INDIAN DANCE.
As for their dancing, the sport seems unto them, and the use, almost as frequent and necessary as their meat and drink, in which they consume much time, and for which they appoint many and often meetings, and have therefore, as it were,set orgies[315] or festivals for the same pastime, as have yet at this day the merry Greeks.… At our colony’s first sitting down amongst them,when any of our people repaired[316] to their towns, the Indians would not think they had expressed their welcome sufficiently enough, until they had showed them a dance, the manner of which is thus. One of them standeth by, with some fur or leather thing in his left hand, upon which he beats with his right hand, and sings withal, as if he began the choir, and kept unto the rest their just time; when upon a certain stroke or more,—as upon his cue or time to come in,—one riseth up,and begins to dance. After he hath danced a while, steps forth another, as if he came in just upon his rest; and in this order all of them, so many as there be, one after another, who then dance an equal distance from each other in ring, shouting, howling, and stamping their feet against the ground with such force and pain, that they sweat again, and with all varieties of strange mimic tricks and distorted faces, making so confused a yell and noise as so many frantic and disquieted bacchanals; and sure they will keep stroke just with their feet to the time he gives, and just one with another, but with the hands, head, face, and body, every one hath a several gesture. And those who have seen the dervishes in their holy dances, in their mosques, upon Wednesdays and Fridays in Turkey,may resemble[317] these unto them. You shall find the manner expressed in the figure.
VIII.—Indian Children in Virginia.
To make the children hardy, in the coldest mornings they wash them in the rivers, and by paintings and ointments so tan their skins, that, after a year or two, no weather will hurt them. As also, to practise their children in the use of their bows and arrows, the mothers do not give them their breakfast in a morning before they have hit a mark which she appoints them to shoot at; and commonly, so cunning they will have them, as throwing up in the air a piece of moss, or some such light thing, the boy must with his arrow meet it in the fall, and hit it, or else he shall not have his breakfast.
Both men, women, and children have their several names; at first, according to the several humor of their parents. And for the men-children, at first, when they are young, their mothers give them a name, calling them by some affectionate title, or, perhaps, observing their promising inclination, give it accordingly; and so the great King Powhatan called a young daughter of his whom he loved well, Pocahontas,which may signify “little wanton;”[318] howbeit, she was rightly called Amonate at more ripe years. When they become able to travel into the woods, and to go forth a hunting, fowling, and fishing with their fathers, the fathers give him another name, as he finds him apt,and of spirit to prove toward[319] and valiant, or otherwise, changing the mother’s [name], which yet in the family is not so soon forgotten. And if so be, it be by agility, strength, or any extraordinary strain of wit, he performs any remarkable or valorous exploit in open act of arms, or by stratagem, especially in the time of extremity in the wars for the public and common state, upon the enemy, the king, taking notice of the same, doth then, not only in open view and solemnly, reward him with some present of copper, or chain of pearl and beads, but doth then likewise—and which they take for the most eminent and supreme favor—give him a name answerable to the attempt, not much differing herein from the ancient warlike encouragement and order of the Romans to a well-deserving and gallant young spirit.
IX.—“The Planter’s Pleasure and Profit.”
There are who delight extremely in vain pleasure, that take much more pains in England to enjoy it than I should do here to gain wealth sufficient: and yet I think they should not have half such sweet content; for our pleasure here is still gain, in England charges and loss. Here nature and liberty afford us that freely which in England we want, or it costeth us dearly. What pleasure can be more than being tired with any occasion ashore, in planting vines, fruits, or herbs; in contriving their own ground to the pleasure of their own minds, their fields, gardens, orchards, buildings, ships, and other works, &c.; to recreate themselves before their own doors, in their own boats upon the sea, where man, woman, and child, with a small hook and line, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent fish at their pleasures? And is it not pretty sport to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence as fast as you can haul and veer a line? He is a very bad fisher [who] cannot kill in one day, with his hook and line, one, two, or three hundred cods; which dressed and dried, if they be sold there for ten shillings a hundred, though in England they will give more than twenty, may not both servant, master, and merchant be well content with this gain? If a man work but three days in seven, he may get more than he can spend, unless he will be exceedingly excessive. Now that carpenter, mason, gardener, tailor, smith, sailor, forger, or what other—may they not make this a very pretty recreation, though they fish but an hour in a day, to take more than they caneat in a week; or if they will not eat it, because there is so much better choice, yet sell it, or change it with the fishermen or merchants, for any thing you want? And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt and charge, than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea, wherein the most curious may find profit, pleasure, and content?
Thus, though all men be not fishers, yet all men whatsoever may in other matters do as well, for necessity doth in these cases so rule a commonwealth, and each in their several functions, as their labors, in their qualities, may be as profitable, because there is a necessary mutual use of all.