There was to be a great gathering of the neighbouring chiefs,—Opechancanough and Opitchipan, his brothers and successors, and others. Early in the morning fires were kindled all over the settlement, and before them haunches of venison were spitted for the slight roasting deemed essential before the boiling, according to the invariable custom of the Indians in preparing flesh and fowl. Beneath the fires flat rocks were heating, to be withdrawn for the baking of bread. Some of the loaves were laid in the ashes, as they are to-day by the Virginians, who are indebted to the Indian, not only for his corn, but for his peculiar methods of cooking it. Now, as then, the "hoe-cake" is baked before the fire, and turned to brown on both sides; the homelier "ash-cake" is washed as soon as withdrawn from its humble bed of ashes, and dries immediately from its own heat. Now, as then, the Indian corn is beaten into "hominy," and boiled for food. We have not lost its Indian name, nor the Indian's name for the small loaf. He called it "pone"—where did he find a word so near kin to the Latin panis and the French pain?
Every morning men, women, and children ran down to the river and plunged into the ice-cold water. There were no bathing-houses for an after-toilet. They were unnecessary. Then, at the first peep of the sun, the entire assembly would turn, with uplifted hands, eastward, and in a wild chant of invocation worship the rising luminary, the men strewing the water with powdered tobacco as sacrifice. The Indian, as we have seen, worshipped no God of mercy! If God was good, why, then, it was unnecessary to placate him by adoration or sacrifice. He feared and worshipped "Okeus." And he also worshipped strength and force,—the fire that burned him, the water that drowned him, the great mysterious orb that was the source of the destroying fire.
When an Indian made a solemn oath, he laid one hand on his heart, raising the other reverently to the sun. "These people," says Percy, "have a great reverence to the Sunne above all other things; at the rising and setting of the same they lift up their hands and eyes to the Sunne, making a round Circle on the ground with dried Tobacco; then they begin to pray, making many Devillish Gestures with a Hellish noise, foming at the mouth, staring with their eyes, wagging their heads and hands in such a fashion and deformitie as it was monstrous to behold." Thus they ever strove to avert evil.
The settlement at Werowocomoco was a large one. Besides Powhatan's own house with many rooms, there were houses or arbours for his bows and arrows, and for his granaries, and stores of dried fish and venison. He had ten or twelve wives, and a number of young women of inferior position always in attendance upon him. He had many children around him: Nantauquas, "the handsomest, manliest savage ever seen," and his brothers; Matachanna, Pocahontas, and Cleopatre, and other princesses whose names do not appear. Matachanna was married, or about to be married, to Tocomocomo, "a wise and knowing priest." Pocahontas was a small maiden about ten years of age; Cleopatre (where did Powhatan get the name Cleopatre?) was destined to figure in history as soon as she reached the marriageable age of twelve. None of these young people lived with their own mothers. Powhatan never kept a wife after the birth of a child, but made a present of her to some chief or captain. But he was extremely fond of his own offspring, a sentiment which civilized man deems a high virtue, but which is shared with keen intensity by savage man, and savage beast as well.
The Mirror in the Woods.
Powhatan's favourite wife at this moment was Winganuskie, his favourite child Pocahontas. She was doubtless a mischievous maiden, active, adventurous, and daring. Strachey calls her "a wanton daughter of Powhatan." We read, among other adventures, of her attempting to swim across the Piankatank River, of her rescue by one of the Englishmen, and the consequent gift by Powhatan of Gwynne's Island to the colony; of the wild entertainment she devised and led for her friend, Captain Smith, all before she was a year older than at the time of which we are writing. She was small, slender, and graceful. Of her beauty a few years later, my readers are able to judge for themselves from the authentic portrait we present in this book. These, with all the other wives, and attendant females of a more doubtful position, with Matachanna and Cleopatre, and the minor princesses, made haste, upon coming up from their bath, to array themselves for the coming ceremonies. They had no mirrors of polished steel or glass, but the Indian woman must have been a very dense woman indeed if she had failed to recognize and regard critically the picture reflected in the pool or bowl of water. In their dark hair they fastened pompons and aigrettes of white marabout feathers (down), after the manner of modern dames. They painted themselves freshly with brilliant red "puccoon," faces and all. On their arms above the elbow they had long worn elaborate bracelets tattooed into the skin, and just below the knee were others, quite as elaborate and quite as durable. On certain wider spaces of their bodies were ornaments of similar material—lizards, serpents, turtles, birds. All these their enlightened sisters wear in emeralds and diamonds. The Indian could, however, rival her civilized sister in pearls. Many chains of these hung from their necks—large, fresh-water pearls—somewhat discoloured, it is true, by rude boring. They wore brief aprons of skins, and moccasins on their feet. Besides these,—rien de tout!
My chivalrous friend, John Esten Cooke, the Virginia historian, takes the liberty, after the manner of latter-day society reporters, of arraying the lady he describes according to his own taste. He has dressed Pocahontas on the occasion of Captain Smith's reception in a robe of doe-skin, lined with down from the breast of the wood pigeon, with coral ear-rings, coral bracelets on wrists and ankles, and a white plume in her hair, the badge of royal blood. Thus my friend saw her, casting his eyes backward two hundred and seventy-five years; but John Smith, who saw her face to face, has, in his picture of the scene which made her famous, presented her clad in her own charms and in these alone. Before the age of thirteen, the early historians[31] tell us, Indian children wore no garments. Their mothers rubbed into their skins ointments which rendered them proof against "certaine biting gnats such as the Greekes called scynipes that swarm within the marshe,"—our snipelike long-billed mosquitoes,—and also against extremes of heat and cold. The paint-pot could furnish the little maid with a new dress every day, if she desired it—red, white, or even black! I am afraid the little princess whose statue is to adorn the Jamestown Park, fared like the rest of her people, unless the severe cold constrained her to encumber her active limbs with a "mantell of feathers."
When a loud shout announced the approach of the escort conducting the distinguished prisoner, Powhatan made haste to put himself into position to receive them. Forty or fifty of his tallest warriors stood without and formed a lane through which the captive was conducted. Within, the emperor was discovered lying in an easy Oriental fashion before a great fire, and upon a dais a foot high covered with ten or twelve mats. "He[32] was hung with manie chaynes of great Pearles about his neck, and covered with a great covering of raccoon skins and all the tayles hanging by. On either hand did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side the house two rowes of men and behind them as many women with all their heads and shoulders painted red, many of their heads bedecked with the white down of birds but every one with something; and a great chayne of white beads about their necks. Powhatan held himself with such a grand majesticall countenance as drave me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage. He is of personage a tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke. His head is somewhat gray, his beard so thinne it seemeth none at all. His age neare 60,[33] of a very able and hardy body to endure any labour. This King will make his own robes, shooes, pots, bowes, and arrows; and plant, hunt, or doe anything as well as the rest."