tration 2: THE DEATH OF MINNEHAHA.
After the painting by William L. Dodge.
The demi-god Hiawatha, miraculous of birth, tutelary genius of the
Indians of North America, wise, benign, powerful, teacher of all good,
protector against all ills, marries the lovely Minnehaha, the daughter
of the old Dakota arrow-maker.... Not even the power of Hiawatha can
save his beloved Minnehaha from the impending and foretold fate which is
to be hers. At last "Famine" and "Fever," two unbidden and unwelcome
guests, force entrance into her wigwam; she cannot withstand the baleful
glare of Death, and, uttering the cry of "Hiawatha! Hiawatha!" she
passes alone into "the Kingdom of Ponemah, the land of the Hereafter."]

When John Smith--if we are to believe his own account, which in this one
instance seems fairly credible--had been taken prisoner by
Opechancanough and led before Powhatan for judgment, the matter at issue
was summarily settled in this wise: the prisoner was laid upon the
ground, his head rested upon a large stone, and a club was poised ready
to dash out his brains. Nevertheless, the adventurer's brains, which
served him so well afterward when he came to write an account of his
perils by land and sea,--being restrained in their flights by no
scruples as to the difference between truth and falsehood, were not to
be wasted upon the soil of Virginia; for Matoaca, or Pocahontas, as she
is more popularly known, the daughter of Powhatan, rushed forward, threw
herself upon the body of Smith to shield him from the threatening club,
and claimed him for her own under the custom which permitted Indian
women thus to rescue captives taken in fight or by wile. The young
princess--as the English inaccurately termed her--being but twelve or
thirteen years of age at the time, it is not probable that she claimed
Smith for her husband, though even this is by no means impossible, as
early betrothals were not uncommon among the Amerinds; but she could
just as easily and efficaciously adopt him as her brother, and it is
more likely that she chose this less drastic method of preserving his
life. At all events, Smith was rescued from the fate which had
threatened him; and while it is by no means impossible that the wily old
savage, Powhatan, had arranged the whole matter, adoption and all, with
a view to establishing the closest and most favorable relations with
such a conjurer as Smith was held to be,--this view is suggested to
future historians in