304 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO I676. 



their eyes also black; their skin tawny, inclining to blacklshness ; they live to- 

 gether in towns, and every town is under a several king. At the first coming 

 of the English, divers towns had two or three thousand bowmen in them ; but 

 now, in the southern parts of Virginia, the largest Indian town has not above 

 500 inhabitants; many towns have scarcely 60 bowmen in them, and in one town 

 there are not above 20; and they are so universally thinned in the foremen- 

 tioued southern part, that I verily believe there are not above 3000 left under 

 the whole government of Sir Will. Bartlet; but in my Lord Baltimore's terri- 

 tories, at the head of the bay, where the English were later seated, they are 

 more numerous, there being still in some towns about 3000 Indians. But these 

 being in continual wars with each other, are likely soon to be reduced to as 

 small numbers as the former. Instead of clothes they wear a deer-skin tacked 

 about their middle, and another about their shoulders; and for shoes they have 

 pieces of deer-skin tied about their feet. Their habitations are cabins about 

 nine or ten feet high, which are made after this manner : they fix poles into the 

 ground, and bring the tops of them one within another, and so tie them toge- 

 ther: the outside of these poles they line with bark to defend them from the 

 injuries of the weather, but they leave a hole on the top, right in the middle of 

 the cabin, for the smoke to go out; round the inside of their cabins they have 

 banks of earth cast up, which serve instead of stools and beds ; they have no 

 kind of houshold stuff, but earthen pots, wooden bowls, and thin mats to lie 

 on ; all which they make themselves. Their diet is Indian corn, venison, wild 

 turkeys, oysters, and all kind of fish the rivers afford, and all kind of wild 

 beasts of the woods. They are prohibited the keeping either cows, sheep, or 

 hogs, by the English, lest they should make bold with more than their own. 

 They formerly took their fish after an odd manner, before the English came 

 amongst them, which was thus: at the head of their canoes they fixed a hearth, 

 on which in a dark night they would make a blaze with fire put to the shivers 

 of pine-tree, then they would paddle their canoes along the shore in shoal- 

 water; the fish seeing the light would come as thick as they could swim by each 

 other about the head of the canoes ; then with sticks that were pointed very 

 sharp at the ends, they would strike through them and lift them up into the 

 canoe. But now they have learned of the English to catch fish with hook and 

 line, and sometimes the English use their way in dark nights, only they strike 

 with an instrument of iron somewhat like mole-tines. 



As to their worship I know little of it; only they have priests which are gene- 

 rally thought to be conjurers; for, when they have great want of rain, one of 

 their priests will go into a private cabin, and by his invocations will cause abun- 

 dance to fall immediately, which they call making of rain. They offer the first 



