But the newly arrived did not find all the Indians hostile. The chief of the Rappahannocks came to welcome them, marching at the head of his train, piping on a reed flute, and clad in the fantastic dress of an Indian dandy. He wore a plate of copper on the shorn side of his head. The hair on the other side was wrapped about with deer's hair dyed red, "in the fashion of a rose." Two long feathers "like a pair of horns" were stuck in this rosy crown. His body was stained crimson, his face painted blue and besmeared with some glistering pigment which to the greedy eyes of the English seemed to be silver ore. He wore a chain of beads, or wampum, about his neck, and his ears were "all behung with bracelets of pearls." There also depended from each ear a bird's claw set with copper--or "gold," adds the narrator, indulging a delightful dubiety. [Sidenote: Purchas i, 686 and following.] During the period of preliminary exploration every trait of savage life was eagerly observed by the English. The costume, the wigwams, and most of all the ingenious weapons of wood and stone, gave delight to the curiosity of the newcomers. V. [Sidenote: Founding of Jamestown.] [Sidenote: Note 1.] [Sidenote: Relatyon of the Discovery of our River, Am. Antiq. Soc., iv, 61.] The colonists chose for the site of their town what was then a malarial peninsula; it has since become an island. The place was naturally defended by the river on all sides, except where a narrow stretch of sand made a bridge to the main. Its chief advantage in the eyes of the newcomers was that the deep water near the shore made it possible to moor the ships by merely tying them up to trees on the river bank. Here the settlers planted cotton and orange trees at once, and experimental potatoes, melons, and pumpkins, but they postponed sowing grain until about the first of June in our reckoning. [Sidenote: The winter of misery.] [Sidenote: A. D. 1607.] [Sidenote: Purchas, p. 1690.]