The Indian woman who rescued Virginia Dare was Wahceta, wife of
Manteno, the Croatoan chief.
This Indian woman had other children of her own, some almost grown up,
and when she brought this little white waif into their midst they gazed
in awe and wonderment, and exclaimed, "White Doe!" And this was the
name given by common consent to the little intruder.
Wahceta cared for the babe as if it were her very own.
The helplessness of the little guest made an appeal to Wahceta, and
she guarded her charge with jealous eyes, and a love that she had
never manifested for her own children. Manteno looked on and shrugged
his shoulders in half token of fear, for a white doe was a thing to
be feared, since the superstition was that it was sent by the Great
Spirit as a warning.
Hunters to this day are familiar with the occasional appearance of a
white deer--an albino--one of Nature's sports, like the proverbial
black sheep, to be found in every flock of white ones.
The Indians regarded a white doe as invincible to all weapons save a
silver arrow alone. A white doe bore a charmed life, and was looked
after with especial care by protecting spirits.
And so in wonder, when Wahceta would walk past, bearing on her back the
white babe, the Indians silently made way, feeling somehow that they
were close to the Great Spirit.
The child grew and learned to speak the Croatoan language with a
glibness that made Wahceta laugh aloud in glee.
White Doe had flaxen hair, that glistened with the sheen of the
sunshine. Very proud was Wahceta of those yellow locks, and she used to
braid them in long strands, while the Indians stood around, looking on,
having nothing else to do.
One day, when White Doe was about ten years old, she went away into the
forest as she often did; but when night came on she had not returned.
Wahceta went out to look for her, and called aloud in shrill soprano,
but no reply came.
Manteno was appealed to, to arouse the braves and go search for the
lost little girl. But Manteno was tired and sleepy, and he had faith
in Providence. He knew that the child would be cared for by the Great
Spirit. Wahceta started a bonfire on the hill above the village, and
waited away the long hours of the night for her lost baby.
In the morning, just as the sun peeped over the tree-tops, White Doe
appeared, her hair all wet with the dew of the night, and her feet cut
and bleeding.
She was leading and half-dragging something--was it a dog or a wolf?
Wahceta sprang forward to take the child in her arms. "Get behind,
mother, and push," said little White Doe. "It's a white doe and I've
held it all night for fear it would get away! Push hard, mother, dear,
and we will get it in the teepee and tie it with green withes, and it
will become gentle, and bring us all good luck."
The child had discovered this white fawn with its mother, feeding near
a salt-lick. White Doe lay on a rock above the spring, waiting for the
deer to come up close. There the girl waited for hours. She knew that
at dusk the deer would come to the spring.
Sure enough, her patience was suddenly rewarded. She leaped from her
rock and pinned the white fawn fast. The old deer disappeared into the
forest. The girl held on to her prize. It struck her with its forefeet,
but she held it close. By and by, tired out, the fawn lay still and
rested entwined in the girl's arms. Now came the test--to get it home!
She succeeded.
In the teepee of Wahceta, the animal was fed, caressed and cared for.
It grew docile, and in a few days followed its little mistress
about wherever she went. The Indians looked on in half-dread, with
superstitious awe.
"All the wild animals would be as tame as this if you were not so cruel
to them," she said. "You fear the wolves and bears and so you kill
them!"
To prove her point she began to hunt the forests for young bears and
cub wolves. She found several, and brought them home, making household
friends of them. And still more did the Indians marvel. So the days
went by then, as the days go by now, and White Doe grew into gorgeous,
glowing girlhood.
Her ability to run, climb, shoot with bow and arrow, to see, to hear,
to revel in Nature, gave her a lithe, strong, tall and beautiful form
and an alert mind. Of her birth she knew nothing, save that she was
descended from another race--a race of half-gods, the Indians said.
White Doe believed it, and her pride of pedigree was supreme.
The other children, dark as smoked copper, stood around clothed in
their black hair--and little else--hair as black as the raven's wing.
Wahceta watched her charge with fear for the future. White Doe had
temper, intelligence, wit, ability. She would roam the forests alone,
unafraid. She knew where the bee-trees were, for even as a child she
saw that the bees would gather at the basswood, and then loaded with
honey would fly straight away for their homes. To follow them in their
flight required a practised eye, but this White Doe had, and always the
white doe followed her. She wove the inner bark of the slippery-elm
into baskets, and would supply the teepee of Wahceta and Manteno with
more berries, potatoes and goobers than any other teepee enjoyed.
Then she laid out gardens and tilled the soil with a wonderful wooden
hoe, carved out of solid hickory with her own hands. Wahceta was
growing old, and as her sight was becoming dim White Doe would lead
her about through the forest and care for her as Wahceta once cared for
White Doe.
The work of looking after Manteno's tent drifted by degrees into the
hands of White Doe. Her industry, her thrift, her intelligence set her
apart.
The Indian is like a white man in this: he allows work and
responsibility to drift into the hands of those who can manage them.
White Doe set about to build stone houses to replace the bark teepees.
Where did she get the idea? Prenatal tendencies you say? Possibly. She
drew pictures with a burnt stick on the flat surface of the cliff, and
then ornamented these pictures with red and blue chalk which she dug
from the ground. She took the juice of the grape, the elder and the
whortleberry, and brewed them together to make wondrous colors for the
pictures: and in some of the caves of North Carolina may be seen the
pictures, even unto this day, drawn by White Doe. Wahceta passed away
and her form was wrapped in its winding-sheet of deerskins and bark and
placed high in the forks of a tree-top, awaiting the pleasure of the
Great Spirit.
Manteno also died. And the people did not choose another chief--they
looked to White Doe for counsel and guidance. She was their
"medicine-man," in case of sickness or accident, and in health their
counselor and Queen. Indians from other towns and distant came to her.
She cured the sick and healed the lame.
She lived alone in a stone hut, guarded by a wolf and a bear that
she had brought up from their babyhood. They followed her footsteps
wherever she went, and also, too, came the white doe, fleet of foot,
luminous of eye, sensitive, intelligent, seemingly intent on carrying
the messages of her mistress.
White Doe, the Indian Queen, with long yellow hair, and the big, mild,
yet searching blue eyes, knew her power and exercised it.
Indian braves, young and handsome, came and sat on the grass
cross-legged for hours, at a discreet distance from her hut, making
love to her in pantomime. They sent her presents rare and precious, of
buckskins, tanned soft as velvet, nuggets of silver strung as beads and
strings of wampum.
These braves she set to work down in the bottom-lands. It is said
that no other person was ever able to set the male Indian to work.
But for her the braves built stone houses, planted gardens, and laid
stepping-stones across the fords, so that she could walk across
dry-shod. The nuggets of silver that they brought her from the
mountains she fashioned into an exquisite arrow of silver, sharper at
the point than the sharpest flint. For days and weeks and months she
worked making the silver arrow.
"What is it for?" the Indians asked.
"It is to help me when all other help is gone," she said.
And the Indians were silent, mystified.
She planted slips of grapes brought from the sunny slopes; these she
tended, dug about, trained and trimmed. The wonderful Scuppernong Grape
was her own evolution. By care and culture it covered the cabin where
she lived, and reached out to an oak a hundred feet beyond.
She showed the Indians how to double their crops of corn, how to grow
such melons as the Indian world had never before known.
She taught them that it was much better to work and produce flowers,
grain, grapes, and make pictures on the rocks than to roam the woods
aimlessly, looking for something to kill.
She told them that the Great Spirit loved people who were kind and
useful, and temperate in the use of the juice of the grape and in all
other good things. So the Croatoans advanced and grew in intelligence
quite beyond any of the other Indian tribes on the Atlantic coast. One
day White Doe sat at the door of her cabin, under the great vine where
hung the grapes.
She was intently painting a picture on buckskin.
The white doe was nibbling at the bushes only a few feet away.
The gray wolf crouched at her feet suddenly snarled, and the hair on
his back arose in wrath.
White Doe looked up, and there at a distance of a hundred feet stood a
man--a pale faced man.
He saw the wolf, and stood stock-still. White Doe looked at the man,
and suddenly her heart beat fast. She felt the color mounting to her
face. She drew her long, yellow hair over her neck and her buckskin
dress up at the shoulder. The man motioned for her to come to him.
Evidently he saw the wolf and dare not go forward. She arose, pacified
the wolf, and slipped forward.
The man had a dark beard, but his complexion told her that they were of
the same race.
He spoke to her in English.
She had never before heard a word of the language spoken.
In amazement she listened, and then shook her head.
The man now resorted to the sign language; he made the motions of
paddling a canoe, and pointed toward the sea. And then she knew that he
had come from far across the sea in a ship.
He took from one of his pockets a chain of gold; and attached to this
chain was a little gold locket.
He opened the locket and showed her a picture inside. On the locket was
engraved the words, "To Sir Walter Raleigh, from his Queen, Elizabeth."
White Doe saw the inscription, but she could not read it.
The man offered to put the chain and locket about her neck. She stepped
back, and the wolf at her heels snarled. She made a motion that the
interview was ended and that the man should go to see the Indians whose
houses and cabins were but a short distance away.
The man did not go. Instead, he in the universal sign language took
off his hat, pressed his hand on his heart, and fell on one knee. He
motioned to the East, away--away, away across the sea!
Would she go with him?
Proudly she shook her head, half-smiled and again ordered him to go.
Her manner said plainly that this was her home: She was Queen of the
Croatoans--was this not enough?
A shade of anger moved across the man's face. He was used to having his
orders obeyed. He moved toward her as if he would seize her. Now it was
her turn to stand still. The wolf leaped to her side, and across the
intervening space from the cabin lumbered a big black bear.
The man now backed slowly away some ten paces, and then he lifted a gun
that lay on the grass where he had left it.
Suddenly a score of white men emerged from the bushes.
There was a flash of fire, a loud explosion, a great volume of white
smoke. And the wolf, the bear, and the white doe all fell weltering in
their blood.
The wolf was not dead, and with fierce snarls tried desperately to
crawl toward the white man. One of the men ran forward and beat its
brains out with a club.
The Indians came rushing from their houses.
There was another flash of fire, a cloud of smoke, and the forward
Indian fell dead. The rest of the red folks fled in wild alarm. White
Doe stood still, her yellow hair blowing in the sunshine. Again the
leader of the white men came forward, a smile of triumph on his face.
His manner said more plainly than any words could express: "You are in
my power. See! I have killed your protectors, your friends. So I can
kill you. You must come with me."
He pressed his hand to his heart in sign of love.
The woman backed away from him, her eyes shooting hatred and defiance.
At her girdle hung the silver arrow. Her hand now reached for it.
The man leaped forward and attempted to seize her. His reach fell
short, for the woman was quicker and quite as strong as he. She flung
him aside. The silver arrow was in her right hand. She held it aloft
like a dagger.
The man retreated.
"Coward," she cried in Croatoan. "Coward! It is not for you. It is my
last friend--the friend that has been waiting to save me all these
years!"
The arrow flashed in the air, and with a terrific lunge went straight
to the woman's heart.
She leaped into the air, reeled and fell across the body of the dying
doe. And the blood of the two friends intermingled.
SO HERE, THEN, ENDETH THE TALE OF "THE SILVER ARROW," WRITTEN BY
ELBERT HUBBARD, AND MADE INTO A BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR
SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, COUNTY OF ERIE, STATE OF NEW
YORK, ANNO DOMINI, NINETEEN HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE, AND SINCE THEIR
FOUNDING THE THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR [decoration]