Mataoka's White Man

The shallop was making her way at a snail's pace through the windings of the sluggish unknown river which was to be heard of later as the Chickahominy. John Smith was scouring the Virginia wilderness for corn. He had with him eight other Englishmen and two Indian guides. Even with the light draft of the little vessel he was tacking cautiously as the wind served, lest he run aground.

When Captain Newport sailed for England he had left the colony with barely four months' provisions. That was on June 22nd, and it was now the loth of December. Before the fierce heat of the summer was half over, the daily ration for each man was only half a pint of wheat and half a pint of barley, boiled to an unpalatable mush. The brackish river water was the only drink. More than fifty of the hundred colonists Newport had left were now in their graves, and no help had come from home.

The Indians had grown shy or suspicious, and removed themselves with their stores of corn to some unknown place. In one way this was a relief, since a single attack by savages might have wiped out the colony altogether. But as Smith observed, whetting his dagger on the sole of his jack-boot, a man is no more dead when brained with a stone club than when starved to death—only dead a little sooner. When cool weather came they fared a little better, for there was fresh meat. Wild geese were honking northward, ducks and pigeons could be snared or shot, now and then there was venison, some of which was dried for future use by the careful Captain. Still, nothing could take the place of grain. If the settlers hoped to live through the winter they must have bread—if it was only the flat cakes of Indian meal such as the wild men had. It would go excellently well with a fat 'possum knocked off a tree somewhere and roasted over the camp-fire.

The exploring party was following the river, which Smith reckoned by his compass to be hereabouts more or less parallel to the James. The weather was mild and delicate, with no sign of winter, and he meant to keep on somehow, afoot or afloat, until he found that corn. When the shallop, a sloop-rigged craft of about twelve tons, could go no further, he could take the two Indians and two white companions and proceed by canoe. This he presently did, leaving the rest to guard the sailing vessel where it lay at anchor.

A while after the canoe disappeared those who remained thought they caught a glimpse of shadowy figures flitting in the same direction through the forest, though the woodlands were as silent as the creeping waters. Then they fancied that far away they heard shots and a cry, but nothing more occurred, nor did any message or sign come from their leader. At last they gave up hope and went back to Jamestown.

Meanwhile the canoe had gone bravely on till the water trail it was following led into a swamp, a wild gigantic mockery of a Lincolnshire fen, its waters black as night in the pools. But over its wide stretches no wind-mills creaked and no bells rang, and the white oaks had never heard the sound of axe. The Captain landed to take his bearings and examine the forest, and there was a whooping rush of savages upon them.

One white man was killed instantly; the other had time for one despairing shriek. Smith whipped out his pistol and shot two of his enemies before they could reach him. These were the shots and the cry which the men in the shallop heard.

Nothing saved the intrepid Captain but the quick inspiration which led him to make no further resistance, but, in the second's pause following the fall of the two Indians, to hold out toward the chief his pocket compass. The huge copper-colored leader had some knowledge of firearms, but here was something he had never beheld. The shining needle quivered at a touch, turning with every motion of the hand that held it, as if alive. He could see it but not touch or stop it. Smith began, in broken Indian helped out with gestures, to explain something of the nature of a magnet so clearly that even his listeners could see what he meant. Finally they tied him to a tree for safety in case he might be a wizard, and consulted anxiously at a distance.

Apparently he was not to be killed immediately, for they untied him and took him with them through the swamp, over a narrow trail that followed the firmest footholds. Presently a village of three or four long bark houses came in view, and as they approached the people swarmed out to see the white man. The older men looked him over, and held another discussion; then the war party resumed its march. At other groups of huts the same thing happened. Smith's alert ears caught a word here and there which led him to suspect that he was accused of the misdeeds of some other white man. In his mind he ran over the record of the unruly and irrepressible persons in the Jamestown colony, but he could not see how any of them could have got into a broil with the wild men unknown to him. Something must be at the bottom of all this, for so far as he knew the neighboring tribes were inclined to be friendly.

His feet were sore and he was hungry, and the two Indian guides were nowhere to be seen. At the largest village they had yet visited the people offered him food, which he ate thankfully and indicated by signs that he would gladly pay for it. The old chief who was watching him said something emphatic to Opecancanough, which made that chief look doubtful. Then a youth came up to the captive and addressed a question to him in a dialect he could understand.

Had he ever been in this neighborhood before? Smith answered, both by word and gesture, never in his life.

Why had he come now? He answered, he wished to buy corn.

Why did he not take the corn, as other white men did, by force? Because this was not right, and he wished to do what was right by all men.

"I said so," said the young Indian. "I told them you were not the white captain who stole our corn. He was taller than you. He was so tall. He had not a great beard like yours. He did not pay for anything, he only laughed and spoke of his gods. My uncle has made a mistake."

John Smith began to see daylight. He had been in other tight places and got out alive. Here was corn, if he could manage to get it without bringing the Indians down on Jamestown. It appeared that the white man for whom Opecancanough had taken him had been there three or four seasons before, and Smith stated, earnestly, that he and his people were not then in the country. At this the old chief nodded.

Much talk followed, and the young interpreter looked grave. He rather liked this fine, brave white man. "They are going to take you to the Powhatan," he said presently. "Although you are not the bad captain, you have killed two of our people, and you must Pay."

As they went on through the woods the Captain wondered what that payment was likely to be. If it was his own life, and he rather thought it was, he hoped that they would kill him quickly.

The chief of the Powhatan tribe of Indians was called the Powhatan as a title, and Opecancanough was, it appeared, his brother. Opecancanough's town was a group of bark-roofed cabins on a sandy hill, each a hundred or more feet long and housing several families of kinsfolk. From the hill other groups of dwellings could be seen scattered over a broad plain. The white prisoner was entertained for some time in one wigwam and another, and had plenty to eat and drink, and a fire at which he could warm himself, but he was never allowed the least chance of escape. At last the stir and activity among the warriors appeared to betoken a crisis of some kind. Smith learned that he was now to be taken before the great Powhatan, Wahunsenacaugh, at his village of Werowocomoco, to be judged.

The house of the chief was a longer and larger wigwam than any of the others, with one fireplace larger than the others, and in front of this was a sort of throne or settle upon which the Powhatan sat. He was a tall, large, bony man, more than seventy years of age, though only slightly gray. On his head he wore a crown of many-hued feathers, around his neck hung chains of white shell beads, and over his shoulders lay a great robe of the finest raccoon skins, with ringed tails pendent like a fringe of furry tassels. Several young squaws sat beside him, and rows of women stood along the walls, their faces and shoulders painted red, and chains of white beads around their necks. Grouped about the chief were dozens of warriors chosen because of their great size and strength to be his body-guard, and all armed with clubs or axes. This court might be grotesque, but it was none the less terrible, and before it stood the lone Englishman to receive his doom.

The Powhatan looked him over with an eye that was cold and severe. One of the men whom this white stranger had shot down was a brother of one of the wives of the chief, and she and her kindred hotly demanded vengeance. By Indian law the killing of any member of the tribe could be wiped out only by the execution of the slayer or his adoption into some family of the tribe in the place of the dead man. There was very little chance that any man there present would defy the anger of the chief's relatives by marriage, by taking pity on the stranger. The Powhatan pronounced sentence, in words brief and to the point.

Two large stones were brought in and put in place. Two big guards laid hold of Smith and dragged him to the stones and forced his head down upon this rude altar, while the executioner lifted his club. Then a lithe young girl of twelve or thirteen leaped from the bench at the Powhatan's side and flung herself upon the captive, crying, "Father, give him to me! I want him for mine!"

Mataoka was the favorite daughter of the old chief, the petted child of his old age. Even if she had not been so important a member of his family, she had the right to adopt the stranger and save him from death. It could not be refused without undermining the whole foundation of Indian law. Half-blinded by the long black hair of the little brown maiden, half-stunned by the unlooked-for change in his fortunes, the Englishman gained his feet, and found himself free to go where he would, received as an equal by his late enemies, of whom he would be counted hereafter a blood-brother. With an instinct as natural as it was gentle he took the slender brown hand of the young Indian princess, dropped on his knee, and kissed her small fingers as if they had been those of his Queen.

Ceremonies which took place later were strange but encouraging. The Powhatan, decked out in much black and red paint, and accompanied by warriors in similar guise, ordered the white captain led to a lodge in the woods and left there on a mat by the fire. There were long and doleful incantations behind a grass-cloth curtain, after which the chief reappeared and told him that he was now free to go back to his own people. If, when he reached them, he would send to the Indian potentate two cannon and a grindstone, he should have land in that neighborhood and be known as the Powhatan's own son forever after. On January 8, 1608, Smith came back to Jamestown with a guard of four Indians, and on the same day the long-awaited ship of Captain Newport arrived with a supply of provisions and more than a hundred colonists.

The adoption of Captain John Smith by the daughter of the Powhatan was perhaps the most fortunate incident in the early history of Jamestown. The rather suspicious friendliness of her father, and the hostility of her uncle Opecancanough more than once threatened war, but Mataoka never changed. In a place where death, famine, and strife were every-day companions, her white man, as she proudly called the English captain, found that the one thing on which he could absolutely depend was her loyalty and her unselfish devotion. She was quick to learn and love whatever was true and noble, and the man who had "a prince's soul in a beggar's purse," as one of his friends declared, found in her a spirit as generous as his own. Again and again she and her maidens brought food for the settlers over the Indian trails, when starvation menaced them. No one can say how far her persuasions may have kept the shaky alliance with the chief from going to destruction, but on one occasion at least she risked her life to serve her hero.

Captain Smith and eighteen of his men took a barge and went into the Powhatan's country to buy corn. The wily chief asked if they would not send away their guns, for surely they could trust him I Smith warily replied that when the Powhatan and his warriors came to Jamestown they were not asked to leave their weapons outside. Then the chief tried other tactics. He invited Smith and one comrade, John Russell, into one of the lodges where only a few squaws were, then slipped away. Smith and Russell, seeing a crowd of armed Indians surrounding the entrance, charged out with drawn swords and scattered them. The Powhatan then hastily explained that these warriors came only to see that the white men's corn was not stolen by any vagabond Indians who might be about. He begged the Captain to accept as gifts a bracelet and chain of white wampum, which signified peace, and be so kind as to take away his corn at once. The party must wait for high tide before the barge could be got off, but the corn was loaded, under the muzzles of the English guns, and then the party prepared to spend the night in a house not far away, where the chief agreed to send them supper.

While they were waiting for the messengers with the food a light knock sounded on the door and Mataoka appeared with news that brought every man of them up standing in a trice. She had come through the woods in the night by a path she knew, to warn her white men of a conspiracy to kill the Englishmen while they were at supper, or later when they were asleep.

"Ah, go, go, my father," she begged, the tears running down her cheeks. "They will kill you if you stay, I am sure they will. No, no"— she put away the gifts the men would have pressed into her small hands, "I dare not take them, for if they saw me with such things they would know that I had been here, and they would kill me. Only go, please go quickly, do not let them find you when they come!" And then she ran away, her little moccasined feet making no more sound than a kitten's on the rough ground.

They took counsel hastily. To retreat would not only lose them their corn but invite further attacks, for then the savages would know that they were afraid. They would stand their ground.

It was not an hour later that eight or ten tall Indians came bringing venison and game, and their leader meekly asked if the English would object to putting out the matches of their matchlocks. The smoke, they said, was upsetting to the weak stomachs of the red men. John Smith smiled in his beard, and directed his sentinels to stand further away. Then he added, coolly:

"I have a word to send to my Father Powhatan. If he is coming to visit me to-night, let him come soon, for I shall be ready for him."

Indians are not slow to take a hint, and the Powhatan must have understood that his plans were suspected, for the English were not disturbed that night. They stood watch turn and turn about until morning, and at high tide pushed off the barge and took their corn safe back to Jamestown.

"Captain," said Russell, as the barge stood out into the middle of the river and headed down stream in the clear light of day, "I do not understand why you call the little maid Mataoka, when her own people and all of us call her Pocahontas. Might that be her title?"

John Smith took off his helmet, as if with instinctive respect to the child who had now a second time saved his life.

"Not that exactly," he said. "Ye see, these wild folk don't like outsiders to know their real names. They generally give a nickname, like. When Cap'n Newport, first time he saw her, asked her Dad what she was called, the old chief said Pocahontas— that's a little madcap, a tomboy, or some such thing. You've seen the little mischief turn somersaults along the streets of Jamestown, haven't ye? It's like some father in England calling his lass 'a baggage,' in sport.

"But her real name's Mataoka. I don't call her that often if there's folk to hear, but last night I was off my guard. She's a dear child that—a dear child —and she has a great spirit."

And the Captain could say no more just then.

Bermuda Hundred