The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 14: America, Part IIIHakluyt, Richard
History
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 14: America, Part III
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
The people are giuen to learn all maner of occupations and sciences,
which for the most part they learned since the coming of the Spanyards:
I say all maner of arts. They are very artificiall in making of images
with feathers, or the proportion or figure of any man, in all kind of
maner as he is. The finenesse and excellency of this is woonderfull,
that a barbarous people as they are, should giue themselues to so fine
an arte as this is. They are goldsmiths, blackesmiths, and coppersmiths,
carpenters, masons, shoomakers, tailors, sadlers, imbroderers, and of
all other kind of sciences: and they will do worke so good cheape, that
poore young men that goe out of Spaine to get their liuing, are not set
on worke: which is the occasion there are many idle people in the
countrey. For the Indian will liue all the weeke with lesse then one
groat: which the Spanyard cannot do, nor any man els.
[Sidenote: The Indians ignorance from whence they came.] They say, that
they came of the linage of an olde man which came thither in a boat of
wood, which they call a canoa. But they cannot tell whether it were
before the flood or after, neither can they giue any reason of the
flood, nor from whence they came. And when the Spanyards came first
among them, they did certeine sacrifice to an image made in stone, of
their owne inuention. The stone was set vpon a great hill, which they
made of bricks of earth: they call it their Cowa. And certeine dayes in
the yere they did sacrifice, certeine olde men, and yoong children: and
onely beleeued in the Sunne and the Moone, saying, that from them they
had all things that were needful for them. They haue in these parts
great store of cotton wool, with which they make a maner of linen cloth,
which the Indians weare, both men and women, and it serueth for shirts
and smocks, and all other kind of garments, which they weare vpon their
bodies: and the Spanyards vse it to all such purposes, especially such
as cannot buy other. And if it were not for this kind of cloth, all
maner of cloth that goeth out of Spaine, I say linnen cloth, would be
solde out of all measure.
[Sidenote: The wilde Indians.] The wilde people go naked, without any
thing vpon them. The women weare the skinne of a deere before their
priuities, and nothing els vpon all their bodies. They haue no care for
any thing, but onely from day to day for that which they haue need to
eat. They are big men, and likewise the women. They shoot in bowes which
they make of a cherry tree, and their arrowes are of cane, with a
sharpe flint stone in the end of the same; they will pierce any coat of
maile: and they kill deere, and cranes, and wilde geese, ducks, and
other fowle, and wormes, and snakes, and diuers other vermin, which they
eat. They liue very long: for I haue seene men that haue beene an
hundred yeres of age. They haue but very litle haire in their face, nor
on their bodies.
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