Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-11-14

SMITH AND THOMPSON OR, VIRGINIA
SAvAGEs, PAST AND PREsENT.-Our readers
will readily recall the touching story of John
Smith, a fugitive slave and adventurer who af-
forwards became one of the first culonists of
jamestown, in Virginia. His small party of
men would soon have persisted for want Of
food if he had not stolen the Indian idol, Okee,
made ofskins stuffed with moss, and compelled
the natives to redeem it with a large purchase
of corn. While exploring the Chickahominy,
however, he was seized by the enemy, having
killed three of them in the encounter, and ia
ken before the great chief Powhatan-the pre-
decessor of Governor Wise-wlo seated on
his stump of a throne and clothed in raccoon
skins, condemned the poor Fellow to death.
But beside the throne of the CHEF stood two of
his dusky daughters, who compositions
ted Smith, and one of whom the chiefs IA
yorite, Pocahontas, resolved to save his life.
When the grim warriors, therefore, brought in
the two big stones on which Smith laid his
head, and their war-clubs were raised to drop
upon his daylight forever, she rushed between
the executiOners and their victim, and by her
passionate entreaties, induced the savages to
suspend their blows and suffer Smith to de-
part.
Those old red Indians seem to us to have
had more real humanity in them than many of
the whites who now occupy their places. The
stery of Thompson is similar in some respects
to the story of Smith. He had committed an
outrage upon the idol of the Virginian-na
in this case Cufiee, not Okee-had been cap
tured and would have been tried and condemn
ed to death, if the blood thirsty ferocity of
the modern Virginians, less capable of re-
straint than that of the old Virginians, could
have awaited the slow decisions of authority
1t could not. According TO the testimony of
Mr. Hunter one of the actors in tho affair and
son OF the prosecuting attorney in the Har-
per's Ferry trials, crowd of armed men rush
ed into the room of the hotel where Thompson
was confined, and would have put him to an
instant and brutal death
But the daughter of the landlord Miss
Foulke, with heroism that surpasses even
that OF Pocahontas, threw herself between the
guns of those maddened and reckless slave
drivers and their object, whom she caught in
her arms, and besought their mercy. "For
Gods sake, wait she said, and let the law
take its course" For moment they desisted
from their work of revenge, but for a moment
only Neither the helpless condition of the
prisoner, nor that noble, womany appeal,
could soften the hearts ofthese savages, as the
words of Pocahontas softened those of the an
cient braves. They dragged Thompson from
the sheltering arms of his protector hauled
him like dog through the streets, amid the
hoOting and bowling of frenzied crowd, and
when they got him to the railroad bridge, al
ready nearly dead with bruises, they ridded
his body with their rife balls Gov. Wise is
reported to have said that he wept for the cow
ardice of the Virginians at Harper's Ferry !;
and well he may have wept; for a cowardice
so susceptible Of panic that it turns men, not
into savages but wild beasts, is indeed TO be
deplored. ~ Y. Eueninq Post