Читать книгу The Beginnings of America, 1607-1763 - Various - Страница 8

The people differ very much in stature, ... some being very great, ... others very little, ... but generally tall and straight, of a comely [pretty] proportion and of a color brown, when they are of any age, but they are borne white. Their hair is generally black, but few have any beards. The men wear half their heads shaven, the other half long. For barbers they use their women, who with two shells will grate the hair, of any fashion they please....

They are very strong, of an able body and full of agility, able to endure, to lie in the woods under a tree by the fire in the worst of winter or in the weeds and grass in ambush in the summer. They are inconstant [changeable] in everything but what fear constrains them to keep.... Some are of disposition fearful, some bold, most cautelous [deceitful], all savage. Generally [they are] covetous of copper, beads, and such like trash. They are soon moved to anger and so malicious that they seldom forget an injury....

For their apparel they are sometimes covered with skins of wild beasts, which in winter are dressed with the hair but in summer without. The better sort use large mantles of deerskin, ... some embroidered with white beads, some with copper, others painted after their manner. But the common sort have scarce to cover their nakedness but with grass, the leaves of trees, or such like. We have seen some use mantles made of turkey feathers so prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be discerned [seen] but the feathers, that was exceedingly warm and very handsome. But the women are always covered about their middles with a skin and very shamefast to be seen bare....

Their women some have their legs, hands, breasts, and face cunningly embroidered with diverse works, as beasts, serpents, artificially wrought into their flesh with black spots. In each ear commonly they have three great holes, whereat they hang chains, bracelets, or copper. Some of their men wear in those holes a small green and yellow colored snake, near half a yard in length, which crawling and lapping herself about his neck often times familiarly would kiss his lips. Others wear a dead rat tied by the tail. Some on their heads wear the wing of a bird or some large feather with a rattle.... Their heads and shoulders are painted red with the root pocone powdered and mixed with oil; this they hold in summer to preserve them from the heat and in winter from the cold. Many other forms of paintings they use, but he is the most gallant that is the most monstrous to behold....

Men, women, and children have their several names according to the several humors of their parents. Their women (they say) are easily delivered of child, yet do they love children very dearly. To make them hardy, in the coldest mornings they wash them in the rivers and by painting and ointments so tan their skins that after a year or two no weather will hurt them.

The men bestow their time in fishing, hunting, wars, and such man-like exercises, ... which is the cause that the women be very painful [busy] and the men often idle. The women and children do the rest of the work. They make mats, baskets, pots, pound their corn, make their bread, prepare their victuals, plant their corn, gather their corn, bear all kinds of burdens, and such like.

Their fire they kindle presently by chafing a dry pointed stick in a hole of a little square piece of wood, that firing itself will so fire moss, leaves, or any such like dry thing that will quickly burn.