United States or San Marino ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To make his entry the more safe and peaceable, he presented the Werowance and Wilsos, and principal men of the place, with some English cloth, axes, hoes and knives, which they accepted very kindly, and freely consented that he and his company should dwell in one part of the town, and reserving the other for themselves.
The next day the messengers came back, bringing with them the Englishmen who had been held captive by Powhatan and some of the arms. The werowance promised, they reported, that when his daughter was restored to him he would give the corn which the white men asked for.
But she was not alone now in solitary grandeur. She was accustomed to surround herself, when she desired company, with a number of younger girls of the tribe who obeyed her, less because she was the daughter of the feared werowance, than because she had a way with her that made it pleasant to do as she willed and difficult to oppose her.
If there had been but one loading in his pistol he would have fired at the werowance and trusted to the confusion to rush through the crowd and out of the lodge. But it was empty. No use struggling, he thought; he had seen men who met death thus discourteously and he was not minded to be one of them. So, when at a quick word from Powhatan two young braves seized him, he made no resistance.
Powhatan had motioned Smith to be seated on a mat beside the fire, and taking the first piece of venison, the werowance threw it into the flames as the customary sacrifice to Okee. Then he was served again, and after him each dish was offered to the prisoner. There was little talk while the feasting continued. Pocahontas, who did not eat, lost no motion of the stranger's.
When the usual stately welcome had been extended to the Paspaheghs, and when they had returned as stately thanks, the werowance began a harangue for which I furnished the matter. When he ceased to speak a great acclamation and tumult arose, and I thought they would scarce wait for the morrow. But it was late, and their werowance and conjurer restrained them.
The eighteenth day the Werowance of Paspihe came himselfe to our quarter, with one hundred Savages armed which guarded him in very warlike manner with Bowes and Arrowes." Some misunderstanding arose. The nineteenth day Percy with several others going into the woods back of the peninsula met with a narrow path traced through the forest. Pursuing it, they came to an Indian village.
The werowance received us in due form, with presents of fish and venison, cakes of chinquapin meal and gourds of pohickory, an uncouth dance by twelve of his young men and a deal of hellish noise; then, at our command, led us into the village, and to the lodge which marked its centre.
White and shaking, he would not meet my eyes, but beckoned the werowance to him, and began to whisper vehemently; pointing now to the man upon the floor, now to the town, now to the forest. The Indian listened, nodded, and glided back to his fellows.
The great Werowance was not in his ceremonial lodge but in the one in which he ordinarily slept and ate when at Werowocomoco. Opechanchanough paused at the opening of the lodge and ordered: "When I call out then bring ye in Pocahontas, and we shall see what Powhatan thinks of a squaw child that shoots at warriors." The lodge was almost dark when he entered it.
Word Of The Day