Part 28

For the fame of “the white cau-co-rouse,” the “great captain,” as the Indians called the courageous and intrepid little governor of the Virginia colony, Captain John Smith, had already gone throughout the confederacy, and his capture was even better than a victory over their deadliest enemies, the Manna-ho-acks.

Ra-bun-ta was as good a gossip and story-teller as any of his tribesmen, and as he squatted before the upper fire-pit, and ate a hearty meal of parched corn, which the little Ma-ta-oka brought him as a peace-offering, he gave the details of the celebrated capture. “The ‘great captain,’” he said, “and two of his men had been surprised in the Chicka-hominy swamps by the chief O-pe-chan-ca-nough and two hundred braves. The two men were killed by the chief, but the ‘captain,’ seeing himself thus entrapped, seized his Indian guide and fastened him before as a shield, and thus sent out so much of his magic thunder from his fire-tube that he killed or wounded many of the Indians, and yet kept himself from harm though his clothes were torn with arrow-shots. At last, however,” said the runner, “the ‘captain’ had slipped into a mud-hole in the swamps, and, being there surrounded, was dragged out and made captive, and he, Ra-bun-ta, had been sent on to tell the great news to the chief.”

The Indians especially admired bravery and cunning. This device of the white chieftain and his valor when attacked appealed to their admiration, and there was great desire to see him when next day he was brought into the village by the chief of the Pa-mun-kee, or York River Indians, O-pe-chan-ca-nough, brother of the chief of the Pow-ha-tans.

The renowned prisoner was received with the customary chorus of Indian yells, and then, acting upon the one leading Indian custom, the law of unlimited hospitality, a bountiful feast was set before the captive, who, like the valiant man he was, ate heartily though ignorant what his fate might be.

The Indians seldom wantonly killed their captives. When a sufficient number had been sacrificed to avenge the memory of such braves as had fallen in fight, the remaining captives were either adopted as tribesmen or disposed of as slaves.

So valiant a warrior as this pale-faced cau-co-rouse was too important a personage to be used as a slave, and Wa-bun-so-na-cook, the chief, received him as an honored guest(1) rather than as a prisoner, kept him in his own house for two days, and adopting him as his own son, promised him a large gift of land. Then, with many expressions of friendship, he returned him, well escorted by Indian guides, to the trail that led back direct to the English colony at Jamestown.

(1) “Hee kindly welcomed me with good wordes,” says Smith’s own narrative, “assuring me his friendship and my libertie.”

This rather destroys the long-familiar romance of the doughty captain’s life being saved by “the king’s own daughter,” but it seems to be the only true version of the story, based upon his own original report.

But though the oft-described “rescue” did not take place, the valiant Englishman’s attention was speedily drawn to the agile little Indian girl, Ma-ta-oka, whom her father called his “tomboy,” or po-ca-hun-tas.

She was as inquisitive as any young girl, savage or civilized, and she was so full of kindly attentions to the captain, and bestowed on him so many smiles and looks of wondering curiosity, that Smith made much of her in return, gave her some trifling presents and asked her name.

Now it was one of the many singular customs of the American Indians never to tell their own names, nor even to allow them to be spoken to strangers by any of their own immediate kindred. The reason for this lay in the superstition which held that the speaking of one’s real name gave to the stranger to whom it was spoken a magical and harmful influence over such person. For the Indian religion was full of what is called the supernatural.

So, when the old chief of the Pow-ha-tans (who, for this very reason, was known to the colonists by the name of his tribe, Pow-ha-tan, rather than by his real name of Wa-bun-so-na-cook) was asked his little daughter’s name, he hesitated, and then gave in reply the nick-name by which he often called her, Po-ca-hun-tas, the “little tomboy”--for this agile young maiden, by reason of her relationship to the head chief, was allowed much more freedom and fun than was usually the lot of Indian girls, who were, as a rule, the patient and uncomplaining little drudges of every Indian home and village.

So, when Captain Smith left Wero-woco-moco, he left one firm friend behind him,--the pretty little Indian girl, Ma-ta-oka,--who long remembered the white man and his presents, and determined, after her own wilful fashion, to go into the white man’s village and see all their wonders for herself.

In less than a year she saw the captain again, For when, in the fall of 1608, he came to her father’s village to invite the old chief to Jamestown to be crowned by the English as “king” of the Pow-ha-tans, this bright little girl of twelve gathered together the other little girls of the village, and, almost upon the very spot where, many years after, Cornwallis was to surrender the armies of England to the “rebel” republic, she with her companions entertained the English captain with a gay Indian dance full of noise and frolic.

Soon after this second interview, Ma-ta-oka’s wish to see the white man’s village was gratified. For in that same autumn of 1608 she came with Ra-bun-ta to Jamestown. She sought out the captain who was then “president” of the colony, and “entreated the libertie” of certain of her tribesmen who had been “detained,”--in other words, treacherously made prisoners by the settlers because of some fear of an Indian plot against them.

Smith was a shrewd enough man to know when to bluster and when to be friendly. He released the Indian captives at Ma-ta-oka’s wish--well knowing that the little girl had been duly “coached” by her wily old father, but feeling that even the friendship of a child may often be of value to people in a strange land.

The result of this visit to Jamestown was the frequent presence in the town of the chieftain’s daughter. She would come, sometimes, with her brother, Nan-ta-qua-us, sometimes with the runner, Ra-bun-ta, and sometimes with certain of her girl followers. For even little Indian girls had their “dearest friends,” quite as much as have our own clannish young school-girls of to-day.

I am afraid, however, that this twelve-year-old, Ma-ta-oka, fully deserved, even when she should have been on her good behavior among the white people, the nickname of “little tomboy” (po-ca-hun-tas) that her father had given her,--for we have the assurance of sedate Master William Strachey, secretary of the colony, that “the before remembered Pocahontas, Powhatan’s daughter, sometimes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve years, did get the boyes forth with her into the market-place, and make them wheele, falling on their hand turning their heeles upward, whome she would followe and wheele so herself, all the fort over.” From which it would appear that she could easily “stunt” the English boys at “making cart-wheels.”

But there came a time very soon when she came into Jamestown for other purpose than turning somersaults.

The Indians soon learned to distrust the white men, because of the unfriendly and selfish dealings, of the new-comers, their tyranny, their haughty disregard of the Indians’ wishes and desires, and their impudent meddling alike with chieftains and with tribesmen. Discontent grew into hatred and, led on by certain traitors in the colony, a plot was arranged for the murder of Captain Smith and the destruction of the colony.

Three times they attempted to entrap and destroy the “great captain” and his people, but each time the little Ma-ta-oka, full of friendship and pity for her new acquaintances, stole cautiously into the town, or found some means of misleading the conspirators, and thus warned her white friends of their danger.

One dark winter night in January, 1609, Captain Smith, who had came to Wero-woco-moco for conference and treaty with Wa-bun-so-na-cook (whom he always called Pow-ha-tan), sat in the York River woods awaiting some provisions that the chief had promised him,--for eatables were scarce that winter in the Virginia colony.

There was a light step beneath which the dry twiggs on the ground crackled slightly, and the wary captain grasped his matchlock and bade his men be on their guard. Again the twigs crackled, and now there came from the shadow of the woods not a train of Indians, but one little girl--Ma-ta-oka, or Pocahontas.

“Be guarded, my father,” she said, as Smith drew her to his side. “The corn and the good cheer will come as promised, but even now, my father, the chief of the Pow-ha-tans is gathering all his power to fall upon you and kill you. If you would live, get you away at once.”

The captain prepared to act upon her advice without delay, but he felt so grateful at this latest and most hazardous proof of the little Indian girl’s regard that he desired to manifest his thankfulness by presents--the surest way to reach an Indian’s heart.

“My daughter,” he said kindly, “you have again saved my life, coming alone, and at risk of your own young life, through the irksome woods and in this gloomy night to admonish me. Take this, I pray you, from me, and let it always tell you of the love of Captain Smith.”

And the grateful pioneer handed her his much-prized pocket compass--an instrument regarded with awe by the Indians, and esteemed as one of the instruments of the white man’s magic.

But Ma-ta-oka, although she longed to possess this wonderful “path-teller,” shook her head.