e accumulation of shells and ashes. Standing on such a spot one's
fancy may almost repeople it with the shadowy forms of the aborigines,
and imagine the flames of the council-fire projecting its red glare upon
the face of the York or the James, and hear their wild cries mingling
with the dash of waves and the roar of the forest. Here they rejoice
over their victories, plan new enterprises of blood, and celebrate the
war-dance by the rude music of the drum and the rattle, commingled with
their own discordant yells.

The Indians of Virginia were tall, erect, and well-proportioned, with
prominent cheek-bones; eyes dark and brilliant, with an animal
expression, and a sort of squint; their hair dark and straight. The
chiefs were distinguished by a long pendant lock. The Indians had little
or no beard, and the women served as barbers, eradicating the beard, and
grating away the hair with two shells. Like all savages, they were fond
of toys and tawdry ornaments. The principal garment was a mantle, in
winter dressed with the fur in, in summer with it out; but the common
sort had scarce anything to hide their nakedness, save grass or leaves,
and in summer they all went nearly naked. The females always wore a
cincture around the middle. Some covered themselves with a mantle of
curiously interwoven turkey feathers, pretty and comfortable. The
greater part went barefoot; some wore moccasins, a rude sandal of
buckskin. Some of the women tattooed their skins with grotesque figures.
They adorned the ear with pendants of copper, or a small living snake,
yellow or green, or a dead rat, and the head with a bird's wing, a
feather, the rattle of a rattlesnake, or the hand of an enemy. They
stained the head and shoulder red with the juice of the puccoon.

The red men dwelt for the most part on the banks of rivers. They spent
the time in fishing, hunting, war, or indolence, despising domestic
labor, and assigning it to the women. These made mats, baskets, pottery,
hollowed out stone-mortars, pounded the corn in them, made bread,
cooked, planted corn, gathered it, carried burdens, etc. Infants were
inured to hardship and exposure. The Indians kindled a fire quickly "by
chafing a dry pointed stick in a hole of a little square piece of wood,
which, taking fire, sets fire to moss, leaves, or any such dry thing."
They subsisted upon fish, game, the natural fruits of the earth, and
corn, which they planted. The tuckahoe-root, during the summer, wa