e interview, are to be found several very suggestive lessons as to
the nature as well as status of the Indian woman in the time of the
early colonists, before the new civilization had exerted any formative
influence whatever upon the old. The dignity of bearing, the eloquence
of speech, the modest and yet impressive demeanor of this child of the
woods were of her nature and training, not grafted there by the
environment in which she found herself during her residence in England.
In the eyes of those who surrounded her she was but a savage; but to us
she is far more, for she is representative of a race which has been
greatly misunderstood. It was a typical Indian woman who stood in such
splendid contrast to the time-serving and ungrateful Smith, who bore
herself at court with all the native dignity of a princess of the blood
royal, who showed herself in all essentials a better Christian and
higher type of true civilization than the majority of those of Caucasian
race with whom she came into contact. Such a woman as this was not the
product of a state of unredeemed barbarism, neither could she have
learned her dignity and self-possession among a people where her sex
knew only degraded slavery. That she was the daughter of a chief was not
of itself sufficient to rescue her from the usual lot of her sex, nor
was her association with Englishmen--especially of the type of Smith,
Argall, or even Rolfe himself--likely to change radically her modes of
thought and lend to her any admirable qualities of nature or bearing
that were not of her normal environment. So it is impossible to escape
the conclusion that among the tribes of Virginia at least--and it is far
from probable that these were peculiar in this respect--woman held a
position far higher than is generally supposed. It is necessary to
reconcile this theory with the known degradation of the Indian woman in
after years, and this task is not impossible; but before so doing it is
necessary that we retrace our steps to primitive conditions, in order to
glance for a moment at the status of women among some of the Western
tribes, which were in some respects more highly civilized than their
brothers of the Eastern slope.

The red civilization of the East was fairly constant. Between the
highest and the lowest of the tribes there was but little difference;
the Delawares of the Lakes, the Hurons, the Senecas, the Potomacs, and
all the rest of the innumerable tribes which inhabited