The extraordinary native shrewdness of Powhatan was abundantly manifested in the amusing advantages he obtained over Newport; his long and artful conversations with Smith, some of them sustained under the most embarrassing circumstances, merely to procure time; the promptness with which he rejected and defeated the proposal to make common cause against the Monacans--a bait, as he expressed it, too foolish to be taken; and, in fine, upon every occasion when the English undertook to negotiate or to argue with him. He availed himself most essentially of the aid of the German deserters heretofore mentioned, but he had too much sagacity to trust them after they deserted _himself;_ and so, when two of them fled to him a second time, with proposals for delivering his great rival, Captain Smith, into his hands, he only observed, that men who betrayed the captain would betray the emperor, and forthwith ordered the scoundrels to be brained upon the spot. [FN] * * * * * [FN] Stith Book III. Powhatan, like many others of his race, has been regarded with prejudice for the very reasons which entitle him to respect. He was a troublesome enemy to the colonists. His hostile influence extended for hundreds of miles around them; cutting off commerce with the natives in the first place, and making inveterate enemies of them in the next. Powhatan, we are told, "still as he found means cut off their boats, and denied them trade;" [FN] and again, "as for corne, contribution and provision from the salvages, we had nothing but mortall wounds, with clubs and arrowes." Here, too, we find the emperor availing himself of the disasters and despair of the colony, to procure swords, muskets and ammunition--so reckless had the colonists become through famine. * * * * * [FN] Authorities in Smith's History, Vol. II.