“Nantiquas will take the Owaissa maid to the wigwam of the Werowance Powhatan; the brave Iosco sits before the door.” As he spoke, he turned and led the way, and the maidens followed him. Virginia could not help noticing how tall and handsome he was, his long black hair pushed back from his high forehead. He wore a skin girded about his waist with a belt of wampum. Over his shoulder hung a quiver of arrows, and on his left arm he carried a bow. In his belt he wore a tomahawk, and across his forehead was bound the skin of a green serpent, its bright eyes gleaming over his left temple. From his right ear to his waist was fastened a long string of pearls.
A strange sight was the wigwam or bower in which Powhatan held his court. He sat on a couch, which looked not unlike one of our modern bedsteads. It was made of fine wood, rudely carved with strange devices. He wore a robe of raccoon-skin, with a belt of the rarest wampum. His powerful arms were decorated with metal bracelets. The ground around him was strewn with dried sweet grasses and crushed pine-needles that made the air fragrant. At his head and feet sat two beautiful maidens. A hundred bowmen formed, as it were, the wall or outside of the court-chamber. In front of them were a hundred women with bare necks and arms, which were dyed with paccoon and decorated with white coral. Beside the great Werowance sat a beautiful girl about twelve or fourteen. (She looked like Cleopatra, and was, in fact, her sister Pocahontas, known to her people as Mataoka.) She gazed wonderingly at Virginia as Nantiquas and Cleopatra led her in, and she took her place among the wives and daughters that sat at the head of Powhatan’s couch, on the right side of which, on mats, were seated the priests, or medicine-men, singing a queer dirge, keeping time to the melody with their grotesquely painted bodies. The curious song continued while Iosco entered. He was in the dress of a prince, wearing a white skin girded with his father’s rare and beautiful wampum belt, in which was supposed to rest a great charm. On his feet he wore moccasins made of skins and beautifully wrought with queer patterns. Across his forehead were bound some rare and beautiful feathers, which rose high above his tall figure and nodded gracefully as he moved. He was attended only by one of his braves and three of the whites, who were dressed as Indians, and carried the presents he had brought from Croatoan, which they had now laid before him. An odd medley enough they were—a coil of deer sinews, a small belt of wampum, a string of noughmass, and last, but not least in the eyes of the chief, an old rusty English sword.
The chief did not deign to notice the things till the sword was put down, then he extended his great hand, and picked it up with a gleam of delight in his small, dark eyes as he held it. He took from his mouth his long pipe, passed it to Iosco, who smoked for some moments in silence. Then Powhatan nodded to Iosco, who returned the pipe and began his tale, not as if he were making a petition, but as if he were chanting or reciting a story. He told first of Manteo’s going to England, then of the white men coming to Croatoan; of the years that had passed since, when they had lived in peace together; then of his father’s death, and the anger of his people, and his wish to remain or leave the two dozen pale-faces that were yet alive at Werowocomoca. He spoke of their skill in many things not known to the Indian people.
He told it in a sing-song drawl, as if he did not care in the least. But when the medicine-men began to mutter, “They are ghosts; have none of them; they kill,” Powhatan looked at the three white attendants, who certainly were weird looking, with their yellow, grisly faces, their colorless eyes, and white skins, and shook his head unfavorably.
Iosco looked anxiously over at Virginia. It was evident she was his chief anxiety; but she, mistaking his look, thought he wanted her, and sprang to him, saying, “Must we go, and where?”
Powhatan half raised himself to look at her, as she clung to the tall figure, fixing upon him her great blue eyes, her wavy golden hair falling loosely about her. Even the medicine-men stopped their muttering, and the beautiful princess Mataoka bent over her father and whispered something in his ear. He could not but admire her beauty, old savage as he was, and he nodded to his daughter, who led Virginia away to her own wigwam. Then he ordered food to be brought to Iosco, which was his way of showing his welcome. And Iosco knew that he and his party were safe for the present.