Savages are not averse to the baubles of civilization, and the crown which their Queen wore was a blessed treasure to her tribe for a hundred years after the Queen was dead.
The Pamunkey tribe, or a pitiful remnant of them, still dwell in Virginia, on the river which bears their name. They have a chief and their own government. Annually they send tribute of fish and game and Indian handiwork to the Governor of Virginia. They are weakening physically, and pray for new blood from the Western reservation.
Once they started for the West, carrying their best treasure, the silver crown. They came to the plantation of Mr. Morson, at Falmouth, and there bad weather and sickness made them halt. Mr. Morson attended to their physical wants, and allowed them to pitch their tents upon his land until their distress abated.
"What do we owe you?" asked the chief, when they had decided to return to their former Virginia reservation.
"Nothing," said Mr. Morson. Perhaps he remembered Totopotomoi and his sorrowing Queen.
"Then we will give you what we value most," and the chief presented to Mr. Morson the crown of the Queen of the Pamunkeys. For three generations it staid in the Morson family, but lately it has been purchased by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.
The crown is really a frontlet, and the Queen of the Pamunkeys wore it upon her brow surmounted by a red velvet cap; the cap has long ago been entirely destroyed by moths; two silver chains bound the frontlet to the head.