University of Virginia Library

33. Indian Home Life
BY WILLIAM STRACHEY (1610-1612)

THE drink of the Indians is like that of the Turks, clear water. For although they have grapes in abundance, they have not learned the use of them. They have not found out how to press them into wine. Pears or apples they have none with which to make cider.

The men spend their time in fishing, hunting, wars, and such manlike exercises out of doors. They scorn to be seen in any woman's work. This is the reason why the women are very busy and the men so idle.

Their fishing is often much in boats which they call quintans. They make one out of a tree by burning and scraping away the coals with bones and shells, till they have made it in the form of a trough.[133]

Instead of oars they use paddles and sticks. They row faster than we can in our barges. They have nets for fishing, which are made of the barks of certain trees, and of deer sinews. There is a kind of grass out of which their women spin a very even thread, rolling it with their hands.

This thread serves for many purposes. They use it to make coverings, to sew their garments of feathers, and to make their leggings. With it, also, they make lines for fishing.

In the time of their hunting, they leave their habitations and gather themselves into companies; and then they go to the wildest places with their families. There they pass their time in hunting and getting wild fowl. In the time of hunting every man will try to do his best to show his skill. For by excelling in the chase they obtain the favor of the women.

While they are hunting in deserts or wildernesses there are commonly two or three hundred together With the sunrising they call up one another and go forth searching for the herd of deer. When they have found it they encircle it with many fires. Between the fires, they place themselves, making the most terrible noise that they can. The deer, frightened by the fires and the voices, betake them to their heels. The Indians chase them so long within that circle, that many times they kill six, eight, ten, or fifteen in a morning.

Hares, partridges, turkeys, fat or lean, young or old, even in laying or in brooding time, they devour. At no time do they spare any that they can catch.[134]

There is a kind of exercise that they have among them much like that which boys call bandy in English.[135] Likewise, they have the exercise of football.[136] In this they only use the foot forcibly to carry the ball from the one to the other. They kick it to the goal with a kind of skill and swift footmanship, to excel in which is thought a great honor. But they never strike up one another's heels, as we do. They do not consider it praiseworthy to win a goal by such an advantage.

The spare time between their sleep and meals they usually use in gayety, dancing, and singing. For their kind of music, they have different instruments.

They have a kind of cane on which they pipe.[137] These can hardly be sounded without great straining of the breath. Upon these instruments they keep a certain rude time. But their chief instruments are rattles, made of small gourds or of shells. These mingled with their voices, sometimes twenty or thirty together, make such a terrible howling as would rather frighten than give pleasure to any man.

The women love children very dearly. To make their children hardy they wash them in the coldest mornings in the rivers. By painting and ointments, they so tan their skin, that after a year o. two no weather will hurt them.

To practice their children in the use of their bows and arrows, the mother does not give them their breakfast in a morning until they have hit a mark which she sets for them to shoot at.

So skilful do they expect the children to become, that the mother often throws up in the air a piece of moss which the boy must hit as it falls, with his arrow. If he does not succeed he cannot have his breakfast.