BOSHNELL] NATIVE CEMETERIES AND FORMS OF BURIAL 27 



sepulcher of their kings. Their bodies are first bowelled, then dryed 

 upon hurdles till they bee verie dry, and so about the most of their 

 jointes and necke they hanj>: bracelets or chaines of copper, pearle, 

 and such like, as they use to weare : their inwards they stuffe with 

 copper beads and cover with a skin, hatchets, and such trash. Then 

 lappe they them very carefully in white skins, and so rowle them in 

 mats for their winding sheetes. And in the Tombe, which is an arch 

 made of mats, they lay them orderly. What remaineth of this kinde 

 of wealth their kings have, they set at their feet in baskets. These 

 Temples and bodies are kept by their Priests In every Terri- 

 tory of a werowance is a Temple and a Priest or 2 or 3 more. Their 

 principall Temple or place of superstition is at Vttamussack nt Pama- 

 unke, neare unto which is a house Temple or place of Powhatans. 

 Upon the top of certaine redde sandy hils in the woods, there are 3 

 great houses filled with images of their kings and Divels and Tombes 

 of their Predecessors. Those houses are neare 60 foot in length, 

 built arbor wise, after their building. This place they count so holy 

 as that none but the Priestes and kings dare come into them: nor 

 the Savages dare not go up the river in boats by it, but that they 

 solemnly cast some peece of copper, white beads, or Pocones^ into 

 the river, for feare their Oke should be offended and revenged of 

 them." (Smith, (1), pp. 75-76.) 



Strachey's account of the burial customs does not differ greatly 

 from the preceding; both writers referred to the same time and 

 generation, and few of the natives then living had ever seen a white 

 man until the coming of the Jamestown colonists in 1607. 



A temple or tomb similar to those described by Smith was en- 

 countered by the English on the coast of North Carolina during the 

 summer of 1585, at which time it was sketched by the artist John 

 White, a member of the second expedition sent out by Sir Walter 

 Ealeigh. The original drawing, together with many others made at 

 the same time, is preserved in the British Museum, London. A pho- 

 tograph of the original is now reproduced in plate 3, h. The legend 

 on the sketch reads : " The Tombe of their Cherounes or chiefe per- 

 s*onages their flesh clene taken of from the bones save the skynn 

 and heare of theire heads, wch flesh is dried and enfolded in matts 

 laide at theire feete, their bones also being made dry ar covered w**" 

 deare skynns not altering their forme or proportion. With theire 

 Kywash, which is an Image of woode keeping the deade." 



This drawing was engraved and used by De Bry as plate 22 in 

 Hariot's Narrative, published in 1591. But in the engraving the 

 tomb, as drawn by White, is represented as placed within an in- 

 closure, evidently the "temple," and this would conform with the 

 legend near one of the buildings shown standing at the village of 

 Secotan. In White's view of this ancient town the structure in the 



