shells; the peak is an English bugle, but the roenocke is a piece of cockle, drilled through like a bead. Before the English came among them, the peak and the roenocke were all their treasure; but now they set a value on their fur and pearl, and are greedy of keeping quantities of them together. The pearl is good, and formerly was not so rare as it is at this time.
They had no iron tools till the English brought them over: their knives were sharpened reeds or shells, their axes sharp stones. They rubbed fire, by turning the end of a hard piece of wood upon the side of one that is soft and dry, which at last would burn. They felled great trees by burning them down at the root, having ways of keeping the fire from ascending. They hollowed them with a gentle fire, and scraped the trunk clean, and this made their canoes, of which some were thirty feet long. They are very good handicraft men, and what they do is generally neat and convenient.
Their kingdoms descended to the next heir, male or female, and they were exact in preserving the succession in the right line. If, as it often happened, one great prince subjected the other, those conquests commonly were lost at his death, and the nation returned again to the obedience of their natural princes. They have no written laws, neither can they have any, having no letters.
Their lands are in common, and their Werowances, or judges, are all lord-chancellors, deciding causes and inflicting punishments according as they think fit. These Werowances and the Coucarouses are their terms to distinguish the men of
quality; the former are their war-captains, and the latter such as have passed the trial of huskanawing. Their priests and conjurors have great authority among them. They have servants whom they call black boys, and are very exact in requiring the respect that is due to their several qualities.
Most of the Indians live on the eastern shore, where they have two or three little towns; some of them go over to the other side, in winter time, to hunt for deer, being generally employed by the English. They take delight in nothing else, and it is very rare that any of them will embrace the Christian way of living and worship. There are about 500 fighting Indians in all the province; the cause of their diminution proceeded not from wars with the English, for they have none with them worth speaking of, but from the perpetual discords and wars among themselves. The female sex have always swept away a great many.
One thing is observed in them, though they are a people very timorous and cowardly in fight, yet when taken prisoners and condemned, they will die like heroes, braving the most exquisite tortures that can be invented, and singing all the time they are upon the rack.
We find several of the Indians doing actions which would do honour to the greatest heroes of antiquity: thus captain Smith, who was one of the first adventurers in planting the colony of Virginia, being taken prisoner, while he was making discoveries, by king Oppecamcanough, he not only spared Mr. Smith’s life, but carried him to his town and feasted him; and afterwards presented him
to Powhaton, the chief king of the savages, who would have beheaded him, had he not been saved by the intercession and generosity of his daughter, Pocahonto, who, when Mr. Smith’s head was on the block, and she could not prevail with her father to give him his life, put her own head upon his, and ventured receiving the blow to save him, though she was scarce then sixteen years of age.
Some time after, Sir Thomas Dale sent captain Argall to Patowmac to buy corn, where he met with Pocahonta. He invited her to come aboard his ship, which with some difficulty she consented to, being betrayed by the king of Postcany, brother to the king of Patowmac, with whom she then resided.