Those sharpened only at one end, at
the other were either curved to a tapering point, or spheroidally
rounded off, so as to serve the purpose of a hammer for breaking or
pounding. In the middle a circular indenture was made, to secure the
tomahawk to the handle. They soon, however, procured iron hatchets from
the English. Trees the Indians felled by fire; canoes were made by dint
of burning and scraping with shells and tomahawks. Some of their canoes
were not less than forty or fifty feet long. Canoe is a West Indian
word, the Powhatan word is quintan, or aquintan.[89:A] The women
manufactured a thread, or string of bark, or of a kind of grass called
pemminaw, or of the sinews of the deer. A large pipe, adorned with the
wings of a bird, or with beads, was the symbol of friendship, called the
pipe of peace. A war-chief was styled werowance, and a war-council,
matchacomoco. In war, like all savages, they relied mainly on surprise,
treachery, and ambuscade; in the open field they were timid; and their
cruelty, as usual, was proportionate to their cowardice.

The Virginia Indians were of course idolatrous, and their chief idol,
called Okee, represented the spirit of evil, to appease whom they burnt
sacrifices. They were greatly under the influence and control of their
priests and conjurors, who wore a grotesque dress, performed a variety
of divinations, conjurations, and enchantments, called powwowings, after
the manner of wizards, and by their superior cunning and shrewdness, and
some scanty knowledge of medicine, contrived to render themselves
objects of veneration, and to live upon the labor of others. The
superstition of the savages was commensurate with their ignorance. Near
the falls of the James River, about a mile back from the river, there
were some impressions on a rock like the footsteps of a giant, being
about five feet apart, which the Indians averred to be the footprints of
their god. They submitted with Spartan fortitude to cruel tortures
imposed by their idolatry, especially in the mysterious and horrid
ordeal of huskanawing. The avowed object of this ordeal was to
obliterate forever from the memory of the youths subjected to it all
recollection of their previous lives. The house in which they kept the
Okee was called Quioccasan, and was surrounded by posts, with human
faces rudely carved and painted on them. Altars on which sacrifices were
offered, were held in great veneration.

The diseases of the India