Jamestown (The Keepers of the Ring) by Angela Hunt, Angela Elwell Hunt Read Free Book Online Page A

the instruction in the religion of Christ the Lord.
    His kinsmen listened with little enthusiasm and much suspicion, though the faces of the Spanish lit with delight. For a week Don Luis played the part of patient and benevolent missionary while he watched and waited for the right opportunity to avenge his blighted land and weakened people.
    One night, in a deliberate, defiant choice, Don Luis stood in the glow of village campfire and chose three wives from the women of the tribe. He had lived among the sexless friars for too long, and believed his unnatural celibacy to be the reason why the land had ceased to be fertile. He was twenty-five years old, and should have already fathered many children. He took his wives to a village on the Pamunkey River, out of sight from the religious monks who had established in a small mission not far away.
    After learning of his polygamy, his missionary companions were too shocked to reprimand him immediately. But days later, when Father Segura called him before the entire religious company and sanctimoniously rebuked him, Don Luis felt the stirring of angry pride from deep within him. “I renounce you,” he cried, casting his Spanish mantle aside. “I am no longer Don Luis, but Opechancanough of the Powhatan, or he-whose-soul-is-white. Do not send for me again, brothers, for I will never go willingly with you.”
    He left the missionary compound and returned to his home on the Pamunkey, determined to abandon both the lifestyle and God of the Spanish. Four months later, Fathers Quirós and Segura visited the Indian village and tried to persuade their rebellious convert to return to the mission. Opechancanough berated them loudly, announced that he had sold his soul to the devil, and laughed as the holy fathers trembled before him. They fled the settlement in horror, and Opechancanough followed with a group of Powhatan warriors, determined to repay his past suffering with bloodshed.
    Under a canopy of silent oaks on the trail, Opechancanough killed the missionary monks, burned their bodies, and scattered their clothing. Moving on to the mission, he identified himself as Don Luis and called a greeting. After being admitted through the gates, he and his warriors massacred the remainder of the Spaniards. In the quick skirmish fueled by murderous anger, Opechancanough received a cut across his left cheek, the only wound ever to mar his strong body. The cut eventually healed, leaving a smooth white scar, but the hate in Opechancanough’s heart did not.
    That bloody day was February fourth, 1571, and since that time Opechancanough chose to hate all things Spanish and all things having to do with Christ and the clothed men’s God. With hatred and bitterness to guide him, Opechancanough dealt with his younger brother Powhatan as one deals with a simple and uncomprehending child. ‘Twas under Opechancanough’s guidance that the simple chief Powhatan put together an empire which grew from six original tribes to more than thirty-two. Their system of autocratic control was more complex than any other of the Algonquin Indians, and there was no doubt that the tribes of the Powhatan had become the mightiest in the land.
    Frightened by news and ideas from across the great ocean, Powhatan had no concept of the power of the enemy, so through the years Opechancanough invented prophecies and dreams that appealed to Powhatan and effectively guided the great chief’s dealings with the clothed men.
    But the English were not Spaniards, Opechancanough mused, watching the red-haired boy struggle up a hilly path with the two children at his side. In his dealings with the English at Ocanahonan, Opechancanough had felt strangely ill at ease. These men did not speak Spanish, so he was unable to spy on them, nor did they pray at the feet of statues and require priests to beg heaven for aid. But the English talked of God and his son the Christ, and they, too, carried long guns of thunder and sharp swords.
    But they