The scattered wigwams, the
scaffolding where the fish were dried, the tall pines and
wide-branching mulberries, the trodden grass, - all flashed into
sight as the flame roared up to the top-most withered bough. The
village glowed like a lamp set in the dead blackness of marsh and
forest. Opechancanough came from the forest with a score of
warriors behind him, and stopped beside me. I rose to greet him, as
was decent; for he was an Emperor, albeit a savage and a pagan.
"Tell the English that Opechancanough grows old," he said. "The
years that once were as light upon him as the dew upon the maize
are now hailstones to beat him back to the earth whence he came.
His arm is not swift to strike and strong as it once was. He is old;
the warpath and the scalp dance please him no longer. He would
die at peace with all men. Tell the English this; tell them also that
Opechancanough knows that they are good and just, that they do
not treat men whose color is not their own like babes, fooling them
with toys, thrusting them out of their path when they grow
troublesome. The land is wide and the hunting grounds are many.
Let the red men who were here as many moons ago as there are
leaves in summer and the white men who came yesterday dwell
side by side in peace, sharing the maize fields and the weirs and
the hunting grounds together.
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