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 the tribe 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 remained in the Morson family, and then it was 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, long since destroyed by moths, and bound to her head by two silver chains.
Footnotes:
[A] Nathaniel Bacon, patriot, born in England, 1642; settled in Gloucester County, Virginia, 1670; led an independent force against hostile Indians in 1675-76 in spite of Governor Berkeley’s opposition; as the head of the republican movement he came into open conflict with Berkeley and the royalists; he captured and burned Jamestown in September, 1676; died the following October; known as a rebel, but the principles for which he fought were in the main those of independence and patriotism.