Historic Girls Part 17

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 a.s.surance 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 compa.s.s--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.

"Not so, Cau-co-rouse," she said, "if it should be seen by my tribesmen, or even by my father, the chief, I should but be as dead to them, for they would know that I have warned you whom they have sworn to kill, and so would they kill me also. Stay not to parley, my father, but be gone at once."

And with that, says the record, "she ran away by herself as she came."

So the captain hurried back to Jamestown, and Ma-ta-oka returned to her people.

Soon after Smith left the colony, sick and worn out by the continual worries and disputes with his fellow-colonists, and Ma-ta-oka felt that, in the absence of her best friend and the increasing troubles between her tribesmen and the pale-faces, it would be unwise for her to visit Jamestown.

Her fears seem to have been well grounded, for in the spring of 1613, Ma-ta-oka, being then about sixteen, was treacherously and "by stratagem" kidnapped by the bold and unscrupulous Captain Argall--half pirate, half trader,--and was held by the colonists as hostage for the "friends.h.i.+p" of Pow-ha-tan.

Within these three years, however, she had been married to the chief of one of the tributary tribes, Ko-ko-um by name, but, as was the Indian marriage custom, Ko-ko-um had come to live among the kindred of his wife, and had shortly after been killed in one of the numerous Indian fights.

It was during the captivity of the young widow at Jamestown that she became acquainted with Master John Rolfe, an industrious young Englishman, and the man who, first of all the American colonists, attempted the cultivation of tobacco.

Master Rolfe was a widower and an ardent desirer of "the conversion of the pagan salvages." He became interested in the young Indian widow, and though he protests that he married her for the purpose of converting her to Christianity, and rather ungallantly calls her "an unbelieving creature," it is just possible that if she had not been a pretty and altogether captivating young unbeliever he would have found less personal means for her conversion.

Well, the Englishman and the Indian girl, as we all know, were married, lived happily together, and finally departed for England. Here, all too soon, in 1617, when she was about twenty-one, the daughter of the great chieftain of the Pow-ha-tans died.

Her story is both a pleasant and a sad one. It needs none of the additional romance that has been thrown about it to render it more interesting. An Indian girl, free as her native forests, made friends with the race that, all unnecessarily, became hostile to her own.

Brighter, perhaps, than most of the girls of her tribe, she recognized and desired to avail herself of the refinements of civilization, and so gave up her barbaric surroundings, cast in her lot with the white race, and sought to make peace and friends.h.i.+p between neighbors take the place of quarrel and of war.

The white race has nothing to be proud of in its conquest of the people who once owned and occupied the vast area of the North American continent. The story is neither an agreeable nor a chivalrous one.

But out of the gloom which surrounds it, there come some figures that relieve the darkness, the treachery, and the crime that make it so sad.

And not the least impressive of these is this bright and gentle little daughter of Wa-bun-so-na-cook, chief of the Pow-ha-tans, Ma-ta-oka, friend of the white strangers, whom we of this later day know by the nickname her loving old father gave her--Po-ca-hun-tas, the Algonquin.