532 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 187 



San Miguel notes that the neighboring Indians of Gua4e daubed 

 paint on their faces, breasts, biceps, and thighs (Garcia, 1902, p. 194). 



TATTOOING 



But if the women of aboriginal Virginia and Carolina were not 

 much addicted to paint, the reason is perhaps to be found in a desire 

 not to obscure the elaborate designs more permanently imprinted 

 upon their skins by means of tattooing instruments. At all events, 

 what they lacked in the way of paint was abundantly compensated 

 for in tattooed designs. 



Beginning with Percy, who wrote in the year when Virginia was 

 founded, we read: 



The women kinde in this Countrey doth pounce and race their bodies, legges, 

 thighes, armes, and faces with a sharpe Iron, which makes a stampe in curious 

 knots, and drawes the proportion of Fowles, Fish, or Beasts ; then with paint- 

 ings of sundry lively colours, they rub it into the stampe which will never be 

 taken away, because it is dried into the flesh where it is sered. (Narr. Early Va., 

 Tyler ed., 1907, p. 19.) 



Says Smith: 



Their women some have their legs, hands, breasts, and face cunningly 

 imbroidered with diverse workes^ as beasts, serpentes, artificially wrought into 

 their flesh with blacke spots. (Narr. Early Va., Tyler ed., 1907, p. 100.) 



And Strachey, as usual, elaborates the statement : 



The women have their armes, breasts, thighes, shoulders, and faces, cunningly 

 ymbroidered with divers workes, for pouncing or searing their skyns with a 

 kind of instrument heated in the fier. They figure therein flowers and fruits 

 of sondry lively kinds, as also snakes, serpents, eftes, &c., and this they doe by 

 dropping uppon the seared flesh sondry coulers, which, rub'd into the stampe, 

 will never be taken away agayne, because yt will not only be dryed into the 

 flesh, but growe therein. ( Strachey, 1849, p. 66. ) 



Hariot has already been quoted regarding the paintings and tattoo- 

 ings of the Carolina coast Indians. Regarding Roanoke women, he 

 says : "Their foreheads, cheeks, chynne, armes and leggs are pownced. 

 About their necks they wear a chaine, either pricked or paynted." 

 Below he adds that the girls also "pounce their foreheads, cheeckes, 

 armes and legs." The "chief ladies" of the town of Pomeioc were 

 also tattooed. The tattooings of the women of Dasemonquepeuc, a 

 town 4 or 5 miles from Roanoke, were similar to the above except 

 that they did not extend to the thighs (Hariot, 1893, pis. 4, 6, 8, 10). 



Although Lederer mentions face paintings and Lawson describes 

 the use of body paint at considerable length, they ignore tattooing al- 

 most entirely, but it is improbable that it was unknown to the Siouan 

 tribes since it was so extensively developed on all sides of them. 



