Their Manner of Praying with Rattles

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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• Search LEARN NC for American Indians, canoes, colonial, fire, illustrations, John White, North Carolina, prayer, and Virginia.

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“Their Manner of Prainge vvith Rattels abowt te Fyer.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of American Indians praying around a fire, published in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. In the foreground, several Indians sit in a circle around a large fire, most of them holding rattles. To the left of the circle, two other Indians are standing facing the fire. In the background is a body of water in which people are rowing canoes. Two fishing weirs are visible in the water in the distant background.

The text accompanying the image reads:

When they have escaped any great danger by sea or land, or be returned from the war in token of joy they may a great fire about which the men, and women sit together, holding a certain fruit in their hands like unto a round pumpkin or a gourd, which after they have taken out the fruits, and the seeds, then fill with small stones or certain big kernels to make the more noise, and fasten that upon a stick, and singing after their manner, they make merry: as my self observed and noted down at my being among them. For it is a strange custom, and worth the observation.

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, “Indians Round a Fire.”