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One of the Religious Men in the Town of Secota

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 standing facing each other. In the background is a body of water in which people are hunting and rowing canoes.

Size: 650×480

“On of the Religeous Men in the Towne of Secota.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of an American Indian man, 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, standing with his arm tucked inside a cloak. In the background is a body of water in which ducks are swimming, and people appear to be hunting with a bow and arrow from inside a canoe.

The text accompanying the image reads:

The Priests of the aforesaid Town of Secota are well stricken in years, and as it seems of more experience than the common sort. They wear their hair cut like a crest, on the tops of their heads as other do, but the rest are cut short, saving those which grow above their foreheads in manner of a periwig. They also have somewhat hanging in their ears. They wear a short cloak made of fine hares skins quilted with the hair outward. The rest of their body is naked. They are notable enchanters, and for their pleasure they frequent the rivers, to kill with their bows, and catch wild ducks, swans, and other fowl.

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 Priest.”