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Their Idol Kiwasa
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
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for American Indians, colonial, drawings, illustrations, John White, North Carolina, statues, and Virginia.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
“Ther Idol Kivvasa.” Theodor de Bry’s engraving of an American Indian wooden idol, published in Thomas Hariot’s 1588 book A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. The idol sits on a platform in a round structure and is visible through an open doorway. It wears a fringed garment and strands of beads around its neck and legs, and sits with its legs spread apart and its hands on its knees.
The text accompanying the image reads:
The people of this country have an Idol, which they call KIWASA: it is carved of wood in length 4 feet whose head is like the heads of the people of Florida, the face is of a flesh color, the breast white, the rest is all black, the thighs are also spotted with white. He has a chain about his neck of white beads, between which are other Round beads of copper which they esteem more than gold or silver. This Idol is placed in the temple of the town of Secotam, as the keeper of the king’s dead corpses. Sometimes they have two of these idols in their churches, and sometimes 3 but never above, which they place in a dark corner where they show terrible. These poor souls have none other knowledge of God although I think them very desirous to know the truth. For when as we kneeled down on our knees to make our prayers unto God, they went about to imitate us, and when they saw we moved our lips, they also did the like. Wherefore that is very like that they might easily be brought to the knowledge of the gospel. God of his mercy grant them this grace.
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.
