any one, was in the room, they had run
against and very nearly upset the astonished bearer of dispatches.
Still more astonished was he, when the girl, using his body as a barrier
against her pursuer, danced and dodged around him to avoid being caught
by her pursuer--a fine-looking young lad of about her own age--Karl
Gustav, her cousin. The scandalized bearer of dispatches to the Swedish
Council of Regents shook himself free from the girl’s strong grasp and
seizing her by the shoulder, demanded, sternly:
“How now, young mistress! Is this seemly conduct toward a stranger and
an imperial courier?”
The girl now for the first time noticed the presence of a stranger. Too
excited in her mad dash into the room to distinguish him from one of
the palace servants, she only learned the truth by the courier’s harsh
words. A sudden change came over her. She drew herself up haughtily and
said to the attendant:
“And who is this officious stranger, Klas?”
The tone and manner of the question again surprised the courier, and he
looked at the speaker, amazed. What he saw was an attractive young girl
of thirteen, short of stature, with bright hazel eyes, a vivacious face,
now almost stern in its expression of pride and haughtiness. A man’s
fur cap rested upon the mass of tangled light-brown hair which, tied
imperfectly with a simple knot of ribbon, fell down upon her neck. Her
short dress of plain gray stuff hung loosely about a rather trim figure;
and a black scarf, carelessly tied, encircled her neck. In short, he
saw a rather pretty, carelessly dressed, healthy, and just now very
haughty-looking young girl, who seemed more like a boy in speech and
manners,--and one who needed to be disciplined and curbed.
Again the question came: “Who is this man, and what seeks he here, Klas?
I ask.”
“‘T is a courier with dispatches for the council, Madam,” replied the
man.
“Give me the dispatches,” said the girl; “I will attend to them.”
“You, indeed!” The courier laughed grimly. “The dispatches from the
Emperor of Germany are for no hairbrained maid to handle. These are to
be delivered to the Council of Regents alone.”
“I will have naught of councils or regents, Sir Courier, save when it
pleases me,” said the girl, tapping the floor with an angry foot. “Give
me the dispatches, I say,--I am the King of Sweden!”
“You--a girl--king?” was all that the astonished courier could stammer
out. Then, as the real facts dawned upon him, he knelt at the feet of
the young queen and presented his dispatches.
“Withdraw, sir!” said Christina, taking the papers from his hand with
but the scant courtesy of a nod; “we will read these and return a
suitable answer to your master.”
The courier withdrew, still dazed at this strange turn of affairs; and
Christina, leaning carelessly against the council-table, opened the
dispatches.
Suddenly she burst into a merry but scarcely lady-like laugh. “Ha,
ha, ha! this is too rare a joke, Karl,” she cried. “Lord Chancellor,
Mathias, Torstenson!” she exclaimed, as these members of her council
entered the apartment, “what think you? Here come dispatches from the
Emperor of Germany begging that you, my council, shall consider the
wisdom of wedding me to his son and thereby closing the war! His son,
indeed! Ferdinand the Craven!”
“And yet, Madam,” suggested the wise Oxenstiern, “it is a matter that
should not lightly be cast aside. In time you must needs be married. The
constitution of the kingdom doth oblige you to.”
“Oblige!” and the young girl turned upon the gray-headed chancellor
almost savagely. “Oblige! and who, Sir Chancellor, upon earth shall
OBLIGE me to do so, if I do it not of mine own will? Say not OBLIGE to
me.”
This was vigorous language for a girl of scarce fourteen; but it was
“Christina’s way,” one with which both the Council and the people soon
grew familiar. It was the Vasa(1) nature in her, and it was always
prominent in this spirited young girl--the last descendant of that
masterful house.
(1) Vasa was the family name of her father and the ancient king of
Sweden.
But now the young Prince Karl Gustavus had something to say.
“Ah, cousin mine,” and he laid a strong though boyish hand upon the
young girl’s arm. “What need for couriers or dispatches that speak of
suitors for your hand? Am not I to be your husband? From babyhood you
have so promised me.”
Christina again broke into a loud and merry laugh.
“Hark to the little burgomaster,” (1) she cried; “much travel hath made
him, I do fear me, soft in heart and head. Childish promises, Karl. Let
such things be forgotten now. You are to be a soldier--I, a queen.”
(1) Prince Charles Gustavus, afterward Charles XI., King of Sweden, and
father of the famous Charles XII., was cousin to Christina. He was short
and thick-set, and so like a little Dutchman that Christina often called
him “the little burgomaster.” At the time of this sketch he had just
returned from a year of travel through Europe.
“And yet, Madam,” said Mathias, her tutor, “all Europe hath for years
regarded Prince Karl as your future husband.”
“And what care I for that?” demanded the girl, hotly. “Have done, have
done, sirs! You do weary me with all this. Let us to the hunt. Axel
Dagg did tell me of a fine roebuck in the Maelar woods. See you to the
courier of the Emperor and to his dispatches, Lord Chancellor; I care
not what you tell him, if you do but tell him no. And, stay; where is
that round little Dutchman, Van Beunigen, whom you did complain but
yesterday was sent among us by his government to oppose the advices
of our English friends. He is a greater scholar than horseman, or I
mistake. Let us take him in our hunting-party, Karl; and see to it that
he doth have one of our choicest horses.”
The girl’s mischief was catching. Her cousin dropped his serious look,
and, seeking the Dutch envoy, with due courtesy invited him to join the
Queen’s hunt.
“Give him black Hannibal, Jous,” Christina had said to her groom; and
when the Dutch envoy, Van Beunigen, came out to join the hunting-party,
too much flattered by the invitation to remember that he was a poor
horseman, Jous, the groom, held black Hannibal in unsteady check, while
the big horse champed and fretted, and the hunting-party awaited the new
member.
But Jous, the groom, noted the Dutchman’s somewhat alarmed look at the
big black animal.
“Would it not be well, good sir,” he said, “that you do choose some
steadier animal than Hannibal here? I pray you let me give you one less
restive. So, Bror Andersson,” he called to one of the under-grooms,
“let the noble envoy have your cob, and take you back Hannibal to the
stables.”
But no, the envoy of the States of Holland would submit to no such
change. He ride a servant’s horse, indeed!
“Why, sirrah groom,” he said to good-hearted Jous, “I would have you
know that I am no novice in the equestrian art. Far from it, man. I
have read every treatise on the subject from Xenophon downward; and what
horse can know more than I?”
So friendly Jous had nothing more to say, but hoisted the puffed-up
Dutch scholar into the high saddle; and away galloped the hunt toward
the Maelar woods.
As if blind to his own folly, Van Beunigen, the envoy, placed himself
near to the young Queen; and Christina, full of her own mischief, began
gravely to compliment him on his horsemanship, and suggested a gallop.
Alas, fatal moment. For while he yet swayed and jolted upon the back of
the restive Hannibal, and even endeavored to discuss with the fair young
scholar who rode beside him, the “Melanippe” of Euripides, the same fair
scholar--who, in spite of all her Greek learning was only a mischievous
and sometimes very rude young girl--faced him with a sober countenance.
“Good Herr Van Beunigen,” she said, “your Greek is truly as smooth as
your face. But it seems to me you do not sufficiently catch the spirit
of the poet’s lines commmencing
[gr andrwn de polloi tou gelwtos ouneka].(1)
I should rather say that [gr tou gelwtos] should be----”
(1) The commencement of an extract from the “Melanippe” of Euripides,
meaning, “To raise vain laughter, many exercise the arts of satire.”
Just what [gr tou gelwtos] should be she never declared, for, as the
envoy of Holland turned upon her a face on which Greek learning and
anxious horsemanship struggled with one another, Christina slyly touched
black Hannibal lightly with her riding-whip.
Light as the touch was, however, it was enough. The unruly horse reared
and plunged. The startled scholar, with a cry of terror, flung up his
hands, and then clutched black Hannibal around the neck. Thus, in the
manner of John Gilpin,
“His horse, who never in that way
Had handled been before,
What thing upon his back had got
Did wonder more and more.
“Away went Gilpin, neck or nought;
Away went hat and wig;
He never dreamt when he set out,
Of running such a rig.”
Minus hat and wig, too, the poor envoy dashed up the Maelar highway,
while Christina, laughing loudly, galloped after him in a mad race,
followed by all her hunting-party.
The catastrophe was not far away. The black horse, like the ill-tempered
“bronchos” of our western plains, “bucked” suddenly, and over his
head like a flash went the discomfited Dutchman. In an instant, Greek
learning and Dutch diplomacy lay sprawling in a Swedish roadway, from
which Jous, the groom, speedily lifted the groaning would-be horseman.
Even in her zeal for study, really remarkable in so young a girl,
Christina could not forego her misguided love of power and her tendency
to practical joking, and one day she even made two grave philosophers,
who were holding a profound discussion in her presence over some deep
philosophic subject, suddenly cease their arguments to play with her at
battledore and shuttlecock.
A girlhood of uncontrolled power, such as hers, could lead but to one
result. Self-gratification is the worst form of selfishness, and
never can work good to any one. Although she was a girl of wonderful
capabilities, of the blood of famous kings and conquerors, giving such
promises of greatness that scholars and statesmen alike prophesied for
her a splendid future, Christina, Queen of Sweden, made only a failure
of her life.
At eighteen she had herself formally crowned as KING of Sweden. But at
twenty-five she declared herself sick and tired of her duties as queen,
and at twenty-eight, at the height of her power and fame, she actually
did resign her throne in favor of her cousin, Prince Karl,--publicly
abdicated, and at once left her native land to lead the life of a
disappointed wanderer.
The story of this remarkable woman is one that holds a lesson for
all. Eccentric, careless, and fearless; handsome, witty, and learned;
ambitious, shrewd, and visionary,--she was one of the strangest
compounds of “unlikes” to be met with in history.
She deliberately threw away a crown, wasted a life that might have been
helpful to her subjects, regarded only her own selfish and personal
desires, and died a prematurely old woman at sixty-five, unloved and
unhonored.
Her story, if it teaches any thing, assures us that it is always best
to have in youth, whether as girl or boy, the guidance and direction
of some will that is acknowledged and respected. Natures unformed or
over-indulged, with none to counsel or command, generally go wrong.
A mother’s love, a father’s care, these--though young people may not
always read them aright--are needed for the moulding of character; while
to every bright young girl, historic or unhistoric, princess or peasant,
Swedish queen or modern American maiden, will it at last be apparent
that the right way is always the way of modesty and gentleness, of high
ambitions, perhaps, but, always and everywhere, of thoughtfulness for
others and kindliness to all.
MA-TA-OKA OF POW-HA-TAN: THE GIRL OF THE VIRGINIA FORESTS.
(Generally known as “The Princess Pocahontas.”) A.D. 1607.
Throughout that portion of the easterly United States where the noble
bay called the Chesapeake cuts Virginia in two, and where the James,
broadest of all the rivers of the “Old Dominion,” rolls its glittering
waters toward the sea, there lived, years ago, a notable race of men.
For generations they had held the land, and, though their clothing was
scanty and their customs odd, they possessed many of the elements
of character that are esteemed noble, and, had they been left to
themselves, they might have progressed--so people who have studied into
their character now believe--into a fairly advanced stage of what is
known as barbaric civilization.
They lived in long, low houses of bark and boughs, each house large
enough to accommodate, perhaps, from eighty to a hundred persons--twenty
families to a house. These “long houses” were, therefore, much the same
in purpose as are the tenement-houses of to-day, save that the tenements
of that far-off time were all on the same floor and were open closets
or stalls, about eight feet wide, furnished with bunks built against
the wall and spread with deer-skin robes for comfort and covering.
These “flats” or stalls were arranged on either side of a broad, central
passage-way, and in this passage-way, at equal distances apart, fire
pits were constructed, the heat from which would warm the bodies and
cook the dinners of the occupants of the “long house,” each fire serving
the purpose of four tenements or families.
In their mode of life these people--tall, well-made, attractive, and
coppery-colored folk--were what is now termed communists, that is, they
lived from common stores and had all an equal share in the land and
its yield--the products of their vegetable gardens, their hunting and
fishing expeditions, their home labors, and their household goods.
Their method of government was entirely democratic. No one, in any
household, was better off or of higher rank than his brothers or
sisters. Their chiefs were simply men (and sometimes women) who had been
raised to leadership by the desire and vote of their associates, but who
possessed no special authority or power, except such as was allowed
them by the general consent of their comrades, in view of their wisdom,
bravery, or ability. They lived, in fact, as one great family bound
in close association by their habits of life and their family
relationships, and they knew no such unnatural distinction as king or
subject, lord or vassal.
Around their long bark tenements, stretched carefully cultivated fields
of corn and pumpkins, the trailing bean, the full-bunched grapevine, the
juicy melon, and the big-leafed tabah, or tobacco.
The field work was performed by the women, not from any necessity of a
slavish condition or an enforced obedience, but because, where the men
and boys must be warriors and hunters, the women and girls felt that it
was their place and their duty to perform such menial labor as, to their
unenlightened nature, seemed hardly suitable to those who were to become
chiefs and heroes.
These sturdy forest-folk of old Virginia, who had reached that state of
human advance, midway between savagery and civilization, that is known
as barbarism, were but a small portion of that red-skinned, vigorous,
and most interesting race familiar to us under their general but
wrongly-used name of “Indians.” They belonged to one of the largest
divisions of this barbaric race, known the Algonquin family--a
division created solely by a similarity of language and of
blood-relationships--and were, therefore, of the kindred of the Indians
of Canada, of New England, and of Pennsylvania, of the valley of the
Ohio, the island of Manhattan, and of some of the far-away lands beyond
the Mississippi.
So, for generations, they lived, with their simple home customs and
their family affections, with their games and sports, their legends and
their songs, their dances, fasts, and feasts, their hunting and their
fishing, their tribal feuds and wars. They had but little religious
belief, save that founded upon the superstition that lies at the
foundation of all uncivilized intelligence, and though their customs
show a certain strain of cruelty in their nature, this was not a savage
and vindictive cruelty, but was, rather, the result of what was, from
their way of looking at things, an entirely justifiable understanding of
order and of law.
At the time of our story, certain of these Algonquin tribes of Virginia
were joined together in a sort of Indian republic, composed of thirty
tribes scattered through Central and Eastern Virginia, and known to
their neighbors as the Confederacy of the Pow-ha-tans. This name
was taken from the tribe that was at once the strongest and the most
energetic one in this tribal union, and that had its fields and villages
along the broad river known to the Indians as the Pow-ha-tan, and to us
as the James.
The principal chief of the Pow-ha-tans was Wa-bun-so-na-cook, called by
the white men Pow-hatan. He was a strongly built but rather stern-faced
old gentleman of about sixty, and possessed such an influence over his
tribesmen that he was regarded as the head man (president, we might
say), of their forest republic, which comprised the thirty confederated
tribes of Pow-ha-tan. The confederacy, in its strongest days, never
numbered more than eight or nine thousand people, and yet it was
considered one of the largest Indian unions in America. This, therefore,
may be considered as pretty good proof that there was never, after all,
a very extensive Indian population in America, even before the white man
discovered it.
Into one of the Pow-ha-tan villages that stood very near the shores of
Chesapeake Bay, and almost opposite the now historic site of Yorktown,
came one biting day, in the winter of 1607, an Indian runner, whose name
was Ra-bun-ta. He came as one that had important news to tell, but he
paused not for shout or question from the inquisitive boys who were
tumbling about in the light snow, in their favorite sport of Ga-wa-sa or
the “snow-snake” game. One of the boys, a mischievous and sturdy young
Indian of thirteen, whose name was. Nan-ta-qua-us, even tried to insert
the slender knob-headed stick, which was the “snake” in the game,
between the runner’s legs, and trip him up. But Ra-bun-ta was too
skilful a runner to be stopped by trifles; he simply kicked the “snake”
out of his way, and hurried on to the long house of the chief.
Now this Indian settlement into which the runner had come was the
Pow-ha-tan village of Wero-woco-moco, and was the one in which the old
chief Wa-bun-so-na-cook usually resided. Here was the long council-house
in which the chieftains of the various tribes in the confederacy met for
counsel and for action, and here, too, was the “long tenement-house” in
which the old chief and his immediate family lived.
It was into this dwelling that the runner dashed. In a group about the
central fire-pit he saw the chief. Even before he could himself stop his
headlong speed, however, his race with news came to an unexpected end.
The five fires were all surrounded by lolling Indians, for the weather
in that winter of 1607 was terribly cold, and an Indian, when inside his
house, always likes to get as near to the fire as possible. But down the
long passage-way the children were noisily playing at their games--at
gus-ka-eh, or “peach-pits,” at gus-ga-e-sa-ta, or “deer-buttons,” and
some of the younger boys were turning wonderful somersaults up and down
the open spaces between the fire-pits. Just as the runner, Ra-bun-ta,
sped up the passage-way, one of these youthful gymnasts with a dizzy
succession of hand-springs came whizzing down the passage-way right in
the path of Ra-bun-ta.
There was a sudden collision. The tumbler’s stout little feet came plump
against the breast of Ra-bun-ta, and so sudden and unexpected was the
shock that both recoiled, and runner and gymnast alike tumbled over in a
writhing heap upon the very edge of one of the big bonfires, Then there
was a great shout of laughter, for the Indians dearly loved a joke, and
such a rough piece of unintentional pleasantry was especially relished.
“Wa, wa, Ra-bun-ta,” they shouted, pointing at the discomfited runner as
he picked himself out of the fire, “knocked over by a girl!”
And the deep voice of the old chief said half sternly, half tenderly:
“My daughter, you have wellnigh killed our brother Ra-bun-ta with
your foolery. That is scarce girls’ play. Why will you be such a
po-ca-hun-tas?” (1)
(1) Po-ca-hun-tas, Algonquin for a little “tomboy.”