The Princess Pocahontas Part 16

The trees grew so close together that it was difficult for the Englishmen to distinguish in the shadows they cast the figures whirling between the trunks. Half naked they were: here a ma.s.s of something painted red; there flashed a white arm, of a whiteness such as nature never dyed, and there issued shoulders of a brilliant blue, as they advanced dancing and shrieking.

"All their war paint on!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Captain Waldo.

And in that moment John Smith lost his faith in the friendship Powhatan had sworn to him, and he drew his sword, ready to pierce the first oncomer.

Then he looked again ... and hastily thrust his sword back into its scabbard, shouting to his comrades who had also drawn their blades, "Hold!"

For there before him, the first of the dancers who had run out of the forest, advanced Pocahontas! On her head she wore branching antlers, an otter skin at her waist and one across her arm, a quiver at her back, and she carried a bow and arrow in her hand. In a flash she realized what the Englishmen were thinking--that they were caught in an ambush.

"My Brother!" she cried out in a tone that rang with disappointment, "didst thou too doubt me? Tell them, thy companions, that I lay my life in their hands if any harm was intended."

Seldom in his life had John Smith felt so at a loss as to what he should reply. He hurriedly explained to the others that Pocahontas was evidently intending to do them special honour in welcoming them with some kind of sylvan masque. Then facing her, he cried:

"Forgive us, Matoaka, and be not angry that we mistook thy kindness.

See, we seat ourselves here upon the ground and we beseech thee that thou and thy maidens will continue thy songs and thy dancing, which will greatly divert us."

Pocahontas's disappointment vanished at once and she sped back with her comrades to the woods, where they repeated their masque, this time to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the Englishmen, who were somewhat ashamed to think that they had been so frightened by a troop of girls. All of the dancers were horned like their leader and the upper parts of their bodies and their arms were painted red, white or blue. There was a fire blazing in the centre of the field and around this they formed a ring, dancing and singing a song which, while unlike anything Smith's companions had ever heard, affected their pulses like drumbeats. Some of the words they sang Smith was able to catch words of welcome, songs of young maidens in which they told of the joys of childhood and of the days when sweet-hearts would seek them and when they would follow some brave to his wigwam.

Pocahontas, he thought, was as graceful as a young roe; her feet were as quick as the flames of the fire, and every now and then, from the very exuberance of her happiness, she shot an arrow over their heads into the trees beyond. Smith could not help wondering what kind of a husband she would follow home some day.

The masque lasted an hour; all the different motions were symbolic, as Smith had learned all Indian dances were, and much of it he was able to comprehend. In any case he would have enjoyed the masque, knowing that Pocahontas had performed it to honour her father's guests. When it was over, suddenly as they had come, the maidens vanished into the dark forest.

The Englishmen were not left alone, however, for during the dancing a number of braves and squaws had come to look on at the ceremony and even more at the audience. Now Nautauquas came forward and greeted Smith.

"My father hath just returned. He hurried back when he learned that ye were to visit him. He hath had the guest lodge prepared and awaits your coming there."

Powhatan greeted them when they entered the lodge, which Smith recognized at once as the one where his life had been in such jeopardy.

"Tell them they are welcome, thy comrades," he said to Smith, "and thou, my son, art always as one of mine own people."

They seated themselves on the mats spread for them, and the usual feasting began, the Englishmen doing more than justice to the Indian dishes.

"'Tis a strange beast and of a rare flavor withal, this racc.o.o.n," said Waldo, "and methinks the King at Westminster hath no better trencher meat. Hath the old savage asked of thee yet our errand, Smith?"

"An Indian never asks the errand of his guest," he replied; "but now we have eaten it is not meet that I delay longer to tell him."

He rose to his feet and began to speak. Pocahontas, who had stood at the entrance looking in, now entered and sat down at her father's feet.

"Ruler of many tribes, Werowance of the Powhatans, Wahunsunakuk, we have come to bring the greetings sent thee from across the sea by our own great werowance, James. With the English, the Spaniards, the French and other great peoples beyond the seas, their greatest chief who rules many tribes is called a 'king.' He is mightier than all other werowances, hath always much riches and honour, and when the time comes that, by the death of an old king or by conquest, a new king takes his place, he is crowned. They put a circlet upon his head and in his hand they place a staff of honour and upon his shoulders they throw royal robes, so that all who see shall know that this is the King and that all must do him fealty. Our own King James, who hath heard of thee, and of the many tribes that are subject to thee, hath desired that thou, too, shouldst be crowned as another king, his friend, so that the English may know that he calls thee 'brother,' and that thine own people shall hold thee in yet greater awe."

Powhatan manifested no sign of interest in these words; but from the eager look on Pocahontas's face Smith was aware that his Indian speech had at least been comprehended.

"Therefore," Smith continued, "it is planned to hold thy coronation at Jamestown upon as near a day as thou shalt see fit to appoint. Our King hath sent presents for thee which await thy coming to us."

Then he ceased and looked to Powhatan for an answer. The werowance thought a moment in silence, then he spoke:

"If your king hath sent me presents, I also am a king, and this is my land; eight days I will stay to receive them. Your Father is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort."

He spoke with so kingly a dignity that the Englishmen did not seek to dissuade him. They promised to do as he wished and to persuade Newport, whom he called their "father," to go to Werowocomoco, which might be considered as Powhatan's capital. Then they departed for Jamestown, after having thanked Powhatan and Pocahontas for their entertainment.

Pocahontas awaited their return with eagerness. She talked the matter over with Nautauquas. Perhaps, she said, there was some strange medicine in this ceremony which would make their father invulnerable and perchance safe even from death itself.

"I have more faith in the white men's guns than in their medicine,"

declared Claw-of-the-Eagle. "Ever since one of those fat housebuilders whom they call Dutchmen let me try to fire off one of them, I know now that they are not worked by magic. If we could manage to get enough of them we should be ten times as strong as their starving company and could destroy all of them before another shipload of newcomers arrived."

"Nay," cried Pocahontas, "not as long as our brother, the captain, lives. Thou couldst not even face his eyes when he is angry."

She did not imagine that she was stating an actual fact.

Claw-of-the-Eagle had never been able to look Smith in the eye since he crawled away from the lodge where he had meant to kill the white man. It was only Smith himself who awed him so; but he dreamed that some day he might be able to deal a blow in the dark when those terrible eyes could not stop him. In the meantime he felt equal to meeting the other palefaces day or night.

"But," asked Nautauquas slowly and gravely, as if weighing the matter, "why should we wish to destroy these white men? I once had different thoughts, and I have gone alone into the forest and fasted and prayed to Okee that I might know whether to greet them as foe or friend. In some way the white tribes that live across the great waters have found their way westward. Many have come, the rumor is, to the south of us, men of different race and different tongue from these on the island. These others are cruel to the Indians among whom they have settled and have destroyed many villages and made captive their braves and squaws. Now I have talked with our father, Wahunsunakuk, of what I now speak, since we can no longer hope to hide our trail again to these wanderers from the rising sun, that it is better to make friends of these who have come and who seem well-disposed towards us, and to have them for allies rather than enemies."

In spite of himself, Claw-of-the-Eagle was impressed with this reasoning.

"Dost thou then like these paleface strangers and their ways?" he asked.

"There is much about them I do not understand," replied Nautauquas; "how they can wear so many garments; why they build them houses that let in no air; why they come here when they have villages beyond the seas; yet I know that they are brave and that their medicine is mighty."

Pocahontas spoke little. She had never told anyone how much interest she found in all that concerned the white men and their ways.

It was some days later that Smith, Captain Newport and fifty men started to march to Werowocomoco for the coronation of Powhatan. The presents which the King and the governors of the Colony in London had chosen for him were sent by boat up the river. When the company of Englishmen in their farthingale-breeches, slashed sleeves and white ruffs, their swords and buckles glistening, accompanied by a few soldiers bearing halberds and long muskets, arrived, the entire population of the village and those of other villages for leagues about were awaiting them. Braves and squaws had decked themselves out also in their choicest finery--necklaces and beads and embroidered robes.

It was a wonderful picture that the dark surrounding forest looked upon--the group of gaily colored Indians facing the more soberly dressed Europeans. Round them circled children, pushing, peering between their elders that they might miss nothing. And through it all, running from one group to the other, welcoming, explaining, smiling and laughing, flitted the white-clad Pocahontas.

After their greeting, when Powhatan and Captain Newport eyed each other appraisingly, the gifts were brought into the field where Pocahontas had danced her masque and spread out before the curious gaze of the savages.

Pocahontas, in her white doeskin skirt and wearing many strings of white and blue beads, went about among her new friends, and laid her hand into that of Captain Newport, as Smith had told her was the manner in which the English greeted one another. Some of the chieftains scowled at the sight and did not relish the friendliness shown by her to the strangers.

Several even remonstrated with Powhatan who, however, would not restrain her. After a few words with Smith, she rejoined Cleopatra and others of her sisters at one side of the field.

"What is yon curious thing, Pocahontas?" they questioned of her superior knowledge, as the wrappings were taken off a bedstead that Captain Newport by means of signs presented solemnly to Powhatan.

"That," she answered, having had a glimpse of such furniture at Jamestown, "that is a couch on which they sleep."

"Is it more comfortable than our mats?" asked Cleopatra. "I should fear to fall out of it into the fire."

Plainly Powhatan, too, was at a loss to know what to do with it. The next gifts, a basin and ewer, met with more enthusiasm. The squaws were particularly interested in them when Pocahontas told them that they were made of a substance which would not break as did their own vessels of sun-baked pottery. But it was the red mantle of soft English cloth, in shape like to the one, he was told. King James had worn at his coronation at Westminster, that made Powhatan's grim features relax a little with pleasure. Captain Newport placed it on the werowance's shoulders and held a mirror that he might behold himself thus handsomely apparelled.

Then they proceeded to the crowning. Newport would have liked to have some words of ritual read, even though the princ.i.p.al of the ceremony had not been able to understand them; but the chaplain pointed out that neither the law nor the Prayer-Book made any provision for the crowning of a heathen, and that after all it was the act, not the words, which would impress the savages.

The drummer beat a loud tattoo and the trumpeter blew a call that startled the squaws and the children into shrieks; the braves were quicker in hiding their astonishment. Then Smith and Newport walked forward, Newport holding the crown. Smith said:

"Kneel, Wahunsunakuk, that we may crown thee."

But Powhatan, whose understanding of these strange proceedings was not clear, though he comprehended Smith's words, continued to stand stiff and straight as a pine tree.

"Kneel down, oh, Powhatan," urged Smith. "Mistake not, this act is a kingly one; so do all the kings of Europe."

But Powhatan would not. To him the posture was one unfitting to the dignity of a mighty werowance, ruler over thirty tribes and lord of sixty villages. He would accept presents sent him, and he had no objection to wearing a glittering ring upon his head if the white men chose to give him one; but he would not kneel; that was going too far in his acquiescence to strange ways. Such a position was for suppliants and squaws and children.