antles of feathers and their
[?] and they also with it make lines for angles.

Their angles are long small rods at the end whereof they have a
cleft to which the line is fastened, and at the line they hang a
hook, made either of a bone grated (as they nock their arrows) in
the form of a crooked pin or fishhook, or of the splinter of a
bone, and with a thread of the line they tie on the bait. They use
also long arrows tied on a line, wherewith they shoot at fish in
the rivers. Those of Accowmack use staves, like unto javelins,
headed with bone; with these they dart fish, swimming in the
water....

By their houses they have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised
like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered
with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft
of hurdles they lay forth their corn and fish to dry....

They are inconstant in everything but what fear constrain them to
keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in
their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take
their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed
in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the
water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish
cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by
chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey
to the fishermen the next low water which they fish with a net at
the end of a pole....

The earliest observers reveal how intimately food from the waters was
linked with the colonists' experiences. George Percy wrote in 1607:

We came to a place [Cape Henry] where they [natives] had made a
great fire and had been newly roasting oysters. When they perceived
our coming, they fled away to the mountains and left many of the
oysters in the fire. We ate some of the oysters which were very
large and delicate in taste.

This was April 27 of that year. Oyster roasts have been a Virginia
institution ever since. He continued:

Upon this plot of ground [Lynnhaven Bay] we got good store of
mussels and oysters, which lay on the ground as thick as stones. We
opened some and found in many of them pearls.

The pearls would probably not have been worth mentioning, except as a
novelty, if they had come from oysters alone. The Virginia oyster pea