The Indian had made no utensil of iron or the copper he so much prized. When he needed a canoe or bowl, he burnt the wood, then scraped it with oyster shells, and burned again, until the wood was hollowed out. How he ever felled a tree is a mystery! Weeks of scraping and burning were spent on each canoe. He had no written language, no signs recording past events. He had done nothing for himself except to minister to the needs of the hour. There was no hieroglyphic, no testimony of the rocks. Even the humble art of pottery, the earliest trace of the human race, was not found among the American Indians to any extent. A few broken earthen pipes and bowls, arrow-heads of flint, remnants of shell necklaces, these are all that the ploughshare of the labourer or the pick and shovel of the antiquarian have ever revealed. Of the temper and disposition of the "Naturells," as King James called them, we shall have abundant occasion to learn; but as Powhatan and his people play a leading rôle in the following story it is indispensable that my reader be made acquainted with the religion, customs, and habits of this tribe of Indians. We have given space to a brief sketch of the English monarch. The American monarch surely claims some attention before we enter upon the story of the struggle between the two: between the Stuarts of England and the Algonquins of America! Historians of the Indians have asserted that the tribes under King Philip and those subject to Powhatan were of a higher class than many other of the North American Indians, more restrained by social and tribal laws, more cleanly in their habits, more intelligent in every way. They are an intensely interesting and mysterious people, and romantic writers love to invest them with virtues which the Powhatans, at least, did not possess. John Smith and Strachey argue that "they are inconstant in everie thing but what peace constraineth them to keepe. Craftie, timerous, quicke of apprehension, and very ingenious: some bold, most cautious, all _Savage_: soone moved to anger, and so malitious they seldom forget an injury." Schoolcraft, the modern Indian historian, said to me "they had not a single virtue or single trait of true nobility." They never met a foe in an open field,--cunning was their best weapon,--but some virtues they surely had, nevertheless. CHAPTER VII