slept, one of his women sat at his head and another at his feet. When he dined they attended him with water, or brought him a bunch of feathers to wipe his hands. His regalia, free from the glitter of art, showed only the simple royalty of the savage. He wore a robe composed of skins, and sat on a throne spread with mats, and decked with pearls and with beads. The furniture of his palace, like the qualities of his mind, was adapted to war, and the implements of death, rather than of pleasure, garnished his halls.

The figures in the annexed engraving, representing an Indian in his summer dress, and an Indian priest, were copied from those given in Beverly's History of Virginia, published in London, in 1722. The figure on the left, (the Indian in his summer dress,) is thus described:

The upper part of his hair is cut short to make a ridge, which stands up like the comb of a cock, the rest is either shorn off or knotted behind his ear. On his head are stuck three feathers of the wild turkey, pheasant, hawk, or such like. At his ear is hung a fine shell, with pearl drops. At his breast is a tablet or fine shell, smooth as polished marble, which also hath sometimes etched on it a star, half-moon, or other figure, according to the maker's fancy; upon his neck and wrists hang strings of beads, peak, and roenoke. His apron is made of a deer skin, gashed around the edges, which hang like tassels or fringe; at the upper end of the fringe is an edging of peak, to make it finer. His quiver is of a thin bark; but sometimes they make it of the skin of a fox, or young wolf, with the head hanging to it, which has a wild sort of terror in it; and to make it yet more warlike they tie it on with the tail of a panther, buffalo, or such like, letting the end hang down between their legs. The pricked lines on his shoulders, breast, and legs, represent the figures painted thereon. In his left hand he holds a bow, and in his right an arrow. The mark upon his shoulder-blade, is a distinction used by the Indians in travelling, to show the nation they are of and perhaps is the same with that which Baron Lahontan calls the arms and heraldry of the Indians. Thus, the several lettered marks are used by several other nations about Virginia, when they make a journey to their friends and allies.

The habit of the Indian priest, is a cloak made in the form of a woman's petticoat; but instead of tying it about their middle, they fasten the gatherings about their neck, and tie it upon the right shoulder, always keeping one arm out to use upon occasion. This cloak hangs even at the bottom, but reaches no lower than the middle of the thigh; but what is most particular in it is, that it is constantly made out of a skin dressed soft, with the pelt or fur on the outside, and reversed; insomuch that when the cloak has been a little worn, the hair falls down in flakes, and looks very shagged and frightful.

The cut of their hair is likewise peculiar to their function; for 'tis all shaved close, except a thin crest, like a cock's comb, which stands bristling up, and runs in a semicircle from the forehead up along the crown to the nape of the neck. They likewise have a border of hair over the forehead, which, by its own natural strength, and by the stiffening it receives from grease and paint, will stand out like the peak of a bonnet.

The face of the Indian, when arrived at maturity, is a dark brown and chesnut. By a free use of bear's grease, and a continual exposure to the sun and weather, it becomes harder and darker. This, however, is not the natural complexion. In infancy they are much fairer. Their hair is almost invariably of a coal black, straight, and long; their cheek bones are high, and their eyes black and full of a character of wildness and ferocity that mark their unappeasable thirst of vengeance, and their free and uncontrolled in. dulgence of every fierce and violent passion. But the education of an Indian, which com. mences almost with his birth, teaches him that dissimulation, which masks the thought and smooths the countenance, is the most useful of virtues; and there is a continual effort to check the fierce sallies of the eye, and keep down the consuming rage of his bosom His eye, therefore, is generally averted or bent downwards. The terrible complacency of the tiger is no inapt illustration of an Indian visage.

The figure of an Indian is admirably proportioned beyond any thing that has hitherto been seen of the human form. Tall, straight; their muscles hardened by the continual action of the weather; their limbs supple by exercise, and perhaps by the use of oil, they

"They are very swarthy," says Charlevoix, speaking of the Canadians, " and of a dirty dark red. But this is not their natural complexion. The frequent frictions they use give them this red, and it is surprising that they are not blacker; being continually exposed to the smoke in winter, to the great heat in summer, and in all seasons to the inclemencies of the air." 18

outstrip the bear, and run down the buck and the elk. No such thing is to be found as a dwarfish, crooked, bandylegged, or otherwise misshapen Indian.

The power and qualities of their minds are such as we should expect from their state of society. In a state of nature the mind of man differs but little from the animals around him. Occupied in supplying his wants or gratifying his resentments, he has but little time or inclination for the labors of calculation or the refinements of abstraction. The sensible objects with which he is most conversant, impress themselves on his memory in the order and degrees of their importance; but their classification, and the faculty of generalizing them by an idea and term that shall take in all the particulars and classes, are the result of deep thought and intense reflection. For this, leisure and application are necessary. But the time of the Indian, after returning successful from the chase, or victorious from the battle, is too valuable to be employed in such trifles. His duty it is to spread the feast; to hear the praises of the old men, and the congratulations of the women; to attend the great council of the nation, and to sing the history of his own exploits. If any time remain after discharging those duties, he exercises himself in shooting the arrow or throwing the tomahawk; or stretched at length along the grass, enjoys that luxury of indolence which constitutes the supreme blessing of his existence.

The idea of numbers is, therefore, very limited among the tribes. Some of them can reckon a thousand, while others cannot exceed ten; to express any greater number they are compelled to resort to something indefinite. As numerous as the pigeons in the woods, or the stars in the heavens, is a mode of expression for any greater number. For the same reason, their language has no term for the abstract ideas of time, space, universal, &c. There is, however, a conjecture, which, if true, will prove that the Indians of Virginia had a more copious arithmetic. It is suggested that Tomocomoco or Uttomaccomac was sent to England by Powhatan, for the purpose of procuring an exact account of the number of the people of England. Tomocomoco made the attempt till his arithmetic failed; but before he would be sent on such an errand, he must have been able to reckon the Powhatans, and these, according even to the lowest estimates, amounted to eight thousand.

It has been said that the Indian is the most improvident of animals; that, satisfied with his present enjoyments, he wastes no thought on the morrow, and that repeated calamities have added nothing to his care or foresight. This may have been true of some of the tribes in South America, or in the islands. The North American, and more especially the Virginian, always had their public stock hoarded. Powhatan and the other sachems carried on a continual trade with the first colonists for corn, and we find that Raleigh, Baltimore, and Penn, derived their principal support from similar sources. But the quantity of labor and industry required for raising this superfluity was comparatively nothing. A few did not, as in established societies, work for the support of the whole, and for the purpose of enabling the rich to vend their surplus commodities in foreign markets. Here every man labored for himself, or for the common stock, and a few days in every year were sufficient for the maintenance of each man, and by consequence, of all the members of the tribe.

The Indians of Virginia have no written laws, but their customs, handed down from age to age in the traditions of their old men, have all the force of the best-defined and positive institutions. Nor is this respect acquired by the fear of punishment. The aborigines of Virginia, whatever may be pretended, enjoyed complete freedom. Their sachems made their own tools and instruments of husbandry. They worked in the ground in common with the other Indians. They could enter into no measure of a public nature without the concurrence of the matchacomoco or grand council; and even after this body had decided on the merits of the question, the consent of the people at large was necessary to sanction their proceedings. If the voice of this council be in favor of war, the young men express their approbation by painting themselves of various colors, so as to render their appearance horrible to their enemies. In this state they rush furiously into the council: they begin the war dance, accompanying their steps with fierce gestures, expressive of their thirst of vengeance; and describing the mode in which they will surprise, wound, kill, and scalp their enemies. After this they sing their own glories; they recount the exploits of their ancestors, and the ancient glories of their nation.

The Indian festival dance, says Beverly, is performed by the "dancers themselves forming a ring, and moving round a circle of carved posts, that are set up for that purpose; or else round a fire, made in a convenient part of the town; and then each has his rattle in his hand, or what other thing he fancies most, as his bow and arrows, or his tomahawk. They also dress themselves up with branches of trees, or some other strange

accoutrements. Thus they proceed, dancing and singing, with all the antic postures they can invent; and he is the bravest fellow that has the most prodigious gestures."

When any matter is proposed in the national council, it is common for the chiefs of the several tribes to consult thereon apart with their counsellors, and when they have agreed, to deliver the opinion of the tribe at the national council, and as their government seems to rest wholly on persuasion, they endeavor, by mutual concessions, to obtain unanimity. Their only controls are their manners and their moral sense of right and wrong, which, like tasting and smelling, in every man makes part of his nature.

An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or when the case is serious, as in murder, by the individuals whom it concerns.

The Indians of Virginia had no idea of distinct and exclusive property; the lands were in common, and every man had a right to choose or abandon his situation at pleasure. Their mode of computation, as with us, was by units, tens, and hundreds. There is no light on the records by which we may discover its limits or extent. Analogy affords no helps on this occasion. The Iroquois could reckon a thousand, while other tribes, almost in their neighborhood, could count no further than ten.

They reckon their years by winters, or cohonks, as they call them, which was a name taken from the note of the wild geese, intimating so many times of the wild geese coming to them, which is every winter.

They distinguish the several parts of the year by five seasons, viz.: the budding or blossoming of the spring; the earing of the corn, or roasting ear time; the summer, or highest sun; the corn-gathering, or fall of the leaf; and the winter, or cohonks.

They count the months by the moons, though not with any relation to so many in a year as we do; but they make them return again by the same name, as the moon of stags, the corn moon, the first and second moon of cohonks."

They have no distinction of the hours of the day, but divide it only into three parts, the rise, the power, and lowering of the sun; and they keep their accounts by knots on a string, or notches on a stick, not unlike the Peruvian Quippoes.

If we believe the accounts of Smith and Beverly, the Indians of Virginia were grossly superstitious, and even idolatrous. The annexed engraving is a representation of their idol Okee, Quioccos, or Kiwasa, copied from one in Beverly's History. "They do not look upon it as one single being, but reckon there are many of the same nature; they likewise believe that there are tutelar deities in every town."

Although they have no set days for performing the rites of religion, they have a number of festivals, which are celebrated with the utmost festivity. They solemnize a day for the plentiful coming of their wild fowl, such as geese, ducks, teal, &c.; for the returns of their hunting seasons; and for the ripening of certain fruits. But the greatest annual festival they have is at the time of their corn-gathering, at which they revel several days together. To these they universally contribute, as they do to the gathering of the corn: on this occasion they have their greatest variety of pastimes, and more especially of their war dances and heroic songs; in which they boast that their corn being now gathered, they have store enough for their women and children, and have nothing to do but go to war, travel, and to seek for new adventures.

There is a second annual festival, conducted with still greater solemnity. It commences with a fast, which exceeds any thing of abstinence known among the most mortified hermits. This fast is succeeded by a feast. The old fire is put out, and a new fire, called the drill fire, elicited by the friction of two pieces of wood. They sprinkle sand on the hearths, and, to make the lustration complete, an emetic is taken by the whole nation. At this meeting all crimes, except murder, are pardoned, and the bare mention of them afterwards is considered as disreputable. At the close of this festival, which continues four days, a funeral procession commences, the signification of which is that they bury all the past in oblivion, and the criminals having tasted of the decoction of casina, are permitted to sit down by the men they have injured.

The ceremony of huskanawing returns after an interval of fourteen or sixteen years, or more frequently, as the young men happen to arrive at maturity. This is intended as a state of probation, preparatory to their being initiated into the class of warriors and counsellors. The candidates are first taken into the thickest part of the forest, and kept in close and solitary confinement for several months, with scarcely any sustenance besides an infusion or decoction of some intoxicating roots. This diet, added to the severity of the discipline, invariably induces madness, and the fit is protracted for eighteen days. During the paroxysms they are shut up in a strong enclosure, called an huskanaw pen, "one of which," says Beverly, "I saw belonging to the Pamaunkie Indians, in the year 1694. It was in shape like a sugar-loaf, and every way open like a lattice for the air to pass through." When their doctors suppose they have drunk a

sufficient portion of the intoxicating juice, they gradually restore them to their senses by lessening the quantity of the potion, and before they recover their senses they are brought back to the town. This process is intended to operate like Lethe on their memory: "To release the youth from all their childish impressions, and from that strong partiality to persons and things which is contracted before reason takes place. So that when the young men come to themselves again, their reason may act freely without being biased by the cheats of custom and education. Thus they also become discharged from any ties by blood; and are established in a state of equality and perfect freedom, to order their actions and dispose of their persons as they think proper, without any other control than the law of nature."

Marriage, or the union of husband and wife, stood precisely on the same footing as among the other American tribes. A man might keep as many wives as he could support: but in general they had but one, whom, without being obliged to assign any reason, they might at any time abandon, and immediately form a new engagement. The rights of the woman are the same, with this difference, that she cannot marry again until the next annual festival.

Courtship was short, and, like their marriage, unembarrassed by ceremony. If the presents of a young warrior are accepted by his mistress, she is considered as having agreed to become his wife, and without any further explanations to her family, she goes home to his hut. The principles that are to regulate their future conduct are well understood. He agrees to perform the more laborious duties of hunting and fishing; of felling the tree, erecting the hut, constructing the canoe, and of fighting the enemies of the tribe. To her, custom had assigned almost all the domestic duties; to prepare the food; to watch over the infancy of the children. The nature of their lives and circumstances added another, which, with more propriety, taking in a general view, should have been exercised by the male. It belonged to the women to plant the corn, and attend all the other productions of an Indian garden or plantation. But the labor required for raising these articles was trifling, and the warriors, being engaged in hunting and war, had neither leisure nor inclination to attend to objects of such inferior consideration.

To compensate for this seeming hardship or neglect, the women had several valuable privileges, that prove their importance, and the respect entertained for them by the men. All the honors of an Indian community are maternal, and the children, in the event of a separation, belong to the wife. The husband is considered only as a visitor; and, should any difference arise, he takes up his gun and departs. Nor does this separation entail any disgrace upon the parties.

If any credit be due to the accounts of our early historians, the women in the Powhatan confederacy had considerable weight. Some of the tribes had even female sachems, a regulation which could not have been tolerated by freemen and warriors, if, as has been imagined by some historians, they had been regarded only as objects of contempt and ill-usage. What agitation and sorrow were not excited by the death of Pocahontas, and how anxious the inquiries of her family respecting her health and her feelings, her content and her return!

It was no uncommon spectacle to see groups of young women, almost naked, frisking with wanton modesty in the wild gambols of the dance. Even the decent Pocahontas did not disdain to mingle in those pastimes. Crowned with a wreath of leaves and flowers, she sometimes led the chorus and presided in the dance. Nor should this be regarded as a deviation from the rules of modesty and innocence. They acted agreeably to the usage of their country and the dictates of nature. Every object inspired happiness and content, and their only care was to crowd as many pleasures as possible into the short span of a fleeting existence.

The following summary account of the Indians in Virginia, as they were about the year 1700, is from Beverly's History of Virginia.

The Indians of Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge, are almost wasted, but such towns or people as retain their names and live in bodies, are hereunder set down; all which together cannot raise five hundred fighting men. They live poorly, and much in fear of the neighboring Indians. Each town, by the articles of peace, 1677, pays three Indian arrows for their land, and twenty beaver-skins for protection, every year.

In Accomack are eight towns, viz: Matomkin is much decreased of late by the smallpox, that was carried thither. Gingoteque; the few remains of this town are joined with a nation of the Maryland Indians. Kiequotank is reduced to a very few men. Matchopungo has a small number yet living. Occahanock has a small number yet living. Pungoteque; governed by a queen, but a small nation. Oanancock has but four or five families. Chiconessex has very few, who just keep the name. Nanduye: a seat of the empress; not above twenty families, but she hath all the nations of the shore under tribute. In Northampton, Gangascoe, which is almost as numerous as all the foregoing nations put together. In Prince George, Wyanoke is extinct. In Charles City, Appamattox, extinct. In Surry, Nottaways, which are about a hundred bowmen, of late a thriving and increasing people. By Nansamond: Menheering, has about thirty bowmen, who keep at a stand. Nansamond: about thirty bowmen: they have increased much of late. In King William's county, Pamunkie has about forty bowmen, who decrease. Chickahomonie, which had about sixteen bowmen, but lately increased. In Essex: Rappahannock, extinct. In Richmond: Port Tabago, extinct. In Northumberland: Wiccomocco has but few men living, which yet keep up their kingdom, and retain their fashion; yet live by themselves, separate from all other Indians, and from the English.