The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the Revolution — John Shaqi
The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the RevolutionGoodwin, Maud Wilder
History
The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the Revolution
Goodwin, Maud Wilder
Southern States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Upper class -- Southern States
It must be confessed that the Indians appear to better advantage than the
English, in the early transactions. When Hamor went to visit King
Powhatan, he was received with royal courtesy. The chief sent one of his
attendants to bring what food he could find, though he explained that, as
they were not expecting visitors, they had not kept anything ready.
"Presently," Hamor recounts, "the bread was brought in two great wodden
bowls, the quantity of a bushel sod bread, made up round, of the bygnesse
of a tenise-ball, whereof we eat some few." After this repast, Hamor and
his comrades were regaled with "a great glasse of sacke," and then were
ushered into the wigwam appropriated to them for the night. English and
Indian ideas of comfort did not correspond, however, for Hamor complains:
"We had not bin halfe an hour in the house, before the fleas began so to
torment us that we could not rest there, but went forth and under a broade
oake, upon a mat, reposed ourselves that night."
Hamor took with him on this visit, as an offering to the Indian chief,
five strings of blue and white beads, two pieces of copper, five wooden
combs, ten fishhooks, and a pair of knives. In return for these costly
presents, this pious English gentleman asked Powhatan, who had already
given Pocahontas to the whites, to send them another daughter, really as a
hostage, but nominally as a wife to Sir Thomas Dale, the worthy governor
of Virginia, regardless of the slight objection that there was already a
Lady Dale in England. Pocahontas had good reason for saying to Smith when
she met him in London, "Your countrymen will lie much."
To the early settlers the savage seemed a strange being, not more than
half human, who happened to be in possession of the land they coveted.
They thought they did God service when they flung to the Indian a Bible
and a handful of beads, in exchange for the land which had been his
birthright for centuries. They cheated and cajoled him when he was angry,
as they might have wheedled an angry tiger; yet, strange to say, they were
quite off their guard when, at length, the tiger made his spring, and
glutted the vengeance he had been nursing so long.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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