the invaders while the princess was with them, but at her command they supplied them with guides to conduct them through the wilderness, porters to carry their extra baggage and provision as it was needed along the route through her domain.

But had the Spaniards treated the princess and her people kindly and with justice all this would have been done from motives of hospitality and good will. Kindness begets kindness even among savage races.

De Soto did not accept the spirit of the letter from the noble Isabella, in which she wrote, "I will no longer persevere in this invasion of the lands of others which is always plunging me more and more deeply into difficulties." Instead of this he followed the infamous example which Pizarro, in Peru, and Cortez, in Mexico, had set him. There is nothing whatever to justify his action, as it was alike cruel, dastardly and unnecessary.

After being dragged a prisoner in the Spanish army for two or three weeks and covering a distance of about three hundred miles, she found an opportunity to escape from her treacherous and brutal captors. Passing one day through a thick forest she and her attendants suddenly darted from the train and disappeared. De Soto never saw her or heard from her again, though every effort was made to recapture her, partly because of the easket of splendid pearls which one of her attendants carried off with her. Undoubtedly a band of her warriors were in rendezvous there to receive her.

The historian of Florida, Garcilasode la Vega, terminates his account of this princess by declaring that she possessed a truly noble soul and was worthy of an empire. Shame for his countrymen has induced him to suppress all mention of the brutal indignity to which she was subjected by De Soto, and for which, as a Castilian knight, he deserved to have been deprived of his spurs. The Portuguese narrator who accompanied the expedition states the facts too circumstantially to leave us in any doubt about the matter, and the noble and generous Cofachiqui is to be numbered among those who suffered by trusting to the honor and justice of the plunderers of the New World.

Again quoting from Joel Chandler Harris (Uncle Remus), we feel moved to say that " De Soto's expedition was organized by the spirit of greed. It spread desolation wherever it went and it ended in disaster and despair. De Soto himself found a grave in the waters of the Mississippi, and the survivors who made their way back home were broken in health and spirit."

An attempt has been made to throw a halo of romance over the march of the Spaniards through the wilderness of the New World, but there is nothing romantic or inspiring about it. It was simply a search for riches in which hundreds of lives were most cruelly sacrificed and thousands of homes destroyed.

The only permanent good which resulted from it was the discovery of the Father of Waters and this noble, Indian Princess Cofachiqui.

W

CHAPTER II.

POWHATAN, OR WAH-UN-SO-NA-COOK.

HEN the English colonists first landed in Virginia, in 1607, they found the country occupied by three large tribes of natives known by the general names Mannahoack, Monacans and Powhatans.

Of these the two former might be called highland or mountain Indians, because they occupied the hill country east of the Alleghany ridge, while the Powhatan nation inhabited the lowland region extending from the seacoast westward to the falls of the rivers and from the Patuxent southward to Carolina.

Mr. Jefferson, in his "Notes on Virginia," estimates that the Powhatan confederacy at one time occupied about eight thousand square miles of territory, with a population of about eight thousand people, of whom twenty-four hundred were warriors. When it is remembered that there were thirty tribes in this coalition, and that this estimate is less than one hundred warriors to the tribe, it seems moderate enough, especially since it is recorded by an early writer that three hundred warriors appeared under one Indian chief in one body at one time and seven hundred at another, all of whom were apparently of his own tribe.

Moreover, the Powhatan confederacy inhabited a country upon which nature bestowed her favors with lavish profusion. Their settlements were mostly on the banks of the James, Elizabeth, Nansamond, York and Chickahominy rivers, all of which abounded with fish and fowl. The forest was filled with deer and wild turkey, while the toothsome oyster was found in great abundance on the shores of the Chesapeake and its numerous inlets. Indeed, the whole region seems to have been a veritable paradise for hunter and fisherman. Vast quantities of corn, too,