Book contents
- Frontmatter
- EDITOR's PREFACE
- INTRODUCTION
- LETTER FROM THE LORD DELAWARR
- THE FIRST BOOKE
- A PRÆMONITION TO THE READER
- CAPUT I The Cosmographie of Virginia; latitude and bounds; extention upon a right lyne; first division—the quality of the mountaynes, and description of the high land; subdivided; her temperature, wynds, soyle, valies, plaines, marishes, etc.
- CAPUT II Description of the five principall rivers within the Chesapeak Bay, together with such by-streames which fall into them; a description of the Sasquesahanougs of Cape La Warre; the falling with our coast; the fitness of Cape Comfort to fortefie at
- CAPUT III Of the begynning and originall of the people; the great King Powhatan, his description, and sale of his birthright to the English
- CAPUT IV A catalogue of the severall weroances' names, with the name of the particuler province wherein they govern, togither with what forces for the present they are able to furnish their great king, Powhatan, in his warrs
- CAPUT V A true description of the people, of their cullour, attire, ornaments, constitutions, dispositions, etc.
- CAPUT VI The manner of the Virginian government, their townes, their howses, dyett, fowling, and hunting, their gaining, musique, dauncing
- CAPUT VII Of the religion amongst the inhabitants,—their god, their temples, their opinion of the creation of the world, and of the immortalitie of the sowle, of their conjurations and sacrificing of children
- CAPUT VIII Their manner of warrs, and consultations thereabout; of certain prophesies amongst them; of Powhatan's auncient enemies, and how they maie be wrought into league with us, and turned against him, whereby we maie bring him likewise to be in freindship with us; of their bowes, arrowes, and swordes, targetts, drumes; of their phisick and chirurgery
- CAPUT IX Of their æconomick or howshold affaires; how they obteyne their wives; the women's works; and wherefore they contend for rnanie wives
- CAPUT X Of the commodities of the country,—fruicts, trees, beasts, fowle, fish, perle, copper, and mines
- BOOK THE SECOND
- A DICTIONARIE OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGE
- Index
- Plate section
CAPUT V - A true description of the people, of their cullour, attire, ornaments, constitutions, dispositions, etc.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
- Frontmatter
- EDITOR's PREFACE
- INTRODUCTION
- LETTER FROM THE LORD DELAWARR
- THE FIRST BOOKE
- A PRÆMONITION TO THE READER
- CAPUT I The Cosmographie of Virginia; latitude and bounds; extention upon a right lyne; first division—the quality of the mountaynes, and description of the high land; subdivided; her temperature, wynds, soyle, valies, plaines, marishes, etc.
- CAPUT II Description of the five principall rivers within the Chesapeak Bay, together with such by-streames which fall into them; a description of the Sasquesahanougs of Cape La Warre; the falling with our coast; the fitness of Cape Comfort to fortefie at
- CAPUT III Of the begynning and originall of the people; the great King Powhatan, his description, and sale of his birthright to the English
- CAPUT IV A catalogue of the severall weroances' names, with the name of the particuler province wherein they govern, togither with what forces for the present they are able to furnish their great king, Powhatan, in his warrs
- CAPUT V A true description of the people, of their cullour, attire, ornaments, constitutions, dispositions, etc.
- CAPUT VI The manner of the Virginian government, their townes, their howses, dyett, fowling, and hunting, their gaining, musique, dauncing
- CAPUT VII Of the religion amongst the inhabitants,—their god, their temples, their opinion of the creation of the world, and of the immortalitie of the sowle, of their conjurations and sacrificing of children
- CAPUT VIII Their manner of warrs, and consultations thereabout; of certain prophesies amongst them; of Powhatan's auncient enemies, and how they maie be wrought into league with us, and turned against him, whereby we maie bring him likewise to be in freindship with us; of their bowes, arrowes, and swordes, targetts, drumes; of their phisick and chirurgery
- CAPUT IX Of their æconomick or howshold affaires; how they obteyne their wives; the women's works; and wherefore they contend for rnanie wives
- CAPUT X Of the commodities of the country,—fruicts, trees, beasts, fowle, fish, perle, copper, and mines
- BOOK THE SECOND
- A DICTIONARIE OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGE
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
They are generally of a cullour browne or rather tawny, which they cast themselves into with a kind of arsenick stone, like red patise or orpement, or rather red tempered oyntments of earth, and the juyce of certaine scrused rootes, when they come unto certaine yeares, and this they doe (keeping themselves still so smudged and besmeered) eyther for the custome of the countrye, or the better to defend them (since they goe most what naked) from the stinging of muskitoes, kinds of flies or biting gnatts, such as the Greekes called scynipes, as yet in great swarmes within the arches, and which heere breed aboundantly amongst the marish whorts and fenne berries, and of the same hue are their women; howbeit, yt is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discouloured; for Captain Smith (lyving somtymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women, dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming yt the best beauty to be neerest such a kynd of murrey as a sodden quince is of (to liken yt to the neerest coulor I can), for which they daily anoint both face and bodyes all over with such a kind of fucus or unguent as can cast them into that stayne, as is said of the Greek women how they coulored their faces with certain rootes called Brenthina, and as the Britaynes died themselves red with woad; howbeit, he or she that hath obteyned the perfectest art in the tempering of this collour with any better kind of earth.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia; Expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, Together with the Manners and Customes of the PeopleAs Collected by William Strachey, Gent., the First Secretary of the Colony, pp. 63 - 69Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1849