POWHATAN

"Princess, Pocahontas!" cried Claw-of-the-Eagle, as he pointed excitedly
to the outskirts of the village, "look, yonder come thy uncle and his
men bringing the white prisoner with them."

Pocahontas, who a few moments before had jumped down from the grapevine
swing, where she had been idling, to peep into Claw-of-the-Eagle's pouch
at the luck his hunting had brought him, now started off running after
the son of old Wansutis, who was speeding towards the gathering crowd.
Never in all her life had she desired anything as much as she now
desired to gain a sight of this stranger.

"What doth he look like?" she called out, panting, to the boy ahead; but
her own swiftness answered the question, for she was soon abreast of the
procession. There, walking behind her uncle, unbound and apparently
unconcerned, she beheld the white man. Her eyes devoured every detail of
his appearance. She was almost disappointed to find that he had only
one head and two eyes like all the rest of her world. But his
beardedness, so unknown among her people, his youth, which showed itself
more in his figure and in his step than in his weatherworn features, his
cloth jerkin and his leather boots, but above all, the strange hue of
his face and hands offered enough novelty to satisfy her.

Smith noticed the Indian maiden, already in her thirteenth year, tall
above the average. In his wanderings through the Pamunkey villages he
had seen many young girls and squaws, but none of them had seemed to him
so well built or with such clean-cut features as this damsel who gazed
at him so fixedly. When Opechanchanough, catching sight of her, made a
gesture of recognition, Smith knew that she must have some special claim
to distinction, since it was unusual, he had observed, for a chief to
notice anyone about him while occupied in what might be called official
duty. He felt sure too that he had now come to the end of his
journeyings. In the other towns through which he had travelled he had
heard men speak of Werowocomoco and of the great werowance who held sway
there, the dreaded ruler over thirty tribes. This large village he knew
must be the seat of the head of the Powhatan Confederacy and he was
about to be led before him. What would happen then, he wondered, as he
walked calmly through the crowd who eyed him curiously.

And this, too, was what Pocahontas was thinking: what would her father
do with this man? Would his strange medicine, which those