Page:Historic Girls.djvu/243

Rh Her story is both a pleasant and a sad one. It needs none of the additional romance that has been thrown about it to render it more interesting. An Indian girl, free as her native forests, made friends with the race that, all unnecessarily, became hostile to her own. Brighter, perhaps, than most of the girls of her tribe, she recognized and desired to avail herself of the refinements of civilization, and so gave up her barbaric surroundings, cast in her lot with the white race, and sought to make peace and friendship between neighbors take the place of quarrel and of war.

The white race has nothing to be proud of in its conquest of the people who once owned and occupied the vast area of the North American continent. The story is neither an agreeable nor a chivalrous one. But out of the gloom which surrounds it, there come some figures that relieve the darkness, the treachery, and the crime that make it so sad. And not the least impressive of these is this bright and gentle little daughter of Wa-bun-so-na-cook, chief of the Pow-ha-tans, Ma-ta-oka, friend of the white strangers, whom we of this later day know by the nickname her loving old father gave her—Po-ca-hun-tas, the Algonquin.