Classroom » Multimedia
Native Americans Making Canoes
About this illustration
- Creator
- Theodor de Bry
- Date created
- 1590
- 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 North Carolina Collection / UNC Libraries
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for American Indians, boats, canoes, colonial, drawings, illustrations, John White, North Carolina, and Virginia.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
Hand-colored version of Theodor de Bry’s engraving depicting American Indian men making boats. De Bry’s engraving, “The Manner of Makinge their Boates,” was originally published as an illustration in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.
In the foreground, two men are working on a hollowed-out tree, from which smoke and flames are rising. In the background two other men are working on a fallen tree. A third tree to their right has a fire burning at its base.
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. An unidentified artist applied the color to this version of de Bry’s engraving.
