Acashee was the daughter of Samoset, of the Kennebec tribe--the Indian who went to and remained three years in England, where he shared the royal favor of Elizabeth, whose accomplished courtiers vied with each other in lavishing attentions upon a man who presented a new and generous type of the race, undebauched by the vices of civilization. Shakespeare without doubt received many a poetic hint from the noble savage, and most certainly owed to him the story of the Tempest, and the fable of the Pucks, or as the Indians called them Puck-wud-jees--being literally wood-fairies. The courage and address of Acashee had rendered her the friend and companion of her father, and his attendant upon many a long and perilous march. Among savage tribes intelligence of a strange or interesting character is conveyed by fleet runners, who go from tribe to tribe after the manner of the Highland clans so graphically described by Walter Scott in the “speed, Malise, speed” of his spirited poem. Accordingly, Samoset was one of the first to reach the sea-shore, and look with wonder upon the ship which had come like a rare bird, or superior agent, from the spirit-land. He it was who, fifteen years afterward, hailed the Pilgrims at Plymouth with the words: “Welcome, Englishmen.” Samoset had been of great service to the colony upon the Saco river, and Sir Richard Vines and family had not failed to treat his daughter Acashee with much consideration. Little Hope more especially singled her out as her favorite friend and companion. She liked her for her beauty, her courage, her strength and activity, combined with an easy gayety rare in the children of the wood, and almost unknown among the anxious and over-taxed pilgrims to the new world. The artful savage maiden, acute and penetrating, had not failed to perceive the peculiar characteristics of Hope, and had not failed to turn them to account in her own way. She played her game in a manner worthy of her name, of Net-weaver, in the best sense, Spider in its worst. She hinted to the melancholy and superstitious Pilgrim settlers, doubts of her state as a true human being, for the Indians believed in the incarnation of certain malignant beings, no less than the ascetic whites. To the Indians of the many tribes with whom she and her father were in constant intercourse, she enlarged upon Hope’s gifts as a wonderful medicine-woman, and it was she who had more than once induced them to make attempts to abduct her for purposes of divination. While our poor Hope was thus constantly under the eye of her wily and malignant companion, she was a source, also, of much solicitude on the part of the parents, who began to feel painfully that evil and cruel thoughts were rife in the minds of their neighbors regarding her, which might end in some tragedy even more distressing than the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh, with whom Hope was so fond of associating herself.