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A Chief Lady of Pomeiooc

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 an American Indian woman standing and facing a young Indian girl. In the background is a body of water in which people in canoes appear to be hunting or fishing.

Size: 650×457

“A Chieff Ladye of Pomeiooc.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of an American Indian woman and girl, published in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. In the foreground, the woman stands with her head turned to look at the girl. The woman’s hair is tied back, and she wears a necklace of several strands of beads through which she holds her right hand. Her arms and legs are painted or tattooed and she wears a fringed skirt. She holds a large gourd in her left hand. The girl wears only a necklace and a string around her waist. She holds a doll in her left hand and an unidentified object in her right hand. In the background is a body of water in which people in canoes appear to be hunting or fishing.

The text accompanying the image reads:

About 20 miles from that Island, near the lake of Paquippe, there is another town called Pomeioock hard by the sea. The apparel of the chief ladies of that town differ but little from the attire of those which live in Roanoke. For they wear their hair trussed up in a knot, as the maiden do which we spoke of before, and have their skins pounced [tattooed] in the same manner, yet they wear a chain of great pearls, or beads of copper, or smooth bones 5 or 6 fold about their necks, bearing one arm in the same, in the other hand they carry a gourd full of some kind of pleasant liquor. They tie deer skin doubled about them crouching higher about their breasts, which hang down before almost to their knees, and are almost altogether naked behind. Commonly their young daughters of 7 or 8 years old do wait upon them wearing about them a girdle of skin, which hangs down behind, and is drawn underneath between their thighs, and bound above their navel with moss of trees between that and their skins to cover their privates withall. After they be once past 10 years of age, they wear deer skins as the older sort do. They are greatly Delighted with puppets, and babies [dolls] which were brought out of England.

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 Woman and Young Girl.”