Governor, Sir Thomas Dale, and fancifully embroidered by Pocahontas and her maidens. A gaudy fillet encircled her head, and held the plumage of birds and a veil of gauze, while her wrists and ankles were adorned with the simple jewelry of the native workshops. When the ceremony was ended, the eucharist was administered, with bread from the wheat fields around Jamestown, and wine from the grapes of the adjacent woodland. Her brothers and sisters and forest maidens were present; also the Governor and Council, and five English women—all that there were in the colony—who afterward returned to England. Rolfe and his spouse "lived civilly and lovingly together" until Governor Dale went back to England in 1616, when they and the Englishwomen in Virginia accompanied the Governor. The "Lady Rebecca" received great attentions at court and from all below it. She was entertained by the Lord Bishop of London, and at court she was treated with the respect due to the daughter of a monarch. The silly King James was angry because one of his subjects dared marry a lady of royal blood! And Captain Smith, for fear of displeasing the royal bigot, would not allow her to call him "father," as she desired to do, and her loving heart was grieved. The king, in his absurd dreams of the divinity of the royal prerogative, imagined Rolfe or his descendants might claim the crown of Virginia on behalf of his royal wife, and he asked the Privy Council if the husband had not committed treason![1] Pocahontas remained in England about a year; and when, with her husband and son she was about to return to Virginia, with her father's chief councillor, she was seized with small-pox at Gravesend, and died in June, 1617. Her remains lie within the parish church-yard at Gravesend. Her son, Thomas Rolfe, afterward became a distinguished man in Virginia, and his descendants are found among the most honorable citizens of that commonwealth.

Between the lines of the story of Pocahontas can be found the key to much of the early history of Virginia and other colonies. Even before regular settlements were attempted on these shores the Indians had learned by bitter experience to dread and hate the strangers in the big canoes. Slave-traders and adventurers made prey of the natives, and many a depredating visit was doubtless paid to America that is not recorded in the annals of those times. Argall's abduction of Pocahontas ended fortunately, but it might have brought on a terrible Indian war and the destruction of the Virginia colony. Had such been the result the civilized world would never have known the red man's side of the story, and Powhatan's just vengeance would have been set down to the barbarous and savage nature of the Indian.

The scarcity of women in the Virginia colony has already been alluded to in connection with the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas. Of the early immigrants very few were women, and there could be no permanent colony without the home and family. The London Company, at the instance of their treasurer, Edwin Sandys, proposed, about twelve years after the first settlement, to send one hundred "pure and uncorrupt" young women to Virginia at the expense of the corporation, to be wives to the planters. Ninety were sent over in 1620. The shores were lined with young men waiting to see them land, and in a few days everyone of the fair immigrants had found a husband. Wives had to be paid for in tobacco—the currency of the colony—in order to recompense the company for the expense of importing them. The price of a wife was at first fixed at one hundred and twenty-five pounds of tobacco—equal to about $90—but afterward rose to $150. The women were disposed of on credit, when the suitor had not the cash, and the debt incurred for a wife was considered a debt of honor. Virginia became a colony of homes. The settlement was saved from becoming a refuge of the criminal and the outcast, and in the unions formed at that time many of the families in the country had their origin. That some of the refuse of English society floated into the colony is true, and many of the unruly children of London and other English towns, were sent there as apprentices. But the unruly street boy often has the diamond of energy and genius concealed within the rude exterior, and in the genial clime of Virginia, with an opportunity to be a man among men, the young apprentice from the slums of London or Plymouth proved himself to possess qualities of value to the community.

CHAPTER III.

The French in Canada—Champlain Attacks the Iroquois—Quebec a Military Post—Weak Efforts at Colonization—Fur-traders and Missionaries—The Foundation of New France—The French King Claims from the Upper Lakes to the Sea—Slow Growth of the French Colonies—Mixing with the Savages—The "Coureurs de Bois."

Although the French navigator, Jacques Cartier, had sailed up the St. Lawrence as early as 1534, it was not until 1608—the year after the foundation of Jamestown—that Samuel de Champlain effected a permanent settlement at Quebec. It happened that the Indians of the St. Lawrence region were at bitter enmity with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, who lived in the present State of New York, and this enmity had no small influence in deciding the subsequent duel between France and England for empire in North America. Champlain accepted the St. Lawrence Indians as allies, and consented to lead a war party against the Iroquois. In 1609, the year after the settlement of Quebec, Champlain entered the lake which bears his name, accompanied by a number of the St. Lawrence Indians, and engaged the Iroquois in battle. The warriors of the Five Nations were brave, but the white man's gun was too much for them, and when two of their chiefs fell dead, pierced by a shot from Champlain's weapon, they turned and fled. The French thus won the friendship of the Canadian Indians and the undying hatred of the Five Nations, and the latter therefore stood faithfully by first the Dutch, and later the English in the establishment of their power at Manhattan.