Pocahontas, who a few moments before had jumped down from the grapevine swing, where she had been idling, to peep into Claw-of-the-Eagle’s pouch at the luck his hunting had brought him, now started off running after the son of old Wansutis, who was speeding towards the gathering crowd.  Never in all her life had she desired anything as much as she now desired to gain a sight of this stranger.

“What doth he look like?” she called out, panting, to the boy ahead; but her own swiftness answered the question, for she was soon abreast of the procession.  There, walking behind her uncle, unbound and apparently unconcerned, she beheld the white man.  Her eyes devoured every detail of his appearance.  She was almost disappointed to find that he had only one head and two eyes like all the rest of her world.  But his beardedness, so unknown among her people, his youth, which showed itself more in his figure and in his step than in his weatherworn features, his cloth jerkin and his leather boots, but above all, the strange hue of his face and hands offered enough novelty to satisfy her.

Smith noticed the Indian maiden, already in her thirteenth year, tall above the average.  In his wanderings through the Pamunkey villages he had seen many young girls and squaws, but none of them had seemed to him so well built or with such clean-cut features as this damsel who gazed at him so fixedly.  When Opechanchanough, catching sight of her, made a gesture of recognition, Smith knew that she must have some special claim to distinction, since it was unusual, he had observed, for a chief to notice anyone about him while occupied in what might be called official duty.  He felt sure too that he had now come to the end of his journeyings.  In the other towns through which he had travelled he had heard men speak of Werowocomoco and of the great werowance who held sway there, the dreaded ruler over thirty tribes.  This large village he knew must be the seat of the head of the Powhatan Confederacy and he was about to be led before him.  What would happen then, he wondered, as he walked calmly through the crowd who eyed him curiously.

And this, too, was what Pocahontas was thinking:  what would her father do with this man?  Would his strange medicine, which those who had ventured to Jamestown had much discussed, assist him in his peril?  She had listened to much talk lately about the necessity of getting rid of all the white faces who had dared come and build them houses on land which had belonged to her people since the beginning of the world.  Here was the first chance her father had had to deal with the interlopers.  She determined to see and hear all that should take place, so she hurried ahead to the ceremonial lodge, where she was sure to find her father, and entered it unchallenged by the guards.