The particular occasion--as the historians consider it--of the conspiracy, is too characteristic to be omitted. There was a noted Indian, named Nemattanow, who was wont, out of vanity or some unaccountable humor, to dress himself up with _feathers_ in a most barbarously fantastic manner. This habit obtained for him among the English the name of _Jack-of-the-feather._ He was renowned among his countrymen both for courage and cunning; and was esteemed the greatest war-captain of those times. But, what was most remarkable, although he had been in many skirmishes and engagements with the English, he had always escaped without a wound. From this accident, seconded by his own ambition and craft, he obtained at length the reputation of being invulnerable and immortal. Early in 1622, Nemattanow came to the house of one Morgan, who kept and sold a variety of well-selected commodities for the use of the Indians. Smitten with a strong desire to obtain some of them, Nemattanow persuaded Morgan to accompany him to Pamunkey, on the assurance of an advantageous traffic at that place. On the way, he is supposed to have murdered the trader. Within two or three days, he returned again to the house of his victim where were only two stout young men, servants of Morgan, at home. They, observing that he wore their master's cap on his head, inquired after him; and Jack told them frankly he was dead. Confirmed in their previous suspicions by this declaration, they seized him, and endeavored to carry him before Mr. Thorpe, who lived at a neighboring settlement. But their prisoner troubled them so much by his resistance, and withal provoked them so intolerably by his bravadoes, that they finally shot him down, and put him into a boat, in order to convey him the remaining seven or eight miles of the way. But the Indian soon grew faint; and finding himself surprised by the pangs of death, he requested his captors to stop. In his last moments he most earnestly besought of them two great favors; first, never to make it known that he was killed by a bullet; and secondly, to bury him among the English, that the certain knowledge and monument of his mortality might still be concealed from the sight of his countrymen. So strong was the ruling passion in death.