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A Weroan or Great Lorde of Virginia

About this illustration

Creator
Theodor de Bry
Date created
1585–1586
License
This work is believed to be in the public domain. Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment and to understand their rights to fair use.
Source
Original image housed by Documenting the American South / UNC Libraries

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Black and white drawing of two American Indian men facing each other, each holding a bow and arrow. In the background are numerous other Indian men, aiming bows and arrows at a leaping deer.

Size: 650×469

“A Weroan or Great Lorde of Virginia.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of an American Indian man with a bow and arrow, published in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. In the foreground, the man is depicted from both the front and back, holding a bow and arrow. The man is bare-chested and wears three feathers on his head, a necklace, and a fringed garment. A container holding arrows is worn at his hips. In the background, several other Indians are aiming bows and arrows at a leaping deer.

The text accompanying the image reads:

The Princes of Virginia are attired in such manner as is expressed in this figure. They wear the hair of their heads long and bind up the end of the same in a knot under their ears. Yet they cut the top of their heads from the forehead to the nape of the neck in a manner of a cockscomb, sticking a fair long feather of some bird at the Begining of the crest upon their foreheads, and another short one on both sides about their ears. They hang at their ears either thick pearls, or somewhat else, as the claw of some great bird, as comes in to their fancy. Moreover they either pounce [tattoo], or paint their forehead, cheeks, chin, body, arms, and legs, yet in another sort than the inhabitants of Florida. They wear a chain about their necks of pearls or beads of copper, which they much esteem, and there of wear they also bracelets on their arms. Under their breasts about their bellies appear certain spots, where they use to let them selves blood, when they are sick. They hang before them the skin of some beast very finely dressed in such sort, that the tail hangs down behind. They carry a quiver made of small rushes holding their bow ready bent in one hand, and an arrow in the other, ready to defend themselves. In this manner they go to war, or to their solemn feasts and banquets. They take much pleasure in hunting of deer where of there is great store in the country, for it is fruitful, pleasant, and full of goodly woods. It has also store of rivers full of diverse sorts of fish. When they go to battle they paint their bodies in the most terrible manner that they can devise.

Theodor de Bry was a Flemish-born engraver and publisher who based his illustrations for Hariot’s book on the New World paintings of colonist John White. These depictions of the landscapes and residents of North Carolina provided Europeans with some of their earliest notions of what the North American continent looked like. This engraving was based on White’s watercolor painting, “Indian in Body Paint.”