Powhatan; A Metrical Romance, in Seven CantosSmith, Seba
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Powhatan; A Metrical Romance, in Seven Cantos
Smith, Seba
Indians of North America -- Poetry; Powhatan, approximately 1550-1618 -- Poetry; Virginia -- Poetry
“Their language and attire were very suitable to their stature and
appearance. For their language sounded deep and solemn, and hollow, like
a voice in a vault. Their attire was the skins of bears and wolves, so
cut that the man’s head went through the neck, and the ears of the bear
were fastened on his shoulders, while the nose and teeth hung dangling
down upon his breast. Behind, was another bear’s face split, with a paw
hanging at the nose. And their sleeves coming down to their elbows, were
the necks of bears, with their arms going through the mouth, and paws
hanging to the nose. One had the head of a wolf, hanging to a chain, for
a jewel; and his tobacco pipe was three-quarters of a yard long, carved
with a bird, a deer, and other devices at the great end, which was
sufficient to beat out a man’s brains. They measured the calf of the
largest man’s leg, and found it three-quarters of a yard about, and all
the rest of his limbs were in proportion; so that he seemed the
stateliest and most goodly personage they had ever beheld. His arrows
were three-quarters long, headed with splinters of a white crystal-like
stone, in the form of a heart, an inch broad, and an inch and a half
long. These he carried at his back, in a wolf’s skin for a quiver, with
his bow in one hand and his club in the other.”
[NOTE 3--CANTO FIRST, SECT. I.]
And thirty tribes one monarch bless’d.
“He had under him thirty werowances, or inferior kings, who had power of
life and death, but were bound to govern according to the customs of the
country.”--_Stith’s Virginia._
* * * * *
All accounts agree that Powhatan had under his dominion thirty tribes,
and some of our chronicles locate them as follows. Ten tribes between
the Potomac and Rappahannock, five between the Rappahannock and York,
eight between the York and James, five between the James River and the
borders of Carolina, and two on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.
[NOTE 4--CANTO FIRST, SECT. III.]
Deep in a sea of waving wood
The monarch’s rustic lodge was seen,
Where brightly roll’d the river down,
And gently sloped the banks of green.
Powhatan’s principal place of residence at the time of the arrival of
the English, was on the James River, a little below the spot where
Richmond now stands. He resided, however, a part of the time at
Werowocomoco, on York River, about ten or a dozen miles from Jamestown;
and a part of the time at Orapakes, up the river Chickahominy.
[NOTE 5--CANTO FIRST, SECT. VIII.]
His plume is a raven wing.
“Some on their heads wear the wing of a bird, or some large feather with
a rattel. Those rattels are somewhat like the shape of a rapier, but
lesse, which they take from the taile of a snake. Many have the whole
skinne of a hawke or some strange foule, stuffed, with the wings
abroad.”--_Smith’s History of Virginia._
[NOTE 6--CANTO FIRST, SECT. XIII.]
And Madoc and his host were withered from the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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