tastefully fringed and shagged at the skirt, and these mantles, like the mantles of the warriors, were generally embroidered with white beads and links of copper, or they were beautifully painted with the images of beasts, birds, tortoises, fruits, and flowers. Very frequently the mantles were made of the feathers of ducks, swans, geese, and turkeys, so skilfully woven that the threads uniting them were concealed, and these feathers were dyed red or blue as fancy suggested. In the expeditions which were sent out to hunt, or to gather wild fruit, or the grass from which the mats were manufactured, individuals of both sexes put on leather breeches and stockings, secured by strings to the waist as a shield against the weeds and shrubs.[1]
The king had no characteristic dress. On one occasion when visited by the English, Powhatan had donned a mantle of raccoon skins fashioned in a manner to retain the tails, which hung down around his body. The dress of the priest was still more conspicuous; he wore a short mantle composed of the furs of the weasel and other vermin, with the tails still attached, and the stuffed skins of
- ↑ For these various particulars, see Works of Capt. John Smith, pp. 66, 361; Strachey’s Historie of Travaile into Virginia, pp. 65, 66; Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 128. Strachey gives the following description of the apparel of an Indian princess whom he had seen “I was once early at her house,” he writes, when she was hayed without dores . . . herself covered with a faire white drest deare skynne or two, and when she rose, she had a mayd who tetcht her a frontail of white currall and pendants of great but imperfect coloured and worse drilled pearles which she put into her eares, and a chayne, with long lyncks of copper which they call Tapoantaminais and which caine twice or thrice about her neck likewise her mayd fetcht her a mantell which they call puttawus, which is like a side cloake, made of blew feathers, so artificyally and thick sowed together that it seemed like a deepe purple satten, and is very smooth and sleeke, and after she brought her water for her hands and then a braunch or twoo of fresh greene asshen leaves as for a towell to dry them.” Historie of Travaile into Virginia, pp. 57, 58.
