LEARN NC

K–12 teaching and learning · from the UNC School of Education

Indians Cooking Fish

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 UNC Libraries / North Carolina Collection

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Color illustration of two American Indian men cooking two large fish on a grate over a fire.

Sizes available: 1024×673 | 200×200 | 450×296

Hand-colored version of Theodor de Bry’s engraving depicting two American Indian men cooking fish. De Bry’s engraving, “The Broiling of Their Fish Over the Flame,” 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 center, two large fish are lying on a grate over a fire. Two other fish hang suspended from sticks under the grate. The man on the left holds a long fork-like tool. The man on the right wears on his back a tall basket containing more fish.

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, apparently without having seen John White’s original watercolor painting, “Cooking Fish.”