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Page 26
"Their boats whereof we brought one to Bristoll, were in proportion
like a wherrie of the river of Thames, seventeene foot long and
foure foot broad, made of the barke of a birch tree, farre exceeding
in bignesse those of England: it was sowed together with strong and
tough oziers or twigs, and the seames covered over with rozen or
turpentine little inferiour in sweetnesse to frankincense, as we
made triall by burning a little thereof on the coales at sundry
times after our comming home: it was also open like a wherrie, and
sharpe at both ends, saving that the beake was a little bending
roundly upward. And though it carried nine men standing upright, yet
it weighed not at the most, above sixtie pounds in weight, a thing
almost incredible in regard of the largenesse and capacitie thereof.
Their oares were flat at the end like an oven peele, made of ash or
maple, very light and strong, about two yards long wherewith they
row very swiftly." [Footnote: Purchas, IV. 1655.]
The silence of the letter in regard to this species of the canoe is
the more remarkable, as it is in connection with the natives of the
harbor where they spent fifteen days, that mention is made in it a
second time of the manner of making their boats out of single logs,
as if it were a subject of importance, and worthy of remark. The
inference is most strongly to be drawn therefore, from this
circumstance, that the writer knew nothing about the bark canoe, or
the people who used them.
The absence of all allusion to any of the peculiar attributes,
especially of the essential character just described, of the natives
of the great bay leads to the conclusion that the whole account is a
fabrication. But this end is absolutely reached by the positive
statement of a radical difference in complexion between the tribes,
which they found in the country.
The people whom they saw on their first landing, and who are stated
to have been for the most part naked, are described as being black
in color, and not very different from Ethiopians, (di colore neri
non molto dagli Etiopi disformi) and of medium stature, well formed
of body and acute of mind. The latter observation would imply that
the voyagers had mixed with these natives very considerably in order
to have been able to speak so positively in regard to their mental
faculties, and therefore could not have been mistaken as to their
complexion for want of opportunity to discover it. The precise place
where they first landed and saw these black people is not mentioned
further than that the country where they lived was situated in the
thirty-fourth degree of latitude. From this place they proceeded
further along the coast northwardly, and again coming to anchor
attempted to go ashore in a boat without success, when one of them,
a young sailor, attempted to swim to the land, but was thrown, by
the violence of the waves, insensible on the beach. Upon recovering
he found himself surrounded by natives who were black like the
others. That there is no mistake in the design of the writer to
represent these people as really black, like negroes, is made
evident by his account of the complexion of those he found in the
harbor of the great bay in latitude 41 Degrees 40", who are
described as essentially different and the finest looking tribe they
had seen, being "of a very white complexion, some inclining more to
white, and others to a yellow color" (di colore bianchissimo; alcuni
pendano piu in bianchezza, altri in colore flavo). The difference
between the inhabitants of the two sections of country, in respect
to color, is thus drawn in actual contrast.
This is unfounded in fact. No black aborigines have ever been found
within the entire limits of North America, except in California
where some are said to exist. The Indians of the Atlantic coast were
uniformly of a tawny or yellowish brown color, made more conspicuous
by age and exposure and being almost white in infancy. The first
voyagers and early European settlers universally concur in assigning
them this complexion. Reference need here be to such testimony only
as relates to the two parts of the country where the distinction is
pretended to have existed. The earliest mention of the inhabitants
of the more southerly portion is when the vessels of Ayllon and
Matienzo carried off sixty of the Indians from the neighborhood of
the Santee, called the Jordan, in 1521, and took them to St.
Domingo. One of them went to Spain with Ayllon. They are described
by Peter Martyr, from sight, as semifuscos uti nostri sunt agricolae
sole adusti aestivo, half brown, like our husbandmen, burnt by the
summer sun. [Footnote: Dec. VII, 2.] Barlowe, in his account of the
first expedition of Raleigh, which entered Pamlico sound, within the
region now under consideration, describes the Indians whom he found
there as of a "colour yellowish." [Footnote: Hakluyt, III. 248.]
Captain John Smith, speaking of those of the Chesapeake, remarks,
that they "are of a color brown when they are of age, but they are
born white." [Footnote: Smith, Map of Virginia, 1612, p. 19.] On the
other hand the natives of Massachusetts and Rhode Island in latitude
4l Degrees 40' are described by the first explorers of that region
in substantially the same terms. Brereton, who accompanied Gosnold
in his first voyage to the Elisabeth islands and the main land
opposite, in 1602, mentions the natives there, as being of a
complexion or color "much like a dark olive." [Footnote: Purchas, IV.
1652.] Martin Fringe who visited Martha's Vineyard the next year and
constructed there a barricade where the "people of the country came
sometimes, ten, twentie, fortie or three score, and at one time one
hundred and twentie at once," says, "these people are inclined to a
swart, tawnie or chesnut colour, not by nature but accidentally."
[Footnote: Ibid, IV, 1655.] And Roger Williams, partaking of the
same idea as Pringe, that the swarthy color was accidental,
testifies, almost in the same language as Captain Smith, that the
Narragansets and others within a region of two hundred miles of
them, were "tawnie by the sunne and their annoyntings, yet they were
born white." [Footnote: Roger Williams's Key, 52.] Thus the
authorities flatly contradict the statement of black Indians
existing in North Carolina, and a difference of color between the
people of the two sections claimed to have been visited in this
voyage.
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