"princess"--and held as a hostage. Soon after her capture she was married to John Rolfe, though whether willingly or in the role of a captive does not appear. Taken by Rolfe to England, she was visited by Smith, whose account of the single interview which occurred is one of the most cold-blooded pieces of writing that was ever put on paper. It is worth quoting in its display of dignity and pathos on the part of the savage and of ingratitude and callousness to all decent feelings on the part of the Christian--by courtesy:

"Being about this time about to set sail for New England, I could not stay to do her that service I desired and she well deserved; but hearing she was at Brentford with divers of my friends, I went to see her. After a modest salutation, without a word she turned about, obscured her face, not seeming well contented.... But not long after, she began to talk, and remembered me well what courtesies she had done, saying, 'You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like unto you; you called him father, being in his land a stranger, and by the same reason so must I do you.' (Which, though I would have excused, I durst not allow of that title, because she was a king's daughter.) With a well-set countenance she said, 'Were you not afraid to come into my father's country, and caused fear in him and all his people but me; and fear you here I should call you father? I tell you then I will, and you shall call me child, and so I will be for ever and ever your countryman. They did tell us always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet Powhatan did command Uttamatomakin to seek you and to know the truth, because your countrymen will lie much.'"

The only reason that exists for believing the report of this interview, coming from the source it does, is the fact that it tells heavily against the recounter, though his invariable, smug self-conceit prevents him from seeing this aspect of the matter. The dignified reproach of Smith's neglect, the pathetic appeal to the courtesies which had been lavished upon him, she was too proud to allude to her rescue of his brains from the impending club,--and the proud anger which breaks forth in the determination that she will call him "father," as is her right, form a fine contrast to the petty and selfish attitude of her erstwhile friend, who would have "excused" her using the tender title of father, but that she was "a king's daughter" and so might by use of the word place him in a false position toward his patron, Prince Charles. Of course, this was the merest excuse; he knew perfectly well that such a thing was ridiculous; but he needed some excuse for his unmanly attitude toward the woman who had saved his life and whose father had called him friend. It is true that King James had objected to the "presumption" of Rolfe in marrying a "lady of royal birth "; but even that absurd attitude of the king gives no excuse for Smith, since between marriage with a "princess" and the mere use of the formal but affectionate title of "father" lay a broad gulf.

The contemptible captain met his savior no more; for the Lady Rebecca, as Pocahontas was now called, after being presented at court and winning universal admiration by her dignified bearing and lovable disposition, died of consumption just as she was about to set sail for her native land. She left one child, a son, by Rolfe, and through him her blood flows in the veins of some of the Virginia families of our own day. John Randolph of Roanoke made it his boast that he was one of the descendants of the Indian "princess"; but then John Randolph was very eccentric indeed in more ways than one.

If more than proportional space has been devoted to this history of Pocahontas, it is because in the narrative, and especially in the characteristic glimpse obtained through the excerpt from Smith's story of the interview, are to be found several very suggestive lessons as to the nature as well as status of the Indian woman in the time of the early colonists, before the new civilization had exerted any formative influence whatever upon the old. The dignity of bearing, the eloquence of speech, the modest and yet impressive demeanor of this child of the woods were of her nature and training, not grafted there by the environment in which she found herself during her residence in England. In the eyes of those who surrounded her she was but a savage; but to us she is far more, for she is representative of a race which has been greatly misunderstood. It was a typical Indian woman who stood in such splendid contrast to the time-serving and ungrateful Smith, who bore herself at court with all the native dignity of a princess of the blood royal, who showed herself in all essentials a better Christian and higher type of true civilization than the majority of those of Caucasian race with whom she came into contact. Such a woman as this was not the product of a state of unredeemed barbarism, neither could she have learned her dignity and self-possession among a people where her sex knew only degraded slavery. That she was the daughter of a chief was not of itself sufficient to rescue her from the usual lot of her sex, nor was her association with Englishmen--especially of the type of Smith, Argall, or even Rolfe himself--likely to change radically her modes of thought and lend to her any admirable qualities of nature or bearing that were not of her normal environment. So it is impossible to escape the conclusion that among the tribes of Virginia at least--and it is far from probable that these were peculiar in this respect--woman held a position far higher than is generally supposed. It is necessary to reconcile this theory with the known degradation of the Indian woman in after years, and this task is not impossible; but before so doing it is necessary that we retrace our steps to primitive conditions, in order to glance for a moment at the status of women among some of the Western tribes, which were in some respects more highly civilized than their brothers of the Eastern slope.

The red civilization of the East was fairly constant. Between the highest and the lowest of the tribes there was but little difference; the Delawares of the Lakes, the Hurons, the Senecas, the Potomacs, and all the rest of the innumerable tribes which inhabited the country east of the Alleghanies, as well as those dwelling in the Mississippi Valley, showed but little variation of civilization. In the West, however, it was widely different. It is true that there were on the plains many great tribes, such as the Sioux, the Pawnees, the Utahs, the Apaches, and others too numerous to specify, whose general status in the roll of civilization was of very slightly varying average; but there were also tribes which touched the highest and lowest points of Amerind culture. As an example of the latter, mention need be made only of the Pi-Utes, or "Digger" Indians, a tribe as degraded as the Australian aborigines themselves.

The Pi-Utes were the most abject and wretched of all American Indians; they lived chiefly on roots--whence their common name among the whites--and sometimes on offal. Yet even among these degraded people there existed, even up to a comparatively late period, a spirit of tribal devotion, at least if the story be true that is related of them, and which, as it deals with women, is here reproduced without pronouncement upon its entire credibility. It is--or was--said that, as the products of the chase were of great importance to this people, it was necessary that they should be armed with the most effective weapons in their reach, and so they contrived a peculiarly deadly poison with which to tip their small arrows. This poison was so noxious that its distillation from the plant which furnished it a plant of which the secret was known only to the "Diggers"--always resulted in the death of the person preparing the decoction. It would naturally be thought that the position of the individual who was to prepare the yearly stock of poison for the tribe was one that would be shunned; but, on the contrary, there was an