and know the truth, because your countrymen will lie much_." It was
not long after this interview that Pocahontas died: she never returned
to Virginia. Her death occurred in 1617. The issue of her marriage was
one child, Thomas Rolfe; so it is through him that the First Families of
Virginia are so invariably descended from the Indian Princess. Captain
Smith lived until 1631, and, as we have said, never married. He was a
noble and true man, and Pocahontas was every way worthy to be his wife;
and one feels very ill-natured at Rolfe and Company for the cruel
deception which, we must believe, was all that kept them asunder, and
gave to the story of the lovely maiden its almost tragic close.

One can scarcely imagine a finer device for Virginia to have adopted
than that of the Indian maiden protecting the white man from the
tomahawk. But, alas! with the departure of Smith the soul seems to have
left the Colony. The beautiful lands became a prey to the worn-out
English gentry, who spent their time cheating the simple-hearted red
men. These called themselves gentlemen, because they could do nothing.
In a classification of seventy-eight persons at Jamestown we are
informed that there were "four carpenters, twelve laborers, one
blacksmith, one bricklayer, one sailor, one barber, one mason, one
tailor, one drummer, one chirurgeon, and fifty-four gentlemen." To this
day there seems to be a large number in that vicinity who have no other
occupation than that of being gentlemen, and it is evidently in many
cases just as much as they can do.

When Pocahontas died, the last link was broken between the Indian and
the settler. Unprovoked wars of extermination were begun to dispossess
these children of Nature of the very breasts of their mother, which had
sustained them so long and so peacefully. For a century the Indian's
name for Virginian was "Longknife." The very missionaries robbed him
with one hand whilst baptizing him with the other. One story concerning
the missionaries strikes us as sufficiently characteristic of the wit
of the Indian and the temper of the period to be preserved. There was a
branch of the Catawbas on the Potomac, in which river are to be found
the best shad in the world. The missionaries who settled among
this tribe taught them that it would be a good investment in their
soul-assurance to catch large quantities of the shad for them, the
missionaries. The Indians earnestly set themselves to the work; their
rever