The story of his escape was told for years around the wide fireplaces throughout the country-side, and was thought so remarkable that one who heard it, unwilling that the record of so much coolness and courage should be lost, wrote it down for future generations of boys to read. V THE CROWN OF AN AMERICAN QUEEN In the Days of Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia In the age when America was but a name and Virginia only a hamlet, there was a dusky queen who wore a silver crown by order of his most sacred Majesty King Charles II., King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and Virginia. There are few distinct Indian personalities. Powhatan, Pocahontas, Opechancanough, Totopotomoi and his wife, the Queen of the Pamunkeys, are savage heroes who sentinel the seventeenth century; they all belonged to the Pamunkey tribe of the great Powhatan Confederacy, the most powerful Indian combination that ever existed. When the boisterous and heroic Nathaniel Bacon[A] was in the flush of his wonderful success, and had brought his followers to Jamestown, he demanded of the Governor redress for Indian depredations and outrages. When the Assembly in council was sitting, the Queen of the Pamunkeys came in, leading her son by the hand. She came to tell of grievances also. She wore a dress of black and white wampum peake and a mantle of deer-skin, “cut in a frenge” six inches from the outer edge. It fell loosely from her shoulders to her feet. On her head was a crown of “purple bead of shell, drilled.” She was a beautiful woman, old chronicles tell us, and she walked in with a proud but aggrieved countenance. [A] Nathaniel Bacon, patriot, born in England, 1642; settled in Gloucester County, Virginia, 1670; led an independent force against hostile Indians in 1675-76 in spite of Governor Berkeley’s opposition; as the head of the republican movement he came into open conflict with Berkeley and the royalists; he captured and burned Jamestown in September, 1676; died the following October; known as a rebel, but the principles for which he fought were in the main those of independence and patriotism. She sat down in the midst of the Assembly, listening eagerly to the arguments for the suppression and, if need be, the extinction of her race. And she remembered Totopotomoi bleeding for these people who would not recognize her rights. She arose and made a speech in her own tongue, eloquent with gesticulation; the refrain of it was a mad wail: “Totopotomoi chepiak!” (_i.e._, Totopotomoi dead). Colonel Hill, the younger, touched a fellow-member on the shoulder, and whispered: “What she says is true. Totopotomoi fought with my father, and fell with his warriors.” But the Assembly would not listen to the poor suffering Queen. They wanted to fight more battles, and the Queen of the Pamunkeys must furnish her quota.