"Where is the half king?" demanded the Governor sharply. "I have no time
for these fooleries. Make them stop that infernal racket, and lead us to
your chiefs at once."

The Indian frowned at this cavalier reception of the village civilities,
but he waved his arm for the music to cease, and proceeded to conduct
the visitors through a lane made by two rows of dusky bodies and staring
faces, to a large wigwam in the centre of the village. Before this hut
stood a mulberry tree of enormous size, and seated upon billets of wood
in the shade of its spreading branches were the half king of the tribe
and the principal men of the village.

Their faces and the upper portions of their bodies were painted red--the
color of peace. They wore mantles of otter skins, and from their ears
depended strings of pearl and bits of copper. To the earring of the half
king were attached two small, green snakes that twisted and writhed
about his neck; his body had been oiled and then plastered with small
feathers of a brilliant blue, and upon his head was fastened a stuffed
hawk with extended wings.

To one side of this group stood a band of Indians, two score or more in
number, who differed in appearance and attire from the Chickahominies.
The iron had entered the soul of the latter; they had the bearing of a
subject race. Not so with the former. They were men of great size and
strength, with keen, fierce faces; their clothing was of the scantiest
possible description; ornaments they had, but of a peculiar
kind--necklaces and armlets of human bones, belts in which long tufts of
silk grass were interwoven with a more sinister fibre. They leaned on
great bows, and each sternly motionless figure looked a bronze Murder.

The chief of the Chickahominies raised his eyes from the ground as the
Governor and his party entered the circle. "My white fathers are
welcome," he said. "Let them be seated," and looked at the ground again.
The "white fathers" took possession of half a dozen billets, and waited
in silence the next move of the game. After a while, the half king
lifted from the log beside him a pipe with a stem a yard long and a bowl
in which an orange might have rested. An Indian, rising, went to where a
fire burned beneath a tripod, and returning with a live coal between his
fingers, calmly and leisurely lighted the pipe. The half king, still in
dead silence, lifted it to his lips, smoked for five minutes, and handed
it to the Indian, who bo