Smith was a shrewd enough man to know when to bluster and when to
be friendly. He released the Indian captives at Ma-ta-oka's
wish--well knowing that the little girl had been duly "coached"
by her wily old father, but feeling that even the friendship of a
child may often be of value to people in a strange land.
The result of this visit to Jamestown was the frequent presence
in the town of the chieftain's daughter. She would come,
sometimes, with her brother, Nan-ta-qua-us, sometimes with the
runner, Ra-bun-ta, and sometimes with certain of her girl
followers. For even little Indian girls had their "dearest
friends," quite as much as have our own clannish young
school-girls of to-day.
I am afraid, however, that this twelve-year-old, Ma-ta-oka, fully
deserved, even when she should have been on her good behavior
among the white people, the nickname of "little tomboy"
(po-ca-hun-tas) that her father had given her,--for we have the
assurance of sedate Master William Strachey, secretary of the
colony, that "the before remembered Pocahontas, Powhatan's
daughter, sometimes resorting to our fort, of the age then of
eleven or twelve years, did get the boyes forth with her into the
market-place, and make them wheele, falling on their hand turning
their heeles upward, whome she would followe and wheele so
herself, all the fort over.
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