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Updated: June 21, 2025
"Tell Rolfe he will find me alone," I said, "and take my thanks for your pains, Nantauquas. If ever we hunt together again, may I have the chance to serve you! I bear the scars of the wolf's teeth yet; you came in the nick of time, that day." The Indian smiled. "It was a fierce old wolf. I wish Captain Percy free with all my heart, and then we will hunt more wolves, he and I."
"Nantauquas, the son of Powhatan, hath had much talk with himself lately," he said simply. "The white men's ways have seemed very good to him, and the God of the white men he knows to be greater than Okee, and to be good and tender; not like Okee, who sucks the blood of the children. He remembers Matoax, too, and how she loved and cared for the white men and would weep when danger threatened them.
"I shall hardly be troubled with company," I said. "There's a bear-baiting toward." Nantauquas smiled. "My brother asked me to find a bear for to-day. I bought one from the Paspaheghs for a piece of copper, and took him to the ring below the fort." "Where all the town will presently be gone," I said. "I wonder what Rolfe did that for!"
It was also true that without his aid Nantauquas could not have rescued us from that dire peril. And it was again the truth that an Indian neither forgives nor forgets. He was my saviour, and I knew that mercy had been shown for some dark reason which I could not divine. Yet I owed him thanks, and gave them as shortly and simply as I could.
But he looked a man in the prime of life; his frame was vigorous, his skin unwrinkled, his eyes bright and full. When he rose to welcome us, and Nantauquas stood beside him, there seemed not a score of years between them. The matter upon which we had come was not one that brooked delay.
Now he flung up his hand, and in it was a bracelet of gold carved and twisted like a coiled snake and set with a green stone. I had never seen the toy before, but evidently others had done so. The excited voices fell, and the Indians, Pamunkeys and Paspaheghs alike, stood as though turned to stone. Nantauquas smiled coldly. "This day hath Opechancanough made me war chief again.
Opechancanough is his king, and he lies upon his bed in his lodge and says within himself: 'My war chief, the Panther, the son of Wahunsonacock, who was chief of all the Powhatans, sits now within his wigwam, sharpening flints for his arrows, making his tomahawk bright and keen, thinking of a day three suns hence, when the tribes will shake off forever the hand upon their shoulder, the hand so heavy and white that strives always to bend them to the earth and keep them there. Tell me, you Englishman who have led in war, another name for Nantauquas, and ask no more what evil you have done him."
It was not for me to send that Indian leader to his account. Rolfe's lips tightened and a sudden pallor overspread his face. "Nantauquas?" he muttered in my ear, and I nodded yes. The volley that we fired full into the ranks of our foe was deadly, and we looked to see them turn and flee, as they had fled before. But this time they were led by one who had been trained in English steadfastness.
The mat that hung before the door of the lodge was lifted, and an Indian, emerging, came forward, with a gesture of welcome. It was Nantauquas, the Lady Rebekah's brother, and the one Indian saving always his dead sister that was ever to my liking; a savage, indeed, but a savage as brave and chivalrous, as courteous and truthful, as a Christian knight.
This wild night gives one wild thoughts, Master Sparrow. The loud wind, and the sound of the water, and the hurrying clouds who knows if we shall ever see the moon of blossoms?" I broke off with a laugh for my own weakness. "It's not often that a soldier thinks of death," I said. "Come to bed, reverend sir. Nantauquas, again, good-night, and may you tame your panther!"
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