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Updated: May 5, 2025
When she thought that he might be crying with terror or hunger she began to pray, prayers that came from the depth of her heart that she might reach him before he really suffered. But these prayers were not to the God of the Christians, but to the Okee her fathers had worshipped. Many times the trail was almost invisible.
The priests shook their rattles, and made themselves dizzy with bending and whirling about their Okee; the old men, too, though they sat like statues, thought only of the dance, and of how they themselves had excelled, long ago when they were young.
"I will not give them up," Pocahontas cried out in anger such as she had not shown for many a day; and to Sir Thomas's amazement, she turned her back upon his presence and sped, swift as a fawn, into the thicket which still covered a portion of the island. There she lay upon the ground, panting with emotion and passionately going over her arguments: "Why should I forsake the Okee of my fathers?
And while she worked she prayed, invoking Okee to heal her son, to make him strong that he might care for her old age. Pocahontas was so eager to know whether the boy were alive that she crept closer to the wigwam, and when at last he opened his eyes they looked beyond the hearth and the crouching Wansutis, straight into those of Pocahontas.
One of these women bore a great burning torch, the flame and smoke streaming over her shoulder as she ran. Others carried pieces of bark heaped with the slivers of pine of which every wigwam has store. The sun was yet to rise when we reached a hollow amongst the low red hills. Above us were the three long houses in which they keep the image of Okee and the mummies of their kings.
And all the time he, who had never trembled before an enemy, was trembling from fear of the unknown. Of course, it was wise for the shamans to make this trial, but he wished it had been possible for one of them to have taken his place. But they knew they would never have got the chance to slip unnoticed as he had done into the lodge of the white man's Okee.
The maiden's heart was so full that under a roof she felt it would burst. And until dawn she stood on the shore, her face turned eastward towards the sea across which he had sailed away, bewailing her "Brother" in the manner of her people, now calling to Okee to guide him to the happy hunting grounds, and now praying God to bear his soul to the Christian heaven.
As to their religion, they have all of them some dark notions about God; but some of them have brighter ones, if a person may be believed who had this confession from the mouth of an Indian: “That they believed God was universally beneficent; that his dwelling was in heaven above, and the influence of his goodness reached to the earth beneath; that he was incomprehensible in his excellence, and enjoyed all possible felicity; that his duration was eternal, his perfection boundless, and that he possessed everlasting happiness.” So far the savage talked as rationally of the existence of a God as a Christian divine or philosopher could have done; but when he came to justify their worshipping of the Devil, whom they call Okee, his notions were very heterodox.
Their Okee, she thought, must be a very powerful one; and there came to her as she crouched there, the hidden witness of this evening service, the conviction that her father, if he would, and even with all his tribes, could never conquer this handful of determined men.
The wind died away, and with it all noises, and a dank stillness settled upon the flood and upon the endless forest. We were nearing Uttamussac, and the Indians rowed quietly, with bent heads and fearful glances; for Okee brooded over this place, and he might be angry. It grew colder and stiller, but the light dwelt in the heavens, and was reflected in the bosom of the river.
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