The skins of these animals were the tidewater Indians’ most necessary and useful commodity next to food. Mainly they were necessary as clothing in winter, but they were also used as adornment by chiefs and priests, and for many ceremonial purposes. They were utilized, too, as closures and decorations for the Indians’ long-houses. And soft hide leather, such as buckskin, came in for a variety of aboriginal hunting and household requirements, as well as for garments and footwear. Actually Powhatan’s common subjects often went quite naked, except for skins worn much like aprons. However, when it was cold, they wore _matchcores_--an Indian word for garments of fur which was later turned into “match-coats” by the English. At his first meeting with Powhatan, Smith found the old savage blanketed with a _matchcore_ of raccoon skins. One of the priests was “disguised with a great Skinne, his head hung round with little Skinnes of Weasels and other vermine.” Many of the better sort of savages, such as werowances and chief men, affected mantles of carefully dressed deerskin, some painted and embossed with white beads or bits of copper. Others who were opulent had _matchcores_ made from squirrel, beaver, muskrat and otter, the last being held in highest esteem. Women wore fur blankets of beaver and otter, or tastefully fringed and embroidered skin skirts, appropriate to the season. Children usually went naked, although marriageable maidens, twelve to fifteen, modestly covered their loins at least. Pocahontas herself is referred to on one occasion as being girdled with soft otter skins. About most of the great Bay of the Chesapeake, on his expeditions, Captain Smith found “Wilde Cats ... Martins, Powlecats, weessels and Minkes.” When he explored the Eastern Shore he discovered it to be thickly inhabited by “Otters, Beavers, Martins, Luswarts and sables.” Truly, the tidewater literally swarmed with fur bearers. In the northernmost reaches of the bay Smith managed to trade with the giant Susquehannocks. “Their attire,” he recorded, “is the skinnes of beares and Woolves, some have Cassacks made of Beares heades and skinnes that a man’s necke goes through the skinnes neck, and the eares of the beare fastened to his shoulders behind, the nose and teeth hanging downe his breast, and at the end of the nose hung a Beares Pawe: the halfe sleeves comming to the elbowes were the neckes of Beares and the armes through the mouth, with pawes hanging at their noses. One had the head of a Woolfe hanging in a chaine for a Jewell.”