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.