erewocomoco, leading a captive white man to Powhatan for inspection
and for sentence. As the warriors passed into the Indian village, they
encountered crowds of dusky braves and tattooed squaws hurrying along
the wood trails, and when they halted at the central clearing of the
village, the crowd closed in around them to get a better view of the
captive. At the same time there rose a wild clamor from the rear of
the throng as a merry group of shrieking, shouting girls and boys
darted forward, jostling their way through the crowd.

Their leader was a slender, straight young girl with laughing eyes
such as are seldom seen among Indians, and hair as black as a crow's
wing blown about her cheeks in wild disorder, while her manner was
that of a happy hearty forest maiden. This was Matoaka, daughter of
the Werowance Powhatan, and although he had many subjects as well as
twenty sons and eleven daughters, not one was ruled so despotically as
was he himself, by this slender girl with laughing eyes, for whom his
pet name was Pocahontas, or in free translation, "little romp."

Having established themselves in the front row of the crowd the girls
and boys stood eagerly staring at the prisoner, for many of them had
never seen a white man before, and as Pocahontas watched, she looked
like a forest flower in her robe of soft deer-skin, with beaded
moccasins on her shapely feet, coral bracelets and anklets vying with
the color in her dark cheeks, while a white plume drooping over her
disordered hair proclaimed her to be the daughter of a great chief. In
her health and happiness she radiated a charm which made her easily
the ruling spirit among her mates, and compelled the gaze of the
captive, whose eyes, looking about for some friendly face among the
savage throng, fastened on the eager little maiden with a feeling of
relief, for her bright glance showed such interest in the prisoner and
such sympathy with him as was to endear her to his race in later
years.

The long line of braves with their heads and shoulders gaily painted
had wound their slow way through forest, field, and meadow to bring
into the presence of the great "Werowance" a no less important captive
than Captain John Smith, leader in the English Colony at Jamestown by
reason of his quick wit and stout heart. The settlers having been
threatened with a famine, the brave Captain had volunteered to go on
an expedition among neighboring Indian villages in search of a supply