Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
It was now moonlight without the lodge and very quiet. The night was far
gone; already we could smell the morning, and it would come apace.
Knowing the swiftness of that approach, and what the early light would
bring, I strove for a courage which should be the steadfastness of the
Christian, and not the vainglorious pride of the heathen. If my thoughts
wandered, if her face would come athwart the verses I tried to remember,
the prayer I tried to frame, perhaps He who made her lovely understood
and forgave. I said the prayer I used to say when I was a child, and
wished with all my heart for Jeremy.
Suddenly, in the first gray dawn, as at a trumpet's call, the village
awoke. From the long communal houses poured forth men, women, and
children; fires sprang up, dispersing the mist, and a commotion arose
through the length and breadth of the place. The women made haste with
their cooking, and bore maize cakes and broiled fish to the warriors who
sat on the ground in front of the royal lodge. Diccon and I were loosed,
brought without, and allotted our share of the food. We ate sitting side
by side with our captors, and Diccon, with a great cut across his head,
seized the Indian girl who brought him his platter of fish, and pulling
her down beside him kissed her soundly, whereat the maid seemed not ill
pleased and the warriors laughed.
In the usual order of things, the meal over, tobacco should have
followed. But now not a pipe was lit, and the women made haste to take
away the platters and to get all things in readiness. The werowance of
the Paspaheghs rose to his feet, cast aside his mantle, and began to
speak. He was a man in the prime of life, of a great figure, strong as a
Susquehannock, and a savage cruel and crafty beyond measure. Over his
breast, stained with strange figures, hung a chain of small bones, and
the scalp locks of his enemies fringed his moccasins. His tribe being
the nearest to Jamestown, and in frequent altercation with us, I had
heard him speak many times, and knew his power over the passions of his
people. No player could be more skilful in gesture and expression, no
poet more nice in the choice of words, no general more quick to raise a
wild enthusiasm in the soldiers to whom he called. All Indians are
eloquent, but this savage was a leader among them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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