She, a child raised in a heathen sensual court, arranged a show for him and his four men at which Smith was astonished. Powhatan's warriors, she knew, would have been enchanted by the dance number put on by older girls to amuse the strangers. Pocahontas had heard her people wonder how it was that the English came without women, stayed a long time and yet got on without them. Their pale women must have been too timid to come along, and they must be lonesome and bored without feminine allure around. Thirty girls wearing nothing but green leafy aprons pranced out of the woods, their bodies painted in various colors. Some wore antler's horns on their heads, and all were brandishing crude weapons that were less frightening than their wild contortions and fiendish yells. At first the men grabbed their own weapons in alert defense. The Englishmen were embarrassed by the brazen savage scene, and more so when the dancers ran to the woods to change to regular garb, for they now wound their arms about blushing necks, murmuring torridly "Lovest thou me? Lovest thou me?" "These nymphs the more tormented him than ever with crowding and pressing, hanging upon him, most tediously crying 'love you me,'" it was reported.
Pocahontas herself would have liked to ask John Smith that, for she knew that the welling adoration she had for him was growing faster than herself, and was something she would not put aside with childish fancies. She was sorry he was not pleased with today's entertainment, even when great platters of food were set before his men, and they were led to their rest by torches. He had business on his mind and looked relieved when Powhatan showed up in the morning.
"Your highness, our king across the seas lives in such grandeur as you can scarcely imagine. Newport tells me he was so troubled to find out that you did not have the sort of luxuries that befit a great werowance like yourself, that he sent back fine gifts for you."
"What then should a king have that I have not?"
"He wears a crown. A king is quite a fellow."
"Indeed. You speak the truth there. That is quite so."
"Come down to Jamestown and be crowned. We will be friends, and fight our common enemies the Monacans."
Powhatan looked him down cooly. "If your king has sent me presents, I also am a king and this is my land. Eight days will I stay here to receive them. Your father is to come to me, not I to him, nor yet to your fort. Neither will I bite at such bait. As for the Monacans, I can revenge my own injuries."
There was no course left for Newport and Smith but to trudge twelve miles over land, while they sent the cumbersome presents by water. First they proffered the red suit and cloak which Powhatan tried on grudgingly. He knew that he could strut, even in incongruous rigging. His row of women admired him, putting him in an amiable mood.
"What is this ewer and basin for?"