here related not merely for the sake of the pathos which it holds, but for the purpose of noting a curious contrast between the sons of the wilderness and the children of civilization. The case of Frances Slocum is typical; many a captive has been led away by the red men, and has afterward become so completely Indianized that he or she would stubbornly refuse to return to the life of the white race, and, if forced to do so, would pine and die for lack of the breath of the forests and plains. Yet never has there been known an instance where a red man became reconciled to life among the whites; always, when not forcibly detained captive, they fled back to the free life which had been theirs, even if they had known it but as children; if kept in captivity, they broke their chains by death. So that when we vaunt our civilization we must remember that it has no charms for those who have known the life of the woods, and thus we learn some at least of the reasons why we have failed to produce from the Indian a finished product of the civilization of our day.

Uncongenial as it may be to our pride of race to admit the fact, it would seem certain that the Indian character has power of persistence over that of the Caucasian. Many were the white captives whose blood flowed in the veins of succeeding generations of red men, but that blood was never powerful even to modify the traits which were the inheritance of the Indian. It is most likely that the first white child ever born on our shores--that Virginia Dare whose story has been so often told that it is needless here to recapitulate it--was carried captive to the tents of the Indians and in time became the wife of some brave, and that her blood is in the veins of some of the survivors of the red men; but it had no power to make itself known in any persistence of trait. It is certain that a half-breed, whatever the circumstances of his education, almost invariably shows the dominance of the Indian nature over the white. This fact, which has not received adequate attention by students of ethnology, is worthy of consideration in its significance; but this is not the place for such consideration.

After this somewhat lengthy digression, let us now return to our more immediate subject, the status of woman among the aborigines during their period of freedom from white influence. Enough has been said to show that such status was widely different from that usually attributed to the women of the Amerinds. It is most true that women were hewers of wood and drawers of water--that they performed most or all of the labor which civilization is accustomed to look upon as menial and much that it considers the rightful duty of man; but in this respect the American Indian did not differ from most or all primitive peoples. It is only civilization that has released woman from the tasks which she was accustomed to perform during the days when the chief sources of sustenance were found in the spoils of the chase, the duty of providing such sustenance naturally falling to the men of the community or household. This division of labor if so it can be called has been in all countries and among all peoples destructive to the claims of woman to high consideration. Among primitive peoples there has never been recognized that which is now known as chivalry toward the weaker sex; if only because of weakness, rendering resistance to tyranny and oppression impossible, women in such communities have always been relegated to the position of slaves and chattels. Yet this state of affairs obtained less strongly among the American Indians than among most races in similar conditions of civilization. With the former, woman had many privileges which she was usually denied among other similarly developed peoples. Not only, as has been shown, did she have the opportunity granted her to make herself a power in her tribe, if her intellect were of force sufficient to enable her thus to do, but she had certain well-defined privileges inherent in her sex--privileges which sometimes were powerful even to overcome the strength of custom or the promptings of vengeance. One of these peculiar privileges is illustrated in the story of Pocahontas, and, notwithstanding the hoary antiquity of the tale, it must be set down here in order to illustrate this and some other points needful to be understood if we are to comprehend the true position of the Amerind woman among her fellows.

THE DEATH OF MINNEHAHA
After the painting by William L. Dodge

The demi-god Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the Indians of North America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good, protector against all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter of the old Dakota arrow-maker.... Not even the power of Hiawatha can save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she passes alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."

When John Smith--if we are to believe his own account, which in this one instance seems fairly credible--had been taken prisoner by Opechancanough and led before Powhatan for judgment, the matter at issue was summarily settled in this wise: the prisoner was laid upon the ground, his head rested upon a large stone, and a club was poised ready to dash out his brains. Nevertheless, the adventurer's brains, which served him so well afterward when he came to write an account of his perils by land and sea,--being restrained in their flights by no scruples as to the difference between truth and falsehood, were not to be wasted upon the soil of Virginia; for Matoaca, or Pocahontas, as she is more popularly known, the daughter of Powhatan, rushed forward, threw herself upon the body of Smith to shield him from the threatening club, and claimed him for her own under the custom which permitted Indian women thus to rescue captives taken in fight or by wile. The young princess--as the English inaccurately termed her--being but twelve or thirteen years of age at the time, it is not probable that she claimed Smith for her husband, though even this is by no means impossible, as early betrothals were not uncommon among the Amerinds; but she could just as easily and efficaciously adopt him as her brother, and it is more likely that she chose this less drastic method of preserving his life. At all events, Smith was rescued from the fate which had threatened him; and while it is by no means impossible that the wily old savage, Powhatan, had arranged the whole matter, adoption and all, with a view to establishing the closest and most favorable relations with such a conjurer as Smith was held to be,--this view is suggested to future historians in their search for the truth concerning John Smith,--the fact remains that Smith was saved, and one of the noblest liars that ever graced the world was preserved to humanity. It is interesting to note that Smith records that at Appomatox, afterward Bermuda Hundred, he found a female werowance, or queen, "a fat, lusty, manly woman," who was almost smothered in copper ornaments: a circumstance which tends to confirm the fact of the frequency of women rulers among the Indians.

Pocahontas was not destined to become the wife of the man whom she had saved. Whether or not she regarded him with the eyes of more than sisterly affection is uncertain, but it is entirely certain that Captain John Smith never loved anything but his own valuable person. Some years later, Pocahontas was treacherously captured by one Captain Argall--who bought her from some Potomac Indians whom she was visiting, the price paid being a copper kettle, a valuation which would seem to make strange the pride of those who claim descent from the