The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the RevolutionGoodwin, Maud Wilder
History
The Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the Revolution
Goodwin, Maud Wilder
Southern States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Upper class -- Southern States
The Susquehannocks impressed them most of all the Indian tribes. Their
enormous height and fine proportions made them look like giants, and their
attire was as impressive as their persons. One who saw them, writes home
in those first pioneer days: "Their attire is the skinnes of Beares and
Woolves. Some have Cassacks made of Beares heads and skinnes that a mans
head goes through the skinnes neck, and the eares of the Beare fastened to
his shoulders, the nose and teeth hanging downe his breast, another Beares
face split behind him, and at the end of the nose hung a Pawe. The half
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 Wolfe hanging in a chaine for a Iewell."
One of their chiefs specially impressed the English. He was a giant among
giants. The calf of his leg was three-quarters of a yard round, and "the
rest of his limbs answerable to that proportion." His arrows were five
quarters long, and he wore a wolf's skin at his back for a quiver. The
picture of this Indian Hercules accompanied the maps which Captain Smith
sent home to enlighten the Company in England.
The stories of the different adventurers were gathered together and
printed as "The General History of Virginia." The volume was adorned (I
cannot say illustrated) by a series of woodcuts, which make us laugh aloud
by their inaccuracy. The Indians are simply gigantic Englishmen naked and
beardless, with the hair standing in a stiff ridge on top of the head,
like a cock's comb. The wigwams look like haystacks, and the canoes like
bathtubs. What a collection of pictures we might have had, if a kodak had
been among the possessions of Captain Smith and his company! We should see
King Pamaunche with "the chaine of pearles round his necke thrice double,
the third parte of them as bygg as pease," and catch a view of his
"pallace" with its hundred-acre garden set with beans, pease, tobacco,
gourdes, pompions, "and other thinges unknowne to us in our tongue." We
should have the interiors of the smoky wigwams which Spelman and Archer
visited, the forms of the squaws dimly outlined against the grimy mat, as
they pounded corn, or dropped the bread into the kettle to boil.
Thanks to John Smith's graphic pen, we have a picture of Powhatan, that
fierce old ancestor of so many first families of Virginia, almost as vivid
as a photograph. Smith went to visit him, and found him proudly tying upon
a bedstead a foot high, upon ten or twelve mats. "At head sat a woman, at
his feet another. On each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were
ranged his chief men, on each side the fire, five or ten in rank, and
behind them as many young women, each a great chaine of white beads over
their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and with such a grave and
majestical countenance as drove us into admiration to see such state in a
naked savage."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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