Po-ca-hun-tas slipped away into the forest as silently as she had come, and threaded her way safely home to her own "long house." No one knew she had been out of bed. When the Algonquin braves, in war paint, reached the bank of the York River they found only the embers of a camp-fire to show that the white men had waited for them there.
Pocahontas
From the only authentic portrait
Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown, but he found many of his own people discontented, and soon afterward, tired out by the continual difficulties that beset him in Virginia, he gave up his position there and sailed back to England. Po-ca-hun-tas heard the news and decided that she had better keep away from Jamestown now that the settlers were hostile to her father and her great protector was gone. Troubles were increasing between the Indians and the white men, and neither trusted the others any more.
When she was sixteen Po-ca-hun-tas was visiting friends in another village on the James when she was suddenly made prisoner by a man named Captain Argall, a trader, who decided to hold the Indian girl as hostage for the friendship of Pow-ha-tan. He took her to Jamestown, and there Po-ca-hun-tas was given a certain amount of liberty and met again some of the boys and girls she had played with before. They all liked her, and although she missed her free life in the woods she found so much that was new and strange to interest her that she was not sorry to stay for a time in Jamestown. Here she soon met a young Englishman named John Rolfe, who was much attracted by her, and who at length asked her to marry him. She consented, and a short time after their marriage she sailed with him to visit his home across seas in England.
The people of London had seen few Indians and were very curious to learn more about them. They were charmed with Mistress John Rolfe, or the Princess Po-ca-hon-tas of Pow-ha-tan, as they liked to call her. Captain John Smith met her again and told his friends how she had saved his life that night on the York River. The story spread, and the Princess Po-ca-hon-tas found herself a heroine in England. But she bore her honors very modestly, and was much happier alone with her devoted husband than when she was being stared at by crowds of strange people. She did not live to go back to Virginia or see her own tribesmen again, but died in England when she was only twenty-two.
Ma-ta-oka, or Pocahontas as we call her, was a real heroine, one of the few daughters we know of that brave, romantic race which so quickly vanished from America after the white settlers came. Many among the Indians were cruel and bloodthirsty, many were treacherous and sly, but Pocahontas we know was warm-hearted and true, faithful to the great Captain she had admired before she had even seen him and risking her life to save him from her father. It is fortunate that history has kept her story, for we must always think more kindly of the Indians when we remember the little daughter of Powhatan, nicknamed Pocahontas by her father because she was such a tomboy.
VIII
Priscilla Alden
The Girl of Plymouth: About 1604—after 1680
Two girls stood on the deck of the Mayflower, hand clasped in hand, their eyes fixed on a narrow strip of grayish shore beyond the waste of tossing ocean. About them stood others, men and women and a few children, all looking in the same direction, wonder and satisfaction and a certain awe in their faces. They had been at sea for nearly thirteen weeks, and during most of that time their little ship had been buffeted by constant storms.