European Visions: American Voices (British Museum Research Publication)

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European Visions: American Voices

Edited by Kim Sloan

British Museum Research Publication Number 172

Publishers The British Museum Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DG Series Editor Josephine Turquet Assistant Production Editors: Elizabeth Davidson, Margarita Luna

Distributors The British Museum Press 46 Bloomsbury Street London WC1B 3QQ European Visions: American Voices Edited by Kim Sloan Front Cover: John White, A Festive Dance (BM 1906.0509.1.10) ISBN 978-086159-172-5 ISSN 1747-3640 © The Trustees of the British Museum 2009

Note: the British Museum Occasional Papers series is now entitled British Museum Research Publications. The OP series runs from 1 to 150, and the RP series, keeping the same ISBN preliminary numbers, begins at number 151. A copy of this publication is also available online. For a complete catalogue of the full range of OPs and RPs see the series website: www/the britishmuseum.ac.uk/researchpublications Order from www.britishmuseum.org/shop For trade orders write to: Oxbow Books, 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW, UK Tel: (+44) (0) 1865 241249 e-mail [email protected] website www.oxbowbooks.com or The David Brown Book Co PO Box 511, Oakville CT 06779, USA Tel: (+1) 860 945 9329; Toll free 1 800 791 9354 e mail [email protected]

Printed and bound in the UK by Latimer Trend

Contents

Notes on the Contributors, Abstracts of their Papers and Recent Publications

v

Introduction Kim Sloan

1

Keynote Paper: Roanoke’s Achievement Karen Kupperman

3

Section 1: Economic and Cultural Contexts Introduction and Summary Peter Mason

14

Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report: Knowledge-Making and the Roanoke Voyage Stephen Clucas

17

‘Counterfeited According to the Truth’: John White, Lucas de Heere, and the Truth in Clothing Michael Gaudio

24

Truth and Artifice in the Visualization of Native Peoples: from the Time of John White to the Beginning of the 18th Century Stephanie Pratt

33

Section 2: Nature and Natural History Introduction and Summary Florike Egmond

42

Elizabethan London’s Naturalists and the Work of John White Deborah Harkness

44

Don’t Eat, Don’t Touch: Roanoke Colonists, Natural Knowledge, and Dangerous Plants of North America Karen Reeds

51

Section 3: New Visions of a New World Introduction and Summary Kim Sloan

59

Conservation of John White’s Watercolours Alice Rugheimer

61

Analysis of John White’s Pigments Janet Ambers, Duncan Hook and Antony Simpson

67

John White’s Materials and Techniques Timea Tallian

72

‘A Kind of Gentle Painting’: Limning in 16th-Century England Katherine Coombs Through an Artist’s Eye: Observations on Aspects of Copying in Two Groups of Work by John White c. 1585–90 Sally Birch

77

85

Section 4: American History Introduction and Summary Peter C. Mancall Lost Colonists and Lost Tribes Michael Leroy Oberg

98

101

John White and British Antiquity: Savage Origins in the Context of Tudor Historiography 106 Sam Smiles Serialised Virginia: the Representational Format for Comparative Ethnology, c. 1600 Ernst van den Boogaart Texts, Images and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in early Modern Europe: What we can Learn from White and Harriot Joan-Pau Rubiés

113

120

Past, Present, and Future: Exploring and Restoring Native Perspectives in the Chesapeake 131 Audrey Horning

Notes on Contributors, Abstracts of their Papers and Recent Publications

Janet Ambers is a member of the Science group of the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum specialising in Raman spectrometry and radiography. Analysis of John White’s Pigments This paper summarises the results of the recent analytical work carried out on the John White watercolours by the Science group at the British Museum. Publications: with J. Bescoby, J. Rayner, D. Hook and A. Simpson, ‘New Visions of a New World: The conservation and analysis and the John White watercolours’, in British Museum Technical Bulletin, 1, 2007, 9–22. Sally Birch was formerly a book editor and has written several non-fiction books. She gained a Cert. HE with distinction in botanical illustration at Cheltenham College in 1999 and has since practised, taught, and exhibited botanical art. She is particularly interested in the work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues and his contemporaries. She has recently completed a Dip.A. at the University of Wales (Lampeter). Through an Artist’s Eye: Observations on Aspects of Copying in Two Groups of Work by John White c. 1585–90 This paper examines artistic techniques suggestive of copying in drawings attributed to John White, and considers how they might provide evidence of the chronological and derivative sequence of a) corresponding natural history subjects of White and the ‘Sloane Volume’ and b) the ‘Pictish paintings’. Publications: with M. Hill, Cotswold Stone Homes (Stroud 1994). Ernst van den Boogaart (Private scholar, Amsterdam, Netherlands) Serialised Virginia: The Representational Format for Comparative Ethnography, c. 1600 This contribution presents the Virginia watercolours, now in the British Museum, and the engravings of the True Pictures and Fashions of the People of Virginia, published by Theodore de Bry, as examples of a specific format of ethnographic representation. The format consists of a main series of costume book plates, showing a non-European society as a coherent social structure, and subseries showing specific dimensions of social action within that society. The format is bimedial: the plates were supposed to be elucidated by oral or written comments of reliable informants. In the case of the True Pictures the comments are printed below the plates, the album of watercolours was probably meant to be discussed in the company of knowledgeable viewers. The format encouraged the viewers to immerse themselves in the way of life of the Virginians. In this way it suggested to them a point of view that mediated between the perspective of the indigenous Virginians and that of the future English colonisers. Earlier in the 16th

century this type of representation had occasionally been used. Through the True Pictures it became the leading format for ethnographic representation in the printed travel reports of the early 17th century. Recent publications: ‘Heathendom and Civility in the Historia Indiae Orientalis’, in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 53 (2002) 71–105; ‘De Brys’Africa’, in S. Burghartz (ed.), Inszenierte Welten. Die west- und ostindischen Reisen der Verleger de Bry, 1590–1630 (Basel 2004), 95–155. Stephen Clucas, Reader in Early Modern Intellectual History, School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report: KnowledgeMaking and the Roanoke Voyage In late 16th-century England the drive towards maritime trade and colonial settlement produced a significant volume of print publications, culminating in Richard Hakluyt’s monumental Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). It could be argued that the entrepreneurial desires of Elizabethan traders and investors laid the foundations of a ‘knowledge economy’ which was to grow exponentially over the next 200 years, in which the production of knowledge was closely tied to the production of capital. In this paper I consider Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588) and the Roanoke voyage as part of such a ‘knowledge economy’. What kinds of knowledge does the colonising process generate? What rhetorical forms does knowledge produced under these conditions take? To what extent does the knowledge produced exceed the requirements of its investors? What does it mean to be ‘imployed in discouering’? These are some of the questions which I hope to address and in doing so place Harriot within the context of an energetic mercantile culture of ‘traffique’, ‘settlement’ and ‘discouery’. Recent publications: (ed.), John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought, International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, 193 (Dordrecht 2006); ‘Enthusiasm and “damnable curiosity”: Meric Casaubon and John Dee’, in R.J.W. Evans and A. Marr (eds), Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Aldershot 2006), 131–48; ‘Mathematics and Humanism in Elizabethan England’, Journal de la Renaissance, 4 (2006), 308–18. Katherine Coombs, Curator, Paintings, Word and Image Department, Victoria & Albert Museum ‘A Kind of Gentle Painting’: Limning in 16th-Century England This paper builds on ongoing research into the art of limning (the use of watercolour) in 16th- and 17th-century England. It considers the rhetoric of limning as a gentlemanly art form, European Visions: American Voices | v

Contributors expressed in an unpublished treatise by the portrait limner Nicholas Hilliard and various publications by Henry Peacham, gentleman. It considers the genealogy of limning, and how throughout the 16th century limning continued as a documentary art form, while at the same time developing as a portrait art. It considers how the rhetoric and practice of limning in 16th-century England can inform us about John White as artist and gentleman. Forthcoming publications: ‘From Limning to Miniature: the Etymology of the Portrait Miniature’, and ‘Limning as a Gentleman’s Art in Seventeenth-century England’, both in S. Lloyd (ed.), The Miniature Portrait c. 1500–1850: Current Research and New Approaches (National Galleries of Scotland 2009). Florike Egmond, Scaliger Institute, University of Leiden Recent publications: with P. Mason, The Mammoth and the Mouse: Microhistory and Morphology (Baltimore and London 1997); The Whale Book. Whales and other marine animals as described by Adriaen Coenen in 1585, edited and with an introduction by F. Egmond and P. Mason (London 2003); with P. Hoftijzer and R. Visser (eds), Carolus Clusius. Towards a cultural history of a Renaissance naturalist (Amsterdam 2007); with Francisco Bethencourt (eds), Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe 1400–1700 (Cambridge 2007). Michael Gaudio, Associate Professor, Dept of Art History, University of Minnesota ‘Counterfeited According to the Truth’: John White, Lucas de Heere, and the Truth in Clothing At the end of the 16th century, John White and Lucas de Heere produced extraordinary watercolor drawings that described in detail the clothing and appearances of various peoples of North America and Europe. While their work remains a landmark in the history of visual ethnography and anticipates later ethnological efforts to describe and classify nations and ethnicities, this paper considers the work of White, de Heere, and their contemporaries within the context of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, at a moment when clothing was far from a stable signifier of cultural meaning. Recent publication: Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minnesota 2008). Deborah Harkness, Associate Professor of History, University of Southern California Elizabethan London’s Naturalists and the Work of John White This paper explores the possible interconnections between John White and a circle of prominent European naturalists who lived and worked in Elizabethan London. The naturalists included James Cole (the Antwerp-born nephew of Abraham Ortelius), Matthew de L’Obel (the eminent Flemish botanist and author), James Garret (a Flemish apothecary and tulip propagator), Thomas Mouffet (the English physician and naturalist), and Thomas Penny (another English physician and naturalist). Artists such as the Gheerhaerts were their neighbours in London, they knew Jacques le Moyne, and they traded pictures and natural objects with Flemish artists on the continent. In addition, this group were on good terms with vi | European Visions: American Voices

Carolus Clusius, and were instrumental in sharing New World specimens from the Ralegh and Drake voyages with him for his botanical studies. Recent publications: John Dee’s Conversations with Angels (Cambridge 1999, 2006); The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven 2007). Audrey Horning, Senior Lecturer in Historical Archaeology, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester Past, Present, and Future: Exploring and Restoring Native Perspectives in the Chesapeake The historiography of European exploration and settlement of the Chesapeake region of North America has long relied upon ethnohistorical and literary sources, invariably prioritising European perspectives on the process and impact of early modern colonialism. Even the most recent archaeological explorations of historic sites such as Roanoke and Jamestown similarly emphasise what the material evidence suggests about the experiences of the settlers, rather than focusing upon insights into native culture and the character of relations between ‘natives and newcomers.’ Critical re-examination of contact-period archaeology in the region challenges the seeming invisibility of native peoples, provides an important if complex counterpoint to the White representations, and considers the ways in which native peoples endeavoured to direct and control interactions with the European interlopers. Moving from the past to the present, contemporary tribal communities are increasingly seeking greater public recognition as a means of regaining control over their own histories. Acknowledging the disparate perspectives, contributions, and experiences of Virginia’s First People highlights the ambiguities of colonial entanglements and their continuing legacy, in a year dedicated to commemorating the 1607 founding of Jamestown. Recent publications: with M. Palmer, Crossing paths or sharing tracks? Future directions in the archaeological study of post-1550 Britain and Ireland (Woodbridge 2008); with R. ÓBaoill, C. Donnelly and P. Logue, The Post-Medieval Archaeology of Ireland, c. 1550–1750 (Dublin 2007); ‘Archaeology and the Construction of America’s Jamestown’, in Post-Medieval Archaeology 41(1), 2006, 1–27; ‘English Towns on the Periphery: Seventeenth-Century Town Development in Ulster and the Chesapeake’, in A. Green and R. Leech (eds), Cities in the World, Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, Leeds 2005, 61–82. Forthcoming publication: Ireland in the Virginian Sea: A Comparative Colonial Archaeology. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History, New York University Roanoke’s Achievement Although Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke did not succeed as a colonial foundation, it made substantial contributions to English comprehension of the Atlantic, both in the design of colonial societies and in understanding American cultures. The partnership of Manteo, the coastal Carolina Algonquian man who joined the colonists, the Renaissance scientist Thomas Harriot, and the painter John White made the record they created uniquely valuable. Recent publications: Roanoke: the Abandoned Colony

Contributors (Lanham, MD, 1984, 2007); Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America, Ithaca, NY, 2000; The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, MA, 2007). Peter C. Mancall, Professor of History and Anthropology, University of Southern California and Director, USCHuntington Early Modern Studies Institute Recent publications: with J.H. Merrell (eds), American Encounters: Natives and Newcomers from European contact to Indian Removal, 1500–1850 (New York 2000); (ed.), Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery: An Anthology (Oxford 2006); Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America (New Haven 2007); (ed.), The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624 (Chapel Hill 2007); Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson – A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic (New York 2009). Peter Mason, Independent scholar, Rome Recent publications: Before Disenchantment. Images of exotic animals and plants in the early modern era (London 2009); with C. Báez Allende, Zoológicos Humanos. Fotografías de fueguinos y mapuche en el Jardin d’Acclimatation de París, siglo XIX (Santiago de Chile 2006); with F. Egmond and K. Lankester (eds), The Whale Book of Adriaen Coenen, 1585 (London 2003); with C. Odone (eds), 12 miradas. Ensayos sobre pueblos selknam, yaganes y kawesqar / 12 perspectives. Essays on the Selknam, Yahgan and Kawesqar (Santiago de Chile 2002); The Lives of Images (London 2001); Infelicities. Representations of the Exotic (Baltimore and London 1998). Michael Leroy Oberg, Professor of History, State University of New York–Geneseo Lost Colonists and Lost Tribes Roanoke, of course, often has been viewed as the opening chapter in the story of English settlement in America. But what of the Algonquian peoples of the region, who met John White, Thomas Harriot, and the other colonists, who engaged with them in trade and conversation, and who ultimately determined the fate of Ralegh’s colonization efforts? Recent publications: The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’ Forgotten Indians (Philadelphia 2007); Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585–1685 (New York 2003); Uncas: First of the Mohegans (New York 2003). Stephanie Pratt, Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Plymouth Truth and Artifice in the Visualisation of Native Peoples: from the Time of John White to the Beginning of the 18th Century John White’s drawings are customarily regarded as valuable documents, witnesses of the Indian communities he encountered. Yet, when closely attended to, it is clear that his practice of visualisation reveals a knowledge of European art. His reliance on existing iconography might be called a species of ‘intervisuality’ and sets up an inherent hybridity in such images that is repeated later in other visual representations taken directly from Indian sitters up to the beginning of the 18th century and beyond. This paper proposes that White’s way of making images

indicates that he was not intending to produce exact visual notation, and that his deployment of iconographic traditions was deliberate and purposeful. His impact on artists coming after him was extensive and helped to perpetuate a visual construct standing for the American Indian. Recent publication: American Indians in British Art, 1700– 1840 (Oklahoma 2005) Karen Reeds, Independent scholar, affiliated with University of Pennsylvania and Princeton Research Forum; Guest Curator, Come into a New World: Linnaeus and America, American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia Don’t Eat, Don’t Touch: Roanoke Colonists, Natural Knowledge, and Dangerous Plants of North America Wee had nothing in the worlde to eat but pottage of sassafras leaues (Ralph Lane’s Discourse on the First Colony [of Roanoke], 17 August 1585–18 June 1586).

In narratives of American exploration and colonization, the risk of starvation is a common theme. Linked to it are the themes of eating unfamiliar plants out of desperation, of learning from native inhabitants which plants are safe as food or medicine, and of making educated guesses about which plants might be poisonous. Using examples from Roanoke, Jamestown, New Sweden, and illustrated herbals of the 16–17th century, I consider the ways Europeans discovered toxic properties of North American plants – by warnings from native Americans, by their own unhappy experiences, by analogy to Old World plants, by appeal to medical theory, and by systematic investigation – and the ways that natural knowledge was interpreted and disseminated. Recent publication and exhibition: ‘Leonardo da Vinci and Botanical Illustration: Nature Prints, Drawings, and Woodcuts circa 1500’, in J.A. Givens, K.M. Reeds, A. Touwaide (eds), Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550, AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art (2006) 205–38. Guest Curator, ‘Come into a New World: Linnaeus & America’, American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia, 15 February–1 July 2007. Joan-Pau Rubiés, Senior Lecturer, Department of International History, London School of Economics Texts, Images and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in early Modern Europe: What we can Learn from White and Harriot Historians of early Modern culture have often interpreted the pictorial images of savages as stereotyped dehumanized cannibals, or as stereotyped classicizing figures, as evidence of the limitations of contemporary perceptions of cultural alterity. A common argument suggests that during the first century of the encounter there was either no political will, or no cultural capacity, to perceive ‘the other’ in its difference, and that analogies with antiquity or to various European mythologies were used to domesticate that difference. However, many of the most influential images were those produced by engravers, famously those by De Bry, and there is a question of the extent to which artistic conventions, rather than cultural perceptions, determined certain iconographic choices. One way of challenging the idea of a ‘denial of alterity’ is to focus on the way images related to the ethnographic descriptions they sought to illustrate. Another way to contextualize artistic conventions is to compare engravings to European Visions: American Voices | vii

Contributors the drawings they followed. The corpus created by John White in ‘Virginia’ offers an exceptional opportunity to combine both approaches in order re-assess the whole historiography. Recent publications: with J. Elsner (eds), Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural history of travel (London 1999); Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance. South India through European Eyes 1250–1625 (Cambridge 2000); Travellers and Cosmographers. Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology (Aldershot 2007). Forthcoming publication: Europe’s New Worlds: Travel Writing and the Origins of the Enlightenment, 1550–1750, CUP. Alice Rugheimer, Senior conservator working in the Western Art on Paper studio in the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum. Conservation of John White’s Watercolours The paper describes and illustrates the process of examining and conserving John White’s watercolours in preparation for the exhibition. The drawings are presented from a conservator’s point of view, as physical objects, and the author discusses what was learned about their current condition and their past treatment, as well as how decisions were made to ensure they would be preserved safely for the future. Publications: with Y. Shashoua, ‘An evaluation of the Use of Cellulose Ethers in Paper Conservation at the British Museum’, in J. Eagan (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the Institute of Paper Conservation, London, April 1997 (London 1998) 150–9. Kim Sloan, The Francis Finlay Curator of the Enlightenment Gallery and Curator of British Drawings and Watercolours before 1880, Dept of Prints and Drawings, British Museum Recent publications: with I. Jenkins, Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his collections (London 1996); A Noble Art: Drawing Masters and Amateurs c. 1600–1800 (London 2000); ed., Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the 18th Century (London 2003); A New World: England’s First view of America (London 2007); with S. Lloyd, The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence (London 2008).

viii | European Visions: American Voices

Sam Smiles, Professor of Art History, University of Plymouth John White and British Antiquity: Savage Origins in the Context of Tudor Historiography In this paper I look at White’s illustrations of Picts and Britons, suggesting that the publication of these images may be regarded as contributing to a long-standing debate about the history and identity of the British people. The earliest significant illustrations of ancient Britons can be dated to the 1570s, with the work of Lucas de Heere and Jacques le Moyne. Neither Jacques le Moyne nor White seem to have known anything of de Heere’s work (which remained in manuscript) and it is conventional to take the engravings published by de Bry in 1590 after White (Thomas Hariot’s Briefe and true report on the new found land of Virginia) and republished by John Speed in his History of Great Britaine (1611) as the first widely circulated image of the Briton. This paper will consider the relationship of these images to the historiographical debate about early British history that was raging in the later 16th century, effectively polarizing scholars between those who held out for some sort of truth in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s mythography and those others, from Polydore Vergil (who published his treatise in the 1530s) to William Camden (whose Britannia was first published in 1586), whose scholarship would not support Trojans, Arthur and other colourful episodes in the national history. In such a context the representation of our remotest ancestors as people akin to the ‘savages’ of Virginia would have had repercussions. Recent publications: The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination (New Haven, 1994); with S. Moser, Envisioning the Past: Art and Archaeology (Oxford 2004); J.M.W. Turner: The Making of a Modern Artist (Manchester 2007) Timea Tallian, Research Student at the RCA/V&A (Royal College of Art) conservation programme John White’s Materials and Techniques Timea Tallian is studying Nicholas Hilliard’s materials and techniques using the method of practically reconstructing recipes from his and related treatises. Her talk will cover painting techniques, preparation of pigments, and tools used by John White. Thesis MPhil, RCA/V&A (Royal College of Art) Conservation programme, ‘Reconstruction of Nicholas Hilliard’s materials and techniques’, London 2006.

Introduction Kim Sloan

The exhibition A New World: England’s first view of America was held at the British Museum from 15 March to 17 June 2007. It provided the first opportunity in more than 40 years to examine in detail one of the greatest treasures of the Museum, 75 remarkable watercolours of the people, flora and fauna recorded by John White on a voyage to ‘Virginia’ (on the coast of present-day North Carolina) in 1585. The exhibition then toured to three venues in the United States: the North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, NC (20 October 2007 to 13 January 2008); the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT (6 March to 1 June 2008); and the Jamestown Settlement, Williamsburg, VA (15 July to 17 October 2008). The watercolours by John White (fl. 1585–93) provided the Elizabethan court with its first view of America and its inhabitants – a view that shaped the European perspective for more than 200 years. In the 1580s, John White, a gentleman and artist, accompanied several voyages sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to ‘Virginia’, named in honour of Queen Elizabeth. With Thomas Harriot (1560–1621), a mathematician and navigator employed by Raleigh, they surveyed the land and recorded what they saw, producing a written account and a series of amazing watercolours that documented the voyage. On a brief expedition to the mainland towns of Pomeiooc, Secotan and Aquascogoc in July 1585, he produced a spectacular series of 20 watercolours of the North Carolina Algonquians who lived there and their way of life. Today these watercolours are an incomparable record of America’s natural resources and native society as they were when the Old and New worlds first met. They were the basis of the engravings produced by Theodor de Bry to illustrate Harriot’s written account in his A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, published in four languages in Frankfurt in 1590 – the first volume of de Bry’s ambitious 25-volume series of illustrated accounts of voyages now known as de Bry’s America. John White returned from ‘Virginia’ with visions of Paradise, the perfect place for an English plantation in the New World. One hundred and fifteen men, women and children set out in 1587 to found the ‘Cittie of Raleigh’ on the Chesapeake with White as Governor. They were landed at Roanoke with insufficient supplies and White was sent home to obtain assistance; when he finally returned in 1590 the colonists had disappeared and the legend of the ‘Lost Colony’ was born. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue also included John White’s costume studies from Europe as well as images of Inuit from Frobisher’s voyages, Florida Indians, and Picts and ancient Britons, all included in the original album with the watercolours of the Virginia voyage. They were examined along with another album of related drawings purchased by Sir Hans Sloane from White’s descendants, in an attempt to explain the presence of these other watercolours and to set White’s work within a European and British cultural

and historical context. What the exhibition and catalogue1 could not do, for many reasons including physical constraints of space and time, was to present a Native American perspective to these voyages and to White’s watercolours that were the focus of the exhibition. The type of object-based exhibition the British Museum can mount is not necessarily the best medium for such a perspective, which is better explored and presented through the medium of a conference and its proceedings. This publication of the conference held with the brief of exploring these perspectives, along with other aspects of the voyages and their publications that could not be covered in the exhibition, is intended as a first attempt to open up directions that future research and exploration into these areas might take. In our world of specialists there are few opportunities to look at problems through the eyes of other disciplines, which can often inform and widen our too narrowly focussed views. The first aim of the conference then was to hold an interdisciplinary international academic forum for scholars from the fields of history, ethnography, literature, natural history, art history and economics. All of those invited to speak had recently published new work in their fields with significantly different perspectives. A summary of their recent publications is provided with the author’s description for each paper. In their papers as they appear here, each of them has taken into account relevant comments in the wide-ranging and enlightening discussions that followed their presentations at the conference. And each one has kept in mind the main purpose of the conference, which was to remind the reader that a Eurocentric viewpoint and traditional approach to history are no longer the only viable ones. We must attempt to see in new ways and learn to hear the voices of others through their approaches to their history – oral, ceremonial, ways of living and attitudes to life – through which they view their own history, which is not a separate past but very much a part of the present. This publication follows the format of the conference, which took as its starting point and basic parameters John White’s watercolours, Harriot’s account and de Bry’s publications, as the exhibition had done. It begins with the Keynote Lecture by Karen Kupperman, which provided a summary of some of the approaches taken in the past and how we might attempt new ones, particularly through the interaction of Manteo and Wanchese with Harriot and the court and the fundamental issue of language. The proceedings are then divided into four parts, each with a brief introduction by the moderator. The first part concerns itself with economic and cultural contexts; the second with natural history; the third with the physical production of the watercolours; and the fourth with their place in American history, then and now, European and Native American. The result is, we acknowledge, European Visions: American Voices | 1

Sloan still a very European view, but we hope that it will help to open doors to future approaches and discussions that recognize that history doesn’t just consist of events in the past but is something that is fluid and changes as our ways of viewing it change and we begin to listen to other voices. A few further comments on the conference and its proceedings are required. As mentioned above, there was no space in the exhibition to begin to really explore the Native American perspective in a way or the depth it required. It was not however ignored in the planning and the way that the exhibition was approached by all concerned in its realization. In the summer of 2006 the families and chiefs of eight Virginia tribes visited the British Museum to view the John White watercolours that were going to go on display and talk to the curators involved in the exhibition. The visit and their reflections on the drawings and their importance to their own history and their lives today were recorded by Max Carocci and Simona Piantieri. They produced a five-minute video, On the Traces of Pocahontas (2007), which was shown at the conference and at the three venues in the United States. It is available from them through [email protected]. Just as the titles of John White’s drawings vary according to whether they are taken from the inscriptions, the written accounts or the de Bry engravings, so the approaches to the subjects under discussion in the essays vary according to the author’s interpretation. There has been no attempt to impose consistency upon either. The whole purpose of online publication like this is to encourage, rather than close off, debate. American authors have used US spellings throughout. Two papers not given at the conference have been added to the section on the production of the watercolours as they were particularly appropriate to the proceedings: one was presented as a lunchtime lecture during the exhibition and the other was the response of a practising artist to questions raised in the exhibition and the conference. But there are other areas we could not explore that we would hope will now become the subject of other conferences and debates, for example the questions and issues surrounding Frobisher’s contact and capture of the Inuit and White’s depictions of them, the issue of Elizabeth’s plantations in Ireland and how they affected the perceptions of the people of Ireland and North America, and the subsequent activities of White and Harriot when they resided on Raleigh’s plantations in Munster after returning from Virginia.

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Finally, as editor, I would like to acknowledge the work of several people who have made possible the publication of these papers to such a wide audience. Foremost, I thank the authors for their perceptive contributions to the conference and for their patience and attention to detail in submitting their revised papers for publication. I would like to thank Sir John Elliott whose perceptive and supportive comments were invaluable. Kirsti Blom took on the task of picture researcher at short notice and efficiently organized all of the images within two weeks. I would also like to thank the British Museum Research Publications editor, Josephine Turquet for her role as Production editor of the publication. Joyce Chaplin, Christian Feest and Ute Kuhlemann contributed enormously to the conference, Ute particularly in the capacity of Conference Organizer, and all three wrote important new chapters for the exhibition catalogue but were unable to participate in this publication. We are very grateful to Morwenna Chaffe who helped to devise the conference title, and to her and Debbie Walker and volunteers from the British Museum Friends who assisted with registration and other matters during the conference itself. Finally, and most importantly, a very generous grant from the British Museum Challenge Fund provided the funds for the conference, including 50 free places for students, and for the picture research and costs of reproduction. I would like to convey my sincere gratitude to them all and to the people who attended the conference and made their own contributions through their comments. 1

Kim Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, London and Chapel Hill, NC, 2007; includes contributions by: Joyce E. Chaplin, ‘Roanoke “counterfeited according to the truth”’; Christian F. Feest, ‘John White’s New World’; and Ute Kuhlemann, ‘Between reproduction, invention and propaganda: Theodor de Bry’s engravings after John White’s watercolours’.

Notes to the Reader All the drawings from the British Museum by John White and attributed to him are in watercolour and body colour over graphite. The register numbers have been given for each of them and they can all be viewed in greater detail on the British Museum online database at http://www.britishmuseum.org/ research/search_the_collection_database.aspx .

Roanoke’s Achievement Karen Ordahl Kupperman

In the middle of the 1580s when English leaders first became interested in founding a permanent American presence, they were conscious that their country was far behind the greater European powers in these endeavors. This is not to say that England had not been involved in American ventures; English fishermen had been making annual voyages to the Newfoundland coast for decades. David Beers Quinn even argued that they may have discovered that portion of the American continents by 1481, a decade before Columbus’ historic voyage.1 English fishermen continued to play a leading role in the voyages that brought protein to Europe’s burgeoning population. Fishing was an ideal trade because it did not require maintenance of expensive year-round occupation. The ships came in the spring and departed with their loads of partially dried fish in the fall.2 So important was this trade that Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh’s older half-brother, aimed for Newfoundland when he set out on the exploratory voyage on which he died in 1583. Gilbert aimed to found a great empire in America and told his associates that ‘this voyage had wonne his heart from the South, and that he was now become a Northerne man altogether’.3 Gilbert’s resolve, however, was expressed on the eve of the storm in which his ship went down. The young Raleigh inherited Gilbert’s interest and he concentrated his attention on the south. The geopolitical situation had changed dramatically in the middle of the 1580s as tensions between Spain and England, the self-styled leader of the Protestant nations, threatened to erupt into open war with Spanish seizure of English merchant ships in 1585. In anticipation of such a rupture, Raleigh had sent a reconnoitering voyage to the Carolina Outer Banks in the summer of 1584. Raleigh’s principal goal was to find a site for a base from which English ships could attack the great heavy ships that carried New World treasure from Havana to Seville in convoy every summer. Roanoke Island, close to the Florida channel by which sailing ships exit the Caribbean, but sheltered behind the Carolina Outer Banks, seemed to be ideal for these purposes (Fig. 1, see over). The Anglo-Spanish War was fought in the Atlantic. The relatively poor English government had no plans to mount a royal navy; this war was fought entirely by private enterprise through government-issued licenses for privateering through which merchants could recoup losses they had suffered by Spanish actions. In theory such a license was controlled and limited, but in reality those who possessed them attacked all shipping. Roanoke was intended to offer rest and refitting to ships involved in privateering and to allow them to stay yearround in the Atlantic sheltered away from its furious storms. Spain, for its part, claimed the entire North American coast and had no desire to see an English presence there. The Spanish had planted St. Augustine in Florida, the first

permanent European settlement within North America, in 1565. They had already eliminated a Protestant French settlement on the northern Florida coast. Florida governor Pedro Menéndez de Avilés wrote to the Spanish king, Philip II, that he had ‘made war with fire and blood’ upon the Huguenots who had ‘come to these parts to settle and to plant this evil Lutheran sect’.4 Raleigh and his supporters knew that settling a colony in the Carolina Outer Banks was risky. But the rewards would be correspondingly great if ships based there could capture one of the great laden carracks. And they could assure themselves that not only were they recompensing English merchants and sailors for prior losses, but they also were only seizing wealth that the Spanish had extorted from the suffering Indians. The first English translation of Bishop Bartolomeo Las Casas’ depiction of Spanish cruelties towards the Indians was published in 1583 with the title The Spanish Colonie. And in 1584 Richard Hakluyt, the great promoter of an English global presence, wrote ‘A Particular discourse concerninge the greate and manifolde commodyties that are like to growe to this Realme of Englande by the Westerne discoveries lately attempted’, popularly known as the Discourse of Western Planting. This book remained in manuscript until modern times, an indication of its importance as a document meant only for the eyes of key actors in government circles. Hakluyt argued that the Spanish were weakened by their own corruption, and that vigorous action now could deprive them of the income that supported their campaign to harry Europe’s Protestants back into the Roman Catholic fold. I may therefore conclude this matter with comparinge the Spaniardes unto a dromme or an emptie vessel, which when it is smitten upon yeldeth a greate and terrible sounde and that a farr of, but come nere and look into them there is nothing yn them, or rather like unto the asse which wrapte himself in a lyon’s skin and marched farr of to strike terrour into the hartes of the other beastes, but when the foxe drewe nere he perceaved his longe ears and made him a iest unto all the beastes of the forrest. In like manner wee (upon perril of my life) shall make the Spaniarde ridiculous to all Europe, if with percing eyes wee see into his contemptible weakenes in the west Indies, and with true stile painte hym oute ad vivum unto the worlde in his fainte colours.

He also argued that the Indians were ripe for uprising and would welcome the English as liberators: The Spaniardes have exercised moste outragious and more then Turkishe cruelties in all the west Indies, whereby they are every where there becomme moste odious unto them whoe would ioyne with us or any other moste willinglye to shake of their moste intollerable yoke, and have begonne to doe yt already in divers places where they were lordes heretofore. So many and so monstrous have bene the Spanishe cruelties, suche strange slaughters and murders of those peaceable, lowly, milde, and gentle people together with the spoiles of Townes, provinces, and kingdomes which have bene moste ungodly perpetrated in the west Indies, as also divers others no lesse terrible matters, that to describe the leaste parte of them woulde require more then one

European Visions: American Voices | 3

Kupperman Figure 1 La Virginea Pars, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.3)

4 European Visions: American Voices

Roanoke’s Achievement chapiter especially where there are whole bookes extant in printe not only of straungers but also even of their owne countrymen (as of Bartholomew de Las Casas a Bisshoppe in Nova Spania), yea suche and so passinge straunge and excedinge all humanitie and moderation have they bene that the very rehersall of them drave divers of the cruell Spanishe which had not bene in the west Indies, into a kind of extasye and maze [...].5

The Roanoke colony was designed to be a privateering base, and the group of 100-plus men under military control who made up the first colony in 1585 was clearly chosen for that purpose. Queen Elizabeth released Captain Ralph Lane from service as commander of the garrisons at Clanmorris and Kerry in Ireland so that he could go to America as Governor. The Queen also donated her own ship, the Tyger, as the fleet’s flagship. Unfortunately the Tyger ran aground as the ships neared the Outer Banks and almost all the food supplies were spoiled. This was an inauspicious beginning for the proposed base, as the colonists would now be utterly dependent on the Indians for their food over the coming winter. So when Sir Francis Drake called at the island the next spring ready to refresh and resupply his fleet, he found the colonists desperate to return home. They had just preemptively attacked the Roanoke Indians, fearing a conspiracy on the Americans’ part, and their position had become untenable. Thus, Roanoke’s founding as an English colony had at least as much to do with European politics as it did with interest in America. The quest was both to weaken the Spanish and to enhance English power through the discovery of rich commodities or of a passage through to the Pacific – or both. But that was not the whole story. Raleigh was England’s Renaissance man as well as a leader in the nation’s development. In his intellectual pursuits as in his interest in American colonies, he followed in the footsteps of his halfbrother Humphrey Gilbert. Gilbert had designed a project for an academy for the sons of gentlemen and nobility that would teach the classical curriculum but would also educate them in empirical subjects and mathematical navigation. His goal was to produce a coterie of young men who could carry forward English projects abroad.6 As Raleigh approached his first American project, he saw it as a chance to expand European knowledge as well as England’s power. The captains of the 1584 reconnaissance, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, had come home full of enthusiasm. In his

published account Barlowe praised the land, saying ‘I thinke in all the world the like aboundance is not to be founde’, and he mentioned that he had seen the most abundant parts of Europe, probably including the Levant. He recklessly compared the Carolina coast to the Garden of Eden: ‘The earth bringeth forth all things in abundance, as in the first creation, without toil or labor.’7 Amadas and Barlowe brought home two young men from the Outer Banks, Manteo and Wanchese, and Raleigh’s science advisor, the young Thomas Harriot, worked with them over the winter of 1584–85 to learn some coastal Carolina Algonquian and to teach them some English. With this training, Harriot prepared himself for the task of creating a full natural history of America in collaboration with the painter John White. Wanchese abandoned the English as soon as the fleet carrying the 1585 colony arrived, but Manteo, whose home at Croatoan was farther south in the Outer Banks, remained with them. John White’s portfolio of paintings and Harriot’s A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia are the result of the three-way partnership of these men who produced an unparalleled American record.8 Manteo does not speak in his own voice in the documents, but his shaping role can be seen both in Harriot’s text and in the paintings, and we can assume that his willingness to stay with the colonists and to help them grew out of his perception that he could thus act as agent for his own people’s interests. One quality that makes the White-Manteo-Harriot record unique is the access to coastal Carolina Algonquian domestic life afforded these Europeans (Figs 2–6). Such access was not allowed to other English venturers, who mainly saw men and who saw even them mostly in ceremonial or adversarial settings. Manteo’s intervention made it possible for White and Harriot to understand the coastal Carolina Algonquians as civil people. Civil life was characterized by three organizational principles in European thought: government and law; religion; and settled life showing care for the morrow. Those who lived a nomadic way of life could not be fully civil. Anyone who saw John White’s painting of the town of Secoton or the engraving of it created in the workshop of Theodor de Bry with its neat and abundant agricultural fields, its depiction of a religious ceremony, and its houses organized along a central lane could

Figure 2 The wyfe of an Herowan of Pomeiooc, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.15)

Figure 3 The broyling of their fish ouer the flame of fier, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.11b)


Kupperman

Figure 4 Theire sitting at meate, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.20)

Figure 5 A cheife Herowans wife of Pomeoc and her daughter, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.13)

standing in the posture of an aristocratic European, one hand on his hip and one foot forward with the other hand holding a weapon (Fig. 8). This proud stance was reserved for the most high-ranking men in European portraiture and Harriot’s caption to the engraving of this figure identified him as one of ‘The Princes of Virginia’.11 White also painted a man who has been identified as the Roanoke chief Wingina and the wives of two chiefs in separate portraits (Fig. 9). Wingina and the wife of an unnamed chief were standing with folded arms, and Harriot’s caption to the engravings said ‘they fold their armes together as they walke, or as they talke one with another in signe of wisdome’. Wingina’s wife stood with her arms on her shoulders in a self-enclosing gesture; her entwined legs completed the mannerist posture (Figs 10–11). The English were particularly interested in how distinctions of all kinds were displayed. Postures, badges of office, tattooing and jewelry, and hair styling were all recorded with very great care; they were important not only because of the information embedded in them, but also because their existence demonstrated that the Indians maintained such distinctions as carefully as Europeans did. Barlowe observed that important men wore ‘redde peeces of copper on their heades’ and that these badges indicated ‘the difference betweene the Noble men and Governours of Countries, and the meaner sort’.12 Harriot observed different emblems; ‘in token of authoritye, and honor,’ he wrote, the ‘cheefe men’ wore ‘a

Figure 6 The aged man in his wynter garment, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.19)

only draw the conclusion that these people were fully civil (Fig. 7). As the author of a 1635 book on Maryland remarked, Algonquian towns resembled ‘Countrey villages in England’.9 Harriot’s A briefe and true report and Philip Amadas’ report on the reconnoitering voyage developed the message that White’s village paintings presented. Amadas and Barlowe carefully scrutinized relationships between Indians, and were gratified to observe the great respect accorded leaders and the order the Americans observed in trading with the English. One question that puzzled Europeans was whether the Indians could have law without written records, and Harriot assured his readers that the coastal Carolina Algonquians had institutionalized a system of memorization through which they retained their own history and remembered their law. In this, of course, their practice resembled the English system of customary law. He also gave a list of the crimes they recognized and the punishments for each.10 White’s paintings reinforced the argument that Indian leaders were worthy of respect. He painted an Indian leader 6 | European Visions: American Voices

Figure 7 The town of Secoton, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.7)

Roanoke’s Achievement Secoton with its neat fields of rows of maize in three stages of growth, and the engraving made from this painting added separate beds of sunflowers, beans, and pumpkins. Those who saw the painting or the engraving would have been gratified to see an idealized version of European-style agriculture. But Harriot’s text presented an agricultural regime that was closer to American realities, as he described planting corn in hills with nitrogen-fixing beans around the cornstalks:

Figure 8 An Indian werowance, or chief, painted for a great solemn gathering, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.12)

Figure 9 A cheife Herowan, possibly Wingina, chief of the Roanokes, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.21)

Figure 10 The wyfe of an Herowan of Secotan, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.18)

Figure 11 One of the wyues of Wyngyno, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.17)

chaine of great pearls, or copper beades or smoothe bones abowt their necks, and a plate of copper [hung] upon a stringe’. Every man indicated his allegiance by tattooes, ‘Wherby yt may be knowen what Princes subjects they bee, or of what place they have their originall’. In his engravings illustrating Harriot’s account, de Bry included a picture of a man with such a tattoo on his back and surrounded him by all the marks of this kind they had seen (Fig. 12).13 The Indians clearly passed the first test for civility: they had orderly government and they were led by admirable men who deserved the respect they commanded. White and Harriot’s collaboration also clearly indicated that coastal Carolina Algonquian culture met the test of living in settled towns and storing food for the morrow. Harriot’s A briefe and true report discussed many Indian crops in detail, and was careful to give the native name for every plant he described. Agriculture was one subject on which the visual report and the written did not match. John White painted the village of

Then their setting or sowing is after this maner. First for their corne, beginning in one corner of the plot, with a pecker they make a hole, wherein they put foure graines with that care they touch not one another, (about an inch asunder) and couer them with the moulde againe: and so through out the whole plot, making such holes and vsing them after such maner: but with this regard that they bee made in rankes, euery ranke differing from other halfe a fadome or a yarde, and the holes also in euery ranke, as much. By this meanes there is a yarde spare ground betwene euery hole: where according to discretion here and there, they set as many Beanes and Peaze: in diuers places also among the seedes of Macocqwer, Melden and Planta Solis.

Using these methods, an English acre yielded ‘at the least 200 London bushelles’ of corn and legumes, not counting other plants such as sunflowers and pumpkins [Macocqwer], whereas ‘in England fourtie bushelles of our wheate yeelded out of such an acre is thought to be much’. Harriot was particularly enthusiastic about maize, whose yield he considered miraculous: ‘a graine of marveillous great increase; of a thousand, fifteene hundred and some two thousand fold’.14 Peter Stallybrass has recently argued that the dialogue between text and image continued as engravers and painters in the Frankfurt workshop of Theodor de Bry transformed White’s paintings into copperplate images. De Bry worked from a now-lost set of paintings that White prepared for him, and he

Figure 12 The marks of sundrey Chief men of Virginia, Theodor de Bry (© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. c.38.i.18 )


Kupperman

Figure 15 Wingina with red hair and red-dyed deerskin, (The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia 135)

with bright red or orange color. This seemingly eccentric choice, he argues, shows that the de Bry added information from Harriot’s text to the paintings sent them by White (Fig. 15). Dyes were of prime importance to the English textile industry and overseas ventures were always looking for them. Harriot wrote that the Indians had

Figure 13 Engraving of Secoton (The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia 161)

Figure 14 Man and woman eating with display of American foods (The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia 153)

used the text of Harriot’s A briefe and true report in collaboration with the paintings to clarify and enhance his portrayal of Indian life. For example, de Bry added examples of the foods described by Harriot as forming the basic American diet to his picture of a man and woman eating (Figs 13–14). And in his engraving of the village of Secoton, de Bry depicted the growing corn without husks so that his meticulously colored books could show the corn as Harriot described it: ‘The graine is about the bignesse of our ordinary English peaze and not much different in forme and shape: but of divers colours: some white, some red, some yellow, and some blew.’ Stallybrass also points out that the illuminators who colored the Latin version of de Bry’s 1590 edition owned by the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia, drew on Harriot’s book as they painted the hair of selected individuals 8 | European Visions: American Voices

‘the seede of an hearbe called Wasewówr, little small rootes called Cháppacor, and the barke of the tree called by the inhabitaunts Tangómockomindge; which Dies are for divers sortes of red: their goodnesse for our English clothes remayne yet to be proved. The inhabitants use them onely for the dying of hayre, and colouring of their faces, and Mantles made of Deare skinnes’

and also for baskets and mats.15 Not only did the Indians meet the first two tests of civility – having government and law and living in settled villages with an agricultural regime – but these documents also clearly showed them as recognizing God and pursuing a relationship with the divine through organized religion. Harriot believed that their observances made them ripe for conversion to Christianity. Manteo’s role was crucial in giving the English access to this aspect of American life, an opening denied to later observers, and Harriot affirmed that he had had ‘special familiarity with some of their priestes’. Sophisticated Europeans were eager to learn about other religions, including Islam and American Indian practices. Harriot recovered an American creation story: the ‘one onely chiefe and great God, which hath bene from all eternitie’ first created lesser gods to help in shaping the creation. On earth the waters were made first, and then creatures ‘visible or invisible’. The first human being was a woman ‘which by the working of one of the goddes, conceived and brought foorth children’. Many of John White’s paintings portrayed religious themes. He painted two religious leaders. One was a priest, who conducted worship ceremonies. Harriot’s caption described him as older – ‘well stricken in yeers’ – and ‘as yt seemeth of more experience then the comon sorte’. Harriot also recorded that priests were ‘notable enchaunters’. The other man with access to the supernatural realm painted by White was a young man, identified as ‘The flyer’ or ‘The conjuror’. The conjurors, or ‘juglers’, were ‘verye familiar with devils’, who enabled them to foretell the future and gave them information about the

Roanoke’s Achievement

Figure 16 One of their Religious men, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.14)

Figure 17 The flyer, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.16)

activities of their enemies. Their followers believed in them because their predictions so often proved true (Figs 16–17). White also painted two religious ceremonies. One, probably the Green Corn ceremony, both as a separate painting and in his depiction of the town of Secoton, clearly indicated to European viewers that the Indians’ worship involved corporate and structured forms (Fig. 18). Harriot wrote that these ceremonies drew people from neighboring towns. He also wrote that they offered tobacco, Uppówoc, to their gods with ‘strange gestures, uttering therewithal and chattering strange words & noises’, and ‘they thinke their gods are marvelously delighted therwith’. Manteo’s collaboration with Harriot and White also allowed the Englishmen to present American mortuary customs with a depiction of a temple which housed the preserved bones of their ‘Weroans or cheefe lordes’. Harriot’s caption described the methods by which the flesh was removed from the bones, which were kept ‘still fastened together with the ligaments whole and uncorrupted’. A priest prayed over the skeletons day and night (Fig. 19). Harriot wrote that the Indians believed in the immortality of the soul and that people went either to ‘the habitacle of gods’ after death or, if they were wicked, to a great hole in the earth

Figure 18 A festive dance, possibly a Green Corn ceremony, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.10)

where the sun sets, ‘there to burne continually: the place they call Popogusso’. Harriot’s and Manteo’s linguistic skills were especially useful on these issues, as they learned the stories of two people who had had near-death experiences in which they had visited the afterlife. Both had seemed dead and had actually been buried before attendants saw signs of movement in the soil over the grave. The first, a ‘wicked man’, said that he had been near Popogusso when one of the gods allowed him to return to the world of the living so that he could ‘teach his friends what they should doe to avoid that terrible place of torment’. The other reported that he had traveled along a highway bordered by fruit trees until he reached a town of ‘most brave and faire houses’, where he encountered his father, who instructed him to return, even though he wanted to stay, so that he could urge the people to live in such a way that they could ‘enjoy the pleasures of that place’ after death.16 One reason why Europeans wanted to know about Americans’ religious life was because of the widespread thought that they might be descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The timing of God’s revelation of the two American continents kept hidden from the Old World for so many centuries indicated to many that they were living in a time of great importance. The knowledge that God had given Adam had been fragmented as peoples became dispersed over the earth. Now, with their ability to study the peoples, plants and animals of the newly disclosed continents, intellectuals hoped that they might bring all that knowledge together again. One part of this would be reversing the corruption of human language that had occurred after the Tower of Babel, and

Figure 19 The Tombe of their Cherounes or cheife personages, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.9)


Kupperman Harriot recorded his observations with these goals in mind. We can see this in the careful description and depiction of the people, plants and animals White and Harriot saw. Another aspect can be seen in Harriot’s careful noting of the indigenous name for every item he described and White’s inscriptions on many of his drawings, so that no part of that original language that might have survived among the Americans would be lost. But Harriot went much further. He invented a system for recording languages, a syllabary, which was structured around the sound of the language rather than the meaning. Using his system, any language could be recorded so that anyone could pronounce it properly. Harriot called it: ‘An universall Alphabet conteyninge six & thirty letters, whereby may be expressed the lively image of mans voyce in what language soever; first devised upon occasion to seeke for fit letters to expresse the Virginian speche. 1585’. Most of Harriot’s work in his system was lost in the great London fire of 1666, but enough remains for its possibilities to be recognized, and we know that Harriot used it on Irish estate maps that he and White made for their patron, Raleigh. Historical linguist Vivian Salmon calls it ‘an astonishing feat for his time’.17 Theodor de Bry’s 1590 edition in four languages of Harriot’s A briefe and true report with his engravings of White’s pictures was a landmark event in the history of Europe’s engagement with America. Peter Stallybrass has marshaled evidence that the English version was a publishing failure, while the editions in German and in Latin enjoyed immense success; therefore, Harriot’s pride in having had his work published in four languages was well placed.18 Although the paintings were largely unknown until modern times, the engravings became the Indians for Europeans through the ensuing centuries. In the 18th century, images of the coastal Carolina towns of Secoton and Pomeiooc appeared as Apache villages in a French map of the New Mexico region north of the Rio Grande River.19 Although it was intended as just a taste of the great full natural history Harriot intended to write, A briefe and true

Figure 20 The arrival of the Englishmen in Virginia, Theodor de Bry (©The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. c.38.i.18)


report was the only book he ever published, and Harriot’s true stature as a Renaissance scientist was not fully known until his papers were studied in modern times. Both Harriot and White spent time in Ireland after the 1585 colony came home, and Harriot ended his personal experience of America. White, however, remained committed to the project of a colony at Roanoke, and this led to the project’s other great achievement: the evolution of the true model of successful colony design. Raleigh’s second attempt to found a colony in America in 1587 completely scrapped the military outpost model. The new plan resembled the kinds of plantations Raleigh and others were building in Munster. It was nothing less than an attempt to create a new society, an idealized model of English society. The company centered on complete families, and David Beers Quinn suggested that they may have included Puritans.20 John White went as Governor, and the colonists included his married daughter Eleanor Dare, and her husband, Ananias. Their daughter, Virginia Dare, was born shortly after the colony arrived. These families were promised substantial landholdings of their own, and they were directed to settle on Chesapeake Bay, the destination of the Jamestown colonists 20 years later. The dimensions of the changed intentions were signaled by the name applied to the new venture. It was patented as ‘the Cittie of Raleigh in Virginea’, and Raleigh arranged for its governor and council to receive grants of arms (Fig. 20).21 Settling families on land of their own was the only colonial model that actually worked in English America, but this knowledge was hard won. Roanoke was abandoned by Raleigh as England faced the great Spanish Armada. All national resources were commandeered for the defense of the nation. Spain’s decision to confront England was, of course, a response to the increased level of privateering that Roanoke had been designed to support. No English person ever saw the final group of colonists again, so the lessons of their experiences were also lost. We

Roanoke’s Achievement now know the region endured massive environmental stress during the colony’s first three years. Tree-ring studies of living thousand-year-old bald cypress trees show that 1587 was the first year of the most severe three years of drought of the past 800 years. When they arrived, the colonists approached Manteo’s Croatoans, the only group that had not been alienated by the 1585 colony. White wrote that they ‘came unto us, embracing and entertaining us friendly, desiring us not to gather or spill any of their corne, for that they had but little’. It would not be possible for the colonists to rely on food supplies from the Indians as had the 1585 group. And if things were bad in 1587, they would have been much worse in ensuing years with each successive bad harvest.22 El Niño may also have helped determine the final colony’s fate. Historical climatologists have suggested that there may have been a severe El Niño in 1590, which is the year John White was finally able to get back to the Outer Banks to try to find the colonists. The Roanoke site was deserted, but they had left evidence that they had departed in orderly fashion; therefore, White assumed they had carried out the plan to move into the interior or up to the Chesapeake Bay. They marked a tree with the word CROATOAN, which was Manteo’s home. White believed that at least some of them had gone south on the Outer Banks. But the ship on which White sailed was driven away by a hurricane, possibly related to El Niño conditions, and the search for the colonists was given up.23 Because the colonists were never recovered, and their experiences were unrecorded by English sources, the lessons of the final Roanoke model were never drawn. Jamestown had to relearn those lessons painfully and slowly; the colony endured a decade of miserable unproductiveness until the Virginia Company was able to make the breakthrough Raleigh had made 30 years before. In 1618, the year of Raleigh’s execution, the company gave up the attempt to control the colony through military government and instead offered land, a degree of selfgovernment and the chance for normal family life to colonists. With these elements in place, the colony finally began to grow.24 Jamestown’s story makes us realize more clearly the dimensions of the lost opportunity at Roanoke. Had the familycentered colony been supported as Raleigh and White apparently intended, the successful model might have been recognized without the many false starts to come before it emerged again in Jamestown. Even though White was its Governor, he had reluctantly gone home rather than stay with his colony in 1587, because the migrants feared that their place among the many enterprises Raleigh was pursuing might slip. Manteo remained with the planters. White’s role was to urge on the effort to assemble ships, more colonists, and supplies, and apparently this was all well in hand when the Armada threat called forth a stay of all shipping. Ultimately, John White lived out the rest of his life in Ireland. His last surviving letter was in 1593. He sent Richard Hakluyt, the great compiler of narratives, the account of his 1590 voyage in search of the colonists, and in the letter’s close he lamented his inability to reach them: ‘I would to God my wealth were answerable to my will.’ He wrote that he was finally forced to give up; having done all he could, he committed ‘the reliefe of my discomfortable company the planters in Virginia, to the merciful help of the Almighty,

whom I most humbly beseech to helpe & comfort them’.25 The Jamestown colonists heard various rumors about people like them who they hoped were the survivors and descendants of the lost colony. George Percy reported from the first exploring journey up the James River that they had seen ‘a Savage Boy about the age of ten yeeres, which had a head of haire of a perfect yellow and a reasonable white skinne, which is a Miracle amongst all Savages’.26 But neither this boy nor the other rumored Europeans and their children were ever seen again by the newcomers. The abandoned colony remained lost. Presumably they had melted into Indian life and lived on as Americans. Notes

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8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16

D.B. Quinn, ‘The argument for the English discovery of America between 1480 and 1494’, in Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620, London, 1974, 5–23. G.T. Cell, ed., Newfoundland Discovered: English Attempts at Colonisation, 1610–1630, London, 1982. E. Hayes, ‘Narrative of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Last Expedition’, in D.B. Quinn, ed., The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 2 vols, London, 1940, 385–423, quote 418. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to Philip II, 15 October 1565, in D.B. Quinn et al., eds, New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, 5 vols, New York, 1979, II, 395–404, quotes 397–8. The Spanish colonie, or Briefe chronicle of the acts and gestes of the Spaniardes in the West Indies, called the newe world, for the space of xl. yeeres: written in the Castilian tongue by the reuerend Bishop Bartholomew de las Cases or Casaus, a friar of the order of S. Dominicke. And nowe first translated into english, by M.M.S., London, 1583; R. Hakluyt, A Particuler Discourse concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties that are like to growe to this Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discoveries Lately Attempted, written in the yere 1584, D.B. Quinn and A.M. Quinn, eds, London, 1993, known as The Discourse of Western Planting, quote 52. On the role of key manuscripts see H. Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England, Oxford, 1993. H. Gilbert, The erection of an achademy in London for educacion of her maiestes wardes, and others the youth of nobility and gentlemen, London, 1578; H. Gilbert, Queene Elizabethes Achademy, F.J. Furnivall, ed., EETS, extra ser., 8, 1869, 1–12. On Gilbert’s intellectual circles see A. Grafton and L. Jardine, ‘Studied for action: How Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129, 1990, 30–78. A. Barlowe, The First Voyage Made to the Coastes of America, 1584, in D.B. Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584–1590, 2 vols, London, 1955, I, 91–116, quotes 95, 108–9. On the Roanoke colonies see Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584–1606, Chapel Hill, 1985, and K.O. Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, 2nd ed., Totowa, NJ, 2007. A. Vaughan, ‘Ralegh’s Indian interpreters’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., LIX, 2002, 341–76. Anon., A Relation of Maryland, London, 1635, 30. Barlowe, supra n. 7, I, 91–116; T. Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the new found land of Virginia, 1588, 1590, ibid., 373–5. On the aristocratic meaning of this posture, see J. Spicer, ‘The Renaissance elbow’, in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg, eds, A Cultural History of Gesture, Ithaca, 1991, 84–128. Barlowe, supra n. 7, I, 103. Harriot captions in Quinn (1955), supra n. 7, I, 438–9, 443. On descriptions of Indian life, see K.O. Kupperman, English and Indians: Facing Off in Early America, Ithaca, NY, 2000. Harriot, supra n. 10, I, 338, 342. Ibid., 334–8; P. Stallybrass, ‘Admiranda narratio: A European Best Seller’, in T. Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, facsimile edn of the 1590 Theodor de Bry Latin Edition, Charlottesville, 2007, 9–30. Harriot’s description of coastal Carolina Algonquian religion and his interaction with religious leaders is in his Briefe and true report in Quinn (1955), supra n. 7, I, 345, 372–8, and in his captions to the de Bry engravings, ibid., 425–7,430–2, 442–3.


Kupperman 17 V. Salmon, ‘Thomas Harriot (1560–1621) and the English origins of Algonkian Linguistics’, Historiographia Linguistica, XIX, 1992, 25–56, quotes 26, 33. Salmon describes the 20th-century rediscovery of Harriot’s manuscripts and the process through which their true significance became recognized. See also V. Salmon, Thomas Harriot and the English Origins of Algonkian Linguistics, The Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar, Occasional Paper No. 8, 1993, M. Booth, ‘Thomas Harriot’s translations’, The Yale Journal of Criticism, 16, 2003, 345–61, and J.W. Shirley, Thomas Harriott: A Biography, Oxford, 1983, 107–12. 18 Stallybrass, supra n. 15, 12–13. 19 ‘Carte de la Nouvelle France’, in H.A. Chatelain, Atlas Historique, tom. 6, Amsterdam, 1719. For this reference see H. Wallis, Raleigh and Roanoke: The First English Colony in America, 1584–1590, Raleigh, NC, 1985, 99. 20 Quinn, ‘Investment in the Roanoke Colonies and its consequences’, E. Thomson Shields Jr. and C.R. Ewen, eds, Searching for the Lost


21 22

23 24 25 26

Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection, Raleigh, NC, 2003, 92–105. The patent and grants are in Quinn (1955), supra n. 7, II, 506–12. J. White, ‘The fourth voyage made to Virginia’, 1587, in ibid., II, 526. D.W. Stahle et al., ‘The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts’, Science, 280, 1998, 564–7; D. B. Blanton, ‘If its not one thing, it’s another: The added challenges of weather and climate for the Roanoke Colony’, in Shields and Ewen, supra n. 20, 169–76. R. Grove and J. Chappell, ‘El Niño Chronology and the history of global crises during the Little Ice Age’, in Grove and Chappell, El Niño: History and Crisis, Cambridge, 2000, 1–30. K.O. Kupperman, The Jamestown Project, Cambridge, MA, 2007. John White to Richard Hakluyt, 4 February 1593, in Quinn (1955), supra n. 7, II, 712–16. G. Percy, Observations gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English, 1606, in P.L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, 16061609, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1969, I, 140.

Section 1

Economic and Cultural Contexts

Economic and Cultural Contexts Introduction and Summary Peter Mason The publication of the essays collected in Cultures of Natural History1 a little more than a decade ago may be said to have both consolidated and triggered a way of looking at the emergence of the human and natural sciences with an emphasis on the cultural context(s) within which they arose and developed. It can be seen as a shift from a ‘tunnel vision’ of the steady progress of a disinterested science to one that takes into account the various, sometimes conflicting interests and pressures within which such developments – both progressive and retrograde – arose. In line with this approach – and sometimes in polemic with the éminence grise of John White studies, David Quinn – Stephen Clucas places Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia firmly within an economic framework rather than in one of a disinterested search for knowledge. By implication, the drawings of John White may be taken to show a similar interest in the economic implications of the new colony.

Figure 1 Hinde de Loranbec, from Histoire Naturelle des Indes, watercolour (The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Bequest of Miss Clara S. Peck 1983, Ms. 3900, f. 90)


A significant part of the exhibition A New World: England’s first view of America was devoted to the parallels between the dress of the human figures among the John White drawings and parallels in Western dress as evidenced in costume books, pamphlets and alba amicorum. The context in which Michael Gaudio situates the John White drawings is that of dress and costume – words whose connotations of habit and custom extend into the world of ethical and moral values too. In the case of Native Americans, dress extends to the painted or tattooed skin as well, an area where John White and others could draw parallels with the ancient Picts (as discussed by Sam Smiles). Stephanie Pratt’s discussion of the John White drawings places them in a more rigorously art-historical framework and stresses how certain features – the pose of The flyer, for instance – betray the influence of European Mannerist conventions. The notorious ‘Renaissance elbow’, present for example in the White drawing of An Indian werowance, is another case of the European filter through which White portrayed his non-European subjects. But besides responding to a particular context, the drawings in turn left their imprint on subsequent renderings, and this Nachleben forms the second component of her paper. Besides these particular cultural contexts, there is another context into which the John White drawings can be inserted – one that, curiously enough, was not brought up during the conference itself. I am referring to the existence of other bodies of images displaying a similar content – renderings of human beings, plants and animals, i.e., what counted as ‘natural history’ in the 16th century – that are roughly contemporary with the White drawings. One such example is the so-called Drake Manuscript Histoire Naturelle des Indes, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library and probably dating from the early 1590s.2 Since Drake visited the area covered by John White on his way to rescue the failing English colony at Roanoke in 1586, the manuscript is obviously of relevance to the White illustrations. The 199 separate images on its 134 leaves represent plants, animals and people of the Caribbean – the very area through which White sailed on his way to the North American mainland. In particular, the watercolour of an Indian of Loranbec (Fig. 1), probably to be located near what is now South Carolina, invites comparison with John White’s figures. The artist, it is true, is no gentleman limner as White seems to have been, but we should put brackets around the issue of artistic skill: even the humblest ‘vernacular’ images may still be of relevance for comparative purposes. Another manuscript, this time one that was completed in the very year of the White voyage, 1585, is the 125-folio Whale Book by Adriaen Coenen (now in the library of the Royal Zoological Society, Antwerp).3 Coenen, an official beachcomber in the Netherlands, was no gentleman limner

Economic and Cultural Contexts: Introduction and Summary either, but he did frequent the Dutch nobility of his day and was on personal terms with William Prince of Orange. In spite of its title, this manuscript includes far more than whales alone; since the sea was taken to contain marine equivalents of the creatures that populated the land, Coenen regales the viewer with fanciful aquatic equivalents of lions, cows, horses and others. Adriaen Coenen also completed a much larger manuscript that he called the Fish Book (now in the Dutch National Library in The Hague).4 Predictably, this manuscript likewise ranges over a much wider field than the title suggests. Though his style is clearly more ‘vernacular’ than that of John White, comparison of Coenen’s rendering of the puffer fish with that by John White (Figs 2–3) shows a common interest in a creature that was regularly to be found in the Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. The Fish Book also includes portraits of Inuit (Fig. 4), probably based on an unidentified pamphlet, but with features that are not found in other visual records, such as

the actual scene of capture of an Inuit man in a kayak (Fig. 5). Moreover, Adriaen Coenen had himself seen two Inuit on display in The Hague in 1567, and his mention of them is the only evidence known to us for that particular display. Since both the John White drawings and the Sloane volume include renderings of Inuit (Fig. 6), which are obviously iconographically related to the same corpus of images as those by Coenen, this is another area in which further research is called for. In the field of costume books too, a genre that emerged in the course of the 16th century, it would be worth considering manuscripts as well as printed sources. One such manuscript is the autobiographical Trachtenbücher of the Augsburg banker

Figure 4 These are people who eat raw fish, Adriaen Coenen Visboeck, (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, f. 410 verso–411 recto) Figure 2 Puffer fish, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.51)

Figure 5 Capture of Inuit Adriaen Coenen Visboeck (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, f. 48 verso)

Figure 3 Puffer fish, Adriaen Coenen Visboeck (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, MS 78 E 54, f. 382 recto )

Figure 6 Inuit, John White (BM 1906.0509.1.29, 30)


Mason Matthäus Schwarz, the last entry of which is dated 16 September 1560.5 The Drake Manuscript, Coenen’s Whale Book and Schwarz’s costume book have appeared in quasi-facsimile editions by now. But there may be more unpublished and unattributed manuscripts from this period in collections that could throw light on other aspects of the John White drawings. Stephanie Pratt draws attention to the remarkable fact that, although John White could presumably have had access to two American Indians in England who had been captured during the first Virginia expedition, they do not appear to have sat for him. Whatever the explanation for this, it is the context that appears to have been of prime importance. He does represent American Indians when they are situated in the context of the exotic and faraway soil of Virginia; he does not when they are


situated in the familiar – though exotic to them – context of Elizabethan England. At times the context in which the subject is set seems to have played a more determinant role than the subject itself. Notes 1

2 3 4 5

Jardine, N., Secord, J.A., and Spary, E.C., eds, Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge, 1996. Histoire Naturelle des Indes. The Drake Manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York and London, 1996. Florike, E., and Mason, P., eds and with introduction, The Whale Book. Whales and other marine animals as described by Adriaen Coenen in 1585, London, 2003. The Fish Book of Adriaen Coenen can be consulted on-line at: http://www.kb.nl/webexpo/visboek.html. Un banquier mis à nu. Autobiographie de Matthäus Schwarz, bourgeois d’Augsbourg, présenté par Philippe Braunstein, Paris, 1992.

Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report: Knowledge-making and the Roanoke Voyage Stephen Clucas In late 16th-century England the drive towards the extension of maritime trading operations and the establishment of colonial planting and settlement enterprises to rival those of Spain produced a significant volume of print publications, culminating in Richard Hakluyt’s monumental Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). In this paper I will suggest that the entrepreneurial desires of Elizabethan traders and investors laid the foundations not only for a trading empire, but also for a ‘knowledge economy’ that was to grow exponentially over the next two hundred years, in which the production of knowledge was closely tied to the production of capital. The Grenville– Lane voyage to Roanoke in 1585–6 and Thomas Harriot’s representation of it in A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (published in 1588) offer us as an illuminating case-study of such a ‘knowledge economy’. In his two-volume collection of sources The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590, David Beers Quinn drew attention to what he saw as the limitations of Harriot’s first-hand account of the Roanoke voyage. ‘Thomas Harriot’s Brief and true report has two aspects’, Quinn suggested: ‘It is the propagandist tract to discourage adverse rumours about Raleigh’s Virginia and to set out the facts which would encourage settlers to go there. This governs its form and limits its contents.’1 Despite his identification of the ‘propagandist’ limitations of Harriot’s work, Quinn’s characterization of the contributions of Thomas Harriot and John White to the voyage has a very different emphasis. ‘It is the remarkable naturalism of White’s drawings’, Quinn says, ‘combined with the sympathetic detachment of Hariot’s observations which make the collaboration of the two men so noteworthy.’ The achievement of Harriot and White lies in the ethnographical light which they shed on ‘native society’, their ‘contribution to natural history’ and ‘cartographic work which was incomparably the best yet done on any part of North America by any Europeans’.2 The contribution of Harriot and White is thus a ‘contribution to knowledge’ the ‘opening up […] of a remarkable continent to inquiring European eyes’.3 This last phrase is perhaps the most helpful, for Harriot and White were indeed involved in ‘opening up’ the newly discovered continent, but whether the ‘eyes’ of Europeans were ‘inquiring’ or merely acquisitive, is the question of this paper. For Quinn, then, the Harriot–White enterprise is one which can broadly be categorized as ‘scientific’, dividing up neatly into natural history, ethnography and cartography, all of which seem to be construed as the ideologically indifferent acquisition of knowledge. Quinn’s emphasis on the ‘high degree of objectivity and the painstaking accuracy’ of the two men reflects a certain mid-20th-century understanding of scientific detachment which is seen as readily applicable to the late 16th century. This accuracy and objectivity Quinn says,

makes Harriot and White’s work in Virginia a ‘landmark in the history of English cartography and the natural sciences’.4 As the ‘trained mind’ of the expedition to White’s ‘practised eye’,5 Harriot’s duties were as much scientific as practical – thus, according to Quinn, ‘Harriot’s task when he sailed with Grenville in April 1585 was to take astronomical observations at sea, and act as a consultant on navigation.’6 Here already we can see signs of a tension within Quinn’s characterization of Harriot’s ‘detachment’. Even the astronomical observations have a practical orientation in relation to the voyage, and Harriot’s contribution is more invested in the enterprise than some of Quinn’s remarks may lead us to think. Quinn, of course, was too good a historian not to see the extent of these involvements. While he notes Harriot’s sympathetic insights into Native American culture – in which Harriot himself states that he was ‘specially imploied’ by Raleigh7 – Quinn recognizes that Harriot’s acquisition of skill in the Algonquian language (aided by his development of a highly sophisticated phonetic symbolic alphabet) had a largely utilitarian function. Harriot had almost certainly spent time with the Algonquians who had been brought back to England in 1584, Manteo and Wanchese, so that he might learn ‘as much as he could of the local language from them, and interrogat[ed] them about the resources, economic and other, of their homeland’. Once he had arrived at Roanoke Harriot’s role was ‘supervising the mapping of the new territories [...] and above all making a survey [...] of the economic resources of the region’.8 Far from being detached and objective, then, Harriot and White were fully implicated in the economic nature of the enterprise, and while their work may have generated knowledge which to 20th-century eyes at least has an objective value of its own, their work was fundamentally driven by the financial aims of the expedition. Quinn does recognise this arguing that, The positions which Harriot and White were to occupy in the 1585 expedition were those of which well-informed opinion by that time considered necessary to the effective conduct of any reconaissance in the newly-explored territories, whether the objective was trade, mines or settlement.9

This ‘well-informed opinion’ is typified, according to Quinn, by the figure of the ‘geographical consultant’: men like Richard Eden and the two Richard Hakluyts who ‘disposed of their information to merchants, speculators, explorers and would-be colonists’.10 Richard Hakluyt and the ‘traffique’ of knowledge Richard Hakluyt was without doubt one of the most outspoken promoters of this new ‘knowledge economy’ arguing the necessity for the ‘breeding vp of skilfull Sea-men and Mariners in this Realme’.11 He sought to promote the establishment of a lecture on navigation in London, modelled on those which had European Visions: American Voices | 17

Clucas been established in Spain by Charles V, arguing that English mariners ‘by lectures and such like instructions ... ought to haue a better education, then hitherto they haue had’. In addition to lectures Hakluyt also saw the publishing of ‘sundry exact and worthy treatises concerning Marine causes’ as a desideratum.12 Hakluyt points to the precedent of Sir Thomas Gresham, who ‘being but a Merchant hath founded so many chargeable Lectures, and some of them also which are Mathematicall, tending to the advancement of Marine causes’.13 The cultivation of skilled and knowledgeable mariners, Hakluyt suggests, would: turne to the infinite wealth and honour of our Countrey, to the prosperous and speedy discouery of many rich lands and territories of heathens and gentiles as yet vnknowen, to the honest employment of many thousands of our idle people.14

Hakluyt compares English voyages of discovery with those of Spain and Portugal, arguing that England’s exploration of the northern seas in Europe, Scandinavia and Russia while they had not met with the same ‘golden successe [… and] deductions of Colonies […and] attaining of conquests’ as those of their Spanish and Portuguese rivals were nonetheless every bit as courageous and honourable.15 Now, Hakluyt says, is the moment to emulate the ‘golden successe’ of their enemies by competing with them for territory in the new world: But nowe it is high time for vs to weigh our ancre, to hoise vp our sailes, to get cleare of those boistrous, frosty and misty seas, and with all speede to direct our course for the milde, lightsome, temperate, and warme Atlantick Ocean, ouer which the Spaniards and Portugales haue made so many pleasant prosperous and golden voyages.16

Hakluyt promotes this vision of an Atlantic colonising enterprise, and his own ‘sweet studie of the historie of Cosmographie’ as being ‘for the common-wealths sake’,17 and yet his appeal to Howard as ‘the father and fauourer of English nauigation’ and his praise of Howard’s father as one of the ‘first fauorers and furtherers, with his purse and countenance, of the strange and wonderfull Discouerie of Russia’ (as a backer of the Muscovy company) makes it clear that Hakluyt is seeking to appeal to private investors in these ventures. In Hakluyt’s vision the individual ‘fauourer’ with his private ‘purse’ would in some ill-defined way contribute towards the greatness of the nation (as well as his own wealth). One can certainly see signs of Hakluyt’s heady blend of Protestant evangelism, profiteering and national pride in the Bill brought before the House of Commons in December 1584 to confirm the Royal Charter given to Raleigh for the settling of Virginia. Not only would Raleigh’s patent ensure that the ‘trewe religion’ would be ‘propagatyd amongest foreign Nacions’, but also: The people of this her heighnes Realme mainteyned and encresed And traficke to the most benefitte and Comodytie of her lovinge subiectes as otherwise shulde spende there tyme in Idellnes to the greate preiudice of the Common Welthe be trayned in vertuous and Commodyous Labor […].18

In his Discourse of Western Planting, presented by Richard Hakluyt to Queen Elizabeth three months earlier, Hakluyt gave a detailed account of how to prepare for such a voyage, which included ‘provisions tendinge to force’, such as the inclusion of ‘men experte in the arte of fortification’ and various trades associated with the making of weapons, but also identified the need for an intellectual skill-base ‘incident to the first traficque 18 | European Visions: American Voices

and trade of marchandize’. These included ‘cosmographers [and] hidrographers’,‘Diers to seeke […] rich Cochinilio and other things for that trade’, ‘mynerall men’, a ‘phisition [… and] a surgeon to lett bloude’ and an apothecary ‘to serue the phisition […] and to sende into the Realme by seede and roote herbes and plantes of rare excellencie’.19 We can see evidence of Hakluyt’s recommendation of skilled and knowledgeable personnel in the team that Raleigh put together for the 1585 voyage. Apothecaries and mineral men In an anonymous set of notes written for the guidance of Richard Cavendish and Walter Raleigh before the 1585 voyage (headed ‘For Master Rauley’s Viage’), we can see an even more detailed prescription of intellectual skills. Although the primary emphasis was on the military aspects of the expedition – the construction of a fortification, the government of soldiers, etc. – the notes also identify other essential occupations: I would haue a phisitien as well for the healthe of the souldier as to discouer the simpels of earbs plantes trees roothes and stons, [a] good geographer to make a discription of the landes discouerd, and with hym an exilent paynter, potticaris and Surgiantes for low sycniss and woundes. An alcamist is not Impertinent, to try the mettaylls that maybe discouerd and an perfett lapidary not to be forgotten. Masons, Carpenters, makers of mudwals, su[m] of ye myners of Cornwell [and] Sume exelent husband men, with all thinges appertayninge to husbandry.20

Raleigh seems to have adhered fairly closely to these suggestions. John White was certainly ‘an exilent paynter’, and Harriot’s cartographical and navigational skills clearly mark him out as the ‘good geographer’. In a letter to Francis Walsingham, Ralph Lane refers to ‘our Appotycaryes’,21 while Harriot in his A briefe and true report refers to ‘our Phisitions and Chirurgeons’ (who had assessed the quality of the terra sigillata – or Wapeih – found at Roanoke), as well as ‘men of skill’ who had given their ‘iudgement’ on the Virginian flax and hemp (whether as merchants or ‘husbande men’ Harriot does not say).22 The role of ‘myner’, ‘lapidary’ and ‘alcamist’ was filled by the Czech metallurgist Joachim Gans – to whom Harriot refers as ‘a minerall man’ who located iron ore and ‘founde by triall’ that the Virginian copper contained traces of silver.23 Quinn speculates that Gans may also have been accompanied by Daniel Höchstetter the younger, who was later concerned with copper mining in Keswick.24 It is clear from the remaining documents (and especially Harriot’s report) that the Grenville–Lane voyage had been well supplied by Raleigh with intellectual know-how, but they can best be seen not as ‘investigators’ concerned with the natural sciences or the natural history of the new world, but rather as ‘men of skill’ who were ‘incident to the … traficque and trade of marchandize’.25 The aptness of this characterization of Harriot, White, Gans and the others can be seen clearly in Harriot’s A briefe and true report and in Lane’s letters from Virginia to investors in the voyage. While Harriot refers at a number of points to other kinds of discourse that he had written and might publish at some later date – a ‘Chronicle’ of the voyage,26 a ‘large discourse’ concerning the ‘naturall inhabitants, their nature and maners’,27 or a detailed account of ‘strange beastes, fishe, trees, plants, and hearbes’ which ‘for want of leasure there for the purpose coulde not bee pictured’28 – the fact remains that

Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report the Report itself (as Quinn has noted) has a very limited brief: ‘to discourage adverse rumours about Raleigh’s Virginia and to set out the facts which would encourage settlers to go there.’29 Harriot was later extensively involved in lawsuits against his patron,30 so it is fitting that he should treat the Report as a kind of forensic legal brief. The first six pages of the Report deals with the ‘many enuious, malicious, and slaunderous reports and deuises’ which had been spread abroad about the Virginia colony and its prospects by individuals who had been involved in the voyage. These reports Harriot says, had not done a litle wrong to many that otherwise would have also fauoured & aduentured in the action, to the honour and benefite of our nation, besides the particular profite and credite which would redound to them selues the dealers therein.31

Therefore, it had dissuaded potential investors who might have profited from the colony. The first six pages, then, are a rebuttal of these reports, so that investors might ‘renewe’ their ‘good liking’ of the venture.32 Harriot treats this as a legal ‘cause’, which, he says he will ‘open […] in a few wordes’ so that the ‘Adventurers, favorers and well-willers of the enterprise’ to whom the Report is addressed can place ‘fauorable constructions’ on the verity of Harriot’s account. Harriot in fact omits dealing with the ‘particularities’ of the claims of the slanderers but (in good legal forensic style) confines himself to undermining the character of these false witnesses. These individuals says Harriot, were those who were ‘neuer out of the Iland where wee were seated’ (and so were ignorant of the commodities of the Virginian main-land). Once gold and silver were ‘not so soone found, as it was by them looked for’ these malingerers lost interest in discovery and sought nothing but ‘to pamper their bellies’. They were, in short, city-slickers unfitted for the rigors of colonial life: Some also were of a nice bringing vp, only in cities or townes, or such as neuer (as I may say) had seene the world before. Because there were not to bee found any English cities, norsuch faire houses, nor at their owne wish any of their olde accustomed daintie food, nor any soft beds of downe or fethers: the countrey was to them miserable, & their reports thereof according. 33

Brushing aside their testimonies in this way, Harriot moves quickly to the second part of his ‘cause’ – the reporting of the commodities that make Virginia an attractive investment. This objective can be seen in the three broad headings that structure A briefe and true report that are economic, i.e., first, ‘marchantable commodities’ where ‘an ouerplus sufficiently to bee yeelded’ would allow planters not merely to subsist but ‘by way of trafficke and exchaunge’ to ‘enrich’ themselves and their investors; second, commodities of ‘victuall and sustenance’, which would sustain the planters in the new settlement and third, ‘Other thinges as is behoofull for those which shall plant and inhabit to know of’, which deals largely with an outline of available building materials and a description of the Algonquians as a docile and governable people. The first section, on merchantable commodities, begins not with precious metals (as one might have expected) but with ‘grasse Silke’, a specimen of which, on their return to England, was used to make ‘a peece of silke Grogran’ that was ‘excellent good’. This is followed by silk worms which, by planting mulberry trees Harriot hoped would lead to ‘as great profite in time to the Virginians, as there doth now to the Persians,

Turkes, Italians and Spaniards.’ This theme of supplanting costly imports to increase English merchant profits was clearly one that Harriot had picked up from Hakluyt who makes a particular point about the customs paid on ‘forren commoditie’ in his Discourse of Western Planting.34 The theme of commodities derived from plants continues with flax, hemp, pitch, tar, rosin and turpentine. Harriot places particular emphasis on a relatively new commodity to European markets, sassafras, which he says, has ‘most rare vertues in phisick for the cure of many dieases’ which is ‘found by experience to bee far better and of more uses then the wood which is called Guaiacum, or Lignum vitae’. Harriot’s assessment of these two very new commodities is an interesting example of what I am calling a ‘knowledge economy’. For more information on sassafras Harriot refers his readers to ‘the booke of Monardus, translated and entitled in English, The ioyfull newes from the West Indies’.35 This is a reference to the translation of a treatise on New World plants and their medicinal uses by Nicholas Monardes of Seville published by the Bristol merchant John Frampton.36 Frampton’s work was clearly used by Harriot as a field guide while he was in Virginia and he also cites Frampton’s translation in relation to cassia bark, and would also presumably have read Monardes’ descriptions of guaiacum and the tobacco plant.37 Hakluyt too had read Monardes in Frampton’s translation – as can be seen from his reference to Monardes on sassafras in the Discourse of Western Planting.38 The idea of potential profits from New World apothecary drugs was clearly a high priority for the Grenville–Lane voyage. This can be seen from Lane’s first letter from Virginia to Sir Francis Walsingham who is identified as one of the ‘honorable aduenturers’ who had invested in the voyage. In this letter Lane boasts of their discovery of the ‘singular commodytyes’ that they had discovered, which had been approved ‘by ye vnyuersalle opynyone of our Appotycaryes and all our merchantes here’. Clearly medicinal commodities were high on the lists of his priorities (and that of his investors), as at this stage they had not yet ‘serched’ into ‘ye bowelles of ye Earthe’.39 That apothecary drugs continued to be a particular objective for the Virginian colonizers can be seen from Harriot’s account of ‘Sweete Gummes’ in A briefe and true report, where he says that they have discovered ‘many other Apothecary drugges of which we shall make speciall mention when wee shall receiue it from such men of skill in that kynd’.40 Dyes were also prominent in Harriot’s report, not only cochinile, which Harriot knew about from the Spanish Indies, which he hoped might be derived from Metaquesúnnauk, a local fruit-bearing shrub,41 but also Sumach and the bark and roots of other local trees and bushes.42 The fact that both Harriot and Hakluyt cite Monardes – and that Lane should prioritize apothecary commodities in his letter to Walsingham – is significant. The Bristol trader and merchant Frampton, as Donald Beecher has recently shown, was a significant contributor to the new knowledge economy that was growing up around (and shaping) nascent colonial enterprise.43 The promotion of apothecary drugs as a new commodity in which England should compete with Spainish trade from the Indies was central to Frampton’s book. In a dedicatory epistle addressed to Edward Dyer, Frampton says that he translated Monardes’ book so:


Clucas that in deede it might bryng in tyme rare profite, to my Countrie folkes of Englande, by wonderfull cures of sundrie greate deseases, that otherwise then by these remedies, thei were incurable.44

The profits that Frampton envisaged where not just metaphorical ones, however, and later in his preface he notes that: the afore saied Medicines mentioned in the same worke of Doctour Monardes are now by Marchauntes and others, brought out of the West Indias into Spaine, and from Spain hether into Englande, by suche as dooeth daiely trafficke thether.45

While Frampton is attuned to the medicinal import of Monardes’ New World medicines (which has caused the ‘olde orde and manner of Phisicke’ to be ‘forsaken’) it is clear that it is the mercantile prospects of such medicines and their very real ‘profite’ to the English which he has uppermost in mind.46 The import of Frampton’s work was not lost on Raleigh, Harriot and Lane. Raleigh had been told that an ‘alcamist’ and a ‘lapidiary’ would not be ‘Impertinent’ to his voyage, and, as is to be expected, the mineral resources of Virginia also loom large in Harriot’s account. The first mineral commodity mentioned concerns a coastal ‘veine of earth’ which was rich in rock alum, copperas and nitre which had presumably been identified as such by Gans and Höchstetter, but had also been approved by ‘chymists’ who ‘made triall’ in England.47 The reference to testing the iron ore deposits and assaying copper for traces of silver were confirmed in the 1990s by the archaeological work of Ivor Hume who supervised new excavations in Roanoke Island’s Fort Raleigh National Historical Site under the auspices of the Virginia Company Foundation, which give us a vivid picture of the chemical work done by Harriot and Gans at Roanoake. Hume discovered the remains of an ‘old, buried laboratory once used for metallurgical research’, the ‘first archaelogical evidence [...] for a laboratory in America’. Remains found at the site included fragments of glass, a piece of metallic antimony, slag, clinkers from a forge and traces of molten materials.48 A brass apothecary’s weight was found in a ditch and also shards of glassware consistent with the kinds of vessel used by assayers in the late 16th century. Although a visitor to the site in 1849 was reputed to have found ‘glass globes containing quicksilver, and hermetically sealed’,49 the fragments of glassware found by Hume and his colleagues was rather less well preserved, but still identifiable as chemical vessels of the period.50 Harriot and Gans also appear to have used Native American bowls in their work as badly burned fragments of local clay pots were found at the site.51 The traces of materials found at the site are consistent with Harriot’s description of their activities, including fragments of smelted copper, and antimony (which was used in the separation of silver and copper), and seeds and nuts from leaf pine and shagbark hickory which Hume believes may have been among the plants which Harriot was testing for their medicinal properties. There may also have been a ‘perfect lapidary’ amongst the discoverers (or at least a merchant with extremely particular knowledge) as Harriot notes that one of the party, who had gathered ‘about five thousande pearls’ from the local people was ‘a man of skill in such matters’.52 It can be seen from this brief summary that Harriot’s 20 | European Visions: American Voices

interest in the ‘natural history’ of the region has an explicit economic focus – the attraction of investment and settlement in Virginia – and he pointedly omits descriptions of flora and fauna which have no commodity value. He mentions in the section on trees, for example, that they had found ‘many other strange trees whose names I knowe not but in the Virginian language’, but he declines to ‘trouble’ his readers with a ‘particular relation’ of them, as they have no ‘necessary vses’.53 Harriot’s putative contributions to ethnography also share this narrow colonial objective. While it is true that Harriot’s A briefe and true report gives us intriguing insights into the daily lives of the local people, including their religious beliefs, Harriot’s narrative is clearly aimed at addressing the potential concerns of investors and settlers. Harriot by his own testimony was ‘specially imploied’ in ‘dealing with the naturall inhabitantes’, but as his detailed lexicon of the local commodities, and his conversations with the local inhabitants concerning the sources of their copper ornaments show, Harriot’s dealings were of a strictly utilitarian nature.54 While Harriot promises a ‘large discourse’ on the local inhabitants at a later date, he restricts himself, in the present context, to those aspects of immediate concern to potential settlers, that is to say, ‘onely so farre forth, as that you may know, how that they in respect of troubling our inhabiting and planting, are not to be feared […]’.55 His detailed descriptions of local husbandry are also not disinterested observations, but bear direct relevance to the ‘victuall and sustenance’ of settlers (and appear in the section of the report dedicated to that purpose),56 with crop yields carefully compared to the yields of the average English acre.57 Harriot spends a disproportionate amount of time in A brief and true report outlining the religious beliefs of the Algonquians and their putative deference to the religion of the colonizers (especially after the famous ‘inuisible bullets’ episode).58 But even here Harriot is not engaging in disinterested anthropological or ethnographical speculation, or exhibiting a desire to understand the Algonquians as a different culture, but focuses instead on depicting the Algonquians as heathens who are ripe for conversion to a Protestant Christianity, and whose respect for the God of the colonizers will dispose them to be docile and governable by settlers: These their opinions I haue set downe at large that it may appeare vnto you that there is good hope they may be brought through discreet dealing and gouernement to the imbracing of the trueth, and consequently to honour, obey, feare and loue vs.59

Harriot reassures his readers about the vastly inferior military organization of the Algonquians in comparison with the English, with their ‘discipline […] strange weapons and deuises’,60 and while he is at pains to emphasise their ‘gentlenesse’ towards the local people,61 he acknowledges that some of his party had ‘shewed themselues too fierce’ towards the end of their stay.62 Even at the beginning of their stay Lane had complained to Sir Philip Sidney that he was ‘emungst sauuages [with] ye chardege of wylde menn of myne owene nacione’,63 and although Harriot claims that the violence meted out to the Algonquians was ‘on their part iustly deserued’,64 the description of English colonists burning a village and spoiling crops after the failure of a local chieftain to return a silver cup suggests otherwise.

Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report In his conclusion Harriot emphasises that all the commodities mentioned in A briefe and true report had been ‘discouered & experiemented’ not far from Roanoke Island (‘not far from the sea coast where was our abode’). Their occasional journeys ‘farther into the maine and countrey’ revealed more and better commodities than those described, holding out the possibility of emulating Spanish colonial successes: Why may wee not then looke for in good hope from the inner parts of more and greater plentie, as well of other things, as of those which wee haue alreadie discouered? Vnto the Spaniardes happened the like in discouering the maine of the West Indies.65

The interior, which extends ‘many hundreds of leagues’, and ‘where yet no Christian Prince hath any possession or dealing’, was sure to provide ‘many kinds of excellent commodities, which we in our discouerie haue not yet seene’. The climate of Virginia is compared favorably to that of Japan, China, Persia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain, and the clear implication is that it is capable of yielding the same commodities as England presently obtained at a premium from these other nations.66 Added to this the Atlantic voyage is such that is could ‘bee perfourmed thrise a yeere with ease and at any season’.67 A briefe and true report closes with a brief advertisement for the land grants that Raleigh was offering to settlers on the basis of his 1584 patent (‘fiue hundred acres to a man onely for the aduenture of his person’).68 Science, colonization and the knowledge economy From this brief analysis of A briefe and true report, we can see then what Harriot meant when he said that he was ‘imploied in discouering’. Discovering in effect meant the identification of new commodities and their ‘necessary vses’.69 This is a far cry from the scientific detachment imagined by Quinn, and yet this scramble to recover from what Hakluyt called the ‘decayed trades’ of 16th-century England,70 produced knowledge – and not by accident, but by design. Harriot found the Algonquians ‘a people poore, and for want of skill and iudgement in the knowledge and vse of our things’, and particularly in their lack of ‘craftes, sciences and artes’. By acknowledging this technological superiority Harriot believed that they could be ‘brought to ciuilitie’.71 Science and technology, as Harriot points out, had led to an increased ‘speed’ in ‘doing or execution’ in Europe, and this increased speed and the reciprocal exchange between knowledge and use is what created the necessary conditions not just for the colonial enterprise but also for the advent of modern science. Quinn noted the close connections between England’s colonial enterprise and science in his account of the work of Harriot and White: ‘[M]ajor figures in natural history in the sixteenth century’, he said, ‘had contacts with the pioneers of English overseas enterprise.’72 While the concerns of these pioneers were ‘almost wholly utilitarian’, Quinn argued, The growing exactness of the questions asked and answered by the naturalists, particularly the botanists, impelled them towards more scientific ways of acquiring and assembling their information.73

In his Oxford Harriot lecture, ‘Thomas Harriot and the problem of America’, given in 1990, Quinn returned to this distinction between the ‘utilitarian’ and the ‘scientific’ in what was probably his final assessment of Harriot’s career (Quinn

died in 2002). ‘That his [i.e., Harriot’s] work helped to give rise to the imperialist ventures of the following century is not in question’, Quinn argued, Although in this area it exerted only a marginal influence. His powers of investigation, however, made their mark on other spheres, mainly mathematical and astronomical, and we can only regret that because of political circumstances his later life was passed with little publicity. In this period, the habit of quiet experiment for its own sake became engrained in him, contributing to the obscurity in which much of his achievement has remained for so long.74

Harriot’s colonial role is minimized in Quinn’s account, making way for Harriot the ‘problem solver’ and ‘investigator’ who valued ‘experiment for its own sake’.75 In the most recent Harriot lecture, Stephen Johnston asked whether there wasn’t some connection between Harriot’s thought and the life he’d lived. In Johnston’s view Harriot’s work would not have taken its later shape unless he had been on the Roanoke voyage, if he hadn’t accompanied Grenville on his ‘Tilt boate’ to discover the towns of Pomeiooc, Aquascogoc and Secotan.76 What Quinn seems to assume is the existence of a realm of theoretical scientific thought which is uncontaminated by the utilitarian, the practical and the profitable – a realm where experiment, or astronomy, or mathematics or botany could be pursued ‘for its own sake’. While it is quite clear that even by the late 16th century there was a highly developed notion of the theoretical and practical realms (in relation to the classification of the arts and sciences), what I would propose is that a conception of a 16th-century ‘science’ that is not embedded in a practical world of economic considerations is a chimera. Consider, for example, the botanists or ‘naturalists’ who Quinn sees as encouraging colonial pioneers in ‘scientific ways of acquiring and assembling their information’. Is it possible to conceive of a 16th-century botanist whose pursuit of knowledge is not shaped by the materia medica and the livelihood of the practising physician, or the apothecary trade? Would mathematics and astronomy have made the advances they made in the 16th and 17th centuries, without the economic impetus of maritime navigation, warfare, engineering and other practical employments? It is interesting to note, for example, that one of Harriot’s most explicit acknowledgements of Copernicus as a ‘notable mathematitian’ comes not in his manuscripts concerning observational astronomy, but in a manuscript entitled ‘The Sonnes Regiment’, where the interest in finding the ‘declination of the sonne’ is strictly navigational, and sets him in the immediate context of Spanish and Portuguese maritime endeavours.77 I would like to end this paper on an image that I think captures the spirit of Harriot’s activities in the 1580s (and beyond). In an abbreviated 1595 version of his Arcticon – a manual for the seamen involved in the Roanoke voyage – Harriot talks about the difficulty of making astronomical observations on board ship. The astrolabe is unreliable ‘when the sea is rough […] because of his agitation & unquiet hanging’.78 The cross-staff is to be preferred, he says, but one should take care to adjust ‘the orderly mouing of your body & hand’ so that they are ‘answerable to the surge of the sea, & then bring him downe by litle & litle till you se only the edge of the sonne’.79 Without his experience on the Roanoke voyage, Harriot’s scientific knowledge would have been very different. This is what I mean by Harriot’s place in a ‘knowledge European Visions: American Voices | 21

Clucas economy’: that scientific knowledge and economic needs in the 16th century existed in a reciprocal relationship. If Harriot had not been involved (for better or for worse) in the energetic mercantile culture of ‘traffique, settlement and discouery’ he would not be the ‘Elizabethan man of science’ we remember today. Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21 22 23

24 25

D.B. Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590: documents to illustrate the English voyages to North America under the patent granted to Walter Raleigh in 1584, 2 vols, London, 1955, I, 314. For an account of the voyages based on these materials see Quinn, Set fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584–1606, London and Chapel Hill, NC, 1985. Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, I, 316–317. Ibid., 317. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 37. T. Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, Frankfurt, 1590, 5. Supra n. 2, 37. Ibid., 50–51. Ibid., 49. R. Hakluyt, The principal nauigations, voyages, traffiques and discoueries of the English nation made by sea or ouer-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1600. yeres: deuided into three seuerall volumes, according to the positions of the regions, whereunto they were directed. The first volume containeth the worthy discoueries, &c. of the English ... The second volume comprehendeth the principall nauigations ... to the south and south-east parts of the world ... By Richard Hakluyt preacher, and sometime student of Christ-Church in Oxford, 3 vols, London, 1599–1600, I, dedicatory epistle ‘To the right honorable my singular good Lord, the Lord Charles Howard, Erle of Nottingham [... etc]’, sig. *3 recto. Ibid. Ibid., sig. *3 verso. Ibid. Ibid., sig. *4 recto. Ibid., sig. *4 verso–*5 recto. Ibid., sig. **2 verso and sig. *2 recto. Supra n. 2, 127. R. Hakluyt, A particuler discourse concerninge the greate necessitie and manifolde commodyties that are like to growe to this Realme of Englande by the Westerne discoueries lately attempted, D.B. Quinn and A.M. Quinn, eds, London, 1993, xxiv, 124, 127. Essex County Record Office, County Hall, Chelmsford, MS D/DRh, MI, reprinted in Quinn, supra n. 2, 130–139. For more on the preparations for the Roanoke voyage see J.L. Humber, Backgrounds and preparations for the Roanoke voyages, 1584–1590, Raleigh, 1986. Ralph Lane to Sir Francis Walsingham, 12 August 1585, supra n. 2, 199. Supra n. 7, 8. Ibid., 10. On Gans see G.C. Grassl, ‘German Mineral Specialists in Elizabethan England and Early English America’, Yearbook of German-American Studies, 31, 1996, 45–61 and ‘Joachim Gans of Prague: The First Jew in English America’, American Jewish History, 86, 1998, 195–217 and I. Abrahams, ‘Joachim Gaunse: a mining incident in the reign of Queen Elizabeth’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society, 4, 1903, 83–103. On the ‘Harriot-Gans workshop’ in Roanoke and its archaeological discovery in the 1990s see I.N. Hume, The Virginia adventure: Roanoke to James Towne: an archaeological and historical odyssey, Charlottesville, VA, and London, 1997, 73–89. Evidence of Gans’ explicitly alchemical interests can be seen in British Library MS Sloane 3748, an alchemical notebook owned by Clement Draper of London, which includes a piece on Beginning on f. 26v is ‘The Greatt Redd Worke taught in ye prisson of King’s Bench’ (ff. 26v–30v) the end of the treatise is endorsed ‘per Jo. Gantz’. I would like to thank Deborah Harkness for drawing my attention to this manuscript. Supra n. 2, 195, fn. 2. The characterization of Harriot as an ‘investigator’ or ‘problem


26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

39

40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53 54

solver’ comes from Quinn’s 1990 Oxford Harriot lecture ‘Thomas Harriot and the Problem of America’, in Thomas Harriot: An Elizabethan Man of Science, R. Fox, ed., Aldershot, 2000, 9–27 (see pp. 9 and 27). Supra n. 7, 32–3. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 20. See fn. 1 above. See J.W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a Biography, Oxford, 1983, 218– 223 and idem, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s Guiana Finances’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 13(1), 1949, 55–59. Supra n. 7, 5. Ibid. Ibid., 6. Hakluyt, supra n. 19, 116. Supra n. 7, 9. J. Frampton, Ioyfull newes out of the newe founde worlde wherein is declared the rare and singuler vertues of diuerse and sundrie hearbes, trees, oyles, plantes, and stones, with their aplications, aswell for phisicke as chirurgerie, the saied beyng well applied bryngeth suche present remedie for all deseases, as maie seme altogether incredible: notwithstandyng by practize founde out, to bee true: also the portrature of the saied hearbes, very aptly discribed: Englished by Ihon Frampton marchaunt, London, 1577. This is a translation of N. Monardes, Primera y segunda y tercera partes de la historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias occidentales qui sirven en medicinal, Seville, 1574. On cassia lignea see supra n. 7, 23. For tobacco and guaiacum see ibid., 10v, 34 recto– 45 recto. Hakluyt, supra n. 19, 18–19: ‘Doctor Monardus bestoweth xj leaves in describinge the … excellent properties thereof.’ Cf. supra n. 36, 46 recto–56 verso. On Harriot, Frampton and Monardes see G. Mirlees, Sassafras: a cure-all of Harriot’s time, Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Papers, 12, Durham, 1993. Ralph Lane to Sir Francis Walsingham, 12 August 1585, supra n. 2, 199–200. One possible reason for the emphasis on commodities other than precious metals was the recent embarrassing failure of the Frobisher voyages of 1576–8. See D.D. Hogarth, P.W. Boreham, and J.G. Mitchell, Mines, Minerals and Metallurgy: Martin Frobisher’s voyages of 1576, 1577 and 1578, Mercury Series, 7, Ottawa, 1994, 73–99. Supra n. 7, 11. Ibid., 18: ‘Some that haue bin in the Indies, where they haue seen that kind of red die of great price which is called Cochinile to grow, doe describe his plant right like vnto this of Metaquesúnnauk but whether it be the true Cochinile or a bastard or wilde kind, it cannot yet be certified; seeing that also as I heard, Cochinile is not of the fruite but founde on the leaues of the plant; which leaues for such matter we haue not so specially obserued.’ Ibid., ‘Dyes of diuers kindes’, 11. For tentative identifications of these plants see supra n. 2, 334–5. D. Beecher, ‘The legacy of John Frampton: Elizabethan Trader and Translator’, Renaissance Studies, 20(3), 2006, 320–339. Supra n. 36, sig. *ij recto–verso. Ibid., sig. On the ‘ideological and mercantile intent’ behind Frampton’s translations and the stimulation of pharmacological trade see supra n. 43, 324–6. Supra, n. 7, 8. Chicago Sun Times, Wednesday, 25 December 1991, 26. I would like to thank Dr Gerrylynn Roberts of the Open University for drawing my attention to this reference. I.N. Hume, ‘Roanoke Island’: America’s First Science Center’, Pamphlet reprinted with permission from the Spring 1994 Issue of Colonial Williamsburg: the Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 4. Private correspondence from I.N. Hume, 1 February 1995: ‘The fragments of glass [...] were very small indeed and only two pieces came from recognizable vessels, both of them from wide-necked retorts and one of them a characteristic string rim.’ Supra n. 49, 10. Supra n. 7, 11. Ibid., 23. For a critical view of the role of the Algonquians as ‘informants’ see B.R. Smith, ‘Mouthpieces: Native American Voices in Thomas Harriot’s True and Brief Report of ... Virginia, Gaspar Pérez de

Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report

55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Villagrá’s Historia de la Nuevo México, and J. Smith’s General History of Virginia’, New Literary History, 32(3), 2001, 501–517. Supra n. 7, ‘Of the nature and the manners of the people’, 24. See ibid., 13–16. Ibid., 15. This section of Harriot’s narrative has achieved a certain notoriety in literary studies thanks to S. Greenblatt’s essay ‘Invisible bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V’, Glyph: Textual Studies, 8, 1981, 40–60. See the response of B.J. Sokol, Invisible Evidence: The Unfounded Attack on Thomas Harriot’s Reputation, Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Papers, 17, Durham, 1995. Supra n. 7, 29. Ibid., 25. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 30. Ralph Lane to Sir Philip Sidney, 12 August 1585, supra n. 2, 204. Supra n. 7, 30. Ibid., 31. Ibid. Ibid., 32. Ibid. See ibid., 12: ‘Many other commodities by planting may there also bee raised, which I leaue to your discret and gentle considerations: and many also may bee there which yet we haue not discouered.’ Supra n. 19, 16. On the colonising impulse and England’s trading difficulties see p. xxiii. Supra n. 7, 25. Supra n. 2, 48. Ibid., 49. Quinn, supra n. 25, 27. Cf. also D.B. Quinn, ‘Thomas Harriot and the New World’ in Thomas Harriot Renaissance Scientist, J.W. Shirley, ed., Oxford, 1974, 36–53, 42: ‘[W]hile the primary purpose of the survey was to

76

77

78 79

inform Ralegh and his associates of the major features of Virginia as a basis for colonial development there, from an early stage in the process of their survey, Harriot and White had in mind the preparation from their collections of a systematic illustrated survey, covering both natural resources and ethnography.’ S. Johnston, Thomas Harriot Lecture 2007, ‘Thomas Harriot and the English Experience of Navigation’, delivered at Oriel College Oxford, 17 May 2007. On Grenville’s ‘Tilt boate’ see Quinn, supra n. 25, 190. Thomas Harriot, ‘How to find the declination of the sonne for any time of the yeare & any place; by a speciall table called the Sonnes Regiment newly made according to late obseruations’, British Library, Add. MS 6788, f. 468 et seq. For his praise of Copernicus see f. 468 recto: ‘There are in the hands of seamen both written & printed 2 sortes of regiments. The one sorte I count those which are the auncientist calculated […] they were calculated & made of the Tables of Alfonsus sometime King of Spayne […]. And although since about 70 yeres since past those tables were found fauty by the diligent obseruation of certayne notable mathematitians & especially of one Nicholaus Copernicus of Cracow in poland; whose labor in obseruations & in making of tables according, was since of all men preferred; but only of the spaniards & portingalls, who […] thorough self-loue of the doinges of there owne king litle regarded what others had don; [and] followed stil there owne tables […].’ Harriot also refers to the ‘exquisitenes’ of Copernicus’ tables (ibid.). For more on the Regiment see J.J. Roche, ‘Harriot’s “Regiment of the Sun” and its background in sixteenth-century navigation’, British Journal of the History of Science, 14(48), 1981, 245–261. British Library, Add. MS 6788, f. 485, cit. J.V. Pepper, ‘Harriot’s Earlier Work on Mathematical Navigation: Theory and Practice’ in supra n. 75, 54–90 (p. 59). Ibid., 63.


The Truth in Clothing: The Costume Studies of John White and Lucas de Heere Michael Gaudio Through the Middle Ages, Europeans tended to imagine peoples at the furthest reaches of the earth through the classical paradigm of the ‘monstrous races’. Taking their cue from the descriptions of Pliny and others, artists gave visual form to such creatures as the Blemmye and the Sciapod. According to Pliny, Blemmyes – like the one that appears in an English manuscript dating from the second quarter of the 11th century (Fig. 1) – inhabit the interior of Africa and are reported ‘as being without heads; their mouth and eyes are attached to their chest’. The Sciapod, or umbrella-foot – as portrayed, for example, in a woodcut from the Nuremburg Chronicle (1493) (Fig. 2) – could be found in India and was reputed to have amazing speed with its single foot; to protect itself from the heat, it could also lie on its back and relax under the shade of this versatile foot.1 Monstrous races were fantastic hybrids that inverted or exaggerated normal human appearances and behaviors, and for this reason they served very well as markers of the limits of the known world. The Latin monstrum in fact derives from the verb monēre, meaning to ‘warn’ or ‘instruct’, and this is just what the monstrous races did: as prodigious inversions of the norm, they warn us, instruct us, about the Figure 1 Blemmye, watercolour, pen and ink (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Cotton Tiberius B. V, Part 1, f.82)

Figure 2 Sciapod, in Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum 1493, woodcut (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. IC.7452)


limits of human knowledge. To stray so far from the center of a sacred Christian geography that one begins to encounter creatures with faces on their chests, or with feet that provide shelter from the sun, is to stray beyond order itself. But even as the tradition of the monstrous races continues into the 16th century, we see an alternative approach to the representation of human difference emerging within Europe, an approach that we might label – using a modern term – an ‘ethnographic’ impulse. One of the chief forms that early modern ethnography took was the costume book, an early example of this type of collection being François Desprez’s Recueil de la diversité des habits, first published in Paris in 1562. The Recueil actually includes examples of the monstrous races, as in the case of the Cyclops (Fig. 3). But the Cyclops, with its single eye, oversized ears, and pendulous breasts, is more the exception than the rule in the Recueil; indeed in the verses below the image, Desprez is reluctant fully to endorse its existence: ‘It is said’, he writes, ‘that this line still endures’ [my italics].2 A more typical image from the same volume displays a Tupinamba man of Brazil (Fig. 4). Although he hails from an exotic locale, when considered alongside a figure like the French courtier (Fig. 5) he appears in his physical make-up essentially like a European: both men, happily, have two legs, two eyes, and heads on top of their shoulders. What distinguishes one from the other, what establishes their respective places in the world, is not their inverted or exaggerated physical characteristics, but their costume. The Brazilian holds bow and arrows and wears a feathered headdress and the Enduap (the fan-shaped feathered arrangement worn on the lower back).3 These items, carried in the hand or worn on the body, set him apart from the courtier, whose body is almost lost beneath an outlandish slashed doublet and ballooning breeches. These figures do not instruct about the limits of knowledge; rather, they are the products of an ethnographic desire to know, an impulse to describe and indeed fully account for peoples by depicting the fabrics and ornaments worn on the body. In the costume book, you are what you wear, a logic that opens up the world to a new kind of order based on descriptive taxonomy. My concern in the following pages will be this ethnographic mode as it is pursued in England under the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, and especially – though not exclusively – as it is pursued in the late 16th-century watercolor drawings of John White and Lucas de Heere, the latter a Flemish painter and poet who lived in England in the 1560s and 70s as a Protestant refugee. Both of these artists were very much part of the costume book tradition.4 Their visual descriptions of American Indians and the ancient and modern inhabitants of Europe, Asia and Africa contributed directly towards the Renaissance collection of customs and habits, towards the construction of a ‘theater’ of the peoples of the world. In one of his best known

The Truth in Clothing

Figure 3 Cyclops, in François Desprez, Recueil de la diversité des habits, Paris, 1562, woodcut (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Douce CC 129 (2) fol. 6r)

Figure 4 Brazilian man, in François Desprez, Recueil de la diversité des habits, Paris, 1562, woodcut (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Douce CC 129 (2) fol. 68r)

costume studies of the Algonquian Indians he encountered in Virginia in 1585, White depicts, according to his own gloss, ‘The manner of their attire and painting themselves when they goe to their generall huntings, or at theire Solemne feasts’ (Fig. 6). It is often noted that in pictures such as this one, White pays close attention to racial difference by showing the tawny skin color of his Native American subjects, although skin color – as we will see – was far from a stable signifier of ‘race’ in early modern England, and indeed was itself often understood as a kind of removable costume. Lucas de Heere, in a watercolor drawing from his manuscript at the British Library titled Corte beschryuinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende. Irland [A Short description of England, Scotland and Ireland], displays the costumes of various inhabitants of Ireland: a ‘noble woman’, a ‘bourgeois woman’ and two ‘wild Irish’ (Fig. 7). How do we account for this interest, in the latter decades of the 16th century, in costume as a – and perhaps as the – defining characteristic of humans? What did it mean to know the peoples of the world by the clothes they wore and by the ornamentation and color of their skin? A good place to begin considering this question is the small title page White placed at the beginning of his album of watercolors. Here White describes the contents of his album as ‘The pictures of sondry things collected and counterfeited according to the truth in the voyage made by Sr: Walter Raleigh knight, for the discouery of La Virginea’. White’s choice of the word ‘counterfeited’ is a significant one, because it directly places his pictures within a special class of Renaissance images intended to provide immediate access to the world of facts.5 Counterfeits were stand-ins for things; their truth value lay in the authority of the eyewitness, in the fact that someone actually observed the particular object, person or event being pictured. The identity of the particular witness, however, is not of primary importance in the counterfeit, and it is not

Figure 5 Courtier, in François Desprez, Recueil de la diversité des habits, Paris, 1562, woodcut (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Douce CC 129 (2) 6th image)

accidental that the title page of White’s album makes no mention of the artist’s name. The counterfeit is not about the invention or ingenuity of an individual; it is about recording that which anyone could have seen, had he or she been there to see it. John White’s contemporary, Sir Philip Sidney, helps to clarify the nature of the counterfeit in his Defence of Poesie (written during the 1580s but not published until 1595). Sidney distinguishes between

Figure 6 The manner of their attire and painting themselves, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.12)


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Figure 7 Irish man and women, Lucas de Heere, in Corte beschryuinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland, 1570s watercolour (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. Add MS 20330,34)

the meaner sort of Painters, who counterfeyt only such faces as are set before them, and the more excelent, who having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon you, which is fittest for the eye to see, as the constant, though lamenting looke of Lucretia ..., wherein he painteth not Lucretia whom he never saw, but painteth the outward beauty of such a vertue.6

White would certainly fall under Sidney’s ‘meaner sort of Painters’. Sidney, immersed in a courtly aesthetic that valued painting and poetry according to their potential for moral instruction, has no patience for counterfeits with their deficiencies of ‘wit’. He prefers his painters to depict abstract virtues like beauty rather than the mere surfaces of the world. The counterfeiter, in contrast, delves only skin deep, and indeed this superficiality could be cause for some anxiety. Surfaces are unstable; they are the sites of fleeting fashions and dissimulation. Hence the negative associations that the word ‘counterfeit’ begins to take on in this period: one need only think of antitheatricalism in England at this time, with its virulent rejection of all the counterfeiting that occurred on the stage. The Puritan Stephen Gosson, for instance, complained in 1582 of playwrights who ‘have got such a custome of counterfeiting upon the Stage, that it is growen to an habite and will not be lefte’.7 But while the imitation of outward appearances – whether pictorial or performative – could be cause for suspicion, the exterior of the body was also a place where order was sought. The costume book, after all, seeks a deep truth through the counterfeiting of surfaces; it declares that through costume we can find order in the world by mapping the enduring habits of peoples and nations.8 White’s practice of counterfeiting demands, therefore, that we approach his work while keeping two conflicting notions in mind. First, we must recognize that in early modern England the identity of an individual, a people, or a nation is located in the clothing one wears, and more generally in the way one ornaments the surface of the body. Identity, in other words, lies in surface qualities that can be truthfully counterfeited by an 26 | European Visions: American Voices

observant painter. Second, we must also recognize that there is a basic instability to this external notion of identity, precisely because it is a surface phenomenon, precisely because it can be counterfeited. This tension between the potential for order and the potential for disorder inherent in costume plays a defining role in late 16th- and early 17th-century English culture. One way to bring it into focus is through a scantily clad fellow painted by Lucas de Heere in the 1570s (Fig. 8). In addition to his Short description of England, Scotland and Ireland, de Heere was the author of another illustrated account of customs and manners, housed at Ghent University Library in Belgium, titled Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits, et ornements diuers [Theatre of all the peoples and nations of the earth with their habits, and diverse ornaments]. De Heere’s curious picture of a nearly naked man holding cloth and scissors appears as the final illustration of that manuscript. The picture is somewhat difficult to decipher at first, but we are fortunate to have some commentary from the period that sheds light on it. Lucas de Heere happened to be the teacher of Karel van Mander, a Dutch artist who is best known as the author of an important book, first published in 1604, called Het Schilderboeck [The Book of Painters], which comprises the lives of the eminent Netherlandish and German artists. Van Mander’s book includes a biography of de Heere, and it specifically discusses the picture in question. Here is what van Mander has to say about it: It once happened that when [Lucas de Heere] was in England he obtained a commission to paint in a gallery for the Admiral in London [the Lord High Admiral, Edward Clinton] in which he had to paint all the costumes or clothing of the nations. When all but the Englishman were done, he painted him naked and set beside him all manner of cloth and silk materials, and next to them tailor’s scissors and chalk. When the Admiral saw this figure he asked Lucas what he meant by it. He answered that he had done that with the Englishman because he did not know what appearance or kind of clothing he should give him because they varied so much from day to day; for if he had done it one way today the next day it would have to be another – be it French or Italian, Spanish or Dutch – and I have therefore painted the material and tools to hand so that one can always make of it what one wishes.9

Van Mander then says that the Admiral showed the picture to Queen Elizabeth, who took it as an occasion to decry the

Figure 8 Naked Englishman, Lucas de Heere, in Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits, et ornements diuers, 1570s, watercolour (University Library Ghent, BHSL.HS.2466)

The Truth in Clothing fickleness of English dress. And there is every indication to suggest this story is true, because this very picture was in fact mentioned in the ‘Homily Against Excess of Apparel’ that Elizabeth commanded to be preached in churches, as an example of the sartorial decadence of the English.10 De Heere’s confused Englishman suggests that in Elizabethan England, one’s position within the social order is defined on the surface of the body, and that it is precisely because of this that one’s social position could so easily be put into question – and this is true whether we are speaking of national identity (English, Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) or gender. A good example of the gender confusion that could be located in one’s outer garments becomes particularly visible in the early 17th century, during the gender wars waged under James I. James was fed up with women cross-dressing as men, and he had the churches preach vehemently against the practice. Two popular pamphlets, titled Hic-Mulier and HaecVir, both published in 1620 and both with illustrated title pages, were very much part of this outcry (Figs 9–10).11 The first of the pamphlets to appear, Hic-Mulier; or, The Man-Woman, is directed against cross-dressing women. The woodcut on the title page depicts a woman having her hair cut short (left) and admiring her new masculine hat in a mirror (right). The answer to this pamphlet was Haec-Vir; or, The Womanish-Man, which turns around and accuses men of having, since Elizabeth’s day, indulged in gender confusion by affecting womanish dress and ornaments. This pamphlet is staged as a dialogue between the man-woman, who on the title page holds a pistol and wears a sword and spurs, and the womanish-man, who appears in tights holding a battledore and shuttlecocks. Hic-Mulier and Haec-Vir, with their condemnation of

gender-counterfeiting, are in a sense antitheatrical pamphlets; at the very least they show how closely the English preoccupation with costume was related to concerns about the stage. As I have already suggested, costume and the ease with which it could be changed was the scandal of the theater in early modern London. The theater was a place where actors of low social status could put on the finest clothes and counterfeit gentlemen, lords, and kings; where boys regularly dressed as women; in short, it was a place where actors had the license to flaunt, temporarily, the very strict sumptuary laws of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The theater was in this sense dangerous, but of course it was also exciting; audiences were drawn to it not least of all because it allowed this play with identity. I emphasize the theatricality of costume because it can help us to understand why an artist like Lucas de Heere felt the need to make a drawing such as his study of Irish costume (see Fig. 7). It is a type of picture that proliferated during this great age of costume books but which, because of its simple format and lack of narrative action, is difficult to find interesting unless we grasp the motives that compelled artists to return, again and again, to the outer garments and ornaments that the peoples of the world presented to them. John White, of course, felt this same need, and as the exhibition A New World: England’s first view of America makes abundantly clear, his interests in costume extended well beyond the studies of Native Americans for which he is best known. Watercolor drawings from the Sloane volume, for instance, include pictures of the Doge of Genoa and a Roman soldier, both dating from the 1570s or 80s and executed either by White himself or by a copyist (Figs 11–12). The ancient Roman subject further reveals how this Renaissance

Figure 9 Title page to Hic-Mulier; or, The Man-Woman London, 1620. Woodcut (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. C.40.d.27.(1.))

Figure 10 Title page to Haec-Vir; or, The Womanish-Man, London, 1620. Woodcut (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. C.40.d.27.(2.))


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Figure 11 The Doge of Genoa, after John White (BM P&D SL,5270.8v)

Figure 12 A Roman Soldier, after John White (BM P&D SL,5270.8r)

ethnography could collapse time and space, so that temporal and geographical difference are both subsumed under a broader set of differences based on what one wears. Such images could be put to a variety of uses, from patterns for festivals and plays, to incorporation into geographies and chorographies, to the album amicorum (or ‘friendship album’). The making of alba amicorum was a common practice for students in the period throughout Europe. These albums would often include costume studies of social types encountered on their travels, either commissioned or drawn by the student himself, such as a study dating from the 1570s of the Doge of Venice, taken from the album (now in the Bodleian library) of a Flemish traveler named Paul van Dale (Fig. 13).12 It is worth noting that the word most commonly used to describe the subject of such studies was ‘habits’, a word that refers to the outward appearance or fashion of a person – in

other words, habits in the sense of clothing (the distinctive cap, for instance, worn by the Doge) – but also to cultural habits, to ways of life ingrained, at the deepest level, in one’s behavior. ‘Habits’, then, is a word that conflates and synthesizes the related concepts of a person’s costume and his or her culture and morals.13 Thus when van Dale went to Venice and there inscribed his picture of the Doge and pasted it into his album, or when White and de Heere pictured the Inuit men brought back by Martin Frobisher from his first and second expeditions to Baffin Island in 1576 and 1577 (Figs 14–15), these artists were doing more than merely representing outward appearances; they were collecting culture in the deepest sense, since for them culture – or rather habits – inhered in the very surfaces they were counterfeiting. To look at such pictures, to carry them around in your own costume book or in your friendship album, was to know the world in the most material sense. And

Figure 14 (left) Inuit man, Lucas de Heere in Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre avec leurs habits, et ornements diuers, 1570s, watercolour (University Library Ghent BHSL.HS.2466)

Figure 15 (right) Inuit man, Kalicho, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.29)


Figure 13 Doge of Venice, in Album Amicorum of Paul van Dale (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS. Douce d. 11 fol. 5)

The Truth in Clothing this returns us once again to the connection between the picturing of costume and theatrical performance, for, like the theater, costume studies provided occasions for audiences to experience civilization itself as a matter of exploring possible roles through costume, costume that could reveal but also conceal one’s social status, one’s gender, one’s nation, one’s civility. White’s and de Heere’s studies of Inuit men are records of a cultural encounter that demonstrates precisely this kind of theatricality. In 1576, Martin Frobisher returned to London from his first voyage to Baffin Island with an Inuit captive, the man depicted in de Heere’s drawing, who died about two weeks after his arrival. But he did live long enough to have portraits made: after Frobisher’s return, arrangements were promptly made for a Flemish artist resident in London, named Cornelis Ketel, to paint a series of pictures.14 The portrait by John White actually depicts a captive, named Kalicho, who was brought back on Frobisher’s second voyage in the following year, 1577; Cornelis Ketel portrayed Kalicho as well. But none of Ketel’s paintings of Kalicho or the captive from the previous year survive. We do, however, have a verbal record of what those lost portraits of the 1576 captive looked like. Of the several full-length portraits that were made, there were three types.15 The first type, which accounts for most of the commissions, were depictions of the man ‘in his [native] apparell’. The studies by White and de Heere both correspond to this type of costume study, and it is entirely possible that de Heere’s, and perhaps both, are copies of the Ketel portraits in native dress. These portraits suggest an ethnographic interest in the strangeness of different peoples, from different places, of different skin color, wearing different dress. They emphasize cultural difference, and clothing serves in these instances to fix the subject’s status as a foreigner, a savage: ‘Homme Sauvage’ reads the text at the top of the de Heere watercolor. A second type of portrait commission had the Inuit man depicted by Ketel ‘in Englishe ap[par]ell’. The idea of a portrait in English dress would seem to spring from a desire to collapse the very cultural difference established by the portraits in native dress. The portrayal of an Inuit counterfeiting an Englishman exhibited the power of clothing, not to fix one’s identity, but to transform it. Although we do not have the surviving portrait, we can let a different one stand in for it – the well-known engraving by Simon van de Passe, dating from 1616, of Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan who famously saved Captain John Smith from execution and later came to visit England herself as the wife of John Rolfe (Fig. 16). She too, like the Inuit captive, was pictured in English dress shortly after her arrival. The engraving portrays Pocahontas as Rebecca, the English name she adopted. But it is important to recognize that this portrayal of Pocahontas as an Englishwoman is not meant to conceal her cultural difference, but rather to dramatize the transformation that can occur through a change of clothes. This is not simply Rebecca; according to the inscription in the oval frame, it is Matoaka (her original name) AL[IA]S Rebecca. The inclusion of both names suggests that to look upon this portrait is not to see Pocahontas as she ‘is’ essentially – as if identity could somehow lie deeper than the things you wear – but to imagine the process of change itself, a conversion through clothing. Indeed, for a Jacobean audience, the very costume she wears surely

played to social anxieties over the ease with which clothing could transform a woman into a man, and vice versa. While she holds certain feminine props (namely the fan), her feathered hat in particular recalls the headgear of the man-woman on the title page of Hic-Mulier. According to a 1619 sermon on apparel, the defining features of the Jacobean man-woman were in fact her short hair (which Pocahontas also sports) and the hat ‘wagging a Feather to defie the World’.16 According to HicMulier, Pocahontas’ French doublet hanging open is yet another sign of the cross-dressing woman. De Passe’s engraving seems to record a latent anxiety surrounding the ease of social and cultural cross-dressing. But there is, of course, an imperial ideology at work here as well – this transformation of the heathen savage into the habit of a Christian Lady, however ambivalent it may be in regard to gender, is a demonstration of the civilizing process. The third type of portrait commissioned from Ketel, in addition to those in native dress and English dress, was a portrait of the Inuit man naked. And once again, because the portrait itself does not survive, we will have to imagine it. White’s portrait of Kalicho is perhaps more helpful for this exercise than de Heere’s portrait, since the tight-fitting sealskin coat, revealing his navel, abdomen and pectoral muscles, does indeed invite us to see through clothes to what may lie beneath. And what lies beneath, what White asks his viewer to contemplate, is an undefined nakedness. The lost portrait of the naked Inuit commissioned from Ketel, in other words, would seem to be based on a desire to display an essential,

Figure 16 Pocahontas/Matoaks, Simon van de Passe, 1616, engraving (BM 1863,0509.625)


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Figure 17 A Pictish Warrior, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.24)

unaccommodated man, a man without identity because he is without the external trappings that are the very essence of identity. Its closest surviving counterpart just might be de Heere’s naked Englishman, who doesn’t know who he is because he doesn’t know what he wants to wear. I have been discussing the performance of identity through costume, but what about this savage body that lacks clothing, the unaccommodated body whose nakedness is understood as a sign of the absence of civilization? Nakedness is of course a critical theme in the texts as well as pictorial works that represent non-English peoples in early modern England, especially those peoples deemed to be exemplary savages – American Indians like John White’s painted Algonquian (see Fig. 6), Africans and the inhabitants of a British past, like the ancient Picts and Britons who were the subject of a number of fantastical images at the time, including John White’s painting of a savage Pict (Fig. 17). Skin represents something more permanent than clothing; unlike clothing, skin is part of the body and cannot simply be shed. Yet like clothing, it too is a surface that can be marked on, ornamented in various ways, made to signify. Thus while the naked body is the emblem of a natural state, precisely because of this it becomes a critical site for testing what is and is not natural. Is the darker skin color of Americans and Africans, for example, a natural state or the result of some tampering with nature? It was actually a widely held belief at this time that natives of the New World were not dark skinned by nature but were in fact innately whiteskinned, only appearing brown and tawny due to the sun and to substances like bear grease that they rubbed on their skin.17 Beyond the question of skin color, how are we to make 30 | European Visions: American Voices

sense of the tattooing and painting of the body, practices that were subjects of European fascination and repulsion throughout the 16th and 17th centuries? The body painting displayed in White’s watercolors of the Algonquian and Pict offer an interesting case, because the painted savage is shown, curiously, as simultaneously naked and clothed. That is to say, the body paint of these figures appears, particularly on the body of the Pict, as a kind of clothing, and indeed its colorful grotesques call to mind the suits of fantastical armor that appear in other works of Renaissance art. It would not be surprising if White found the model for his Pict’s body paint in the theatrical armor of the Elizabethan theatre.18 White’s painted Pict is a paradoxical figure, in the sense that he is both completely naked and completely clothed, and he thus raises in particularly strong fashion the central problem of imagining a savage body. To signify a distinct cultural difference the body must be clothed (like the portrait of the Inuit in native dress), but to be natural, or savage, it must be naked (like the portrait of the naked Inuit). The skin thus becomes a clothing of its own on which all kinds of significance is heaped in the period. It is an essential yet unstable surface that oscillates between a sign of a natural, unaccommodated condition and a sign of cultural difference. An interesting text in this regard is John Bulwer’s Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d: or, The Artificiall Changling, published in 1653 and so a bit later than the Elizabethan and Jacobean examples I have been considering, yet it is still an instructive text for our purposes. Anthropometamorphosis is an extended diatribe against practices of ornamenting the body that carries on and develops the preoccupation with the corrupted tastes of English fashion expressed earlier in the Hic-Mulier and Haec-Vir pamphlets. Bulwer’s great cause is Nature, and he rails, rabidly, against all affectations that corrupt it, whether those affectations belong to the supposedly civil English or to monstrous savages. In reference to the tattooing practices of American Indians, for example, he writes that ‘The Brasileans and Florideans, for the most part, are painted over the body, the armes, and thighs, with faire branches, whose painting can never be taken away, because they are pricked within the flesh’.19 Here, then, is the difference between skin and clothing: while clothes can always be changed, skin cannot be. To tattoo the skin is to mark cultural difference permanently – and writers of the period including Bulwer note this fact with utter horror mingled with utter fascination, a fascination evidenced in the various woodcuts in Anthropometamorphosis that present the reader with the visual spectacle of this crime against Nature. But as I have argued, the skin occupies a very ambiguous position on the nature-culture scale, constantly shifting between these poles. Tattooed skin could signify permanent cultural difference, a costume that cannot be removed. On the other hand, just as clothing could be removed, simple body paint could be washed off. Recall, moreover, that the darker skin of American Indians was considered an artificial alteration, a reversible one. And yet Africans represented a very different case. A great trope of the period was the idea of the African who was by nature black, an idea that has its source in Jeremiah 13:23: ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?’ To attempt to wash the black African was a literary conceit for the futility of altering nature’s designs, as

The Truth in Clothing

Figure 18 Aethiopem lavare, in Geffrey Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes and Other Devises, 1586, woodcut (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved. C.57.l.2.)

expressed in an emblem from Geffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblemes and Other Devises of 1586 (Fig. 18). Titled Aethiopem lavare (‘To wash the Ethiop’), the verses below advise the reader to leave off with scowering the blackamore, because as soon as we withdraw our hand, Nature will return him to his former hue.20 Yet at certain moments nature can be trumped, as it is in the Masque of Blackness, written by Ben Jonson and with costumes designed by Inigo Jones (Fig. 19). Jones’ costume study for a daughter of the River Niger is a case of theatrical design and ethnographic costume study literally overlapping. The Masque of Blackness was performed at the court of James I in 1605. In the Masque a courtier representing the River Niger comes to London with his black daughters, who are played by the Queen and her ladies, wearing black body paint. They come to London to see how the English sun can ‘blanch an Ethiop’ in Jonson’s words; the River’s aim is to make his daughters white and therefore, in English eyes, more beautiful. Ultimately the Queen and her ladies remove their paint, transforming from ‘black Ethiops’ to pure white Englishwomen. The representation of cultural difference through black skin thus becomes, in the end, a performance of Englishness.21 It is an important early rehearsal of what will ultimately become a strong identification between the nation of England and racial whiteness. But it is definitely not a modern, biological concept of race that is at work here. The skin of Jonson’s Ethiopian princesses demands the same kind of ambivalent readings as the skin of White’s Algonquian, skin that is dark but possibly white underneath; skin that is mostly unclothed and therefore natural, but which is also painted and therefore cultured. In John White’s England, skin, like clothing, is not a fixed marker of cultural or racial identity but a very fluid, ambivalent surface upon which culture is endlessly performed.

Figure 19 Masquer: A Daughter of Niger, Inigo Jones, 1605, watercolour (© Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees)

Notes

1

Pliny the Elder (J.F. Healy, trans.), Natural History: A Selection, London, 1991, 57, 78. 2 ‘On dit encore que ce lignage dure’. F. Desprez, Recueil de la diversité des habits, qui sont de present en usage, tant es pays d’Europe, Asie, Affrique & Isles sauvages, le tout fait apres le naturel, Paris, 1564, D6r. 3 For an early description and illustration of the Enduap, see H. Staden (M. Letts, trans.), The True History of His Captivity, 1557, London, 1928, 144. 4 On White, de Heere, and the costume book tradition, see K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, Chapel Hill, 2007, 147–53. 5 See P. Parshall, ‘Imago Contrafacta: Images and Facts in the Northern Renaissance’, Art History, 16(4), 1993, 554–79. 6 Sir Philip Sidney (A. Feuillerat, ed.), The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, vol. 3, Cambridge, 1962, 10. 7 Gosson quoted in T. Murray, ‘From Foul Sheets to Legitimate Model: Antitheater, Text, Ben Jonson’, New Literary History, 14(3), 1983, 642. The slipperiness of the verb ‘to counterfeit’, which could imply both honest imitation (as in White’s use of the term) and false imitation (as in Gosson’s) is evident in the entry for the word in the OED, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1989. 8 A. R. Jones and P. Stallybrass examine this deep truth contained in Renaissance clothing – or ‘deep wearing’ as they put it – in their important study, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge, 2000.


Gaudio 9 K. van Mander (H. Miedema, ed., J. Pennial-Boer and C. Ford, trans.), The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, Doornspijk, 1994, 281. 10 See M. Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-dressing & Cultural Anxiety, New York, 1992, 27. 11 On these two pamphlets see S.G. O’Malley, ed., ‘Custome Is an Idiot’: Jacobean Pamphlet Literature on Women, Urbana, IL, 2004, 251–306. 12 On White’s costume studies in the Sloane volume, see Sloan, supra n. 4, 146–7. On van Dale’s album, see J.L. Nevinson, ‘Illustrations of Costume in the Alba Amicorum’, Archaeologia, 106, 1979, 167–76. 13 V. Traub, ‘Mapping the Global Body’, in P. Erickson and C. Hulse, eds, Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England, Philadelphia, 2000, 51; also see Jones and Stallybrass, supra n. 8, 6. 14 For a thorough account of all of the depictions of Inuits resulting from Frobisher’s voyages, see W. C. Sturtevant and D.B. Quinn, ‘This New Prey: Eskimos in Europe in 1567, 1576, and 1577’, in C.F. Feest, ed., Indians in Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, Aachen, 1987, 61–140. 15 For a discussion of these three portrait types in terms of ‘competing hypotheses about the meaning of Frobisher’s savage’, see S. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World,


16 17 18

19 20

21

Chicago, 1991, 112. My own analysis of these lost portraits is indebted to Greenblatt’s insightful reading. Quoted in Jones and Stallybrass, supra n. 8, 79. See K.O. Kupperman, Indians & English: Facing Off in Early America, Ithaca, 2000, 58–9. For example, the body paint of White’s Pict is very similar in appearance to the armor worn by Carlo Crivelli’s St. George (1472), reproduced in S.W. Pyhrr and J.-A. Godoy, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and his Contemporaries, New York, 1998, 14. The authors suggest that Crivelli’s St. George may have been inspired by theatrical armor. J. Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d: or, The Artificiall Changling, London, 1653, 459. G. Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and Other Devises, Leyden, 1586, 57. Also see A.T. Vaughan and V.M. Vaughan, ‘Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 54(1), 1997, 19–44; and A. Korhonen, ‘Washing the Ethiopian white: conceptualising black skin in Renaissance England’, in T.F. Earle and K.J.P. Lowe, eds, Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, Cambridge, 2005, 94–112. On the Masque of Blackness see M. Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama, Cambridge, 2003, 111–31.

Truth and Artifice in the Visualization of Native Peoples: From the time of John White to the Beginning of the 18th Century Stephanie Pratt The watercolour drawings created by John White depicting American Indian peoples he encountered during the English colonizing ventures to the New World from 1584 to 1590 have a primary importance in the history of European visualizations of American Indians. Their special status as images derives partly from the circumstances of their creation in a number of ‘firsts’ – i.e., this venture being the first organized English attempt to permanently settle with Native North Americans in their own locale; White being the first English artist taken abroad specifically for the role of making a visual record; these ventures being some of the first of Elizabeth’s reign to make land claims in the so-called ‘New World’ of America; and these images being among some of the earliest ever devised by an English artist of the natives of North America. The primacy of White’s images, their foundational importance for so much of the ‘Indian’ iconography that followed and was derived from them, can be explained by their originating position.1 But, by the same token, precisely because White’s images are the first extensive visualization of Native Americans, with no tradition to draw on, the natural presumption has been to treat them as objective records immune from any process of mediation. A starting point for any analysis of the balance between ‘truth’ and invention in White’s work is the interpretation first iterated by David Beers Quinn that the drawings’ ‘pictures and actions’ are more revealing than the words provided by Ralph Lane and Thomas Harriot in their respective narratives of the early English venture in what would become North Carolina.2 Specifically, Quinn finds White’s ‘drawings speak loudly of his goodwill toward the native peoples whom he pictured, and of his immense care to record them faithfully, without either exaggeration or reduction’.3 This is a perceptive comment in

that it highlights an attitude that White most certainly would have adopted with respect to his subject matter, one characterized by modern scholars as dispassionate and akin to proto-scientific scrutiny. English colonizing ventures such as Sir Walter Raleigh’s in the 1580s instituted a focus on the ‘accurate’ visual recording of details of cultural difference; even if those are not the precise terms they would have used to describe it.4 One of the earliest scholars of White’s visual material, Paul Hulton, has also written about the artist’s ‘convincing’ and factual approach, [attaining an] almost ethnographic status.5 This factual content is validated even further by the documentation contained at the end of the British Museum’s A New World exhibition held in 2007. In the last room of the exhibition current Virginian and North Carolinian Indian representatives were quoted from their reactions to first seeing White’s drawings on a visit to the British Museum in 2006. This was one of the first occasions when Algonquian tribal members have been able to view these works firsthand. They recognized themselves in the drawings as they could see images of ‘our brothers and sisters’ and saw their traditional practices well represented.6 The idea that White’s drawings offer direct testimony is widespread. In an American educational website (accessed November 2006) designed for use by high-school teachers, White’s methods are described thus: ‘He probably sat off to the side quietly observing the American Indians with his sensitive and understanding eye, then swiftly conveying his impression to paper.’ He showed ‘a delicate naturalism in portraying his subjects’ and did not ‘pose them in unnatural situations’ or ‘europeanize’ them as would most 16th-century artists.7 It is easy enough to criticize a non-academic website such as this, but it serves to point up the consensus about the ethnographic importance of White’s drawings in contemporary scholarship. White himself spoke of what he had achieved in a more complex manner, stating in the title page to the portfolio of drawings made after his expeditionary experiences in Elizabethan ‘Virginia’ that these were the pictures of sundry things collected and counterfeited according to the truth in the voyage made by Sr. Walter Raleigh knight, for the discovery of La Virginea. In the 27th yeare of the most happie reigne of our Soveraigne lady Queene Elizabeth. And in the yeare of or Lorde God. 1585.8

Figure 1a A Cheife Herowan, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.21)

Figure 1b One of the wyves of Wyngyno, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.17)

White’s observational accuracy is validated when comparing his watercolours with Thomas Harriot’s text.9 Harriot describes Granganimeo, the brother of Wingina, the Roanoke Indian leader, and Granganimeo’s acquisition of a piece of tin from the English which he then fashioned as a piece of adornment to wear around his neck. White’s watercolour of the ‘Chiefe Herowan’ (Fig. 1a) shows a man similarly adorned. His folded arms echo Harriot’s observation that some elders of the community known for their wisdom characteristically European Visions: American Voices | 33

Pratt adopted such a pose.10 John White’s ‘truth’, however, is not now easily mapped onto our current expectations of naturalism in art and the mechanical recording of space, volume, shape, colour, field and depth as we understand these elements today. His concepts of truth and artifice pertained to his practice as a gentlemanlimner in the tradition instituted by Nicholas Hilliard.11 The limning tradition was codified in several art treatises in English published towards the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, just following the period when White was most active as an ethnographer/artist. Richard Haydocke’s translation of Lomazzo’s Trattato (first published in Italian in 1583) appeared in 1598 and continued the incorporation of Italian Renaissance and Mannerist art theories into the broader academic professionalization of artists in England. Nicholas Hilliard’s The Arte of Limning (1600), written at the request of Haydocke, helped to distinguish limning from other kinds of painting. Its discussion of the painting of faces is instructive for my account as one finds a close approximation to what John White might have considered one of the kinds of ‘truth’ being counterfeited in his art. But of all things, the perfection is to imitate the face of mankind (or the hardest part of it, and which indeed one should not attempt until he were meetly good in story work) so near and so well after the life as that not only the party in all likeness for favour and complexion is, or may be, very well resembled, but even his best graces and countenance notably expressed; for there is no person but hath variety of looks and countenance, as well ill-becoming as pleasing or delighting.12

Hilliard’s tract, and indeed White’s practice, promotes the rendering of faces as a key part of the imaging process, but rather than record the precise features seen before the artist, a countenance is best expressed through the perfect resembling of the ‘best graces’ selecting from a variety of moods or countenances that the person adopts. Turning to John White’s single or paired figures of Algonquian peoples (10 watercolours in total) we find that the attention to truth in his work is most assuredly found in the painting of the faces of his figures, who many have noted are distinctly American Indian in countenance and ‘individualized’ to a large extent. The faces of his Indian figures reveal a certain amount of variety, as he turns from painting the old to the very young, a mother and her daughter, ‘age of 8 or 10 yeares’, both of the village of Pomeiooc (Fig. 2). Further examination of the Figure 2 A Cheife Herowans wyfe of Pomeiooc and her daughter, John White (BM 1906.0509.1.13)

Figure 3 Wyve of Wyngyno (left, detail of Fig 1b) and A Cheife Herowans wyfe (right, detail of Fig. 2)

faces also reveals the artifice involved in making the ‘best graces and countenance’ for the kind of portrait being assembled. White’s painting of the mother of the young daughter of Pomeiooc and his image of the ‘wyfe’ of Wingina are facially, and in the arrangement of their hair, very much the same individual physiognomically (Fig. 3, details). However, in their depicted poses, costumes and body decoration, each are distinctive. Are we meant to see them as the same individual or do their poses, tattooed limbs and differing titles mean that they are separate and distinct? White’s male figures are all facially very similar, with the upturned and rather square chin, full lips, somewhat close-set eyes and a certain amount of hairstyle repetition (Fig. 4, details). These figures, apart from their written titles and differing poses and costumes, are mainly distinguished by their age, the older figures having much more lined features, heavily inscribed with dark parallel marks across the forehead and cheeks. Significantly, White’s images of Florida peoples, a man and a woman, are facially different from the ‘Virginians’ as they were copies after those made by Jacques Le Moyne. Here, again, we might have recourse to Renaissance theories of decorum as instituted in several Italian treatises and reproduced for an English audience via Haydocke’s translation of Lomazzo. Younger individuals would show more decoro or decorum in active poses and older figures would maintain more reticent and senatorial stances as befitted their stations in society. Similarly, their faces must show decorum in expression. When we turn to the poses, stances, articulation of the hands and fingers of the Algonquians being represented, we reach now a place of absolute artifice in John White’s images, several scholars noting the clear dependence of White and his

Figure 4 A Cheife Herowan (left, detail of Fig 5a), The Flyer (right,) (BM 1906,0509.1.16)

34 |European Visions: American Voices

Truth and Artifice in the Visualization of Native Peoples Figure 5a Their manner of their attire and painting themselves, John White, (BM 1906,0509.1.12)

engraver de Bry on Mannerist forms of expression.13 One wellknown instance of this formulation is the deployment of what is termed the ‘Renaissance elbow’ in John White’s figure of the werowance or chief ‘Lorde’, showing the ‘manner of their attire and painting themselves when they go to their generall huntings or at theire solemne feasts’.14 He isn’t shown as a particularly elderly individual and his pose certainly signifies someone fit and active in European iconographical terms, a military standard-bearer or young courtier.15 This pose amounts to an idealization and Europeanization of the original sitter and begins a process of hybridical representations of American Indian leaders that lasted far into the 18th century (Fig. 5a,5b – compare with Standard bearer by H. Goltzius). Other forms of artifice that enter into John White’s imaging processes are taken again from Mannerist visual culture, in the form of engravings, both of whole figures and of smaller details, such as the depiction of hands and toes. Some of White’s figures seem to speak through their hands, especially in the image of the mother and daughter of Pomeiooc, who Joyce Chaplin and others, have read accurately as literally drawing in the English viewer to imagine their impact on American Indian society whose needs are to be fulfilled by the colonizing effort (see Fig. 2).16 The mother’s right arm and pointing finger in this watercolour-drawing look very similar to the right arm in the image of a woman holding a plantain leaf illustrated in volume 3 of Giambattista Ramusio’s collection of Navigationi e Viaggi published in Venice in 1550–59. In the circle around Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, the Hakluyts or the aristocratic patron himself would have been aware of this important set of published voyages and offered them to White as further stimulus for his own work.17 Finally, White’s deployment of contemporary visual models is demonstrated in the distinctive pose of the figure of ‘The flyer’ or medicine person, widely thought to be based on small bronze reproductions of Giambologna’s sculpted figure of Mercury of the 1580s, another instance where accepted forms of European art expression provide appropriate models for the truths that White wishes to express.18 I would like to make a brief observation at this point about a source White does not appear to have used, despite having every possibility of doing so. Manteo and Wanchese were captured during the first Virginia expedition sponsored by Raleigh and taken back to England in 1584. While Wanchese

Figure 5b A Standard bearer, Hendrick Goltzius, 1587, engraving (BM 1853,1008.87)

only spent those few months of 1584 and 1585 in the company of the English, Manteo stayed much longer in Raleigh’s household and amongst his retinue of gentlemen and ‘scientists’ before finally returning home permanently to the Carolina Outer Banks, in 1587.19 A traveller’s diary of 1584–85, notes that the two American Indian men in Raleigh’s company ‘are clad in a brown taffeta,’ that ‘their faces as well as their whole bodies were very similar to those of the white Moors at home’; however, ‘they wear no shirts, only a piece of fur to cover their pudenda and the skins of wild animals to cover their shoulders. Nobody could understand their language, and they had a very childish and wild appearance.’20 There is no evidence that either man sat for White. Did he view these two captives and cultural interlopers as non-Anglo but also non-native? Had Manteo’s excellence as an intermediary meant that his success in acculturation is now our ethnographic loss?21 What I hope I have suggested in this discussion is that while White’s images are original and accurate in parts, they contain a certain amount of invention and artifice relevant to the era in which they were created. As I now turn to the images that Theodor de Bry and his workshop created after the John White watercolours, I hope to show that these also partake in the visual culture of their creators. Therefore, if White’s images were only partial truths, de Bry’s copies are removed even further from the truth. De Bry would have worked faithfully towards the perfection of his art and would not have questioned White’s authority as artist on a voyage of colonization. His manipulation of John White’s watercolours, their transformation into graphic imagery, with additions and inventions of de Bry’s own making, should be understood as accepted practices of the processes of reproduction. De Bry enhanced images that he might have considered proto-designs, prepared for printing but not to be widely disseminated without further elaboration. The distinction traditionally held between the two forms of representation is that in John White’s watercolours we find authentic American Indian content, whereas in de Bry’s images we find subjects that are derivative, manipulated and manipulative, ideologically suspect and Europeanized. What I hope will now be apparent is that most of these distinctions are misleading, and work to valorize one form of representation over another. In White’s own words, he ‘counterfeited’ his images ‘according to the truth’ and thus European Visions: American Voices | 35

Pratt

Figure 6 A Virginian man in St. James’s Park, London, Brent de Bock?, from Michael van Meer’s Album Amicorum, 1615, watercolour (With permission of Edinburgh University Library, La.III.283. f.254v)

Figure 7 Aged man in his winter garment, Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White (© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

understood fully the functional, symbolic and representational qualities of the image-making process and its limitations. De Bry merely extended the practice. This attention to the context of de Bry’s image-making does not, however, excuse his works from historical or critical reinterpretation which has been undertaken by a number of distinguished scholars.22 Drawing on this discussion it becomes apparent that, in fact, in terms of understanding Raleigh’s, the Hakluyts’ and the company of gentlemen-speculators’ intentions (those who backed this English venture into the New World), it is de Bry’s publication that most fully functioned to carry the weight of ideological and aspirational drives behind it. Richard Hakluyt convinced de Bry to publish the 1585 Virginia colonizing efforts ahead of the French Huguenot attempts in Florida of 1563–65 that were chronologically first, but ideologically less relevant to the aims of promoting English Protestant forms of colonial control over those of the Spanish.23 Recent analyses of the English written accounts pertaining to the Virginia voyages, including de Bry’s published illustrations, cite their ‘rhetorical’ content and approach, perfectly in keeping with Renaissance attitudes to argumentation and the putting forward of an account or ‘history’.24 If we can take as a guide the approach adopted by Peter Mason in his recent study of the intentions behind another sort of rhetorical venture, the publication of the Franciscan friar André Thevet’s Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557), translated into an English version in 1568, as well Thevet’s Les Vrais Pourtraits et Vies des Hommes Illustres of 1584, then the permission to view the inhabitants of the New World as part of ‘history’ itself becomes a significant precursor to how and why the Raleigh circle’s expositor, de Bry, proceeded.25 Crucially, it seems, for English promotion of the new colony in Virginia and for how its American Indians are permitted into history it is the structuring of the visual information in a published text that explicates where in ‘history’ these inhabitants of lands not previously known or recorded should be placed. The first illustrated plate in de Bry’s published account of the Virginian venture is of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In plucking the apple Eve introduces into the timeless world of Paradise an event that precipitates the history of humanity. At the end of the volume are White’s images of Ancient Britons and Pictish peoples, who are

included in order to show ‘that the Inhabitants of the great Britainne have bin in times past as sauvage as those of Virginia’.26 In between are placed the Virginia Indians, framed genealogically by Adam and Eve and anthropologically by the ancient Britons. But the Indians’ historical context is not securely placed. The reader of de Bry may have surmised that the Indians’ previous existence took place in a continual present, bereft of significant history in the sense the English colonists could have recognized. There is no ‘in times past’ for these figures beyond the original moment of the first contact in 1584. De Bry’s venture, once published, took on an iconic authority of its own and can be shown to have dictated the terms for representation of American Indians throughout much of the next 200 years.27 In the remainder of this account I will give four instances of this phenomenon to demonstrate just how widespread was the taking up of the de Bry stereotypes. My first example dates from the 1610s. Two nearly contemporaneous images, c. 1615, have emerged in the historical records, one that clearly labels its figures with individual names and another that shows a single standing male Virginian, viewed in ‘St James’s Park, London in the zoological garden, in Westminster’ surrounded by a number of European animals, a sheep, goat and three birds (Fig. 6). With respect to the latter, the unknown artist [perhaps Brent de Bock] claims to ‘have seen’ this figure, but there is a danger here in accepting this statement as a claim for visual congruity between what is depicted and what was actually ‘seen’. In Dutch visual tradition, the phrase ‘copied from the life’ does not propose, as modern viewers might think, that the artist is recording an event in front of their eyes.28 Instead, it refers to the basis of the drawing stemming from life-study drawings, i.e., studies of hands, feet, expressions, etc. Just as the birds and animals of this drawing are probably copied from other books containing life studies of these animals, so too is the Indian man derived from the Virginia volume published by Theodor de Bry, particularly the plate Aged man in his winter garment (Fig. 7). This drawing’s derivation from de Bry does not invalidate the truth of its inscription, that the draftsman saw a Virginian Indian in St. James’ Park, but de Bry showed him how to turn his experience into a visual record. The identity of the man seen in the park may be elucidated


Truth and Artifice in the Visualization of Native Peoples Figure 8 Eiakintomino, by Felix Kyngston for William Welby, detail of Virginia Company Lottery, printed broadside with woodcuts, 1615. (Society of Antiquaries of London)

like to take just one part of Robert Vaughan’s six-part plate to reveal how an original John White image, via a de Bry reproduction of it, is translated from a North Carolinian context to one relevant to native peoples living near the Jamestown colony in Virginia and how this further allows the subsequent use of the altered image to be reused in an entirely new context. Vaughan reused White’s scene of the circular dances of the Carolina natives around carved poles ‘which they use at their hyghe feastes’ to articulate the position John Smith must have felt on being captured and surrounded by Virginian natives carrying weapons and dancing in ‘Their triumph about him’ (Figs 9–10). Vaughan, or more likely Smith, provided a rationalization of this reconfiguration by stating in the plate’s legend that The Countrey wee now call Virginia beginneth at Cape Henry distant from Roanoack 60 miles. Where was Sr. Walter Raleigh’s plantation: and because the people differ very little from them of Powhatan in any thing, I have inserted those figures in this place because of the conveniency.29

by the Virginia Company broadside, published in 1615, where two individuals are named: Eiakintomino and Matahan. Clearly, Eiakintomino (on the left) is identical with the St. James’s Park figure – although the pose is reversed by the nature of the engraving (Fig. 8). It is possible, therefore, that both images derive from an intermediary drawing – itself elaborating on the original in de Bry. This process of using White’s designs, mediated by de Bry, as templates for the visualization of the American Indian occurs frequently thereafter. A good example comes from the images illustrating John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, published in 1624. I would

Vaughan’s re-imagining of Smith’s capture and his alteration of the meaning of the dancers’ poses to one of perverse pleasure at the suffering of others was carried forward as late as the early 19th century in an illustration to a captivity narrative. The scene shows the ‘horrific torture of two “helpless virgins”’, illustrating an anti-Indian propaganda collection now considered fictitious, the Affecting History of the Dreadful Distresses of Frederick Manheim’s Family, (1793–1800) (Fig. 11). White’s figures are here given back some of their original accountrement seen in their first articulation in de Bry but they also retain the weaponry brandished in the plate illustrating John Smith’s account. Further reuses of the de Bry visual iconography of the Virginian Algonquian Indians show up in a number of other contexts, usually graphic, of which I will highlight only two to exemplify further the range and extent of impact that these original images had on the general European representation of American Indians. During the 17th century, a number of mapmakers displayed in the cartouches and other framing devices of their printed maps American Indian support figures who owed their origins to some of White and de Bry’s visual

Figure 9 Detail, Map and illustrations in John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, Robert Vaughn, engraving, 1624, (© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, G.7037)

Figure 10 Their dances which they use at their hyghe feastes, Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White, 1590, in Historia Americae, Pars 1 (© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)


Pratt Figure 13 Huron or Iroquoian man with body markings, Anon., from Historia Canadensis, ed. F. Du Creux, Paris, 1664, (© Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University)

Figure 11 Frontispiece to the Affecting History ofthe Dreadful Distresses of Frederick Mannheim’s Family, engraving, 1793 – c.1800 (Philadelphia, © The Library Company of Philadelphia, Am1794 Aff, 6972.0.5)

formulations. It became somewhat of a stereotype for Dutch and Flemish mapmakers (Blaue and others) to include a number of de Bry ‘Indians’ within the cartouche or decorative borders of their American maps, proliferating what was already a set of semiotically structured elements and fixing to a certain extent the already existing visual iconography of the North American Indians as first expressed by de Bry and his followers (Fig. 12, opposite). As I have argued elsewhere, the uncertain knowledge of the landforms of America can be compared with the seeming security of these iconic figures.30 The Indian stereotype in the fixity of its visual authority provides a secure frame of reference for the continent. This authority was effective precisely because no new visual representations had emerged to supplant it. Finally, I wish to underscore the pervasiveness of that use of the Renaissance elbow (mentioned above) in certain images of North American Indians produced up to the 18th century. Two places where this pose is most distinctively seen and which show obvious indebtedness to John White’s original images of coastal Algonquians are those illustrations found in the Historia Canadensis of 1664 of single figures of Huron and other northeastern Indians and the related set of figures shown in the Codex Canadiensis of around 1700 (Figs 13–14). The Codex’s illustrator was probably the Jesuit father Louis Nicholas, who produced a number of tracts based on his experiences during several years of travels in New France. In 38 |European Visions: American Voices

the Codex, Nicholas created almost entirely hybridical figures of native peoples from the Great Lakes regions that he reconfigured using typical bodies and formats he found in the illustrations to Francois Du Creux’s Historia Canadensis, whose illustrator in turn produced figures drawing on the precedent of White and de Bry. We can trace this especially through the use and reuse of the Renaissance elbow format for some of the figures. In White, this pose is found in a Coastal Algonquian man, in Du Creux’s Historia, he has become Huron, and finally in Louis Nicholas’ Codex, the man is either Ottawa or one of their enemies, the ‘Sioux’, or Nadowessieux ‘King’. In all of these instances what is laid bare is a process of visual imagining, rather than an eyewitness record. Once White’s designs had been disseminated by de Bry they took on an iconic authority that dictated the terms for representing American Indians for over a century. Even when the draftsman had actual figures to work from, the iconography he deployed frequently relied on de Bry’s formulations. It was as though de Bry had constructed a set of two-dimensional lay figures, which other artists would clothe with whatever variations their own experience offered them.

Figure 14 Roy de la grande nation des nadouessioueks, Louis Nicholas?, pen, ink, and wash, c. 1700, from the Codex Canadiensis, The Gilcrease Institute, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Truth and Artifice in the Visualization of Native Peoples

Figure 12 America, with those known parts in that unknowne worlde both people and manner of buildings, from A Prospect of the most Famous Parts of the World, John Speed, engraving, 1676 (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, Atlas 39 (fo.A))

Notes

The most comprehensive studies of European visual representation of American Indians are H. Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the discoveries to the present time, New York, 1975 and his concurrent exhibition catalogue, The European Vision of America, Washington, DC, Paris and Cleveland, 1975. See also more recent synoptic studies by S. Pratt, American Indians in British Art, 1700–1840, Norman and London, 2005; and Michael Gaudio, Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization, Minneapolis/St. Paul, 2008. 2 It was a number of years before the name of the English colony was fixed as ‘Virginia’, this title only emerging from a number of alternates after the late 1580s (alternative names were ‘Wingandacoia’, ‘Ossomocomuck’ or ‘Norumbega’) as discussed in H.C. Porter, The Inconstant Savage: England and the North American Indian, 1500–1660, London, 1979, 225, 230. 3 D.B. Quinn Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584–1606, Chapel Hill and London, 1985, 231. 4 The attention to visual information is shown in the precise instructions given to the artist Thomas Bavin, who was drafted to sail with an abortive English-backed transatlantic voyage of 1582– 83. The instructions to Bavin are reprinted and discussed in P. Hulton, America, 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White, Chapel Hill and London, 1984, 9. 5 P. Hulton and D.B. Quinn, eds, The American Drawings of John White, 1577–1590, 2 vols, London and Chapel Hill, 1964, 40. 6 As stated on the cover of the recently produced video to mark the historic visit of contemporary Virginian and North Carolinian native peoples, On the traces of Pocahontas, ‘the legacy of John White’s c. 17th-century watercolours is discussed by the descendants of the peoples he encountered’, DVD, filmed and produced by Simona Piantieri and Max Carocci, ©The Trustees of the British Museum, 2007.

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13 14

15

A current National Park Service website for Fort Raleigh, North Carolina, illustrates John White in the act of sitting and making a sketch on a small board, an anachronism of some proportion; see also the comments about White’s practice by Michael Strock at http://www.nps.gov/fora/teacher.htm . Quoted from the handwritten title page to the collection of John White’s drawings held in the British Museum, Prints and Drawings department, pen and brown ink, 80 x 164mm, accession no. 1906,0509.1.1. See catalogue entry in K. Sloan, et al., A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007, 93. Thomas Harriot, A briefe and true report, first published, 1588, reprinted in D.B. Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590, London, 1955. This incident of the bartering with the English for their tin dish and Granganimeo’s acquisition of it for the pricey sum of £7 worth of animal furs is described in Porter, 1979, 226; and quoted from Harriot in ibid., 101–2. For an explication of John White’s status as a nobleman-limner, see Sloan, ‘Knowing John White: The courtier’s “curious and gentle art of limning”’, supra n. 8, 22–37, and Katherine Coombs’ paper in this collection. Nicholas Hilliard, A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning, together with a more compendious discourse concerning ye art of limning by Edward Norgate, R.K.R. Thornton and T.G.S. Cain, eds, Ashington and Manchester, 1981, 75. H. Keazor, ‘Theodore De Bry’s images for America’, in Print Quarterly, 15, 2, 1998, 131–49, is a recent example. This is quoted from the written notation on White’s drawing, also frequently titled an ‘Indian in body paint’, from de Bry’s reproduction of the same. It is assumed that either Harriot or White himself would have made the notations. J. Spicer, ‘The Renaissance elbow’, in A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day, J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg,

European Visions: American Voices| 39

Pratt eds, London, 1991, 84–128. 16 J. Chaplin, ‘Roanoke “Counterfeited according to the truth”’ in Sloan, supra n. 8, 63. 17 Ramusio’s translation into English and therefore its availability to scholars of the time is discussed in W.H. Sherman, ‘Bringing the World to England: The politics of translation in the age of Hakluyt’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2004, 14, 199–207. 18 Most recently cited by Neil McGregor in his keynote address at the conference. 19 A.T. Vaughan, ‘Ralegh’s American Interpreters’, in Transatlantic Encounters, American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776, Cambridge, 2006, 21–9. 20 G. Von Bulow, ‘Journey through England and Scotland by Lupold von Wedel in the Years 1584 and 1585’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2nd series, 9, 1895, 251. 21 ‘Manteo and Wanchese also served an important promotional function for Ralegh and his circle. When parliament in December confirmed Ralegh’s patent to his American holdings, it did so at least in part because, “some of the people borne in those partes brought home into this our Realme of England” visited the Chamber so that the “singular great comodities of that Lande are revealed & made knowen unto us.” Ralegh may as well have sent Manteo or Wanchese to visit and board with potential investors and supporters. The evidence here is at best sketchy, but it is at least possible that “the Blackamore” who resided for a time with Henry Percy, the Duke of Northumberland, was either Manteo or Wanchese.’ in M.L. Oberg, ‘Between “Savage Man” and “Most Faithful Englishman”: Manteo and the Early Anglo-Indian Exchange, 1584-1590’, Itinerario, Leiden, 24, 2, 2000, 151–2. 22 B. Bucher, Icon and Conquest, 1988; T. Scanlon, ‘Fear and love: two versions of Protestant ambivalence’, in Colonial Writing and the

40 |European Visions: American Voices

New World, 1583–1671, Cambridge, 1999, 38–67. 23 Discovering the New World, based on the works of Theodore de Bry, M. Alexander, ed., New York and London, 1976, 9. 24 M.G. Moran, Inventing Virginia: Sir Walter Raleigh and the Rhetoric of Colonization, 1584–1590, London, 2007. 25 P. Mason, ‘The Purloined Codex’, Journal of the History of Collections, 9, 1, 1997, 2; see also, F. Lestringant, ‘The Euhemerist and the European Perception and Description of the American Indians’, in The Classical Tradition and the Americas, I, part 1, W. Haase and M. Reinhold, eds, Berlin and New York, 1994, 173–188. 26 Quoted from the original third title page in Harriot’s Briefe and true report, 1590, as reproduced in Hulton (1984), supra n. 4, 130. 27 W.C. Sturtevant was one of the first to emphasize the importance of de Bry’s engravings after White for their impact on later visual representations of American Indians, in ‘First Visual Images of Native America’, in First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Fredi Chiapelli, ed., Berkeley, 1976, I, 419. 28 The term ‘haer net leven’ or ‘taken from the life’ as used in 17thcentury Dutch art theory is clearly explained in C. Swan, Art, Science and Witchcraft in Early Modern Holland: Jacques de Gheyn II, 1565–1629, Cambridge, 2005, 36–40. Swan’s analysis goes some way towards counteracting the tendency in some forms of modern scholarship to align these terms with later theories and practices of naturalism arising in the 18th century and after. 29 Quoted from Robert Vaughan’s illustrations to John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, London, 1624, British Library collections, manuscript no. g7037 30 S. Pratt, ‘From the Margins: The Native American personage in the cartouche and decorative borders of maps’, Word and Image, 13, 4, Oct–Dec 1996, 249–65.

Section 2

Nature and Natural History

Catalogue Nature andtitle Natural History to go in here and Summary Introduction Florike Egmond If any topic proved to be a recurring one during both the exhibition of John White’s watercolours A New World: England’s first view of America and the conference European Visions: American Voices, it was the theme of nature: the study of it, the knowledge and experience of it, its dangers and profits, its potentially fatal powers, the representation of nature, and the way in which exotic people, plants and animals all were regarded as part of ‘exotic nature’ by the English settlers who arrived in Virginia. In the session of the conference specially devoted to botany two of these aspects were highlighted. Deborah Harkness looked at the European context from which John White and his companions departed. What kind of botanical knowledge – especially concerning American botany – was actually available in 16th-century London? In Lime Street a community of naturalists could be found, many of whom were refugees from the Southern Netherlands. In some respects this was, in fact, an English outpost of a European-wide network of students of nature, including botanists, zoologists, entomologists and collectors of minerals, rocks and fossils. At its core we find James Cole (or Ortelianus), a nephew of the famous Flemish cartographer Ortelius. Some of these men were the foremost experts on exotic nature at the time, and obtained their information via close contacts with those who actually had participated in the voyages of Drake or Cavendish. John White was in contact with this community, and it is more than likely that he tried to obtain as much information from them as possible about the nature of the New World. In spite of this, as Karen Reeds pointed out in her paper about White’s experience of nature in Virginia, their preparations were insufficient. Their knowledge of the plants, trees, shrubs and climate of the land where they planned to settle, and their information about the type of crops that they might grow seem to have been minimal. Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia relates that the first impression of the settlers upon landing was that of a paradisiacal landscape, a garden of Eden overflowing with edible fruit and vegetables. Yet, this peaceful and abundant paradise soon took on a more daunting aspect. Eventually, White and his companions were almost starving, eating dog’s meat made palatable by cooking it together with the strong smelling sassafras. Why were these men who spent so much time on nautical preparation so badly prepared in this respect? After all, their very survival in the new land depended on it. And how did they actually think they could convince the investors back in England that a settlement colony was a profitable enterprise if they could not even keep themselves alive? These were some of the questions that came up during discussion, which also touched upon the themes of ‘ethnography’ and representing nature. 42 | European Visions: American Voices

White depicted by no means only plants and animals that were economically interesting. Whether his pictures of people were actual portraits of individuals or more generic representations is still a much-debated question. His drawings, however, encompass both local inhabitants, ways of life, plants, crops and animals, thus bringing together human and nonhuman exotica in one series of drawings, as frequently happened in early ‘ethnography’. Precisely for that reason it might be interesting to link the debates on generic versus individual representation with similar discussions among the scholars of botanical and natural history illustration. White’s personal connection with the naturalists of Lime Street – which is also evident from the fact that the illustration of the milkweed in John Gerard’s famous The herball or Generall historie of plantes (London, 1597) was based on a drawing by White – not only implies that he could ask them for information about American plants, but it also means that White could have access via these men to the Continental European traditions and styles of depicting nature. In the course of the 16th century a vast number of drawings and watercolours were created on the Continent portraying plants and animals: both local, indigenous ones and exotic naturalia. Some of the most famous collections of (mainly botanical) watercolours were only discovered, or rediscovered, in the second half of the 20th century. For the area north of the Alps the best-known collections are perhaps the approximately 1,500 sheets of the Libri Picturati vols A.16–30 (now in Cracow), which were created during the second half of the 16th century in the southern Netherlands. The rich collector and aristocrat Charles de Saint Omer, who lived near Bruges, commissioned the core (more than 600 sheets) of this collection, which were put together in albums and may have served as a mixture of an encyclopedia of the natural world, a paper museum and an inventory of some of the plants and animals in his collection. In the Libri Picturati we find pictures of a few American and Asian plants, barks and spices, besides a vast number of European plants, shrubs, flowers and trees. Almost equally famous are the 1,529 sheets with naturalistic watercolours of plants (now known as the Codex Fuchs in Vienna), created between 1538 and 1562, and intended as a basis for the woodcuts in a work by Leonhart Fuchs (1501–66) that was probably going to be entitled De stirpium historia commentarii. It never appeared because of Fuchs’s death in 1566, and the watercolours were generally forgotten until they were acquired by the Austrian National Library in 1954. The Fuchs watercolours show many European plants, but also include pictures – some of them now held to be the first in European history – of American plants such as the tomato, the pumpkin, tobacco and the sunflower. Other important collections of botanical watercolours from the second half of the 16th century are the watercolours of plants in the garden of Eichstätt, which served as the basis for

Nature and Natural History: Introduction and Summary the copperplate engravings used to illustrate Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis (Nuremberg 1617); the watercolours made by the famous Swiss polymath and naturalist Conrad Gesner (1516–65) – which, like the Fuchs ones, were never used for the great botanical work planned by Gesner because of his untimely death; and the so-called Camerarius Fiorilegium, all three now in the library of Erlangen-Nuremberg. So far, it is unclear why some of the first European pictures of American plants – probably portraits of living plants growing in Fuchs’s garden in Tübingen – can be found around the middle of the 16th century in Germany rather than in Spain or Italy, which were after all the more obvious points of first entry for American naturalia into Europe. The reason can certainly not be a lack of interest in exotic plants on the part of the Italians or Spanish, as famous collections of botanical and zoological watercolours can be found south of the Alps as well. Yet, several of these collections too were ill-fated. This is true above all for the thousands of watercolours brought back in 1577 by the royal physician Francisco Hernández, who had been sent to America on the orders of King Philip II of Spain to investigate and document the flora of Mexico. The king decided for various reasons that the watercolours were not to be published, and even access to them was rare. A selection of copies of the Hernández watercolours, however, came into the possession of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei, which eventually published them after considerable delay. The Hernández originals were lost during a fire in the Escorial in 1671. The fate of the hundreds of botanical and zoological watercolours made for the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) was much less dramatic: the printed works for which they served as a basis only appeared decades after the death of Aldrovandi, but the originals still exist and now can even be consulted online: http://www.filosofia.unibo. it/aldrovandi/. Some other Italian herbals of the second half of the 16th

century, such as the album of Pier Antonio Michiel and the works by Gherardo Cibo, mainly depict indigenous plants. But American and other exotic plants can also be found in slightly less well-known Italian collections of watercolours, such as the Codice Casabona, a late 16th-century album of botanical watercolours in the library of Pisa, some of them by Daniel Froeschl. In terms of artistic standards, detailed observation and portrayal, and naturalism many of these finely limned representations are regarded as unsurpassed. Whether John White had ever personally seen examples of the watercolours created in Continental Europe is unclear, but his contacts with Gerard and with other members of the Lime Street community make it likely that he was at least aware of these modes of representing nature. Whether he closely followed European styles in terms of painting or added elements peculiar to English traditions of limning is a matter to be further investigated. It is clear, however, that his manner of depicting nature in the New World formed part of a typically Old World style of representing nature. Further reading

Blunt, W., and Stearn, W., The art of botanical illustration, London, 1950, revised ed. 1994. Egmond, F., ‘Clusius, Cluyt, Saint Omer. The origins of the sixteenthcentury botanical and zoological watercolours in Libri Picturati A. 16–30’, in Nuncius 20, 2005, 11–67. Lack, H.W., Ein Garten Eden. Meisterwerke der botanischen Illustration / Garden Eden. Masterpieces of Botanical Illustration / Un Jardin d’Eden. Chefs-d’oeuvre de l’illustration botanique, Taschen, Cologne, London, Madrid, New York, Paris, 2001. Meyer, F., Trueblood, E.E., and Heller, J., The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs. De Historia stirpium commentarii insignes, 1542. Facsimile and with commentaries, 2 vols, Stanford, 1999. Prinz, W., and Beyer, A., eds, Die Kunst und das Studium der Natur vom 14. zum 16. Jahrhundert, Weinheim, 1987. Schnalke, T., ed., Natur im Bild. Anatomie und Botanik in der Sammlung des Nurnberger Arztes Christoph Jacob Trew [Exhibition catalogue] Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek, 1995.


Elizabethan London’s Naturalists and the Work of John White Deborah E. Harkness In 1587, after John White returned to England following his second voyage to Virginia, copies of some of his watercolors of New World fauna came into the possession of two of Elizabethan England’s two best known naturalists: Thomas Penny and Thomas Moffett. Penny, who is frequently called the father of English entomology, and Moffett, whose name is inextricably linked to spiders and tuffets, were fellow physicians and close friends who were interested not only in the study of insects but also the study of plants and other naturalia, and they were especially interested in rare, foreign, and exotic specimens. It is not surprising, therefore, that they were eager to receive illustrations of never-before-seen New World creatures such as the firefly (Fig. 1) and a spectacular swallow-tail butterfly (Fig. 2). Once in the hands of Penny and Moffett, these drawings were associated with hundreds of detailed drawings of insects and insect specimens that the two men had collected over decades of intensive study, and were used as reference points for their investigations into the natural world (Fig. 3). When Moffett and Penny acquired White’s insect studies, the images began to circulate within Elizabethan London’s most distinguished community of naturalists. In the downtown neighborhood around Lime Street, adjacent to Leadenhall Market, (Fig. 4) behind garden walls, inside apothecary shops, and within the well-appointed houses of merchants and physicians, an important community of naturalists lived and worked. Lime Street was the English outpost of a Europeanwide network of students of nature – including plant hunters, gardeners, rock and fossil collectors and scholars interested in animals and insects. Its members included English citizens, foreign immigrants, physicians, apothecaries and merchants. It was with this important community that John White made contact, and shared his New World discoveries. How White made contact with Penny and Moffett has long been questioned. It is an important question among historians interested in White and the role he played in communicating

Figure 1 Fireflies, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.67)


New World discoveries to a larger audience, and also among historians of early modern science interested in how naturalists obtained information about the Americas. While I have not discovered irrefutable evidence of the ‘missing link’ that could tie White, Penny, and Moffett neatly together, my purpose here is to suggest one possible way that the men may have been introduced, and give some explanation why a man like John White would have been a person of interest to the Lime Street naturalists. Today, little is known about the naturalists on Lime Street or the contributions they made to the study of nature in the early modern period. In John White’s lifetime, however, the Lime Street naturalists were well-known in both local and international intellectual circles. This paper will focus on the five core members of the Lime Street naturalist community to which Penny and Moffett belonged, and explore the relationships they had with others on the Continent who were interested in the New World such as Abraham Ortelius and Carolus Clusius. After introducing five of the Lime Street naturalists and their work, the paper examines how their belief in the importance of fieldwork, and the value they placed on accurate representations of natural objects, may well have brought John White to their attention. John White, who was both an artist and an explorer, was precisely the kind of person that Penny, Moffett and the other Lime Street naturalists would have wanted to rely on for information about the newly discovered lands. Living on Lime Street Had you lived on Lime Street between 1585 and 1590, and been interested in natural history, there is no question that you would have made every effort to get into the good graces of a Flemish silk merchant who was known in the City by the very Figure 2 Tiger swallowtail butterfly, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.66)

Figure 3 Tiger swallowtail butterfly, John White, c. 1585 (British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Sloane MS 4014, fol. 95v)

Elizabethan London’s Naturalists Figure 4 Area around Limestreet, from the Agas map of London, woodcut, c. 1603 (by permission of the Guildhall Library, Corporation of the City of London)

English name of James Cole. Some knew him under another name – Jacobus Colius Ortelianus – for he was the nephew of Abraham Ortelius, the great geographer and antiquarian (Fig. 5). Christened Jacob Coels in Antwerp in 1563, he became ‘James Cole’ at the age of eight when his family fled religious persecution in the Netherlands and joined hundreds of immigrant Protestants living in London.1 James Cole was the person who kept the Lime Street natural history community together, and it is probable that he was the first member of the community to make contact with John White. The evidence for this hypothesis comes from the correspondence that moved back and forth across the English Channel between Abraham Ortelius and James Cole. In the winter of 1587, just days after John White received his charter from Walter Raleigh to return to the New World for a third time, Ortelius wrote a letter to his young nephew in London. The letter was full of matters of common intellectual concern, namely geography, history, and botany.2 In the letter Ortelius thanked Cole for ascertaining the precise location of ‘Wigandecua’, more familiar to us as Virginia, from his informants in England. Ortelius also praised Cole’s knowledge of history, while lamenting the fact that his nephew could not take advantage of his well-stocked Antwerp library. To bridge the gap between Antwerp and London, however, Ortelius enclosed some valerian3 and sunflower seeds (one of the trendiest garden flowers at the time) gathered from his garden by Cole’s aunt Anna.4 Ortelius reckoned that sending seeds to Cole was like ‘sending owls to Athens’ because his nephew already had such an impressive garden. No doubt Ortelius hoped that they would serve as an adequate substitute for the African marigold seeds that Cole wanted, and which Ortelius could not procure. Ortelius’s letter and the packet of seeds made their way across the English Channel, into the City of London, and were delivered to James Cole’s comfortable house on the curving expanse of Lime Street. It was a wealthy street, described by the Elizabethan historian John Stow as an expanse ‘of fair houses for merchants and others’.5 At the north end Lime Street opened up to Cornhill Street and Leadenhall Market, where a

variety of plants, vegetables and herbs were sold. The southern end of Lime Street intersected with Lombard Street, where the foreign merchants residing in London met twice a day to exchange news and information until 1568 when they were expected to transact their business under the porticoes of the Royal Exchange.6 Cole’s father was one of these foreign merchants, and from his youth the family seems to have seen in young James the intellectual curiosity and abilities of his uncle. The two became close through occasional visits and regular correspondence, and today this correspondence reveals that James Cole was not just a silk merchant, but also a well-read Latinist with an avid interest in plants, fossils and old coins. By the age of 12 he was studying Greek and receiving simple Latin letters from Ortelius, who also sent his young nephew parcels of books. In his mid-twenties Cole went to Antwerp to stay with his uncle and aunt, Anna. ‘He does not pass his time uselessly’, Ortelius

Figure 5 Abraham Ortelius, uncle of James Cole, by Hendrik Golzius, engraving, c. 1586 (BM 0,5.2)


Harkness wrote proudly to Cole’s father back in London; ‘he studies, he writes. He learns every day, which I observe with pleasure.’ Cole’s studies were not limited to natural history, and he also delved into matters of history, theology and philosophy.7 In time, Cole became a published author who wrote a wideranging assortment of treatises popular enough to be reprinted and translated, including a work in praise of the study of plants, a description of the plague in London and religious texts.8 The Lime Street neighborhood was home not only to James Cole, but also to four other men who were equally interested in natural history: Thomas Penny (c. 1530–88), Thomas Moffett, Mathias de L’Obel and James Garret. Thomas Penny was a popular City physician, but his real passion was reserved for the study of animals, insects and plants. He had studied in Zurich with the naturalist Konrad Gesner in 1565, and when Gesner died Penny left the city with some of Gesner’s animal studies. He then made his way to the French university at Montpellier, where he became friends with a medical student named Mathias de L’Obel, who would one day be his neighbor in London. While still in Europe, Penny also became close to Joachim Camerarius (1534–98), the author of pioneering books in fields of study that would become botany and zoology. Camerarius described Penny in his Hortus medicus (1588) as ‘the eminent London doctor, very skilled in natural history, [and] my particular friend’.9 It was Penny who drew Thomas Moffett (1553–1604), another physician and naturalist, into the Lime Street community. Moffett was a London native who was often at odds with the College of Physicians, which disapproved of his interest in the controversial new chemical medicines of an itinerant German medical practitioner called Paracelsus. But he was also fascinated by natural history, and was an active figure in the Lime Street community. After Penny’s death, Moffett gathered up all his friend’s manuscripts on insects and compiled them with his own observations into a monumental work of more than 1,200 pages. No London printer would agree to publish it, especially since Moffett could not resist tinkering with it and adding new entries whenever an exciting specimen came to his attention. It was only after Moffett’s death that the volume finally saw the light of day as The Theater of Insects, or Lesser Animals (Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum) in 1634.10 Lime Street’s most distinguished naturalist was undoubtedly the Flemish physician Matthias de L’Obel (1538– 1616) (Fig. 6), one of the two most important botanists of the 16th century. Known for his pioneering work on botanical taxonomy, L’Obel first resided in England between 1569 and 1571, when he met up with the naturalist Carolus Clusius to do some botanical fieldwork around Bristol and struck up a friendship with Hugh Morgan, Queen Elizabeth I’s apothecary, who had a number of novel West Indian plants in his garden. In 1585 L’Obel returned to London to take up permanent residence at the southern end of Lime Street, and became friends with, and then father-in-law to, James Cole. 11 James Garrett (d. 1610), a Flemish apothecary and exotic plant specialist, also lived on Lime Street, close to L’Obel at the southern end. Garret was well known in London for importing novel drugs from the East and West Indies, and his fellow apothecaries knew that they could rely on his manuscript 46 | European Visions: American Voices

translation of Christopher Acosta’s important treatise on these drugs.12 Well connected to a European-wide network of naturalists, Garrett was a close friend of the 16th century’s other great botanist, Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), who described him as ‘my dear friend, a man of honour, greatly delighting in the study of herbarism’. Clusius’s affection for Garrett may have stemmed from their mutual passion for tulips, which Garrett cultivated in his London garden plot along the city wall in Aldgate.13 When Clusius visited England, as he did three times, he always stayed on Lime Street with either L’Obel or Garrett. On his third visit, in 1581, Clusius received some strange roots Sir Francis Drake had gathered on his 1580 voyage through the Straits of Magellan, which he named Drake’s Root.14 This was an impressive group of intellectuals, who had a deep interest in understanding the natural world. But for the community to flourish, they needed to forge connections with people like John White, who had access to exotic plants, animals and mineral specimens. These specimens were the intellectual capital of the Republic of Letters, an early modern Euro that could travel freely and be exchanged easily no matter where the specimens originated, or where they concluded their journey. Rare plants, cultivated and propagated in Lime Street gardens, became important items of exchange, accompanying letters to learned naturalists in Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands, as did New World plants that were received from contacts who had been on the voyages. It was through the circulation and collection of these naturalia – a packet of seeds, a drawing of a rhinoceros horn, a spider, a snippet of

Figure 6 Matthias de L’Obel, Francis Delaram, engraving, 1615 (BM 1876,0708.53)

Elizabethan London’s Naturalists information about Virginia – that the Lime Street community expressed its vitality at home and made its reputation abroad. Though it is easy to dismiss these objects as intellectual bric-a-brac, the fragmentary evidence of an unsystematic interest in the natural world, each item was part of an intricate web of exchange that stretched from Russia to the New World and from Denmark to Africa. Every time a specimen changed hands it became infused with new cultural and intellectual currency as its provenance became richer, its associations greater. Every gift of a flower bulb, a drawing of a firefly, or a fossil came with an unspoken understanding that the recipient would take the specimen and not only credit its donor but find some way to repay the donor either directly or indirectly with something of equal value and importance.15 On Lime Street, these valuable objects were treated carefully, and placed in curiosity cabinets that were specially designed to hold varied collections. Thomas Penny, for instance, maintained a ‘dried garden’, or hortus siccus, a collection of preserved plant specimens that he kept safely between sheets of paper. He also collected artistic representations of insects as well as actual specimens, and these later passed into the hands of his friend Thomas Moffett. Moffett treasured his ‘storehouse of Insects’, where he kept his rarest items, including an African grasshopper that he received from Pieter Quiccheberg of Antwerp, the son of the famous collector Samuel Quiccheberg. James Cole inherited Abraham Ortelius’s large collection of natural objects, maps and antiquities – including artifacts from the New World, the therapeutically treasured gallstones of Persian goats known as bezoar stones, precious gems and ancient marble statues – and stored them all on Lime Street within two large curiosity cabinets that had both shelves and drawers.16 Among the Lime Street naturalists, these objects, specimens, and works of art led double lives. They were both subjects of study and inquiry, and artifacts cherished for their rarity and beauty. As subjects of study, natural objects provoked commentary and argument as their features and merits were debated and discussed within the community. As material objects, they were hoarded in cabinets, were swapped for other desired items on a naturalist’s wish list of specimens, and provided cultural ornamentation that spoke to kings and queens interested in the rare and unusual, as well as to scholars and intellectuals. At a time when most of Europe was locked in war over matters of religion and imperial ambition, the exchange of natural objects prompted an intellectual civility that stood in stark contrast to national disputes. While a naturalist like Cole might have difficulty traveling from Protestant England to the Spanish-occupied Netherlands, his sketch of a rhinoceros horn or a seed packet could cross borders with relative ease and foster friendships that rose above linguistic, religious and national obstacles. While historians often focus on the natural history objects, and the splendid cabinets built to contain them, this paper will consider instead how the Lime Street naturalists acquired objects like these, and how they came to be valued. To do so sheds light on why John White’s insect studies would have been so eagerly acquired and greatly prized by Penny and Moffett. The importance of fieldwork Briefly put, the Lime Street naturalists prized firsthand

knowledge of the animal and plant kingdoms over all other forms of natural knowledge. One could read about a spider in a book, or hear reports of the color of a tulip flower in a letter, but there was nothing like actually seeing a plant or animal in its native habitat to really understand it. The Lime Street naturalists were avid proponents of what we would call fieldwork, and when out in the field, their goal was to observe something novel, rare or peculiar. L’Obel, in particular, loved fieldwork, a passion that was born during his student days at the University of Montpellier when he had studied plants in Geneva and the Jura mountains with Thomas Penny. After moving to England, L’Obel traveled on the border between England and Wales, and identified two new plant varieties: a yellow pulsatilla and a blue-flowered butterwort. ‘I am discovering some beautiful plants in the mountains!’ L’Obel enthused in a letter to his son-in-law James Cole. Moffett was also a tireless field-worker, scouring ‘all Helvetia, Germany and England’ for firsthand knowledge of a particular species of grasshopper, but he was unable to find his elusive prey. When he spotted an unusual specimen, like the ‘rare fly, not every where to be seen ... that feeds on a mud wall made with mud and putrefied materials’, Moffett preserved it ‘though dead, in a box for the rarity of it’.17 For the Lime Street naturalists, one of the joys of fieldwork was the opportunity it presented for collaborative work. Moffett and Penny enjoyed doing fieldwork together, wandering ‘here and there a-sampling’. L’Obel and Penny also went out into the field to examine plant specimens. James Garret helped Moffett study the field cricket by pulling off its wings and rubbing them together ‘very cunningly’ to determine whether their music came, as other naturalists thought, from their wings or from a kind of hollow tube in the insect’s stomach. Garret also studied the habits of the worms he observed living among the violets in his garden for Penny’s work on insects, reporting that they were ‘very small and black, and run very fast’,18 Closer to home, the cultivation of gardens gave naturalists like those on Lime Street another important opportunity to make hands-on inquiries into nature. Ortelius was jealous of his nephew’s London garden, and the rare muscari, tulip, narcissus and lily specimens he had there, some of which were unknown in Antwerp.19 Plants came into the Lime Street gardens from all corners of the globe, along with their donor’s expectation that their health and welfare would be carefully tracked and reported as they became acclimatized to English conditions. Ortelius sent South American sunflower seeds and North American chestnuts on to Lime Street that he had acquired from friends with New World connections. James Garret was internationally renowned both for his ability to propagate ever more colorful varieties of tulip as he unwittingly exploited the virus that was becoming rampant in the flower stock, and for his ability to procure new plant specimens from all over the world. John Gerard noted in The herball or Generall historie of plantes how the apothecary had ‘undertaken to find out, if it were possible, the infinite sorts [of tulip], by diligent sowing of their seeds, and by planting those of his own propagation, and by others received from his friends beyond the seas for the space of twenty years’. More plants poured through the door of his shop on Lime Street: West Indian grasses, seeds from the Peruvian balsam tree obtained European Visions: American Voices | 47

Harkness by Lord Hunsdon, new species of beans, a potted Herba mimosa brought out of Puerto Rico by the Earl of Cumberland and a Virginian version of the china root.20 When a Lime Street naturalist took a trip abroad it was almost always to do fieldwork, rather than to simply engage in recreational travel. Fieldwork could be conducted in new environments, specimens previously seen only in books could be examined in situ growing wild or in cultivated gardens, and friendships made through correspondence could be strengthened by face-to-face contact. James Cole undertook a natural history tour of Europe in the summer of 1597 accompanied by another ‘learned Englishman’. They traveled throughout Europe, visiting the naturalist Joachim Camerarius in Nuremberg, the historian Marcus Welser in Augsburg and the collector Adolphus Occo in Aachen before sweeping the length and breadth of Italy. In Italy, Cole and his English friend visited Professor Magini at the University of Bologna to see whether he had any interesting ancient maps, met artists in Florence and visited Fulvio Orsino’s unparalleled precious stone collection at the Vatican. In Naples, at the house and museum of the della Porta brothers, Cole had the opportunity to participate in the vital intellectual scene and their natural history expeditions.21 While Naples was impressively remote from London by early modern standards, even more exotic fieldwork opportunities were emerging as voyages of exploration opened up new worlds. Eager naturalists were quick to acquire examples of novel specimens from North America, South America and Africa from returning explorers. Acquisition of these desirable, trendy natural commodities was not cheap, as Thomas Moffett discovered when he had to purchase a praying mantis ‘from Barbary that was brought out of Africa with some cost to us’. It was far more cost efficient to procure exotic specimens from friends like Pieter Quiccheberg in Antwerp, who sent Penny a young African grasshopper, which Moffett continued to treasure in his storehouse of insects after his friend’s death. And so it is less surprising that the surgeon Ludovicus Armacus brought Penny a grasshopper from Guinea and a caterpillar from Africa, and John White presented him with another grasshopper ‘brought forth from Virginia’.22 These Lime Street naturalists were interested in topics of perennial interest to gardeners: new species that promised strange colors or interesting flowers, information about species that refused to adapt to new climates and reports on how their favorite plants were faring in the gardens of their friends. But they were also living at a time of unprecedented challenge, as naturalists tried to sort through the findings of their own fieldwork and the overwhelming range of new plants and animals that seemed to be coming into their hands from every direction. The pressing issue among naturalists was how best to study specimens that were not directly available, without falling victim to wild and inaccurate secondhand reports? Representing nature The answer, the Lime Street naturalists found, was to rely on representations of natural objects, specifically sketches, drawings and even colored portraits of plants, animals and insects. While all manner of intriguing objects were sent to Lime Street – hairy caterpillars from Normandy, strange biting caterpillars from Hispaniola and scorpions from Barbary – not 48 | European Visions: American Voices

all specimens could be transported to the City for firsthand inspection. If a specimen could not be had, the Lime Street naturalists greatly preferred a careful drawing to a verbal description. An image of a plant, insect or animal froze the specimen in time, enabling it to be shared with other interested parties and studied minutely and at leisure. The Lime Street naturalists found that an artistic representation of a natural object could impart a greater sense of verisimilitude to the viewer than a verbal description, especially when the descriptive power of words seemed unequal to the task of capturing an especially rare or magnificent specimen. Moffett was glad that he received an elegant drawing of a colorful butterfly from his friend Clusius, for example, because it was ‘easier to wonder at and admire, than with fit expressions to describe’. Even so, representing a specimen – in words or visually – was recognized as an imperfect process of translation from the real object. ‘How hard and uncertain it is to describe in words the true proportion of plants (having no other guide than skilful, but yet deceitful, forms of them, sent from friends ...) they best do know who have most deeply waded in this sea of simples,’ wrote Mathias de L’Obel.23 In spite of these difficulties, Moffett and Penny were eager to receive detailed sketches of plants and other naturalia that were of interest to them. They happily received an illustration of a praying mantis discovered in Greece, and depictions of magnificent butterflies from the one-time Lime Street resident Carolus Clusius, who was then living in Vienna, for example. These included an image of a butterfly that was so splendid and unusual Moffett rhapsodized that it was ‘as if Nature in adorning ... this had spent her whole painter’s shop’.24 Lime Street returned the favor by sending Clusius dried plant specimens from the New World.25 Penny was particularly eager to receive an image of a tarantula rumored be in the possession of Abraham Ortelius that had four eyes. He urged Ortelius to have the tarantula sketched immediately, as the sketches already made for him of Italian tarantulas, sadly, had but two eyes.26 Even when a careful line drawing was made for publication or to send to a friend, the absence of color could limit its usefulness to other students of nature. Moffett carefully instructed his readers how to modify the line drawings that were to be included in his published Theater of insects to make them better reflect live specimens. ‘We have here set down exactly the form and magnitude of the Cranesbill-Eater’, Moffett wrote next to a drawing of a hairy caterpillar, but to fully appreciate what it looked like, the reader ‘must make the white spots that adorn its black girdles of an iron color; and paint the belly and feet, and the white space between the girdles, with a leek-green color’. Moffett gave similar instructions for hand-coloring the line drawing of a tarantula: ‘If you paint the white places with a light brown, and the black with a dark brown, you have the true spotted Tarantula.’27 Much of the reliability associated with drawings and other representations of plants and insects depended on the quality of artists who made the drawings, and though most naturalists of the period were very good draftsmen, their skills were minor in comparison to the artists the Lime Street naturalists considered friends: Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger and Joris Hoefnagel.28 The middle men

Elizabethan London’s Naturalists between the Lime Street naturalists and these artists were James Cole and his uncle, Abraham Ortelius – the same pair who found out the location of Wigandecua in 1587. The Gheeraerts family lived close to Cole on Lime Street, and used the family’s merchant connections to get letters and gifts back to friends on the continent. Joris Hoefnagel, one of Rudolf II’s court artists, had once lived in London among the immigrant community and after departing for the continent he continued to use Abraham Ortelius to procure works of art that he wanted to study. In 1593, Hoefnagel sent him ‘a little drawing from my hand, hoping that it will not displease you’, along with an old sketch of a flowerpot he had long ago dedicated to the cartographer as a token of thanks. Having settled his debts, Hoefnagel now wanted Ortelius’s assistance completing his ‘book of art’ that already had examples of ‘about three hundred good and notable masters’. ‘This study requires the help of friends’, Hoefnagel earnestly explained, ‘and for the little flowerpot I desire nothing but art for art.’ Later in the letter, after sharing the latest news, Hoefnagel dropped broad hints as to the artists whose works he would like to acquire: ‘I possess nothing by Henry Bles, nor of Joos van Cleve, Frans Floris, or the Pourbuses.’29 Back in London, the Flemish immigrants on Lime Street collected the signatures and sketches of their artist friends in their album amicorum. Another of Cole’s uncles, the Dutch community’s London postmaster Emmanuel van Meteren, had an album that included entries by Cole, Ortelius and Clusius, as well as beautiful still-life miniatures by Joris Hoefnagel, Marcus Gheerhaerts and Lucas de Heere. Matthew de L’Obel’s son, Paul, had a similarly star-studded album amicorum, with entries by the classical scholar Joseph Scaliger, France’s royal gardener Jean Robin and two of King James I’s apothecaries.30 Given the strong emphasis on fieldwork among the Lime Street naturalists, their belief in the value of artistic representations as objects of study as well as value, and the strong ties that the community had to artists on the continent and in London through the Cole-Ortelius family, it is less difficult to imagine how John White’s pictures of the firefly and the butterfly made it into Penny and Moffet’s hands. There were doubtless many rumors circulating in London about the New World after the members of the Virginia voyages returned home. But when the opportunity came for the Lime Street naturalists to acquire drawings by John White, they no doubt pounced on their first opportunity to meet the artist and confer with him about what he had seen in his first views of America.

2

3

4 5 6 7

8

9 10

11

12

Notes 1

This paper is a modified and abbreviated version of chapter 1 of Deborah E. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, New Haven/London, 2007, 15–56. I wish to thank Yale University Press for allowing me to republish the information on Elizabethan naturalists here. In addition, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Kim Sloan, who offered her assistance to me as I tried to piece together White’s relationship with the Lime Street naturalists and gave so generously of her time and expertise. I am also deeply appreciative of the comments and feedback that I received at the British Museum’s conference in association with the John White exhibit in June 2007. Stephen Clucas, Florike Egmond, Michael Gaudio, Karen Kupperman, and Kim Sloan helped to sharpen aspects of this paper because of their own contributions to the conference, as well as their questions to me, and I am grateful for their assistance. James Cole, Sr. had already established an outpost of his silk

13 14

15

business in the city of London in the early 1550s, and by 1571 James, Elizabeth and their young son were living in the crowded parish of St. Botolph’s Bishopsgate in the northern part of the city. They appear to have fled the Low Countries for religious reasons, along with many other members of their extended family including Elizabeth Ortels’s cousins Emmanuel van Meteren and Daniel Rogers. For more information on the participation of foreign immigrants in English science of the period, see D.E. Harkness, ‘Strange Ideas and English Knowledge: Natural Science Exchange in Elizabethan London’, in P. Smith and P. Findlen, eds, Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, New York, 2002, 137–62. J.H. Hessels, ed., Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum (1887), Osnabruck, 1969, 4 vols, I, Abraham Ortelii (Geograph Antverpiensis) et Virorum Eruditorum ad Eundem et ad Jacobum Colium Ortelianum (Abraham Ortelli Sororis Filium) Epistolae, letter 149, 19 January 1587, 345–7. Hereafter cited as Ortelius Correspondence. Hessels transcription writes ‘Marvella’, which I suspect is a mistranscription of ‘marnella’, a form of wild valerian with medicinal properties. See J. Gerard, The herball or Generall historie of plantes, London, 1597, 918. P. Findlen, ‘Courting Nature’, in N. Jardine, J. Secord, E. Spary, eds, Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge, 1996, 57–75, 66–7. J. Stow, A Survey of London (1598), London, 1994, 169. Supra n. 5, 209. Ortelius Correspondence, letter 161, 30 September 1588, 375–6. For a discussion of the academic traditions of the Dutch community in England, see O.P. Grell, ‘The Schooling of the Dutch Calvinist Community in London, 1550 to 1650’, De zeventiende eeuw, 2, 1986, 45–58. Cole’s published works include the Syntagma herbarum encomiasticum, Leiden, 1606, which went through a number of editions, and Den staet van London in hare Groote Peste, Middelburg, 1606. For more on the latter publication, see O.P. Grell, ‘Plague in Elizabethan and Stuart London: the Dutch Response’, Medical History, 34, 1990, 424–39. For further information on Penny, see C.E. Raven, English Naturalists from Neckham to Ray: A Study in the Making of the Modern World, Cambridge, 1947, 153–71. For information on Moffett, see V.H. Houliston, ‘Sleeper’s Awake: Thomas Moffet’s Challenge to the College of Physicians of London, 1584’, Medical History, 33, 1989, 235–46; F. Dawbarn, ‘New Light on Dr. Thomas Moffet: the Triple Roles of an Early Modern Physician, Client, and Patronage Broker’, Medical History, 47, 2003, 3–22. The manuscript for Moffett’s The theatre of insects, which still contains preserved insect specimens, is British Library MS Sloane 4014. It was first published under the title Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum, London, 1634, and later appeared as vol. 3 of E. Topsell, The history of four-footed beasts and serpents, London, 1658, under the title The theater of insects. For details on L’Obel and his work see Raven, supra n. 9, 116 and 135; E.L. Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History, Stanford, CA, 1983, 2 vols, II, 876–937; and A. Louis, Mathieu De L’Obel 1538–1616. Episode de l’Histoire de la Botanique, Ghent-Louvain, 1980. For James Garrett see Raven, supra n. 9, 170 and 192; L.G. Matthews, ‘Herbals and Formularies’, in F.N.L. Poynter, ed., The Evolution of Pharmacy in Britain, Springfield, IL, 1965, 187–213; M. Pelling and C. Webster, ‘Medical Practitioners’, in C. Webster, ed., Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, London, 1979, 165–235, 178. Gerard, supra n. 3, 117. L’Écluse, Rariorum Plantarum Historia, Antwerp, 1601, 109; Gerard, supra n. 3, 117; Johnson in Gerard, The herball or Generall historie of plantes, London, 1633, 1621. For further information on L’Écluse, see F. Egmond, et al., Carolus Clusius in a New Context: Cultural Histories of Renaissance Natural Science, Amsterdam, 2006. Insights into tulip mania can be found in A. Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, Chicago, 2007. On gift-giving and exchange in early modern England, see P. Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Adornment, Chicago, 1991, especially 1–110; N.Z. Davis, ‘Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth Century France’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 33, 1983, 69–88; Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: the Practice of Science in the


Harkness

16

17

18

19 20

21

Culture of Absolutism, Chicago, 1993; P. Findlen, ‘The Economy of Scientific Exchange in Early Modern Italy’ in B. Moran, ed., Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500–1750, Rochester, NY, 1991, 5–24. Raven, supra n. 9, 154 and 159; L’Écluse, supra n. 14, 215; James Cole’s will, National Archives (UK), Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Prob. 11/153, ff. 328b–330a. On the Quiccheberg family’s connection to Moffett, see Raven, supra n. 9, 172. For descriptions of their fieldwork, see Moffett, supra n. 10, 947, 949, 994; L’Obel, Stirpium adversaria nova, perfacilis vestigatio, London, 1605, 41 and 233; Gerard, 1633, supra n. 3, 168 and 271; Ortelius Correspondence, letter 353, 7 June 1610, 832–4; letter 352, 10 September 1609, 831–2. Moffett, supra n. 10, 924, 995, 1087, 1001; P. Pena and M. de L’Obel, Stirpium adversaria nova, London, 1571, quoted in F.D. Hoeninger and J.F.M. Hoeninger, The Development of Natural History in Tudor England, Charlottesville, VA, 1969, 56. British Library MS Harley 6994, letter from Ortelius to James Cole, 30 September 1586, f. 39r. This letter was not catalogued in Hessels’s edition of Ortelius’s correspondence and was never part of the Dutch Church collection in London. It is possible that the letter was confiscated by officials before reaching Cole. Raven, supra n. 9, 168 and 236; Parkinson, Theatrum botanicum: The theater of plants. Or, An herball of a large extent, London, 1640, 613; Bauhin, Pinax theatri botanici, Basel, 1623, ch. 112; Ortelius Correspondence, letter 149, 19 January 1586/7, 345–7, letter 214, 6 May 1592, 512–14; Gerard, supra n. 3, 137–140 and 85; Johnson in Gerard, supra n. 14, 1530, 1599, 1618; L’Écluse, Rariorum aliquot Stirpium, per Pannonium, Austriam, & vicinas quasdam Provincias observatarum Historia, Antwerp, 1583, 731–2. The itinerary for Cole’s tour, as well as reactions to him and his own descriptions of what he saw are in the Ortelius Correspondence, letter 304, 6 June 1597, 716–17; letter 306, 2 July 1597, 719–21; letter 309, 18 October 1597, 726–9; letter 312, 21 November 1597, 735–6; letter 313, 1 December 1597, 737–9; letter 314, 24 January 1597/8, 740–41. For the cultural and intellectual significance of such travel in the period see Stagl, A History of Curiosity: the Theory of Travel, 1500–1800, Chur, 1995.


22 Moffett, supra n. 10, 983, 997, 990, 1045. On the traffic of zoological specimens, see George, ‘Alive or Dead’, 250–52. 23 Moffett, supra n. 10, p. 959; Matthew de L’Obel, quoted in Gerard, supra n. 14, 61. For links between visual depictions of nature and the study of nature see Smith, The Body of the Artisan, Chicago, 2004, and P. Long, ‘Objects of Art/Objects of Nature’, in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels, 63–82. Freedberg traced the circulation of drawings among individuals associated with Galileo in The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, Chicago, 2003. Janice Neri explores issues of truth and accuracy among early modern artists and their scientific illustrations in ‘Fantastic Observations: Images of Objects in Early Modern Europe’, PhD dissertation, University of California at Riverside, 2003. 24 Moffett, supra n. 10, 924, 959, 963, and 983. For nature as artist, see A. Goldgar, ‘Nature as Art: the Case of the Tulip’, in Smith and Findlen, supra n. 1, 324–46. 25 Johnson in Gerard, supra n. 14, 434, 1610, 1618. 26 Ortelius Correspondence, letter 152, 12 June 1587, 350–-51. 27 Moffett, supra n. 10, 1038 and 1060. 28 Studies of these artists can be found in E. Hodnett, Marcus Geeraerts the Elder of Bruges, London, and Antwerp, Utrecht, 1971; Tahon, ‘Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder’, 231–3; K. Hearn, Marcus Gheeraerts II: Elizabethan Artist in Focus, London, 2002; P. Hulton and D.B. Quinn, eds, The American Drawings of John White, Chapel Hill, 1964; P. Hulton, America, 1585: the Complete Drawings of John White, Chapel Hill, 1984; K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007; L. Hendrix, G. Bocskay, and T. Vignau-Wilberg, eds, Nature Illuminated: Flora and Fauna from the Court of Rudolf II, Los Angeles, 1997; L. Hendrix, ‘Of Hirsutes and Insects: Joris Hoefnagel and the Art of the Wondrous’, Word and Image, 11, 1995, 373–90. 29 Ortelius Correspondence, letter 232, 16 April 1593, 556–67; letter 239, 20 September 1593, 566–7. 30 Van Meteren’s album amicorum is now Bodleian Library MS Douce 68. Paul de L’Obel’s album is now British Library MS Harley 6467.

Don’t Eat, Don’t Touch: Roanoke Colonists, Natural Knowledge, and Dangerous Plants of North America Karen Reeds In England’s first attempts to plant an American colony, the Roanoke settlers’ knowledge of the natural world could make the difference between, at the very least, comfort and misery and quite possibly between life and death. In this essay, I suggest that the Roanoke colonists’ uncertainties about the reliability of their ‘natural knowledge’ may have contributed to the colony’s mysterious fate.1 More specifically, I look at the connections between human survival and knowledge of plants in the Roanoke expeditions from 1584 to 1590, the years when John White and Thomas Harriot were England’s closest observers of North America. As the Roanoke ‘enterprisers’ confronted the perils of the New World, there was little they could do to control the hazards of storms, shipwrecks, ‘murdering, or pestilence’.2 The dangers posed by a host of unfamiliar plants were a somewhat different matter: in this realm, the use of experts, firsthand observation, and cautious experimentation could, in principle, tip the odds in the colonists’ favor. What informal and formal knowledge of natural history did the English bring with them? What did they take for granted about the properties of plants? How did these expectations shape their assessments of the Algonquians’ natural knowledge and their own direct encounters with American plant-life? To address these questions, I draw upon White’s watercolors and words, Harriot’s A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1588), other accounts of the Roanoke voyages sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh between 1584–90 and contemporary works of natural history and travels.3 First impressions: delight and disorientation For early European explorers, natural knowledge of North America began with landfall. After weeks at sea, the first sight of the New World stirred intense sensations that affected their interpretation of everything that followed. Their first emotion was delight – not just in their safe arrival, but also in the natural bounty that greeted them.4 The first Roanoke venturers were no exception. For Captain Arthur Barlowe, the leader of the reconnaissance expedition that Sir Walter Raleigh sent in April 1584 (the first of John White’s five Virginia voyages), the good impression began even before ‘the coastes of America’ came into view.5 Barlowe reported to Raleigh that on 2 July 1584, he had sailed into: shole water which smelt so sweetely, and was so strong a smell, as if we had bene in the midst of some delicate garden, abounding with all kind of odoriferous flowers, by which we were assured, that the land could not be farre distant.6

Two days later, the expedition set foot on North America: the lande about vs ... [was] full of grapes ... we found such plentie, as well there, as in all places else… that I thinke in all the world the like aboundance is not to be founde.7

The island’s forests were full of deer, rabbits and wildfowl, and the woods themselves were: not such as you find in Bohemia, Moscouia, or Hyrcania, barren and fruitless, but the highest and reddest Cedars of the world ... Pynnes, Cypres, Sassaphras ... and many other of excellent smell, and qualitie.8

Still better, the ‘people of the Countrey’ greeted them with canoes brimming over with ‘the goodliest and best fish in the world’, baskets of game ‘the best of the worlde’, fruits, vegetables and the corn ‘of the Countrey [maize]’.9 There was no need to stint in this Garden of Eden: ‘The earth bringeth foorth all things in aboundance, as in the first creation, without toile or labour.’10 Those first impressions of Virginia’s ‘incredible abundance’ – invoked a dozen times in the five pages of Richard Hakluyt’s edition – led the later colonists to expect a Paradise.11 The venturers’ delight in this new world, however, was quickly followed by a disorienting awareness of the strangeness of the creatures in it.12 Barlowe’s report conveys the explorers’ disconcerting realization that many things in America were very similar to what they knew– but not quite: They haue those Okes that we haue, but farre greater and better... my selfe hauing seene those partes of Europe that most abound [in grapes], finde such difference, as were incredible to be written.13

Some of the differences were startling, the stuff of fairy tales: Their Countrey corne ... groweth three times in fiue moneths... in tenne daies [our Pease] were of foureteene ynches high. They haue also Beanes very faire, of diuers colours, and wonderfull plenty.14

Even if all the differences were as benign as these, the comparisons undermined the travelers’ sense of security about the natural knowledge they carried with them. In the old world, they had at least a lay knowledge of what plants were ‘good meat and holesome’.15 In this new world, they could not be so sure. ‘Whether to vse or not to vse’ On the second Roanoke expedition, Thomas Harriot and John White spent the summer of 1585 ‘imployed in discouering’ Virginia and dealing with its ‘naturall inhabitants’.16 Most of the large company returned to England with Sir Richard Grenville in mid-August–early September 1585. Harriot was one of 107 men who stayed a full year in Roanoke with Ralph Lane. White’s whereabouts for that year, however, remain uncertain. Kim Sloan has suggested that he went back to England with Grenville, worked up his precious ‘pictures of sundry things collected’, and began promoting the next voyage among potential settlers.17 David Beers Quinn, however, believed it ‘almost certain’ that White continued working with Harriot – only to witness the disastrous loss of their notes, paintings, and specimens in confusion of the company’s flight European Visions: American Voices | 51

Reeds from Roanoke in June 1586.18 To me, White’s undiminished enthusiasm for the colonial enterprise in 1587 suggests that he had only seen the summer’s abundance in 1585, not the hardships of spring 1586.19 Harriot properly credited himself with ‘hauing seene and knowne more then the ordinarie’.20 In A briefe and true report, he named about 60 different plants native to the region or sown there by the colonists (along with nearly 40 animals and a dozen minerals). Two dozen plants, identified only by their indigenous names, were wholly unfamiliar to the English newcomers.21 Even if Harriot had learned these plant names beforehand, while studying the language with Manteo and Wanchese, the two Algonquians who had traveled to England in 1584, the words would have meant little until he saw the living plants.22 White’s drawings add two more Virginian plants to the list. One is an unlabeled five-petaled purple flower.23 The other is labeled as Wysauke (Asclepias syriaca L., common milkweed) (Fig. 1).24 A briefe and true report recorded only a subset of Harriot’s observations and insights.25 He protested that he was working largely from memory; and it is clear that investors, not naturalists, were his intended audience.26 Of the multitude of unknown plants he had seen, utility dictated which ones deserved mention.27 Harriot chose the ones that would either help the colony survive or become ‘Marchantible commodities’.28 To judge whether a particular plant might be good ‘to vse or not to vse’, he relied on five sources of natural knowledge:29 1. English medical and herbal expertise. As two anonymous memoranda and Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting had recommended, the expedition included a surgeon, a physician and apothecaries. Their job was to tend to the health of the soldiers, but equally to ‘discouer the simples [i.e., simple medicines] of earbs plantes trees roothes, and stons’ and then to ‘send into the Realme by seede and root herbs and plants of rare excellencie’.30 They apparently returned to England with

Figure 1 Wysauke (milkweed, Asclepias syriaca L.), John White (BM 1906,0509.1.37)


Sir Richard Grenville at the end of the summer of 1585, carrying specimens to grow and test at home.31 After highlighting the medicinal value of Roanoke’s ‘Sweete Gummes of diuers kindes and many other Apothecary drugges’, Harriot deferred to a report expected from the apothecaries.32 2. Botanical literature. Harriot’s report implies that the expedition carried along a key reference book on New World natural history: John Frampton’s English translation of La historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina (Seville 1574), by the Seville physician, Nicolás Monardes. Harriot may not have had a copy at hand as he wrote: his reference to the herbal – ‘The ioyfull newes from the West Indies’ – conflated its title, Ioyfvll nevves ovt of the newe founde worlde (London 1577, 1580), with its running heads and misspelled Monardes’s name (as ‘Monardus’).33 Harriot referred his readers to Frampton’s Monardes for an account of the invaluable sassafras [Winauk; Sassafras albidum (Nutt.) Nees] (Fig. 2).34 Readers could also find there a long enthusiastic account of Harriot’s favorite American plant: ‘vppówac ... The Spaniardes generally call it Tobacco [Nicotiana rustica L.] (Fig. 3)’.35 3. Resemblances to English plants. Harriot and his companions bestowed English names on a number of American plants, based on their similarity in shape, color, size, habit of growth or use to familiar English plants: ... called by vs Beanes, because in greatness & partly in shape they are like to the beans in England ... . ... called by vs Peaze, in respect of the beanes for distinction sake, because they are much less; although in forme they little differ ... . ... called by vs, Pompions, Mellions, and Gourdes, because they are of the like formes as those kindes in England. 36

The persimmon (Figs 4–5) had some resemblance to English Medlars: ... so called by vs chieflie for these respectes: first in that they are not good until they be rotten; then in that they open at the head as

Figure 2 Sassafras (Winauk; Sassafras albidum [Nutt.] Nees), in Nicolás Monardes, Ioyfull nevves ovt of the newe founde worlde... Englished by Jhon Frampton,1577, woodcut (ed. S. Gaselee, London 1925,100)

Figure 3 Tobacco (uppówac; Nicotiana rustica L.), in Nicolás Monardes, Ioyfull nevves ovt of the newe founde worlde... Englished by Jhon Frampton, London 1577, woodcut (ed. S. Gaselee, London 1925,76)

Don’t Eat, Don’t Touch Figure 4 The English medlar and the American persimmon (Mespilus germanica L. and Diospyros virginiana L.), Mespilus vulgaris, The common Medlar [no. 3, center] and Lotus Virginiana. The Pishamin or Virginia Plumme [no. 6, lower left], in John Parkinson, Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris, London 1629, 569. Woodcut (facsimile reprint, London 1904)

our medlars, and are about the same bignesse; otherwise, in taste and colour they are farre different: for they are as red as cheries and very sweet: but whereas the cherie is sharpe sweet, they are lushious sweet.37

The ‘Leekes’ differed so ‘little from ours in England’ that the colonists were bolder than the Indians: ‘Wee gathered and eate many, but the natural inhabitants neuer.’38 The dye plant, ‘Shoemake’ (i.e., sumac), was ‘well knowen, and vsed in England for blacke.’39 4. Similarities to plants from other lands. Harriot relied on the testimony of others that some Virginian plants resembled plants from Europe, the Near East or the Indies: There is an hearbe which in Dutch [or German] is called Melden. Some of those that I describe it vnto, take it to be a kinde of Orage [orach, Atriplex spp]. Silk of grasse or grasse Silke [Yucca spp.] ... The like groweth in Persia, which is in the selfe same climate as Virginia ... . Metaquesúnnauk [Opuntia sp., prickly pear, tuna], a kinde of pleasaunt fruite ... Some that haue bin in the [West] Indies, where they haue seen that kind of red die of great price which is called Cochinile to grow, doe describe his plant right like vnto this of Metaquesúnnauk... . Coscúshaw [probably Peltandra virginica (Schott) L., or Orontium aquaticum L.], some of our company tooke to bee that kind of roote which the Spaniards in the West Indies call Cassauy, whereupon also many called it by that name. Tsinaw a kind of roote much like vnto yt which in England is called the China root brought from the East Indies.40

5. The experience of the North Carolina Algonquians. Above all, as Harriot readily acknowledged, the colonists were indebted to the Indians’ guidance:

Figure 5 Persimmon, Diospyros virginiana L., with near-ripe fruit (specimen collected and scanned 4 October 2006, Princeton, New Jersey, by Karen Reeds)

religion confirmed Monardes’s praise.43 The colonists – and Harriot above all – ‘found manie rare and wonderfull experiments of the vertues therof; of which the relation woulde require a volume by it self’.44 Through De Bry’s editions of A briefe and true report, Harriot’s fervent advertisement for tobacco reached thousands of European readers and helped create the market for the Jamestown colony’s most important commodity.45 Unspoken fears Just off the pages of John White’s drawings of Roanoke foods and cooking pots (Fig. 6) stand three invisible figures – the artist himself, Harriot the observer and Manteo the interpreter.46 Harriot paid close attention to the ingredients that went into those stews. Aside from simple curiosity, he was motivated by hunger and self-reliance: sooner or later, the settlers would have to grow and cook the native foods for themselves. There was, however, a darker motive for keeping an eye on the cooks: fear of deliberate poisoning. That possibility would have passed through the mind of any prudent Elizabethan: accusations of poisoning were common in England and a plot element in many a drama.47 Frampton’s translation of Monardes dedicated many folios to two exotic antidotes to poison.48 In Virginia, it would have been child’s play for the Algonquian cooks to kill the newcomers. Harriot specifically names two poisonous plants. The roots of Coscúshaw and the mysterious Sacquenúmmener berries were ‘very good in taste, and holsome’, but only if ‘heede... be taken’; they were edible only after a long, careful course of preparation to remove their poisons.49 Poisoned arrows were another fear. Spanish and English accounts of the West Indies had described the Indians’ use of poisoned arrows and stakes.50 John White’s label to his drawing of milkweed (see Fig. 1) signaled both the Virginian Indians’

by the experience and use of the inhabitants, we find ... a kind ... so called by the naturall inhabitants ... .41

From the Indians, the colonists learned to relish maize in many forms, as well as half a dozen starchy roots known only by indigenous names (and some still not identified with certainty) and five sorts of ‘berrie or acorne’ growing on ‘seueral kinds of trees’.42 Above all, this was true for tobacco (see Fig. 3). The Algonquians’ ‘precious estimation’ of the plant in medicine and

Figure 6 Cooking in an earthen pot, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.11.a)


Reeds Figure 7 Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.), ‘Wisanck, sive Vincetoxicum Indianum, Indian Swallow woort’, after John White. In John Gerard, The herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, London 1597, 752. woodcut (British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, 449.k.4)

use of poisoned arrows and their antidote: ‘The hearbe wch the Sauages call Wysauke wherewith theie cure their wounds wch they receaue by the poisoned arroes of theire enemys’.51 John Gerard’s account of milkweed in his widely read Herball (1597) could not offer a ‘phisicall [i.e., medical] vertue’ for the plant (Fig. 7).52 However, the woodcut’s Latin label – Vincetoxicum Indianum, i.e., ‘Indian antidote to poison’ – implies that Gerard had in fact seen John White’s inscription.53 Moreover, that use was supported by Dioscorides, the ancient authority on materia medica, who had recommended the European swallow-worts as ‘a remedie ... against deadly poison ... one of the especiallest herbes’.54 In A briefe and true report, Harriot performed a remarkable rhetorical feat. He put the best face on an expedition whose success was being ‘slaundered’ by returned malcontents.55 He reassured Raleigh and his backers that America was worth investing in: full of valuable commodities and a safe, fertile, healthy place to live. He allayed a host of well-founded fears without acknowledging just how reasonable they were. An encounter with sassafras provides a good example. It was not a dangerous plant; to the contrary, from the start it was on the venturers’ shortlist of profitable commodities and quickly became Virginia’s first cash export.56 Harriot was circumspect about the main reason for the demand: sassafras is ‘of most rare virtues in phisick for the cure of many diseases. It is found by experience to bee farre better and of more vses than the wood which is called Guiacum’.57 However, as every reader of Monardes knew, God gave every region the cures for its peculiar ills, and sassafras– like guaicum – was a sure cure for the New World’s new disease, syphilis.58 Sassafras did indeed help save lives on the 1585–86 expedition (perhaps including Harriot’s), but not for reasons that investors would want to hear.59 On a trip up the Chowan River in April 1586, Ralph Lane’s party ran out of food. They were forced to kill their two mastiffs to make a stew of dogmeat, eked out and thickened with sassafras leaves: ‘Wee ... had nothing in the worlde to eate but pottage of sassafras leaues, the like whereof for a meate was neuer vsed before as I thinke.’60 Why did the explorers add sassafras to their ‘dogs porredge’?61 Of all the unfamiliar greenstuff emerging around them in springtime, it was the one plant that they knew was safe to eat. It was the one plant whose ‘much sweetnes in taste’ 54 | European Visions: American Voices

Figure 8 Sassafras, (Sassafras albidum L.) three leaf forms (specimens collected and scanned on 28 May 2006, Princeton, New Jersey, by Karen Reeds)

and ability to give ‘appetite to eate’ might make the stew palatable.62 And it was the one edible plant they could infallibly recognize, thanks to its distinctive smell and three-lobed leaves, ‘after the maner of a Figge Tree, with three poinctes’ (Fig. 8).63 A poison apple in Paradise In A briefe and true report Harriot played down the drama of his year in ‘the new found land of Virginia’.64 He did not relate the number of times his colleagues had to negotiate with the natural inhabitants for food, effectively robbing them of their own scanty stores of corn, to make it through the winter. He did not convey just how close the company came to starvation and native retaliation.65 The colonists’ relief at Sir Francis Drake’s unexpected arrival in June 1586 is only implied by Harriot’s understated urging that the next colony be sent off with a ‘reasonable’ provision of food, arms, clothing, cattle and seeds of ‘our kinde of fruites, rootes, and hearbes’ for the first year of planting.66 In the long term, Harriot’s rhetoric of rational optimism captured enough well-wishers to keep the Virginia project going even after the Roanoke colony had to be assumed to be lost. In the short term, John White’s drawings served as the visual equivalent of Harriot’s prose: persuasive in their precision, close observation, and restraint. However, White’s Roanoke scenes were misleading in their orderliness. They omitted the tense encounters between two cultures, the backdrop of wilderness, and the dangers that both of these represented to the next band of newcomers. Equally misleading was the impression of expertise that White and Harriot projected. For all their immersion in New World natural history, they did not play a vigorous part in disseminating, analyzing or building upon their unique experience – even though London’s lively community of naturalists would have hung on every detail (what did those five kinds of acorns look like?).67 Apart from writing out his ‘Chronicle’ and A briefe and true report (completed February 1588, published in May), Harriot evinced virtually no interest in natural history after his return to England.68 His Report gives little indication that he had learned to examine, collect and describe unfamiliar plants with the tireless precision he applied to his observations and calculations in astronomy, navigation and physics.69 John White’s drawings, his enthusiasm for ‘fruitfullest

Don’t Eat, Don’t Touch Virginia’, and his safe return from two previous Roanoke expeditions must have reassured his recruits for the second colony.70 They were embarking under a leader who knew more than anyone else in Europe about the place they were going and who clearly felt confident about its success. Why else would he have ventured again? Why else would he have brought his own daughter and son-in-law along?71 It is doubtful that the men and families who set out under Governor John White for Virginia in April 1587 knew how much the first colony’s survival had depended on the natural knowledge and the generosity of Roanoke’s native inhabitants. Even before White and his company arrived in Virginia, however, they had discovered how scanty his knowledge of New World plants actually was and how easily their own natural knowledge could betray them. Here is the story in White’s own words: Iune. The 22. [1587] we came ... an Isle, called Santa Cruz [St. Croix], where all the planters were set on land, staying there till the 25. of the same moneth. At our first landing on this Island, some of our women, and men, by eating a small fruite, like greene apples, were fearfully troubled with a sudden burning in their mouthes, and swelling of their tongues so bigge, that some of them could not speake. Also a child by sucking one of those womens breastes, had at that instant his mouth set on such a burning, that it was strange to see how the infant was tormented for the time: but after 24. howres, it ware away of it selfe... . In this Island we found no watring place, but a standing ponde, the water whereof was so euill, that many of our companie fell sicke with drinking thereof; and as many as did but wash their faces with that water, in the morning before the Sunne had drawen away the corruption, their faces did so burne, and swell, that their eies were shut vp, and could not see in fiue or sixe daies or longer.72

The cause of all these miseries was the ferociously toxic manchineel (Hippomane spp.) (Fig. 9). Touching or tasting any part of the manchineel tree, or anything it had contaminated, was dangerous – as Spanish accounts of the West Indies, beginning with Columbus, had made clear decades earlier (and modern botanists have confirmed).73 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo had provided the classic account of the deceitful manchineel in De la Natural Hystoria de las Indias (Toledo 1524), a work cited by Roanoke’s promoter, Richard Hakluyt, in 1582:74 The fruit is like the perfectly round pears of Sicily or Naples, in shape like the small early pears. In some places they are spotted red and have a very pleasant odor. These trees usually grow on the

Figure 9 Manchineel, The Mançaneel vid. descripta (Hippomane mancinella L.), Garrett Moore (1687–89), finished by Everhard Kick (1700–07). Black ink and gray wash drawing, over pencil field sketch. Specimen collected by Sir Hans Sloane, Jamaica, 1687– 89, Sloane Herbarium, 5:56, ID 76, Herbarium sheet BM000589102, (©The Natural History Museum, London)

coast near the sea, and every man who sees them wants to eat many of the ... manchineel apples. From these manchineel apples, the Carib Indians make the deadly poison with which they tip their arrows and darts ... if a man lies down to sleep in the shade of ... these manchineel trees, he awakes with his head and eyes swollen, his eyebrows level with his cheeks.75

After another month of sailing, the planters landed on Roanoke, on 25 July 1587. Less than a month later, on 18 August, John White’s daughter, Elyoner Dare, gave birth to her own daughter, Virginia Dare, the ‘first Christian borne in Virginia’.76 Another family’s child was born a few days later.77 The colonists’ expectations of Edenic abundance were challenged immediately by deadly misunderstandings with the Indians and by the shortage of corn.78 On 27 August, after 10 days of entreaties by ‘the whole companie ... as well women, as men’, Governor John White sailed back to England for more supplies.79 He never saw any of them again. Consequences Ralph Lane’s account of English lives saved by sassafras and John White’s record of English lives threatened by manchineel poisoning represent two different aspects of the Roanoke colonists’ natural knowledge. With sassafras, the Roanoke explorers could draw on Dr. Monardes’s long testimonial and on the reports from the French expedition who had used it in Florida two decades earlier and the Barlowe expedition in 1584. They had nearly a year’s worth of personal experience gathering sassafras for market, and they had witnessed the Algonquians’ regard for Winauk. The colonists’ success in putting this knowledge to use in a tight spot underscored the value of all these forms of natural knowledge to the colony’s future. With manchineel, the colonists’ state of knowledge was much more problematic. John White could, in theory, have known about manchineel’s dangers before setting out in 1587. He could have picked up stories about manchineel from contemporaries with experience in the Caribbean.80 He could have read about the toxic fruit in Columbus, Peter Martyr and Oviedo – books that circulated in London’s overlapping communities of naturalists and geographers.81 The availability of a piece of information, however, no matter how authoritative its source, is no guarantee that it will be registered or believed. Even today, the extravagant effects of manchineel are dangerously easy to dismiss as travelers’ tales. And, even if forewarned, it might have been hard to stop the passengers – in their joy at their first American landfall, in their longing for fresh food after a month at sea – from trusting in their own lifetime of experience with England’s sweetsmelling apples. Richard Hakluyt was later to signpost the incident on St. Croix with the marginal note: ‘Circumspection to be vsed in strange places.’82 The admonition came too late for this small band of men, women, and children. All that they thought they knew about the way plants looked and grew, all that John White had told them about Virginia, ‘this paradise of the worlde’, was now subject to doubt and misgiving (Fig. 10).83 After that taste of the poison apple, would even John White’s daughter have believed in him quite so trustingly again?84 And what in the New World would she have dared to eat?


Reeds 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18

19

Figure 10 Adam and Eve [Garden of Eden], Theodor de Bry, after Joos van Winghe. Unnumbered, unpaginated plate, to accompany the foreword, ‘To the Reader’, in Thomas Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, Frankfurt 1590, engraving (By permission of British Library Board. All Rights reserved, G 6837)

20 21

Notes 1

2

3 4 5

I am consciously conflating two quite different uses of ‘natural knowledge’ from the late 17th century and the late 20th century. The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (founded 1660) took it to mean objective knowledge of the physical and natural world. In recent decades the term has been widely deployed by historians, sociologists and philosophers of science as a pragmatic shorthand description of what people believe to be true about the physical and natural world, how they learn about and explain its phenomena, and how they act upon their understanding, regardless of its scientific validity. See J. Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science, Cambridge, 1998; 2nd ed., Chicago, 2005. J. Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, London, 1597, 752. Digital facsimile at Max-Planck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung, Köln, Biolib.de website: http:// caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/gerarde/index.html. T. Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, London, 1588, in D.B. Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages 1584-1590: Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to North America under the Patent Granted to Walter Raleigh in 1584, New York, 1991 (Dover reprint; Hakluyt Society, 2nd series, CIV, 1955), doc. 51, 324. Throughout, in quoting Harriot, I have followed his original italicizations omitted by Quinn’s edition; see Thomas Hariot [sic], A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: The Facsimile Edition of the 1588 Quarto, with an Introduction by the late Randolph G. Adams (History Book Club), New York, 1951. Harriot, supra n. 2. White’s drawings are cited from K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, exhib. cat., London and Chapel Hill, 2007. Cf. European travelers quoted by Richard Hakluyt the younger, Discourse of Western Planting, D.B. Quinn and A.M. Quinn, eds, Hakluyt Society Extra Series, no. 45, London, 1993, 16–27. ‘Arthur Barlowe’s discourse’, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 4, 91. ‘John White to Richard Hakluyt’, 4 February 1593, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 107, 715.


22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33

‘Arthur Barlowe’s discourse’, Quinn, supra n. 2, 93–4. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 96–7. Ibid., 97, 105, 115. Ibid., 108. On the Garden of Eden trope, see Karen O. Kupperman’s paper in this collection. ‘Arthur Barlowe’s discourse’, Quinn, supra n. 2, 94–6, 106, 108, 110, 114–5. The travelers’ awareness that Roanoke’s inhabitants found the English equally strange magnified these feelings of disorientation; ibid., 112. Ibid., 106; 95. Ibid., 105–106. For ‘Jack and the Bean Stalk’, see M.O. Grenby’s 2001 essay, cat. no. 0019, The Hockcliffe Project, Hockcliffe Collection of Early Children’s Books: http://www.cts.dmu.ac.uk/ AnaServer?hockliffe+2290+hoccview.anv. Added in proof: Cf. John Dee’s annotation re fast-growing American plants [on f. O2v] in Ferdinand Columbus, ‘Historie... della vita, & de fatti dell’Ammiraglio D. Christoforo Colombo’, described in W.H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, Philadelphia, 2008, 123. Harriot, supra n. 2, 353–4. Ibid., 318. Sloan, supra n. 3, 41–5, 93–4. Quinn, supra n. 2, 40–43, 293, 397. D.B. Quinn and A.M. Quinn, eds, The First Colonists: Documents on the Planting of the First English Settlements in North America 1584–1590, Raleigh, 1982, vi, 141. Harriot, supra n. 2, 318. ‘Ralph Lane’s discourse on the first colony’, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 45, 260, 293. Compare Lane’s florid praise of ‘the most pleasing territory of the world’, in mid-August 1585, to his sober ‘Discourse on the first colony’ the following year; Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 28, 208 (see also docs. 25–7 and 29); Quinn and Quinn, supra n. 18, 255–94. On Lane’s rhetoric, see P.A.S. Harvey, ‘Barlowe, Lane and Harriot’s Accounts of the New World’, The Thomas Harriot Seminar, Occasional Papers, no. 20 (n.d.). Harriot, supra n. 2, 321. The Algonquian Tsinaw perhaps imitated the Europeans’ queries about the ‘China’ root (smilax); ibid., 348; Geary, ‘The Language of the Carolina Algonkian Tribes’, in Quinn, supra n. 2, appendix II, 898. Quinn, supra n. 2, 16–17. See K.O. Kupperman’s paper in this collection. Sabatia stellaris Pursh, rosegentian; Sloan, supra n. 3, cat. 38, 174–5. Quinn, supra n. 2, 447. For accepted scientific names, see the database, ITIS, Integrated Taxonomic Information System: http:// www.itis.gov/. Sloan, supra n. 3, 172–3: Wysauke, cat. 37; Wisakon, fig. 111; Wisanck, fig. 112, 172–3. Harriot, supra n. 2, 321, 334, 336, 346, 359, 387. Ibid., 321, 324, 334, 346. On Harriot’s utilitarian thrust, see Stephen Clucas’s paper in this collection. Harriot, supra n. 2, 325–337. Harriot, supra n. 2, 344. I leave it to others to decide if Hamlet (c. 1601) echoes Harriot’s phrase. ‘Anonymous notes for the guidance of Raleigh and Cavendish [1584–5]’, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 8, 135; see also Quinn, supra n. 2, 50–4. Hakluyt, Discourse, supra n. 4, 126–7. Harriot, supra n. 2, 334. ‘Ralph Lane to Sir Francis Walsingham, 8 September 1585’, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 29, 213. Samples of silkgrass, cedar, and ‘Indian Swallow woort’ reached England, but we do not know who brought them or when: Gerard, Herball (1597), supra n. 2, 752; Harriot, supra n. 2, 326, 329–30, 334. White gave the naturalist, Thomas Penny, a firefly and a drawing of it; Sloan, supra n. 3, 212–3. Harriot, supra n. 2, 334. Harriot, ibid., 329; the misspelling, ‘Monardus’, appears in both the 1587 pamphlet and Theodor de Bry’s English edition (Frankfurt 1590); Quinn silently corrects it. Monardes, Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Founde Worlde Written in Spanish by Nicholas Monardes ... and Englished by John Frampton ... 1577, intro. S. Gaselee, 2 vols, The Tudor Translations, Second Series, IX–X, London, 1925. It is not known which edition of Frampton Harriot saw. It is very unlikely Harriot used the Latin translation and commentary by Europe’s most astute botanist, Carolus Clusius (Charles L’Écluse,

Don’t Eat, Don’t Touch

34 35 36 37 38

39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53

54 55 56

who later translated A briefe and true report into Latin for de Bry, correcting Monardes’s name in the process): De simplicibvs medicamentis ex occidentali India delatis ... Auctore D. Nicolao Monardis, Antwerp, 1574, 44–9; Clusius replaced Monardes’s image of the true sassafras with a woodcut of a Peruvian tree, Molle. Added in proof: Cf. Thomas Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia: facsimile edn of the 1590 Theodor de Bry Latin edition, accompanied by the modernized English text, Charlottesville and London, 2007, 13, 36, 89. Harriot, supra n. 2, 329, 365. Monardes, supra n. 33, i, 99–120. Cf. G. Mirrlees, ‘Sassafras: a cure-all of Harriot’s time’, The Thomas Harriot Seminar, Occasional Papers, no. 12, 1993. Monardes, supra n. 33, i, 75–98. Harriot, supra n. 2, 344–6. Harriot, supra n. 2, 339–40. Ibid., 351. Harriot’s description of the taste of a ripe persimmon (Diospyros virginiana L.) is right on the mark. Ibid., 350 and n4. Roanoke’s native wild onion, Allium canadense L., does not have the broad leaves suggested by ‘Leeke’ (Allium porrum L.); Allium tricoccum Ait., the wild leek or ramps of North Carolina’s western mountains, is not found in Dare County (my thanks to Misty Franklin, Botanist, North Carolina Natural Heritage Program; personal communication, 7 September 2007). Ibid., 351, 334. Rhus copallina L., dwarf sumac, or R. glabra L, smooth sumac; similar to R. coriaria L. in Europe. Captain John Smith apparently gave the first English account of sumac’s obnoxious American cousins, poison ivy and poison sumac (Toxicodendron radicans [L.] Kuntze; Toxicodendron vernix [L.] Kuntze): ‘The poison weed [of Bermuda] ... being but touched, causeth rednesse, itching, and lastly blisters ... somewhat painful’; John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New–England, and the Summer Isles ... anno: 1584. to this present 1624, London, 1624, 170. Later American colonists made an indelible black ink from poison ivy sap: see Pehr Kalm, Travels into North America, 2nd ed., London, 1773, i, 139. For digital facsimiles of Smith and Kalm, see Wisconsin Historical Society, American Journeys website: http:// www.americanjourneys.org. Quinn, supra n. 2, 340–2, 348, 349, 351–2. Joachim Ganz, the company’s mineral expert, may have identified Melden. Otherwise, this is the only indication that Harriot consulted London’s Dutch/German naturalists; see D.E. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution, New Haven and London, 2007, 194, and Chap. 1. Harriot, supra n. 2, 330, 337. Ibid., 354–5. Ibid., 344–6. Monardes, supra n. 33, i, 75–98; woodcut, 76. Harriot, supra n. 2, 345. John Rolfe’s introduction of the Caribbean’s more palatable Nicotiana tabacum insured Jamestown’s economic survival; cf. Sloan, supra n. 3, 128. Sloan, supra n. 3, cat. 8, 24, 42: 110–11, 144–5, 180–1. See T. Pollard, Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England, Oxford, 2005. Harkness, supra n. 40, 92–3. Monardes, supra n. 33, i. 2, 49–101: ‘twoo medicines most excellent against all venome ... the Bezaar [bezoar] stone, and the Hearbe Escuerconcera’. Harriot, supra n. 2, 349-50, 353. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (S. A. Stoudemire, trans. and ed.), Natural History of the West Indies, Chapel Hill, 1959, 91. Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585–86 (M. Frear Keeler, ed.), The Hakluyt Society, London, 1981, 162, 199, 252. Sloan, supra n. 3, cat. 37, 172–3. Quinn, supra n. 2, 444–5, n3–5. Gerard, supra n. 2, 752; 750–1. Gerard, supra n. 2, 752. Gerard’s interest centered on the Indians’ use of milkweed silk to hide the ‘secret parts of maidens’. Sloan, supra n. 3, cat. 37, 172–3. Vincetoxicum (a name applied to several different plants in the late Middle Ages) invoked the classical etymology of toxicum, arrow poison, from toxos, arrow. Gerard’s index, ‘Table of the Natures, Vertue and Dangers’, listed more than 50 remedies for poisons and venoms. Gerard, supra n. 2, 752; unpaginated index, entries for P. Gerard, supra n. 2, 750–1. Harriot, supra n. 2, 322. Cf. Harvey, supra n. 19. ‘Arthur Barlowe’s discourse’, Quinn, supra n. 2. Harriot, supra n. 2, 329, 365. Mirrlees, supra n. 35, 14, 19.

57 Harriot, supra n. 2, 329. 58 Monardes, supra n. 33, i, 10, 113. Other common spellings and synonyms include: guaiacum, guaiac, guayacan, Indian pockwood, lignum sanctum, lignum vitae. 59 Harriot alluded tangentially to the incident: supra n. 2, 357. 60 ‘Ralph Lane’s discourse’, Quinn, supra n. 18, 267, 272, 272n4. Powdered sassafras leaves are the main ingredient of filé, used for flavoring and thickening Creole gumbo. In April on Roanoke now, sassafras leaves are fully out, but still small and tender (my thanks to Katherine Mitchell, Horticulturalist, North Carolina Aquarium, Manteo NC; personal communication 8 October 2007). Added in proof: Cf. John Dee’s annotation re dogs [on f. m1r] in Arrian, ‛Periplus Ponti Euxini’, described in Sherman, supra n. 14, 115. 61 ‘Ralph Lane’s discourse’, Quinn, supra n. 18, 272. 62 Gerard, supra n. 2, 1340. Monardes, supra n. 33, i, 109. 63 Sassafras bears three shapes of leaves, often on a single branch. Monardes described the variability and the three-lobed form (supra n. 33, i, 100, 102), but these features are not clear in Monardes’s and Gerard’s woodcuts. Cf. Mark Catesby’s watercolor (1730s?); Sloan, supra n. 3, 206, fig. 137. 64 Harriot, supra n. 2, 317. 65 Cf. the equally understated account that the party had been ‘hitherto in some scarsitie’; ‘The third voyage made by a Ship, sent in the yeere 1586, to the reliefe of the Colonie planted in Virginia’ (published in 1589 by Hakluyt, and probably written by him), Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 64, 478. 66 Harriot, supra n. 2, 385–6. 67 Harriot, supra n. 2, 354–5. Harkness, supra n. 40 and her paper in this collection. 68 Harriot, supra n. 2, 387. 69 J.A. Bennett, ‘Instruments, mathematics, and natural knowledge: Thomas Harriot’s place on the map of learning’, in Robert Fox, ed., Thomas Harriot: An Elizabethan Man of Science, Aldershot and Burlington,Vermont, 2000, 148–50. My paper, ‘Harriot and the Herbal Tradition’ (revision in progress, originally presented at the Thomas Harriot Seminar, Cambridge, September 1999) will address this issue in more detail. 70 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, Book Two, quoted by Quinn, supra n. 2, 465. 71 ‘Elyoner Dare’, ‘Ananias Dare’, and ‘Virginia Dare’ appear among ‘The names of the colonists [1587]’, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 78, 539, 541, 72 ‘John White’s Narrative of his Voyage’, Quinn, supra n. 2, doc. 77, 517–8. 73 For early references, see José Pardo Tomás and María Luz López Terrada, Las primeras noticias sobre plantas Americanas en las relaciones de viajes y cronicas de Indias (1493–1553), Cuadernos Valencianos de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia, XL, Serie A, Valencia, 1993, 303. R. Howard, ‘Three experiences with the manchineel (Hippomane spp., Euphorbiaceae)’, Biotropica, 13, 3, 1981, 224–7. Cf. Drake’s West Indian Voyage, supra n. 50, 162n1; given Drake’s mention of the poisonous fruit, manchineel seems as likely as the editor’s suggestion of boxthorn (Lycium spp.). 74 Oviedo, supra n. 50, cap. 77, 91. Hakluyt, Discourse, supra n. 4, 108, 112, and Diuers voyages touching the discouerie of America, and the ilands adiacent vnto the same, London, 1582, [title page verso]. 75 Oviedo, supra n. 50, 91. 76 ‘John White’s Narrative’, supra n. 72, 531–2. 77 ‘The names of the colonists’, Quinn, supra n. 71, 542. 78 See K.O. Kupperman’s paper in this collection. 79 ‘John White’s Narrative’, supra n. 72, 524–35. 80 Potential sources of information about manchineel included White’s 1587 pilot, Simon Fernandez, Sir Francis Drake, and the Spanish on Hispaniola in 1585. ‘The Tiger journal of the 1585 voyage’, Quinn, supra n. 2, 180–8; 500–6. Drake’s West Indian Voyage, supra n. 50, 319. Cf. Harriot, supra n. 2, 352, and supra n. 40: ‘Some that haue bin in the Indies... haue seen... Cochinile to grow [and] do describe his plant... ’. 81 See supra n. 73. Harkness, supra n. 40, 25–6, 48 82 Hakluyt’s 1600 edition of ‘John White’s narrative’; Quinn, supra n. 67, 518n5. 83 ‘The third voyage’, supra n. 65, 479. 84 ‘John White’s Narrative’, supra n. 67, 531–2.


Section 3

New Visions of a New World

New Visions of a New World Introduction and Summary Kim Sloan This section of the conference proceedings takes into account five quite different ways of seeing John White’s watercolours of the New World, all of them informed by close physical examination, by the naked eye or through a scientific instrument, of the various pigments John White laid on the paper. Each author also views them through years of experience in their own particular area of expertise and brings that knowledge to bear on what they see: a paper conservator, a research scientist, a researcher who recreates the original tools and techniques, a curator of miniatures and a practising botanical artist. Through their eyes we can ourselves see John White’s watercolours in a completely new way and with new understanding. Paper conservator Alice Rugheimer provides some insight into the amount and type of work involved in preparing works like this for an exhibition and how the work that she and her colleagues carry out on the drawings can help us to reconstruct their history. Close examination can reveal the original order of the drawings in the album in which they were first mounted – which in turn reveals a thematic Elizabethan way of looking at the world and different cultures, quite different from the imposition of our own modern chronological ordering of events. The physical changes that were the result of the fire, smoke and water damage occasioned by the album being in a fire in the 19th century and the changes in colour, through chemical reactions to those elements and to the air, and fading caused by exposure to light, all explain that what we see now is not what John White or his contemporaries saw. The damage caused to the paper itself during the transfer of the drawings from one album to another or to a museum mount is evident once you know what to look for. Finally, she explains what we can and can’t do to repair or reverse such damage and how they can be protected for the future. Janet Ambers analyzes the pigments scientifically with non-invasive technology to show exactly which earth and mineral pigments were used, where they came from originally and speculates on how John White acquired them and whether they were expensive or easily available. She explains how they have reacted and changed over time and what further work might be done, given time and access to the works. Both Janet Ambers’ and Alice Rugheimer’s papers are the summaries of work carried out by them and other colleagues and they are analyzed in more detail with further illustrations and tables in their article with J. Bescoby, J. Rayner, D. Hook and A. Simpson in ‘New Visions of a New World: The conservation and analysis


of the John White Watercolours’ in British Museum Technical Research Bulletin, 1, 2007, 9–22. Timea Tallian has been studying and recreating historic methods of limning for several years as part of a thesis on the Elizabethan limner Nicholas Hilliard’s materials and techniques. She discusses each of the tools and pigments White used and how he made them and applied them to the paper. She also answers questions about portability of these materials and the type of results that could be achieved with them, helping us in our questions about whether White’s drawings were made from life on the spot, on board ship or once he returned to England. Katherine Coombs’ paper was not delivered at the conference but as a public lecture during the exhibition and it was so enlightening about who else limned at the Elizabethan court and how and why, that we asked her to revise it for publication here. Her unique ability and experience as Curator of the National Collection of Miniatures at the Victoria & Albert Museum gives her a perspective on John White’s place amongst his contemporaries that helps us to understand why they are unique surviving examples in the early stages of the evolution of a national school of painting in England. Finally, Sally Birch, a practising botanical artist, brought her own vision as a working artist to the way that she looked at the natural history and figure drawings. She found herself seeing things that art historians and natural historians previously writing on White’s drawings had never commented on. It seemed clear to her that John White had created a template of a figure and used it over and over again with a few variations in many of his figures and she explains how and why an artist would use techniques that contradict our modern notions of artistic originality and ‘genius’. She was also particularly intrigued by the relationship between the John White drawings and the other versions of them in the Sloane album purchased from White’s descendants in the early 18th century and which have been all but ignored in the scholarly literature, and asked herself which came first, who was copying whom and which was the more ‘professional’ illustrator. All of these papers raise as many further questions as they answer and they are published here not as the final word on John White and his technique, but, in the spirit of the conference, to encourage others to look with new eyes and ask new questions that will help us better to understand John White’s and his contemporaries’ visions of the New World.

John White’s Watercolours: Conservation and Mounting Alice Rugheimer Introduction This paper will look at the Department of Prints and Drawings’ collection of watercolours by John White, displayed in the British Museum’s exhibition, A New World: England’s first view of America, March to June 2007, from a conservator’s point of view. During their examination, assessment and preparation for display, at the Museum then on tour to several venues in America, valuable information was gained about the materials and techniques used by the artist, the current condition of the watercolours and changes that had occurred over time. This was taken into account, together with a number of other considerations, when deciding on the most suitable conservation treatments and mounting methods to preserve them for the future.1 History of the drawings The most dramatic event in their history occurred in 1865 when the album of 75 watercolours was in the Sotheby’s warehouse, awaiting sale. A fire broke out, resulting in scorching of the spine of the album and charring of the edges of the pages. The worst damage was caused when the album was saturated with water used to extinguish the fire, and then left for three weeks under the weight of other books. The result was that a great deal of pigment was transferred from the original watercolours to the blank interleaving sheets of paper, creating

extraordinarily clear offset images. Figure 1 shows the original watercolour of a Mammea fruit on the left. The offset image, with its charred edges, is seen on the right. In Figure 2 the offset of a Roller Bird is seen on the left, and the original on the right. The remains of smoke damage are visible near the chest of the bird. The damaged album was purchased at the Sotheby’s sale by an American, Henry Stevens, and in 1865 the pages with the watercolours were removed and remounted for him into a new album of red leather with gold tooling by the binder F. Bedford. The offset images on the interleaving sheets were bound into a separate matching album at the same time. The British Museum acquired both volumes in 1866. The offsets remained in their album, while the original watercolours were removed from theirs, and then housed in acid-free mounts kept in archival Solander boxes in the Prints and Drawings Students’ room. Remounting of the watercolours was carried out in stages over the years using different types of board. For the earliest mounts thin boards were used. This produces a shallow aperture, or ‘window’, in the top board, which gives little protection from abrasion of the media surface of the watercolour if the paper does not lie flat. In the majority of the mounts the top ‘windows’ were adhered down onto the back board, creating a solid mount which allows no access for viewing the verso of the watercolours. Years of handling had resulted in the mounts becoming dirty and worn with greasy finger marks on the surface of the mounts clearly visible. The paper used by John White was of a high quality with few impurities. The fine laid lines and even distribution of fibres are shown in Figure 3. Many of the paper sheets contained the watermark of a bunch of grapes, seen here, which closely resembles those found in papers made in France in the 1580s.2 In fact, the majority of fine white papers used in England at the time were imported from Europe, France in particular.

Figure 1 Mammea fruit, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.40.a). Original watercolour on left, offset on right

Figure 2 The Roller Bird, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.64). Offset on left, original on right

Figure 3 The town of Pomeiooc, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.8) detail, viewing over transmitted light reveals fine laid lines and bunch of grapes watermark


Rugheimer Examination and condition The watercolour of a Sabatia flower is shown on its mount before conservation in Figure 4. Raking light was used in the photograph to show the quite dramatic undulations in the paper, which occurred in many of the watercolours. Ridges around the edges of the sheets were the result of methods used to attach them to the mounts, either by long paper hinges (guards), or by inserting them into ‘traditional’ inlays of false paper margins with chamfered edges which were then adhered to the back board of the mount. Some of the watercolours had been adhered directly onto the back mount board, in these cases there were no ridges on the edges. Over the years general dirt had accumulated on the surface of the watercolours, sometimes with stains from excess adhesive around the edges where they had been attached to another sheet of paper. There were also many tears and other damage to the edges of the sheets. Damage caused by the offsetting of the images after the flood in 1865 was most obvious in areas where the pigment had been thickly applied or where particles had been more coarsely ground. This can be seen in the watercolour of the Dorado fish, under magnification in Figure 5, where much of the blue smalt pigment has been lost. In the watercolour of the Tartar or Uzbek man (Fig. 6) the blue and red areas have suffered serious pigment loss. A number of the more soluble pigments had ‘run’ through the paper fibres when the album was wet, causing fuzzy edges, as here in the red shoes. There was particular concern about the danger of further loss of pigment and each watercolour was carefully examined under the microscope to detect any loose particles or recent cracking. However, the remaining pigments were found to be firmly attached to the paper surface, therefore no consolidation of pigments was deemed necessary. Use of the microscope also revealed more information about the artist’s technique, such as the stippling in the hat, and graphite under-drawing around the eye of the Tartar or

Figure 4 Sabatia flower, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.38) watercolor, shown before conservation


Figure 5 Dorado fish, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.44), watercolor. Images above, under magnification, show loss of smalt pigment

Figure 6 Tartar or Uzbek man, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.33) watercolor. Images on right, under magnification, show pigment loss

John White’s Watercolours: Conservation and Mounting Uzbek man (Fig. 7). The textures of the paper and media were also clearly visible. A soluble pale green pigment had ‘bled’ sideways and downwards through several pages of the album while it lay saturated with water after the fire and flood. This can be seen in the watercolours in Figure 8. Photographs taken under ultraviolet light showed more of the stain, and also picked up some halos and darker patches, which were not visible under daylight (Fig. 9). In some areas of the watercolours pigments had darkened, giving the opposite effect to the highlights intended by the artist. Pigments containing lead (lead white and red lead) can darken due to a chemical reaction, often with sulphur in the atmosphere. Figure 10 shows darkened areas in the woman’s earrings, shoulder and neck trimming. The darkened patches on the body of the fish are tarnished silver. A faint grey line was visible across the centre of many of the sheets, indicating that they were once folded. This was probably done before John White painted the watercolours

Figure 7 Detail of Figure 6. On right, under magnification showing artist’s technique and textures of paper and pigments

Figure 8 Platano (BM 1906,0509.1.40); Sabatia (BM 1906,0509.1.38); Wysauke (BM 1906,0509.1.37). Soluble green pigment has bled through pages

Figure 10 Greek or Turkish woman, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.35), and Oio de buey, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.42). Showing darkened lead and silver pigments

since the pigment layer in the area is undamaged. From their general condition it appears likely that they were painted on his return to England, using notes and other drawings he made on his voyage. Treatment evaluation Public access to the Department of Prints and Drawings’ collection has increased greatly over recent years, both in the Students’ Room, which is constantly busy, and through an extensive loans programme to exhibitions in the museum and around the world. There has already been considerable interest in the watercolours by John White, and it is likely that these current exhibitions will generate further demand for access to study them. These facts, together with requirements for storage, future display, handling and transport, (in particular their exhibition in America), was taken into account when making decisions on which conservation treatments to select. It was necessary to improve the overall distortions, and the ridges on the edges of the papers, which were a visual distraction, and would become more pronounced with any changes in humidity. Any damage to the paper had to be repaired. There was also the possibility of future loss of pigment by abrasion of the surface due to the shallow mounts. It is often important to be able to view both the recto and the verso, and any watermarks present in the paper. This was not possible with these watercolours as they were adhered to the back mount boards. Figure 11 shows the verso of one of the watercolours, after removal from its mount, with collection stamps, pencil inscription, the green stain in the centre, and some of the drawing showing through from the recto. The faint Figure 11 Verso of A Fire Ceremony, John White (BM 1906,0509,1.11) showing collection stamps, pencil inscription, and a green stain in centre

Figure 9 Platano, John White. On right, under ultraviolet light to show other areas of staining


Rugheimer

Figure 12 An Indian priest, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.14) removal from mount board by undercutting with a scalpel

Figure 13 Remains of the paper hinges

Figure 14 Application of methyl cellulose poultice to aid removal of old adhesive

outline of the bunch of grapes watermark can also been seen. Although conservators can treat blackened lead pigments, mentioned earlier, to restore the original effect, the treatment is not always completely effective and is not reversible. It was therefore decided not to apply it to these watercolours, particularly as digital images can be created to approximate the original colours. Conservation treatment This consisted of taking all the watercolours out of their old mounts, removing the distortions from the paper, repairing and remounting them. The first stage is the removal of the top ‘window’ part of the mount. This revealed an area of grey surface dirt visible bordering the watercolour; the top ‘window’ had protected the area around this from dirt. The watercolours had been attached to their mounts by various methods over the years, as described earlier. If adhered directly onto the mount board, removing them often involved undercutting into the board with a scalpel (Fig. 12). Surface dirt was removed by a light application of finely grated conservation grade eraser, cotton wool and a soft brush, applied only to the edges of the paper surrounding the painted areas. Figure 13 shows the remains of the paper hinges (guards) that were used to attach the watercolour to its old mount. These often caused a slight ridge under the edges (Figure 4). Paper debris and adhesive residue, had to be carefully removed from the edges of the verso, so that the drawings would lie flat after treatment. Moisture is needed to soften the adhesive residue. However, risk of staining of the surrounding paper must be minimised, particularly in cases like this, where the paper of the watercolours was thin and very absorbent. A poultice of methyl cellulose was applied with a small brush to the edges of the paper hinges (Fig. 14). The moisture in the poultice slowly swells and softens the adhesive, the paper guards and remaining traces of adhesive can then be carefully removed with tweezers and a scalpel. After they were removed from their mounts, it was clear that many of the sheets had badly ‘skinned’ edges on the verso. This had probably occurred when they were taken out of an earlier album. Viewed over transmitted light, Figure 15 shows the old paper hinges (guards) partially removed, revealing the previously ‘skinned’ areas of the paper. Some old paper repairs, such as in Figure 16 were also found when the watercolours were taken out of their mounts. These were removed if deemed unbeneficial, and any ‘skinned’ and damaged areas were reinforced to add strength and to improve the visual 64 | European Visions: American Voices

Figure 15 Puffer fish, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.51). Watercolour viewed over transmitted light. Hinges removed from top and left edges, revealing previous skinning of paper

Figure 16 Fireflies and gadfly, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.67). Detail, behind, after lifting from old mountboard, viewed over transmitted light, showing old repair along top edge

appearance, using a combination of repair papers, chosen for their sympathetic texture and colour. Working on a light-box revealed the weak areas in the paper and allowed accurate positioning of repairs (Fig. 17). Thin, weak areas and small tears were supported on the verso with long-fibred Japanese paper, and losses were infilled on the recto using a Western paper of similar weight, texture and laid and chain line structure to that used by John White (Fig. 18). A specialist gluten-free wheatstarch paste, which is easily reversible when necessary, was used to adhere the repairs, and these were then toned with watercolours to blend in with John White’s papers.

John White’s Watercolours: Conservation and Mounting Figure 17 Working over a light box in order to see weak areas and allow accurate positioning of repairs

Figure 20 Sabatia (BM 1906,0509.1.38). Left, before conservation; right, after conservation

Figure 18 Oio de buey (BM 1906,0509.1.42). Below, after lifting from old mountboard, viewed over transmitted light showing the positioning of repairs

Figure 21 Crocobado, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.49). Left, before conservation; right, after conservation

Figure 22 Placing watercolour into false margin of inlay paper

Figure 19 Verso of one of the watercolours, taken in raking light to show bunch of grapes watermark, and texture of paper

In order to remove the distortions in the paper, the watercolours were first briefly humidified, face up, on a sheet of Gore-Tex on top of damp capillary matting, in a box made of cedar wood. A sheet of Perspex formed an airtight chamber. Afterwards they were placed between soft tissues, thick sheets of blotting paper and boards, under a sheet of glass and pressed lightly under weights. There are a number of considerations when pressing paper, for example, the texture of the paper, watermarks, and any vulnerable media, which may tolerate only a very light pressure if these features are to be preserved (Fig. 19). Pressing achieved a marked lessening of distortions in the paper of the watercolours (Figs 20 and 21). Since the Prints and Drawings collection is so often required for study, display and loan, it is our policy to inlay all drawings. A false margin is thus provided to protect the edges, and reduce direct contact when handling the object. A window is cut into the inlay paper around the drawing, which is then attached on the verso using strips of Japanese paper and methyl cellulose adhesive (Fig. 22). This method of inlaying, using Japanese paper strips, avoids the ridges at the edges of the watercolours caused by the ‘guard’ papers, or by the overlap onto the chamfered edge of the ‘traditional’ inlays, described European Visions: American Voices | 65

Rugheimer

Figure 24 This method of inlaying and mounting allows viewing of recto and verso without touching the watercolour

Figure 23 Greek or Turkish woman (BM 1906,0509.1.35). Before, during and after conservation

earlier. Photographs showing a watercolour before, during and after conservation treatment can be seen in Figure 23. After inlaying, the watercolours were hinged into ‘window’ mounts of cream coloured acid-free board. Each mount was stamped with the artist’s name and an individual acquisition number. Inlaying and mounting in this way allows the verso as well as the recto to be seen without touching the watercolour itself, (Fig. 24). For the exhibition here in the Museum, the mounts were temporarily overlaid with coloured board. On their return from exhibition in America, the mounted watercolours will be housed once again in archival Solander boxes to protect them from light, dust and atmospheric pollutants.

Our examination of John White’s watercolours revealed important information on how they were drawn, their history, and present condition. This has been recorded, together with details of our conservation methods, and will provide a useful resource for those responsible for their care in years to come. Conservation treatments and remounting have improved their appearance, and will help to preserve them for the enjoyment of future generations. Notes

1

2


More detailed information is published in Bescoby, J., Rayner, J., Ambers, J. and Hook, D.R. 2007, ‘New visions of a new world: the conservation and analysis of the John White watercolours’, British Museum Technical Research Bulletin, 1, 9–22. Briquet, C.M. 1907, Les Filigranes, vol IV, 13192, 3 and 4, Geneva. 

John White’s Watercolours: Analysis of the Pigments Janet Ambers, Duncan Hook and Antony Simpson

Introduction This essay discusses the results of scientific work carried out on the John White drawings before and immediately after the A New World exhibition in 2007, and summarizes what is now known about the pigments used. It also describes some attempts made to recreate at least a suggestion of the original appearance of some of the pieces. It is not intended here to give full technical details of the analyses undertaken or of the choices of techniques used for the work (these are published in detail elsewhere),1 but rather to provide a summary of the palette identified, within the context of the other papers from the conference in this collection, and to indicate some techniques which might be useful in recreating the original appearance of such works of art. Material studied The British Museum holds both a group of 75 watercolours believed to have come from an original album produced by John White himself (described here as the White album) and also a second volume, known as the Sloane album, which is less well attributed, but may include at least some work by White.2 Additionally, there is a collection of offsets (inverted images produced on interleaved sheets by direct contact with the painted surface) from the White drawings. These are particularly heavy and detailed because of the way in which they were formed; the extinguishing of an accidental fire in a warehouse adjoining the building in which the album was stored led to it being soaked in water. It was then left wet for some weeks under pressure from other volumes above it. This

resulted in the transfer of large amounts of pigment from the drawings onto the interleaving blank pages of the album, producing the offsets (Fig. 1). Any technical study of the type described here is a timeconsuming venture and, while it would have been desirable, it was not possible in the time available to examine all of the drawings in the White album, still less those in the Sloane album. Instead the colours found on some 12 of the White drawings (see Table 1), chosen to be representative of the subjects depicted and colours used, were analyzed, together with two paintings from the Sloane album (Table 2).3 Methods of analysis The methods that could be used in this work were limited by the nature of the material. The type of sampling normally used to examine canvas paintings, involving the removal of tiny paint flakes to produce resin embedded cross sections, was totally unacceptable for this work; and indeed any type of sampling was impossible. Instead we worked with two noninvasive and non-destructive methods of analysis, Raman spectrometry and X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), combined with detailed examination of the painted surfaces by optical microscopy. Both of these techniques have the great advantage that they involve no direct contact with the painted surfaces, a vital requirement with such delicate and vulnerable pieces. The two methods are also complementary, with XRF providing details of the elements present on the surfaces under examination, and Raman spectrometry giving a direct identification of the chemical compounds present. There are

Figure 1 A wife of an Indian werowance or chief and her daughter, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.13) with its offset, showing the amount of transferred pigment


Ambers, Hook and Simpson some limitations, however, in what can be achieved with these techniques; it was not possible to identify most organic pigments (with the notable exception of indigo, to which Raman is very sensitive) or the organic binders used to hold the pigments in place. Sadly, given the present state of analytical technology, to characterize these materials would have required the removal of samples. For more details about these techniques and about the methodology used, see the paper cited in note 1. The palette As expected, given the tradition of English limning in which White was working,4 the palette is dominated by lead white (basic lead (II) carbonate – 2PbCO3.Pb(OH)2) used both as a pure pigment and mixed with other colourants to add opacity and produce what are generally termed ‘body colours’. In many areas the lead white has darkened,5 often dramatically altering the appearance (and sometimes the apparent interpretation) of the pictures. A good example of this can be seen in the beads worn by the adult figure in A wife of an Indian werowance or chief and her daughter (Fig. 2). These are now dark in appearance, apparently suggesting the use of either black pearls or glass beads, neither of which were available in the North Carolina Algonquian area, and which would have had to be traded into the region. However, analysis proves the beads to have originally been painted in white lead, presumably to show the use of white pearls or shells, both of which were available locally. No other whites were conclusively identified in either of the groups of drawings, although calcium is present in some places, and it is possible that a chalk white was used in a few areas. Most of the skin tones and costumes in both albums are coloured in various hues of red and yellow. As would be expected, the bulk of these are painted in mixtures of red and yellow ochre pigments (defined by the presence of hematite

Figure 2 A summary of the pigments found on Figure 1


and goethite). Such earth colours would have been widely and cheaply available and are found in profusion in most paintings of the period. Vermilion (mercuric sulphide – HgS) also occurs, although in rather smaller quantities than red ochre and mostly in areas where a more opaque or deeper colour was required, such as facial features. Given the constraints on sampling it is not possible to comment on whether this pigment was of natural origin (ground from the mineral cinnabar) or artificially manufactured. Additionally, much use is made in the depictions of birds, flowers and sea creatures of a bright pink colour. Initial examination of this material suggested the presence of the element bromine, which could indicate the use of a organic colour derived from shellfish.6 Further investigations, however, have failed to confirm this identification and it seems more likely that most, if not all, such areas are painted with one of the more common organic pink colourants such as madder, the best known organic red of this period.7 More precise identification was not possible without destructive sampling. All of the black areas examined, with the exception of the initial sketching, were coloured with amorphous carbon. In some areas the original drawing lines are visible. As expected from the documentary evidence from the period,8 these were of graphite (termed black lead in contemporary Elizabethan accounts). Three blue pigments were found, the organic material indigo, azurite (copper carbonate – 2CuCO3.Cu(OH)2, ground from a natural mineral) and smalt (an artificially produced potassium-rich glass coloured by cobalt), all of which are well known from this period. In one case (European Roller, Coracias garrulus) all three pigments were found on a single drawing (Fig. 3). Use of such a wide range of pigment types underlines White’s determination to attempt to replicate the true colours of the fauna he encountered as closely as possible. No evidence has been found on any of the watercolours for the use of the most prestigious (and expensive) blue of the period, natural ultramarine, produced by grinding the mineral lapis lazuli. Very few areas of green were found in the drawings from the White album, although there are many more instances of the use of green in the Sloane material. There are a few green plants shown at the base of Indians fishing (Fig. 4) produced by painting in indigo onto a yellow ochre base. The foliage in the depictions of plants (Fig. 5) usually contains a semi-

Figure 3 A summary of the pigments found on European Roller (Coracias garrulus), John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.64)

John White’s Watercolours: Analysis of the Pigments

Figure 4 Summary of the pigments found on Indians fishing, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.6)

Figure 6 Details from the offset of Figure 1 showing transfer of gold

transparent green, although this is generally quite damaged and only survives in poor condition, due both to fading and to movement through the paper as a result of water damage. This fading, together with the lack of any positive results from either XRF or Raman analysis, suggests the use of an organic material, possibly sap green (produced from plant berries, most commonly of buckthorn), the most frequently recorded organic green from this period. It is very possible that the use of this green was originally far more extensive but that degradation of the pigment has led to its disappearance. None of the green

areas in the Sloane album were analyzed in this study, but their appearance, and their continued survival, would suggest that they are inorganic in nature, such as malachite or verdigris (although the latter tends to cause damage to the paper which is not obviously apparent in this material). The final stage in the production of the watercolours was the addition of metallic gold and silver, often on top of other pigment layers. Gold was applied in many areas, but is frequently no longer in place on the drawings, as much has been transferred to the offsets, sometimes together with the pigment from the layers underneath, as shown in the details of A wife of an Indian werowance (see Fig. 6). The amount of disruption to the gold surfaces made it impossible to tell if it was originally applied as small fragments of gold suspended in a binder (‘shell’ gold) or as gold leaf. Silver was used over larger areas, particularly in the pictures of fish (Fig. 7) where it often forms much of the body. It seems to have remained more firmly adhered to the paintings than gold, possibly because it was often applied directly to the paper rather than onto pigment layers. Overall it is in worse condition, however, having tarnished badly over

Figure 5 Sabatia, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.38)

Figure 7 Grouper, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.50), showing heavily discoloured silver on the belly


Ambers, Hook and Simpson Figure 8 Detail from An Indian werowance or chief painted for a great solemn gathering, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.12), showing the face as it currently appears (left) and with the whites of the eyes digitally reinstated (right)

time to a dull grey. This makes it difficult to distinguish the silver from the carbon black or graphite outlines, and destroys what must have been the original intention to replicate fish scales. The silver is clearly particulate in nature and must have been applied as a ‘shell’ pigment. Overall, the palette found on the John White material is fairly typical of its period. Sadly, none of the pigments found are specific to the Americas and this work provides no assistance in answering the question of whether White took his pigments with him or collected them in situ, or indeed if he produced the paintings during the voyages or on his return. Colour changes and recreation of the original appearance The effects of time, and, in particular, of the eventful history of the paintings, have led to a number of changes in their appearance. The two most obvious chemical changes, already mentioned above, are a darkening of the lead white pigment that dominates the palette, both in its pure form and as an addition to other pigments to produce bodycolours9 and the tarnishing of the ‘shell’ silver used most widely on the depictions of fish. Some other pigments, such as vermilion, also seem to have darkened to some extent (although it is difficult to separate this from the changes to lead white), while others, like the green of the foliage, have faded. Additionally the paintings have undergone considerable physical trauma, with the greatest effect being the transfer of substantial amounts of pigment to the offsets, mostly from the topmost layers. Chemical treatments are available to ‘reverse’ at least some of these changes on the original; treatment with hydrogen peroxide has been used in paper conservation in the past to whiten discoloured areas of lead white that has been affected by the presence of sulphur (although this is not a true reversal of the chemical change, as it produces lead sulphate, rather than carbonate, as a final stage). Modern practice, however, frowns upon such irreversible and drastic interventions, and the advent of digital photography, with its capacity for the easy manipulation of detailed and very high resolution images offers a new method by which to attempt to recreate the original appearance of such pieces. The challenge here is to determine what has altered, and, as far as is possible, to recreate the original effect. With the White material this was relatively easy in some cases. Digitally reinstating the original colour of the lead white in the whites of the eyes of An Indian werowance or chief, which can be 70 | European Visions: American Voices

shown by analysis to have darkened, immediately changes the overall perception of the face (Fig. 8). In other cases the changes are more complex. The images of the Grouper (Fig. 9) show an attempt not only to digitally recolour the discoloured white of the eye, but also to recreate the original shimmer of the bright silver layer of the belly. This was a much more complex procedure; it is very difficult to give the impression of a metallic effect on a flat surface. The attempt was reasonably successful when viewed back-lit on a screen on this website, but is less convincing when printed in standard inks onto paper; use of some form of embossing might give a more convincing effect. Other attempts at recolouring the White drawings were less successful. It was originally intended to use a combination of the images of the watercolours overlaid with their offsets to ‘replace’ the transferred pigment onto the surface of the painting. This proved impossible because of the amount of pigment movement that has taken place. The offsets hold more than one pigment layer, making it impossible to tell what the original surface actually was. This was a particular problem in attempting to define the original extent of the gold areas. Figure 6, of an offset, shows some details of areas of transferred gold and demonstrates how vermilion from the layers originally under the gold now rests on top of it,

Figure 9 Grouper, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.48). Top, in present condition; bottom, digitally recoloured in an attempt to recreate the original appearance

John White’s Watercolours: Analysis of the Pigments concealing its edges. Other problems arise from the alteration of organic colours; it seems likely that an organic green was originally used on the paintings far more widely than is now apparent, but this leaves no chemical traces that we can currently identify although it is hoped that future developments in multi-spectral imaging will assist in understanding such changes.10

Table 1 Summary of pigments found on drawings from the White album

Drawing

Pigments found

Flying fish (1906,0509.1)

Silver, Smalt

Indians fishing (1906,0509.1.6) (Fig. 4)

Indigo, Hematite + goethite (red and yellow ochres), Vermilion, Carbon, Gold

The town of Pomeiooc (1906,0509.1.8)

Lead white

Notes

1 Full analytical results are published in J. Bescoby, J. Rayner, J. Ambers and D.R. Hook, ‘New visions of a new world: the conservation and analysis of the John White watercolours’, British Museum Technical Research Bulletin, 1, 2007, 9–22. 2 K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007. 3 Table 2 contains information on one painting not included in Bescoby et al., supra n. 1. 4 For a background to techniques used at this period see K. Sloan, ‘Knowing John White: the courtier’s “curious and gentle art of limning”’ in Sloan, supra n. 2, 23–38. See also papers by Coombs and Tallian in this volume. 5 See the section on ‘Colour changes and recreation of the original appearance’ in this essay for further discussion, and Bescoby et al., supra n. 1, for chemical details. 6 Such colours are dibromoindigos. For details of use, origins and chemistry see D. Cardon, Natural Dyes: sources, tradition, technology and science, London, 2007. 7 T. Primeau, ‘The materials and technology of Renaissance and Baroque hand-coloured prints’, in S. Dackerman, Painted Prints: the revelation of color, Baltimore, MD, 2004, 49–80. 8 See Sloan, supra n. 4. 9 Ibid. 10 See G. Verri, ‘An investigation of corrected UV-induced fluorescence for the examination of polychromy’, M.A. diss., London, 2007, 10–12 for a full discussion of such methods.

An Indian werowance or chief painted for a Lead white, great solemn gathering (1906,0509.1.12) (Fig. 8) Ochre, Carbon, ?calcium-based pigment/ extender in small quantities A wife of an Indian werowance or chief and her daughter (1906,0509.1.13) (Figs 1, 2 and 6)

Lead white, Ochre, Vermilion, Gold, Graphite, ?calcium-based pigment/ extender in small quantities

Tartar or Uzbek man (1906,0509.1.33)

Smalt, Carbon, Vermilion, ?calcium-based pigment/ extender in small quantities

Turkish lady (1906,0509.1.34)

Lead white, Vermilion, Copper blue, Carbon

Sabatia (1906,0509.1.38) (Fig. 5)

Lead white, Organic red compound, ?calcium-based pigment/ extender in small quantities

Grouper (1906,0509.1.50) (Fig. 7)

Lead white, Silver, Ochre, Vermilion, Gold, ?calcium-based pigment/ extender in small quantities

Lookdown fish (1906,0509.1.47)

Silver, Vermilion

European Roller (1906,0509.1.64) (Fig. 3)

Lead white, Azurite, Smalt, Indigo, Ochre

Table 2 Summary of pigments found on drawings from the Sloane album Drawing

Pigments found

The skirmish at Bloody Point (SL 6270.12)

Red lead, Vermilion, Copper blue, Red and yellow ochre, Azurite

Trumpeter swan (SL 5270.82)

Lead white, Vermilion, Smalt


John White’s Materials and Techniques Timea Tallian

Today most professional painting materials such as brushes and paints are sold ready-made in specialist art shops. In comparison, most 16th-century artists had to prepare their paints and equipment themselves. Some raw materials for paints were available in England but most had to be imported from large trading ports such as Antwerp or Venice. Usually they could be obtained from apothecaries. John White painted on paper with fine pigments, bound together with a water-soluble resin called gum arabic. In 16thcentury England, this method was referred to as ‘limning’ (see Katherine Coombs’ paper in this collection). Today we describe this technique as ‘watercolour’ or ‘aquarelle’, as water is used as a solvent for the paint. This description can be misleading, as the term watercolour is nowadays strongly associated with 18th-century and later watercolour paintings or aquarelles, where the paint was applied on the paper in translucent washes, where the paper appeared to glow through the wash or where areas of paper were left uncovered for highlights. As Katherine Coombs explains, the term ‘limning’ is closely related to manuscript illumination, which has some differentiating features, including the use of powdered gold and silver leaf and the application of opaque matt layers of unmixed expensive pigments. These were prepared from colourful minerals like azurite, lapis lazuli (blue), malachite (green) or cinnabar (red). Other pigments for limning were made from naturally occurring coloured earths (ochres), produced by chemical processes (e.g. lead pigments) or by modifying dyes derived from plants and insects (e.g. indigo and Indian lake). Whereas watercolour or aquarelle paints were usually strongly gummed, the mat ‘body colour’ for limning required more pigment and less gum. Also this opaque foundation layer or body colour was usually kept in a middle tone, on which highlights and deep shadows could be build up gradually in fine semi-transparent stipples, hatches or cross hatches of colour (similar to the ‘modelling’ of engravings). We have no contemporary records of how exactly White worked. Close examinations of originals show that he worked as much with transparent washes as with the described typical limning technique, building up the painting with fine hatches on top of an opaque body colour base. Recent instrumental analysis of White’s palette allowed the following pigments to be identified unambiguously: lead white, vermilion, azurite, smalt, indigo, yellow ochre, red ochre, carbon black and powdered gold and silver.1 These pigments are fairly typical for the period and for limning in general2 and will be discussed in greater detail. Treatises on limning (of portrait miniatures) by the famous English Renaissance artist Nicholas Hilliard,3 those by Edward Norgate,4 related manuscripts5 and printed books on the subject6 describe the sophisticated techniques to prepare the pigments and the binder in surprising detail and represent 72 | European Visions: American Voices

invaluable sources of information. When studying these contemporary sources it becomes clear that limning was not considered to be a decorative art but a professional tool. In fact it was used in an equivalent manner to modern day photography and high quality colour prints in books. Limning could be used for illustrations in travel journals, for military purposes like mapping, heraldic images and decorative borders in documents, for painting counterfeits from life, for studies of flora and fauna or for illustrating histories. Generally they were not made to be framed or to be hung on a wall but as illustrations for albums and portfolios. Wellknown exceptions are exquisitely painted small portraits (later called portrait miniatures), which were mounted in gold lockets and pendants. The latter represent the highest quality limnings, as the most precious materials were used for their making. Misleadingly, the term limning was also occasionally used for minor techniques like the hand-colouring of prints and maps with transparent washes of watercolours. This technique required no special ability or knowledge and was referred to by some authors as ‘washing’ to differentiate it from limning.7 Often cheaper transparent paints made of light fugitive organic dyes were used for this purpose. The art of limning as used by White or Hilliard requires good draughtsmanship, specialist knowledge of materials and techniques and good observation from nature. Hilliard states that limning should be practised by artists from an educated (and wealthy) background, and as it is a very clean and outstanding art form he describes it as mostly fit for the use of gentleman.8 Henry Peacham additionally states in his book The Gentleman’s Exercise (1612) that limning is not as smelly as oil painting and does not stain the expensive (silk) clothes worn by the gentry, as watercolour stains could be easily removed. As mentioned above, we have no direct records of White’s working methods. We don’t know if he took his materials ready prepared to America or if he prepared pigments in situ. Also we can’t state categorically whether he painted his images during his stay or back in England. Although he clearly studied the living specimens, particularly the fish, which could be kept alive for some time in a container on board ship, it is likely that White did not always paint directly from life ‘in the field’, but also made his nature studies from dead, dried and conserved specimens in an enclosed studio either abroad or at home. There he would have had a steady light source and would have not been disturbed by direct sun, wind or insects. Hilliard recommends: Let your light be northward, somewhat toward the east, which commonly is without sun shining in. One only light: great and fair let it be, and without impeachment, or reflections of walls or trees [...] in a place where neither dust, smoke, noise nor stench may offend.9

John White’s Materials and Techniques Figure 1 Graphite, a naturally occurring mineral used for drawing

Figure 3 Gum arabic as a resin and as powder. Gum arabic is a water-soluble resin obtained from a subSaharan species of the acacia tree, Acacia senegal, also known by the common names rudraksha, gum arabic tree, or gum Senegal tree. It is native to semi-desert regions of sub-Saharan Africa as well as Oman, Pakistan and northwest India. The gum is drained from cuts in the bark.

Figure 4 Brushes, shells and palette (reconstruction by the author)

For the images of Native Americans White probably prepared sketches of costumes and particular features from life, which he used later as a base for his paintings. One indication that White did not paint entirely from life is that his images of Native Americans show formulated features such as very similar feet with an elongated big toe and the manner of drawing limbs is very formulaic, being repeated in the images of the Picts as well as the Algonquians. Under drawing The under drawing of some of White’s images has been identified as graphite, which is also commonly used for drawing today (Fig. 1). The 16th-century term ‘black lead’ is a misnomer, since graphite does not contain any lead. Generally pre-drawing for limning was done lightly with the brush and diluted paint directly on the paper or vellum (fine parchment). Such pre-drawing would remain largely invisible. Hilliard usually used brush pre-drawings although there is one exception of an unfinished portrait miniature where beside brush drawing also a line of graphite could be identified (Fig. 2). We need to consider that brush drawings and lines with coal, black or white chalk are difficult if not impossible to identify by instrumental analysis. On a finished painting it would be hard to differentiate those materials from the pigments used for the painting. For this reason we can’t exclude the possibility that White also made brush drawings or used also other drawing materials beside graphite.

Figure 2 Unfinished miniature of an unknown lady by Nicholas Hilliard, Victoria & Albert Museum, P.8-1947. This picture clearly shows the limning techniques of making a pre-drawing which brush and applying an opaque body colour for the skin tone and the blue background.

Paint preparation and equipment Hilliard recommends storing the purified and refined pigments as dry powder in paper envelopes or boxes of ivory, ‘that I may easily temper them with my finger in a shell, adding gum at discretion; so have I them always clean and fair and easier to work’.10 Because of technical limitations it is not possible to get analytical evidence of what kind of binder White really used. There is little reason to doubt, however, the use of gum arabic, which was the most common binder for limning. Hilliard recommends: ‘the gum to be gum arabic of the whitest and brittlest, broken into white powder’ (Fig. 3).11 Sometimes it was difficult to temper gum and pigment directly in the shell, as some pigments like vermilion or ivory black do not easily mix with water. In this case it was necessary to prepare the paint on a grinding stone. Hilliard’s treatise mentions the use of a ‘grinding stone of fine crystal, serpentine, jasper or hard porphyry at the least’.12 The ready-prepared paint was thinly smeared with a finger around the inside of a mussel shell. When the paint had the right consistency it would remain as a thin layer on the smooth mother-of-pearl. If too gummy the paint would peel off and flake and if too little gum had been used than it would powder off when touched with a finger. Once the paint dried inside the shell it could be easily reactivated by the addition of water. Colour shades were mixed on a mother-of-pear or ivory palette. Detailed information on painting equipment for limning can be found in a manuscript in the British Library,13 which was probably written by Hoskins, an apprentice of Hilliard.14 These detailed descriptions amongst others were used by the author of this essay for the reconstruction of brushes made from squirrel hair (from the tail) mounted in quills (Fig. 4). Those ‘brush tips’ of various sizes could be put onto on a handle made from wood (e.g. ebony) or ivory. It is possible that White kept his shells, brushes and palette in a ‘pocket deske’ as described by the Hoskins manuscript, which would have been very handy for travelling: The box being open, & the lidd thereof turned quite backwards, the lidd is then a Desk to Limn upon, & the Ribbon is for sticking your pictures in, when you work them. There must be allsoe a stiff wire stuck fast, & upright in the inside of the box [...] to put on your Pencills, whose sticks must have holes for that purpose [...] Your box thus made [...] with 3 or 4 peices of Bayes [...] to lay between your Shells of Colours, to keep them from stirring, & fridgeing in the box.15


Tallian Figure 5 Lead white has formed as flakes on a lead coil, which was exposed to vinegar fumes and carbon dioxide for about a month (reconstruction by Carmen KrisaiChizzola).

Figure 6 Red lead or minium as paint in a mussel shell (reconstruction by the author)

Figure 7 Vermilion as a red powder stored in a paper envelope

Figure 8 Azurite as mineral, powder and paint in a mussel shell (reconstruction by the author)

Figure 9 Shells with earth colours, yellow, red and brown ochres (reconstructions by the author)


Artificial pigments Artificial pigments are not a modern invention but were a side product of early alchemical experiments and have been used since classical times for cosmetic and painting purposes. Lead pigments in particular were very popular, as they provide good coverage and were ideal to create very thin but opaque paint layers. The use of lead white was avoided after the invention of zinc white at the end of the 18th century, as it has a tendency to tarnish when exposed to hydrogen sulphide, a gas produced by coal fires. Analysis showed that lead white was used by White as the main white and as a base for the skin tone. Lead white is made by exposing lead plates to vinegar fumes. This process creates lead acetate, which reacts with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and forms a white corrosion layer on the lead – white lead (basic lead carbonate – 2PbCO3 Pb(OH)2) (Fig. 5). When lead white is roasted it first becomes a light yellow: massicot or litharge (lead oxide – PbO). When it is heated more it turns orange/red: red lead (lead tetroxide (Pb3O4) (Fig. 6). Another red is vermilion (mercuric sulphide – HgS), which occurs naturally as the mineral cinnabar. Often, however, it was produced synthetically by exposing sulphur to mercury fumes. Despite its poisonous nature painters often used this vivid red, as its colour can’t be obtained by any type of red ochre and is much darker than red lead (Fig. 7). Instrumental analysis suggests that vermilion was used by White in small quantities to emphasize features like lips. Mineral pigments Mineral pigments in the 16th century were made and refined with elaborate and often secret methods. According to analysis results White seemed to have used azurite (copper carbonate – 2CuCO3.Cu(OH)2) (Fig. 8) and smalt (glass coloured by the presence of cobalt) as cheaper alternatives to the very expensive blue made from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli (natural ultramarine). Earth pigments Ochres or earth pigments provide the main source for White’s reds, yellows and browns (Fig. 9). Yellow ochre (Iron(III)oxide hydrate) and red ochre (Anhydrous iron(III)oxide) in various shades were the most important pigments of White’s palette for the paintings of Native American life. It is possible that White also used and purified locally occurring earth pigments. In this case he would have used the same pigments that the Native Americans used for their body painting and to decorate items of daily life. This, however, was not something that tests were able to prove. (See Janet Ambers et al. paper in this collection.) Organic pigments Organic pigments are difficult to identify by instrumental analysis. The main exception is indigo. A black blue derived from plants, either woad (Isatis tinctoria) and Dyer’s Knotweed (Polygonum tinctorum), which grows in temperate climates and Indigofera species in the tropics. Indigo has also been an important pigment for limners, enabling them to produce greens by mixing this blue with a yellow such as ochre. Green areas analyzed on botanical drawings such as foliage did not yield any results with instrumental analysis and therefore they must be assumed to be organic in nature. It is possible that

John White’s Materials and Techniques Figure 10 The picture shows the incrustation of the lac insect, which consists of thousands of dead bodies of the female insects (Kerria lacca) formed around a twig, the extracted red dye applied on cotton wool and as Indian lake in a shell.

Figure 11 Charred cherry stones were used in the 16th century to produce fine black pigments (reconstruction by the author).

Figure 12 Powdered gold leaf bound with gum arabic in a shell. Gold paint produced this way is commonly called ‘shell gold’ (reconstruction by the author).

Figure 13 Animal teeth mounted in wooden handles were used to burnish ‘shell gold’ and ‘shell silver’ (reconstructions by the late Jim Murrell, V&A).

White used ‘sap green’ produced from unripe buckthorn berries (Rhamnus sp.).16 Although there is no analytical evidence it is also quite likely that White used ‘lake pigments’ such as Indian lake. Until the 18th century ‘lake’, without further qualification, usually indicated red pigments only. Incrustations of the lac insect (Kerria lacca) were imported into Europe from India, and yielded both red dyestuff and, as a by-product, shellac used as wood polish (Fig. 10). Lake pigments are prepared by the precipitation of a soluble organic dye onto an insoluble, inorganic, adsorptive substrate.17 Also a dyestuff made from shellfish could be identified on a painting of hermit crabs, which could be a paint-stuff of North American origin. Organic

pigments tend to be fugitive to light. Therefore we need to consider that some colours on White’s paintings have changed their appearance. Their storage in albums, however, might have helped to preserve the original shades. Carbon black The analyzed blacks in White’s paintings are predominantly carbon based. Hilliard mentions the charring of fruit stones to obtain good blacks for fine painting. The practical reconstruction of carbon blacks based on 16th-century recipes by the author demonstrated that the carbonization of fruit stones and twigs worked equally well in a metal stove, a traditional clay stove, a bonfire and in various containers (Fig 11).18 This suggests that it is a fairly straightforward process that could have easily been done by the miniaturists themselves at home and abroad. Metal pigments Shell gold (Fig. 12) was applied for final touches and then burnished. This was possibly done with a tooth burnisher made from the tooth of a dog or smaller animal (Fig. 13). Metal paints were made by grinding the off-cuts of gold or silver leaf with a sticky medium such as honey or a thick solution of gum arabic. This was likely to be done on a flat plate with the side of the hand or a finger, and then the resulting gold paste was refined by washing and filtering through cloths. White used shell gold for emphasizing flames of a bonfire, which must have created a wonderful threedimensional effect when it shimmered in the sunlight or when turning the pages of the album. Also the use of shell silver must have closely replicated the effect the reflecting scales of living fish. Unfortunately these special effects were lost; because of water damage, most of the gold is now irreversibly stuck to the offset. The fragments of gold that have remained are not very visible in particular in the dim light conditions of a museum’s display. Unfortunately the silver of the fish scales has tarnished from being exposed to hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere and is now irreversible black dots, lines and areas of grey. This may be the main reason artists have stopped using shell silver for watercolour painting. Conclusion Although White’s paintings show features of modern watercolours, the use of powdered gold and silver leaf clearly identifies White’s paintings as being rooted in the medieval tradition of limning or book illumination. In addition, White’s use of less gummed matt paint and of a certain range of pigments are typical of limning. Although we have no records of exactly how John White worked, information from treatises related to limning of portrait miniatures, in particular by the limners Nicholas Hilliard and Edward Norgate, provide us with information on contemporary working methods and equipment. According to these sources, the equipment for limning would not have been difficult to transport to America. Pigments and powdered gum arabic could be carried in paper envelopes. Readyprepared paint in mussel shells as well as brushes and an ivory palette could have been transported in boxes such as the ‘pocket deske’ as described by the Hoskins manuscript. European Visions: American Voices | 75

Tallian Mineral and poisonous artificial pigments (containing lead or mercury) would have been difficult to prepare abroad. It is possible, however, that some other pigment such as ochres made from natural earths, dyes from plants and shellfish or carbon blacks also could have been made from local materials. It is quite likely that White painted and collected as much information in situ but also refined pictures by taking sketches and specimens home to England. Acknowledgements

For art historical advice, I am indebted to Kim Sloan (British Museum) and Katherine Coombs (Victoria & Albert Museum); for information on scientific analysis, to Janet Ambers (British Museum); and for advice concerning artists’ materials and techniques, to Alan Derbyshire (Victoria & Albert Museum).

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

Verbal communication with Janet Ambers from the British Museum. The analysis has been conducted using optical microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF). R.D. Harley, Artists’ Pigments c. 1600–1835: A Study in English Documentary Sources, London, 2001. Harley describes contemporary pigments and documentary sources of 16th- and 17th-century England. Information about earlier sources can be obtained from M. Clarke, The Art of All Colours – Mediaeval Recipe Books for Painters and Illuminators, London, 2001. Summarized information about medieval artists materials can be also found in: D.V. Thompson, Jr., The Materials of Medieval Painting, London, 1956. Manuscript copy of Nicholas Hilliard’s treatise, Edinburgh, Laing III 174, with a parallel modernized text. R.K.R. Thornton and T.G.S. Cain, eds, A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning by Nicholas Hilliard together with ‘A more Compendious Discourse Concerning ye Art of Limning’, Manchester, 1992. Complete edition of the second version of Edward Norgate’s Miniatura, Bodl. Tan. 326. with review and extracts of other manuscript copies. J.M. Muller and J. Murrell, eds, Edward Norgate, Miniatura or the Arte of Limning, New Haven and London, 1997. List of manuscript treatises related to Norgate’s treatise, Muller and Murrell, supra n. 4, 220–21: (1) Edinburgh, Laing III 174, 15–16; published in Thornton and Cain, supra n. 3, 96–105. (2) London, BL Sloane 228, 3–23. (3) London, BL Sloane 1950, 12–12v. (4) London, BL Harl. 6376, 1–83. (5) London, BL Sloane 3907, 1–31. (6) London, V&A, NAL, L.995–1906, 1–143.


6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18

(7) London, Royal Society, 136, title page, 1–53. (8) Oxford, Bodl. Tan. 326, 1–86. (9) Cardiff, National Library of Wales, 21753b, 89–116v. List of printed books related to Edward Norgate’s treatise, Muller and Murrell, supra n. 4, 223–24: (1) A Book of Drawing, Limning, Washing, 1652; later editions 1660, 1666. After 1666, revised under the title of Albrecht Dürer Revived (no. 4, below). (2) A. Browne, The Whole Art of Drawing, Painting, Limning and Etching, 1660. (3) Academica Italica, 1666. (4) Albrecht Dürer Revived, 1666 (revision of no. 1 above). (5) The Excellency of the Pen and the Pencil, 1666. (6) A. Browne, Ars Pictoria, 1669. (7) W. Salmon, Polygraphice, 1672. (8) A. Browne, An Appendix to the Art of Limning, 1675. (9) R. Blome, The Gentleman’s Recreation, 1686. (10) Art’s Masterpiece. Late 17th century. (11) J. Evelyn, Sculptura, 1662. (12) W. Sanderson, Graphice, London, 1658. This is clear for example from contemporary book titles such as A Book of Drawing, Limning, Washing, 1652 (later editions 1660, 1666). After 1666, revised under the title of Albrecht Dürer Revived. A recent useful book on this subject is S.S. Dackerman, Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color, Baltimore, MD, 2004. Thornton and Cain, supra n. 3, 73. Ibid., 73–4. Ibid., 92. Ibid., 73. Ibid., 73. The original ‘Hoskins manuscript’ (known as ‘Gyles’ book’) is in the British Library (BL, Harley 6376), London. A manuscript copy can be found in the National Art Library (NAL, R.C.A. 20-9951906), London. (Extracts are published in Muller and Murrell, supra n. 4, 237–52 and in J. Murrell, The Way Howe to Lymne – Tudor Miniatures Observed, London, 1983, 76–9, 80–4, 92–3. Murrell, supra n. 13, 76–9. ‘Hoskins manuscript’, supra n. 13, fol. 14. Information obtained from Janet Ambers (scientist at the British Museum). The pigment is formed by the chemical reaction when a suitable reagent (generally alum) is added to an aqueous solution containing the dyestuff and other chemicals such as sodium or potassium carbonate. These chemicals react with the alum to form the substrate, an insoluble product of the reaction. During the reaction the dyestuff becomes intimately combined with the substrate. T. Tallian, Reconstruction of Nicholas Hilliard’s Materials and Techniques, a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Royal College of Art for the degree of Master of Philosophy, May 2007, The Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 61–7.

‘A Kind of Gentle Painting’: Limning in 16th-Century England Katherine Coombs

‘Limning ... a kind of gentle painting’,1 is a quotation from Nicholas Hilliard’s unpublished treatise of about 1600 concerning the art of limning, in which he excelled and of which his self-portrait of 1576 is a notable example (Fig. 1). Hilliard’s comment is not one readily understandable to modern readers. Firstly there is the term ‘limning’, which for Hilliard described a water-based art, different from and contrasted to oil painting. Secondly there is Hilliard’s assertion that limning was a ‘gentle’ art, which is to say gentlemanly. It is a comment from a time when to define oneself as possessing qualities appropriate to a gentleman was to align oneself with a particular status and rank in society. On closer examination, what defined a gentleman was a profoundly vexed question, as is a definition of limning. This paper attempts to tease out what limning was, how and why it was argued for as a ‘kind of gentle painting’ and how we can situate John White’s images of the New World in relation to limning in late 16th-century England. Although we know that John White was of gentle birth, we have no facts about his education or more specifically about how he learned the arts of drawing and painting in watercolour.2 A critical examination of the arguments for limning as a ‘kind of gentle painting’ may illuminate the place of these skills in White’s wider career. White’s images are painted using pigments bound with a binder, probably gum arabic, and applied to the painting support using water – what today would unproblematically be called ‘watercolour’. This could equally describe the medium used by Hilliard. But on comparing a Hilliard portrait with one of White’s images we note immediately the differences between the two artists in their use of this water-based

Figure 1 Self Portrait aged 30, Nicholas Hilliard, watercolour on vellum, 1577 (V&A Images, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, P.155-1910)

medium (Fig. 2). Hilliard’s painting support was fine animal skin, called vellum. He laid what was called a ‘carnation’ – an opaque flesh-coloured ground – in the area of the face, and sketched in the main features of the face and body using a fine brush and brown watercolour. White’s painting support was paper. He would make a light sketch of his subject using graphite (then called black lead), and laid no ground, working straight onto the paper. Hilliard used small hatches in the main features of his work, such as the face, and painted dense areas of pigment in, for example, the drapery. White worked both more broadly in flesh areas, and generally less densely in drapery. Both Hilliard and White did, however, use paint made from real gold, rather than imitating gold with yellow pigment, and both used gold and silver decoratively when the original object was not metallic; a notable example being flames painted using gold (Fig. 3).3 Today Hilliard’s portraits are called ‘miniatures’. In contrast, it has been customary to describe John White’s works as ‘watercolours’. This has effectively situated him as a pioneer of the watercolour medium that came to fruition in England in the 18th century as a predominantly landscape art, with such pre-eminent practitioners as J.M.W. Turner. Writers with a wider European perspective of the use of watercolour have also included White in surveys that encompass such notable artists as Durer, van Dyck and Rubens.4 But neither approach helps us to understand White, the 16th-century English artist. The first sets up a link between White’s works on paper in the late 16th century and other works on paper from the early 19th century; a professionalized use of watercolour, catering to a growing public taste for this ‘new’ art. The second sets up a link between an unrelated group of artists working over a broad 200-year

Figure 2 Young Man among roses, Nicholas Hilliard, watercolour on vellum, about 1587 (V&A Images, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, P.163-1910)

Figure 3 Young Man against flames, Nicholas Hilliard, watercolour on vellum, about 1590–1600 (V&A Images, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, P.5-1917)


Coombs period, with a particular focus on a small group of notable Continental oil painters who used watercolour for essentially private purposes. It is more appropriate to consider White’s work with regard to limning, that ‘kind of gentle painting’, and to do this one must dispense with a further misleading concept, the ‘miniature’. Only one or two uses of the word ‘miniature’ can be found in the English language in the late 16th century, and these reflect knowledge on the part of the writers of the Italian origin of the word ‘miniatura’, Italian for the art of decorating handwritten books.5 The root of this word is the Latin verb ‘miniare’, to decorate with red lead. In medieval England, however, the word for this art was ‘limning’, and in France, ‘enluminer’ – both words coming from the Latin ‘luminare’, to give light. This is the same origin as the word ‘illumination’, still used today for manuscript decoration, encompassing both the idea of illuminating meaning through the use of images and the effect of the bright colours and silver and gold used in this art. Thus in his treatise Hilliard referred to ‘limning’ not ‘miniature’. It was not until a treatise by Edward Norgate, written around 1627, that the Italian word ‘miniatura’ was used as an unequivocal equivalent to ‘limning’. Norgate referred often to Italian art and terminology, and it is unsurprising that his title was Miniatura or the art of limning. It was an etymological confusion that led to the anglicized word ‘miniature’ becoming a word describing a small version of something. Until the late 1590s, the word ‘miniature’ was completely unknown; a state document for example, referred to Hilliard’s portraits of the Queen as, ‘... [of] our body and person in small compass in limning’.6 Richard Haydocke noted in 1598, writing in praise of Hilliard’s art, ‘limning ... the perfection of painting... . This was much used in former times in churchbookes (as is well known)’.7 But in what way was Hilliard’s art related to that used in ‘churchbookes’? How might White’s work also be related to this medieval art? And what ideas current around 1600 encouraged Hilliard to write that, ‘none should meddle with limning but gentlemen alone’.8 In his treatise Hilliard made a number of statements about limning and its appropriateness for gentlemen. Limning was ‘of less subjection than any other [kind of painting]; for one may leave when he will, his colours nor his work taketh any harm by it’;9 it was not the master of one’s time, but could give way to other business. ‘Moreover, it is secret: a man may use it, and scarcely be perceived of his own folk [and is] sweet and cleanly to use.’10 Limning could be practised discretely, taking up neither undue space nor time, unlike more laborious and messy forms of painting. According to Hilliard, the ‘first and chiefest precept’ for limning was ‘cleanliness’, making it ‘therefore fittest for gentlemen’,11 and indeed it was ‘a thing apart from all other painting’.12 Hilliard’s arguments did not concern the aesthetic superiority of limning, although he did compare limning and oil painting, noting that ‘if you put too much gum then it will be somewhat bright, like oil colour, which is vile in limning’.13 Instead he was primarily concerned with social qualities, and the ideas he employed echoed two influential 16th-century discourses. The first was Baldassar Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano written in 1528. This was only available in English, however, from 1561, translated by Thomas Hoby as The Courtyer of Count 78 | European Visions: American Voices

Baldessar Castilio ... Very necessary and profitable for yonge Gentilmen and Gentilwomen abiding in Court ...’.14 The second was Sir Thomas Elyot’s, The Boke Named The Governour, published 1531, which reinterpreted Castiglione for the very different Tudor context and was ‘influential in disseminating new humanist ideas on the role of the gentleman in England’.15 The education and qualities expected of Castiglione’s ‘Courtier’ were those that would recommend him to his prince personally. For example, learning was a ‘true ... ornament of the minde’, and while useful, the object of learning was to fit a gentleman for life at a Renaissance prince’s court.16 For Castiglione the arts were an important branch of learning, and he formulated an argument against the rhetorical and social norm that the arts of drawing, painting and sculpture were not liberal arts but merely mechanic, the work of the hand not the mind. He argued that ‘disegno’ was the ability to abstract beauty from nature through imagination and a trained hand, a combination of mind and body. Hilliard significantly opened his treatise with an idea borrowed from Castiglione, that the Romans, ‘in time past forbade that any should be taught the art of painting, save gentlemen only’.17 In fact Castiglione, recognizing the novelty of his arguments, offered the proviso that drawing was useful to gentlemen, for example for military purposes such as mapping.18 This idea was to become a commonplace in 16th-century English writing on gentlemanly conduct. Elyot’s ‘Governor’ was a more sober gentleman than Castiglione’s glitteringly accomplished ‘Courtier’. Writing for the court of Henry VIII, Elyot was predominantly concerned with the education and role of the gentleman as a member of the governing class, and he privileged practical studies. Thus while he mentioned the pleasure of drawing, painting and geometry, he insisted on their practical values for husbandry and for war.19 Elyot also warned gentlemen to exercise arts such as painting only as a ‘secrete pastime, or recreation of the wittes late occupied with serious studies’, and only in a boy’s youth, to be abandoned when the time came to turn to ‘businesse of greatter importance’.20 These ideas found an echo in Hilliard’s treatise, specifically in his arguments for the appropriately gentlemanly art of limning, the cleanly, discreet art of watercolour. These debates were not the province of mere rhetoric, but were keenly felt in Elizabethan society, as seen in George Gower’s self-portrait in oil, 1579 (Fig. 4). Gower was the grandson of Sir John Gower of Stettenham in Yorkshire. He showed himself holding his palette, with an allegorical device of a metal balance, with a pair of dividers (used to establish proportions) outweighing his coat of arms. A verse paid homage to the ‘virtue, fame and acts’ that first won these family arms, but claimed that his skill as a painter maintained the reputation of his family. As Karen Hearn has commented, it is ‘a startling claim in England where a painter was still viewed as little more than an artisan’.21 Hilliard, without the advantage of gentle birth, had to adopt a different form of special pleading. Hilliard was the son of a notable Exeter goldsmith, Richard Hilliard. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed as a goldsmith; when he was 21 years old he became free of the Goldsmith’s Company. But Hilliard’s boyhood experience perhaps encouraged him to aspire beyond the confines of his given

‘A Kind of Gentle Painting’ trade. At the age of 10 he was placed in the household of John Bodley, a radical Protestant and publisher, and during the reign of the Catholic Mary Tudor went into exile in Geneva with the Bodley family (this is probably when Hilliard learned French).22 Bodley’s eldest son Thomas was only two years Hilliard’s senior, but in contrast to Hilliard he entered Oxford University as a ‘commoner’, meaning that his father paid his tuition, and with the backing of this education and contacts formed in the influential arena of the University, he entered Elizabeth’s service as Gentleman Usher. He was soon entrusted with key diplomatic missions and in 1604 was knighted by Elizabeth’s successor, James I.23 Bodley’s career demonstrates the opportunities for progression within Tudor society outlined by Elyot in his Boke Named The Governour. Elyot argued that while the ‘publick weale’ was made up of a hierarchic order of degrees of men, education could elevate a man to the governing class; ‘excellent virtue and learning do enable a man of the base estate of the commonality to be thought of all men worthy to be so much advanced’.24 The example of his childhood companion was literally before Hilliard in 1598 when he embarked on writing his treatise, because in that year Bodley sat to Hilliard,25 and one can imagine this encounter spurring Hilliard to reassess his own career. It is not known how Hilliard learned the art of limning, but as an apprentice to the Queen’s goldsmith, Robert Brandon, he had contact with the court, and in 1572, three years after completing his apprenticeship as a goldsmith, he had his first sitting with the Queen. In 1576 he travelled to France in the train of Elizabeth’s ambassador, Sir Amyas Paulet, staying for three years. This is where he painted his magnificent selfportrait (Fig. 1), no different in appearance from his courtly sitters, the image of the Renaissance artist. In England, however, the status of painters was socially problematic. The Painter-Stainers Company, established in 1502 to represent the interests of English painters and stainers, was formed of people

who mostly are thought of now as decorative painters; they painted barges, furniture and backdrops or architectural settings for grand but ephemeral court events.26 In his treatise Hilliard pointedly claimed that limning was a ‘thing apart from other painting’, going on to say that, ‘it tendeth not to common men’s use, either for furnishing of houses, or any patterns for tapestries, or building, or any other work whatsoever’.27 While in France, Hilliard held the position of ‘Valet de Chambre’ to the Duke of Anjou, son of the French King, and suitor to Elizabeth I.28 Judging by his self-portrait and his treatise, this experience instilled in him a more Renaissance concept of the artist, one fit to be in company with princes, knights and scholars. In his treatise Hilliard proudly recalled conversations with the Queen and with Sir Philip Sidney, ‘that noble and most valiant knight, that great scholar and excellent poet’.29 Hilliard also wrote that as portraiture required sitter and painter to be in company together, it was important that the portraitist be able ‘to carry themselves as to give such seemly attendance on princes as shall not offend their royal presence’.30 But as noted, Hilliard wrote his treatise towards the end of a career that clearly had not met his expectations. He had returned from France around 1578, but the parsimonious and shrewd Queen did not offer him a prestigious and salaried position at court. Instead of becoming one of the Queen’s household, he set up shop in Gutter Lane in London, painting the Queen only when she required his services, and any sitter who could afford to pay. Thomas Hoby’s 1561 translation of Castiglione had adapted the Italian text to the very different circumstances of the English court, while also adapting elements of Elyot’s Governour to suit the new court of Henry VIII’s daughter, Elizabeth I. Elyot for example had argued that through education a common-born man could be raised to the governing class. Hoby returned to the spirit of Castiglione by focusing on the virtues and qualities that would fit a man to life

Figure 4 Self-portrait, George Gower, engraving by James Basire after original oil self-portrait of 1579 (BM P&D 1865, 0114.355)

Figure 5 Thomas Bodley, Nicholas Hilliard, watercolour on vellum, dated 1598 (The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)


Coombs at court rather than for government service, but as with Elyot, noble birth was not a prerequisite.31 Hilliard had not had the university education of his childhood companion Thomas Bodley, but following Hoby he argued that painting portraits of princes and nobles, ‘of necessity requireth the party’s own presences ... and so it is convenient that they be gentlemen of good parts ... though they be born but common people’.32 He went on to appeal to God and specifically to the genteel art of limning, in which God had granted him skill, for his own claim to gentility: ‘God ... giveth gentility to divers persons, and riseth man to reputation by divers means’, and while, gentlemen be the meetest for this gentle calling or practice [i.e., limning], ... not every gentleman is so gentle spirited as some others are. Let us therefore honour and prefer the election of God in all vocations and degrees.33

Hilliard, in his own words ‘born but common people’, argued that limning was ‘not for common man’s use’, was ‘a Gentle calling’ and that God had raised him to this ‘kind of gentle painting’, thus conferring qualities and virtues that fitted him to be in company with princes and nobles. Hilliard’s treatise dealt predominantly with the practicalities of limning, the preparation of pigments for example. But it opened with this uncompromising argument for his gentility and the gentility of limning, made up of a concoction of ideas borrowed from Castiglione via Hoby and Elyot. It is a heartfelt manifesto for his right to the status that he felt had never been his. Were this an isolated exercise in rhetoric, we might justly ignore it as the convoluted selfjustification of an embittered man, and not give credit to his claims for limning. But two publications suggest that Hilliard’s ideas had some existing currency. The first was an anonymous publication of 1573, now called simply Limming [sic], published only a year after Hilliard’s first sitting with the Queen. The title page opened, ‘A very proper treatise, wherein is briefly sett forthe the art of Limming’, and offered the work to ‘Gentlemenne, and to all such other persones as doe delite in limming...’ .34 This publication went through a surprising six editions between 1573 and 1605, including three in the 1580s. It is notable that the 1573 treatise on limning did not concern portraiture specifically, but as the title page noted, was for ‘the drawing ... of letters, vinets, flowers, armes [i.e., coats of arms] and imagery’ and included the way to ‘temper gold & silver ... and diverse kyndes of colours to write or limme withall uppon velym, parchement or paper’. It should be noted that John White had worked on paper, not on the vellum used by Hilliard. The second publication dated from 1606, the year after the last edition of the anonymous Limming, and only six years after Hilliard wrote his unpublished treatise. It was called The art of drawing with the pen and limming [sic] in watercolours ... For the behoofe of all young Gentlemen ... By H. Pecham [sic], Gent. (A later edition was called more simply Graphice.) This publication, along with the continuing currency and long-term success of the anonymous Limming between 1573 and 1605, and the manner in which Hilliard traced his arguments for the gentlemanly qualities of limning, point to a discourse of limning as a gentleman’s art as existing beyond Hilliard’s imagination. Henry Peacham, ‘Gent.’, was the son of a clergyman, and like Thomas Bodley, was university educated (Cambridge, rather than Oxford), benefiting from the same social 80 | European Visions: American Voices

opportunities accruing to such an education.35 Graphice was probably intended to recommend him either at court or within influential aristocratic circles and Peacham was eventually to secure the patronage of one the foremost nobles in the land, the Earl of Arundel, as tutor to his sons. Peacham’s publications date from the reign of James I, the first written 20 years after John White’s voyages to the New World. Nonetheless his publications can offer an insight into White socially and professionally, because by birth and education Peacham, born in 1578, was an Elizabethan gentleman. For example, as a ‘Gent.’, Peacham rehearsed the now commonplace idea that he practiced the arts of drawing and limning only as accomplishments: ‘I have (it is true) bestowed many idle hours in it ... yet in my judgement I was never so wedded unto it, as to hold it any part of my profession, but rather allotted it the place ... of an accomplement required in a Scholar or Gentleman.’36 Peacham’s education was more comparable to that of Thomas Bodley, rather than that of Hilliard, and he sought accordingly to situate drawing and limning as merely additional and useful skills, not his whole practice and living. In the manner of Castiglione he offered a discussion of ‘The excellency of painting’ in general, but his treatise concerned the practicalities of learning the useful art of drawing and the gentlemanly art of limning. Chapter 1 of Graphice dealt with drawing; subjects included ‘Man’, ‘Drapery’ and ‘Beasts, birds, flowers’. Interestingly Peacham noted the difficulty of drawing some animals because of their nimbleness, which implies a level of natural observation was expected. Chapter 2 dealt with ‘The true ordering of all manner of water colours’, so that the reader could, ‘with more delighte apparrell your work with ... lively and naturall beauty’. He also included information on the use of gold and silver in limning. Peacham concluded by noting that, ‘I had purposed to have annexed hereunto a discours of Armory ... not altogether impertinent to our purpose,’ but that he had put it off until another time, ‘being a while employed in some important business’, echoing Elyot’s idea that such activities should not distract from more worthy business. In this way he also significantly introduced the subject of ‘armory’ into his mix of drawing and limning – a subject that seems to have played a subtle part in setting up the gentlemanly associations of limning in the late 16th century. ‘Armory’ is the art and science of blazoning arms, which is to say the practice of researching, designing and painting heraldic devices.37 This is often mistakenly called ‘heraldry’, a term that more correctly describes all that concerns the office of herald. The office of herald was prestigious – senior heralds for example played an important role in court events – and by the 16th century all heralds were royal appointments working from the College of Arms, founded by royal charter in 1484. The College was responsible to the Crown for maintaining the system of the grant of arms, which was effectively the bedrock of the hierarchical social system, and during Elizabeth’s reign, there was an increased emphasis on genealogy in the College’s work as wealthy ‘new men’ sought to prove their gentility and be granted arms. As any person bearing arms was by definition ‘gentle’, the heralds were effectively ‘the gatekeepers to the gentry class’. Armoury has its own language; the reference books in which arms were recorded are called ‘armorials’, the art of

‘A Kind of Gentle Painting’ painting arms is called ‘blazoning’ and colours are also described with words peculiar to armoury. Nonetheless, the blazoning of arms in armorials, on parchment or paper, was done using water-based pigments, as well as gold and silver. It should be remembered that the 1573 treatise Limming, which the anonymous writer believed to be of interest to gentlemen, included the limning of coats of arms, and specifically referred to the use of gold and silver. Hence also Peacham’s comment that it was ‘not impertinent’ to the arts of drawing and limning to introduce the subject of the blazon of arms for his gentlemen readers. Even though in 1606 Peacham did not include a section on armoury, a woodcut included for the reader to copy showed a heraldic lion rampant. In 1612 Peacham republished Graphice as The Gentleman’s Exercise, this time including a section on the blazoning of arms. His 1622 publication The Compleat Gentleman, although a more ambitious work with chapters on a host of accomplishments for gentlemen, still included a chapter on ‘Drawing, Limning and Painting’, and one on ‘Armoury’. This publication was notably different from the previous two. By this date Peacham had travelled on the Continent and was aware that oil painting was widely esteemed. But while he now referred both to oil painting and notable painters, his concern was the education of gentlemen, and he therefore maintained the Elizabethan prejudice that oil painting, unlike limning, was not fit for the practice of gentlemen. Painting in oyle is done I confesse with greater judgement, and is generally of more esteeme than working in watercolours, but then it is more mechanique, and will rob you of overmuch time from your more excellent studies, it being sometime a fortnight or a month ere you can finish an ordinary piece ... beside, oyle [colours] ... if they drop upon apparel, will not out; when watercolours will with the least washing.38

Despite the concession to oil, Peacham’s viewpoint is still essentially an Elizabethan one. Hilliard for example had written that ‘painting’ was for the furnishing of houses, etc., while ‘limning’ was not for common men’s use; and the 1573 treatise Limming had noted that, ‘... all colours to lime ... should never be tempered with any kind of oyle, for oiles serve most aptly for ... colours to lay upon stone, timber, iron, lead, copper, and such like’.39 To summarize the three writers, the author of the anonymous Limming, Hilliard and Peacham: a knowledge of drawing and limning could ‘delite’ gentlemen; it was separate from and different from other types of painting; it was an art that gentlemen might wish to practice, could do so without censure, and would find useful for many gentlemanly interests or as an addition to their accomplishments; it would not compromise their gentility; and it could enhance the broad range of skills and knowledge appropriate to their class. It was these ideas that Peacham began to consolidate in print from 1606 and which can perhaps help to make sense of John White’s practice. During Henry VIII’s reign, Thomas Elyot had first allowed for the idea that drawing had a useful purpose for gentlemen in the service of the King, for example in delineating fortifications. Nonetheless, the low social standing of professional painters in 16th-century England has in the past made it seem unlikely that John White, described as a ‘painter’ could be John White, Governor of the new City of Raleigh (Fig. 6).40 But as has been discussed, in the reign of Elizabeth, ideas began to develop as to the gentlemanly

qualities of limning – the use of watercolour. John White’s images can be seen as an example of the further development of Elyot’s arguments for drawing; they too are useful in the service of royal patrons, recording fully in colour worlds encountered on voyages of exploration that they had personally sponsored. In Peacham’s 1622 publication, he added a new section on the ‘manifold uses of limning’ to his limning chapter. His list of subject matter probably reflects his knowledge of Theodor de Bry’s engravings after White’s images from the 1590s, but also indicates that Peacham, author of the 1606 treatise on drawing and limning, saw White’s images as falling within the bounds of the gentlemanly practice of limning: It bringeth home with us from the farthest part of the world in our bosomes, whatever is rare and worthy the observance, as the general Map of the country ... the forms and colours of all fruits, [the] severall beauties of their flowers of medicinable simples never before seen or heard of: the ... colours, and lively pictures of the Birds, the shape of their beasts, fishes, worms, flyes etc. It presents our eyes with their Complexion, Manner, and their Attyre. It shews us the Rites of their Religion, their houses, their weapons, and manner of War ... Beside, it preserveth the memory of a dearest friend, or fairest mistress.41

Peacham’s concluding subject, however, takes the art of limning back to portraiture; for example, Peter Oliver’s portraits of the famous beauty Venetia Stanley, mistress and later wife of Peacham’s contemporary, Sir Kenelm Digby (Fig. 7). Comparing Oliver’s portrait with an example of White’s imagery, the ‘manifold’ differences between works that could seemingly both be described as limnings are clearly apparent. It seems understandable, therefore, that the terms ‘watercolour’ and ‘miniature’ have been used to describe these different works, while ‘limning’ has generally been reserved for the illustrations found ‘in former times in churchbookes’, to use Richard Haydock’s phrase. But as has been demonstrated, there was a late 16th- and early 17th-century discourse that defined ‘limning’ as a watercolour art, as different from oil, as

Figure 6 The grant of arms to the Cittie of Raleigh, 1587, John Vincent, (The Provost, Fellows and Scholars of The Queen’s College, Oxford, MS 137, no. 120, p. 1)


Coombs an adjunct to drawing, as appropriate and useful to gentlemen, for use for portraiture and for ‘imagery’. John White’s place in Raleigh’s expedition, his role as Governor for the newly founded colony, his grant of arms, all suggest a man expected to have a range of skills beyond those of a specialist painter, and of a social standing beyond that of a professional painter. A discourse of limning as a gentlemanly watercolour art accommodates both White’s undoubted skill in the arts of drawing and limning, but also his probable standing as a gentleman. It remains necessary, however, to account for the distinct differences between White’s works and those of such portrait limners as Hilliard and Peacham’s contemporary, Peter Oliver. A further written account of limning from the 1620s, contemporary with Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, offers a possible explanation of this difference. Edward Norgate wrote his treatise Miniatura or the art of limning around 1627.42 Like Hilliard’s treatise it was unpublished, but in the same way it was much copied in manuscript form and circulated among an elite of interested gentlemen and artists (Norgate clearly knew Hilliard’s treatise). Norgate uncompromisingly asserted a quite different idea of limning to that found in Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman. His treatise was for a gentlemanly audience, but did not situate limning within a wider range of gentlemanly activities. His concerns were less social than Peacham’s; he was unconcerned with function, the ‘manifold uses of limning’ cited by Peacham, such as recording ‘whatever is rare and worthy of observance’.43 For Norgate the rarity of limning was in the technique, not in what was represented, and the equation he drew between limning and gentlemanly qualities was in the fineness and expense of the materials and tools, the cleanly, neat nature of watercolour, the mystery of the technique, the exquisiteness of the finished ‘curious’ pieces, worthy of inclusion in the cabinets of princes. Norgate echoed his predecessors in the basic information he gave for the preparation of watercolour pigments. But his interest was only in portraiture and the exquisite copies of oils performed in limning by Peter Oliver (Fig. 8). He also emphasised the use of vellum, and of hatching and stippling, close-worked to build up the image: ‘limning when finished is of all kinds of painting the most close, smooth and even’.44 He further commented that if ‘your work appears not altogether so closed up as it should be, you must to bring it to perfection,

Figure 7 Unknown Woman probably Venetia Stanley, Peter Oliver, watercolour on vellum, about 1615–1617 (V&A Images, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, P.3-1940)


Figure 8 Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Peter Oliver, watercolour on vellum, 1628 (V&A Images, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 740-1882)

spend some time in filling up the void and empty places’.45 This is quite different from the looser, more open brushwork used by John White in his works on paper. Recently, accounts of limning have been guided almost exclusively by Hilliard’s and Norgate’s unpublished but influential treatises, with their focus on portrait limning. Writers interested primarily in the development of what are popularly called portrait ‘miniatures’, have compounded this by effectively tracing one line of descent from the medieval art of limning found in ‘churchbookes’ to portrait limners such as Nicholas Hilliard and Peter Oliver.46 But this ignores another noteworthy line of descent from medieval limning, one that adapted to different needs and concerns and that may have contributed to the wider gentlemanly associations of working in watercolour. This could allow us to accommodate both the Hilliard/Norgate conception of limning and that of Peacham under a more elastic understanding of limning. Traditional accounts of the genealogy of limning in England trace a line of descent from illuminated manuscripts, which initially was the art of the monastery. In the 13th century, however, secular workshops developed, allied to the book trade, which employed scriveners to write the text and limners to paint the images and decorate the letters. Then, towards the end of the 15th century there was a challenge to hand-worked book production from the invention of printing. In England limners also lost ground to the great Flemish workshops that specialized in luxury books and led the way in diversifying in the face of the encroachment by printing, painting images as separate works of art.47 In the 1520s members of one of the leading Flemish families of limners, Gerard, Susannah and Lucas Horenbout, came to the court of Henry VIII, possibly as religious exiles, and it is Lucas who is credited with painting the first separate limned portraits. A portrait of Henry VIII is the earliest known example in England of what is now called a portrait miniature, designed not to illustrate a book, but to be set as a jewel or in a small box to be held in the hand.48 Horenbout is believed to have taught the art to the German oil portraitist, Hans Holbein, and the two painters both worked for Henry until their deaths in 1543 and 1544, respectively. Horenbout and Holbein were succeeded in this line of descent by Levina Teerlinc, the daughter of the great Flemish illuminator, Simon Bening. Bening never came to England, but Levina was employed by Henry VIII as ‘paintrix’, and although her place at the courts of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I is

‘A Kind of Gentle Painting’ recorded in accounts as ‘Gentlewoman’, it is known that she made New Year gifts of limnings to Elizabeth I, and a small group of portrait limnings have been tentatively attributed to her.49 This line of descent usually situates Teerlinc as the link between the Flemish limning tradition of Bening and the Horenbouts, and Nicholas Hilliard. It has never been established how Hilliard learned limning, but it is assumed that as apprentice to the Queen’s goldsmith he could well have seen unmounted limnings, for which Robert Brandon’s workshop was employed to make gold and jewelled settings. Hilliard himself contributed to the idea of a great line of descent by paying homage in his treatise to the iconic limnings by Holbein and claiming that he had ever followed his example, adding that ‘most of all the liberal sciences, came first unto us from the strangers [foreigners]’.50 But an account of limning in the 16th century that focuses solely on the development of portrait limning is too partial. Medieval English limning did not die out in the face of competition from ‘strangers’. Instead English limners continued to ‘decorate manuscripts in genres less prestigious than the devotional book; grants of arms, charters, heraldic and genealogical manuscripts and secular texts’.51 The English limner found a role particularly in the service of government; for example in the production of documents such as Plea Rolls. This tradition was discussed in Erna Auerbach’s groundbreaking 1961 publication Tudor Artists, which traced this other dimension of what today might be termed ‘visual culture’. The Plea Rolls of the King’s, later Queen’s, Court, particularly interested Auerbach, who traced the development of the portrait of the monarch in the opening letter ‘P’ of each Roll. This line of descent opens up to view a level of activity quite different to that of the small group of portrait limners. Inevitably, however, attribution of particular documents to named limners is almost impossible, and even discovering the names of practicing limners is difficult. Auerbach did, however, find evidence of one such limner in a draft grant of monopoly to a William Walding, in 1574, a year after the 1573 treatise Limming was published. The draft grant stated that Walding had spent his time in ‘our court of Chancery ... where he hath ... obtained ... the knowledge and perfect experience to lymne, draw, write and florish the letters of our name and style in letters patents ...’.52 Auerbach also found evidence in a court document that Walding was styled a ‘gentleman’.53 Another arena in which the arts of the scrivener and limner continued in use was the College of Arms, both in the production of limned grants of arms (Fig. 9), and in maintaining the armorials (reference books) recording the arms of gentlemen. The heralds’ tasks also included designing (drawing) and blazoning (colouring) new arms. It is notable that the anonymous 1573 treatise described the use of limning for decorative work, such as flowers, for coats of arms, as well as for what it termed ‘imagery’; a range of subject matter found in a work by William Segar, later Sir William Segar, who was knighted for his services as the most senior herald. The limning was commissioned in 1585 by the Mercers’ Company, and the imagery of the long-dead John Colet was copied from a sculpture (Fig. 10).54 Segar was first trained as a scrivener and was taken into the service of the courtier Sir Thomas Heneage, who introduced him to the College of Arms.55 It seems much more credible to situate Peacham’s more

Figure 9 Grant of arms to Hugh Vaughan, ink on parchment with waterbased pigments and gilding, 1492 (V&A Images, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, MSL 1948: 4362)

prosaic account of drawing, limning and armoury as arts of interest and of use to gentlemen within this tradition of limning. White’s imagery can also plausibly be accounted for as a development of limning along this line of descent.56 In contrast, Edward Norgate focused on a more elite and artistic form of ‘limning’. His unpublished treatise of 1627 was written for Charles I’s renowned physician Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, who was fascinated by the mystery of the materials and techniques of professional artists.57 It is even possible that Norgate consciously sought to counter the dilution of the art of ‘limning’ by Peacham’s widely available publications. It is notable that it was Norgate who first used the Italian term ‘miniatura’, in place of ‘limning’, calling his treatise Miniatura, or the art of limning.58 For those conversant with Italian this boldly reasserted the descent of limning from the highly wrought book illuminations painted for the delight of noble and princely patrons, a luxury art that then still flourished in Italy. It is notable that Norgate himself was in the service of both James I and Charles I as the limner of important state letters dispatched throughout the known world. Norgate was Clerk of the Signet from 1625 and was granted the monopoly for writing and ornamenting with gold and colours all state letters.59 His treatise, however, was an account of limning as a refined art form, describing techniques suited to the close-up focus of portraiture, and exquisite finish of tiny copies of oil paintings fit for a prince’s cabinet. But this account of limning should no longer hold a monopoly. ‘Limning’ in the 16th century was a

Figure 10 Postumous portrait of Dean Colet, William Segar, decoration for the front cover of the statute book of St Paul’s School, 1584/6 (Mercers’ Hall, London)


Coombs watercolour art that descended from, but also adapted, the limning found both in ‘churchbookes’ and in a wide range of secular documentary materials. Additionally, through Elyot’s Boke Named The Governour and Hoby’s translation of Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, 16th-century Englishmen developed a discourse concerning the usefulness of drawing as a gentlemanly ‘accomplement’, as it was styled by Peacham. In turn, limning was increasingly adopted as an appropriate adjunct to drawing, because of its sweet, cleanly, discrete qualities. Armoury, and the social and cultural fascination with genealogy and pedigree, added another dimension to gentlemen’s appreciation of the usefulness of drawing and limning. This seems to have further enhanced the gentlemanly associations of limning. This combination of factors created an artistic environment in which it is perhaps possible to situate both John White, Governor of the City of Raleigh, and Nicholas Hilliard, one time ‘Valet de Chambre’ to the Duke of Anjou. White could certainly have been versed in the arts of drawing and limning without necessarily being a professional painter. While Hilliard, who painted Elizabeth I ‘in small compass in limning’ for more than 30 years, was able to argue that although undoubtedly a professional painter, as a ‘limner’ he was blessed by God with gentlemanly qualities that befitted him, ‘to give such seemly attendance on princes as shall not offend their royal presence’.60 Notes

1 N. Hilliard, The Arte of Limning, R.K.R. Thornton and T.G.S. Cain, eds, The Mid-Northumberland Arts Group, Manchester, 1992, 43. 2 K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007, 25. 3 For details of Hilliard’s techniques see V.J. Murrell, ‘The Art of Limning’ in R. Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court: The portrait miniature rediscovered 1520–1620, London, 1983, 13–26. For details of White’s techniques see Sloan, ibid., 234–5. 4 For example, M. Hardie, Water-colour Painting in Britain, London, 1966, vol. 1, 51–8. 5 For a discussion of this issue see forthcoming article, K. Coombs, ‘From Limning to Miniature: The Etymology of the Portrait Miniature’, in The Miniature Portrait c. 1500–1850: Current research and new approaches, S. Lloyd, ed., National Galleries of Scotland, 2009. 6 K. Coombs, The Portrait Miniature in England, London, 1998, 8. 7 Ibid., 7. 8 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 43. The best account of Nicholas Hilliard’s life can be found in M. Edmond, Hilliard and Oliver: the Lives and Works of Two Great Miniaturists, London, 1983. 9 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 43. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 53. 12 Ibid., 43. 13 Ibid., 71. 14 Sloan, supra n. 2, 34. 15 S. Lehmberg, ‘Elyot, Sir Thomas’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed online 23/5/2007, 3. 16 W.E. Houghton Jr., ‘The English virtuoso in the seventeenth century, Parts I and II’, Journal of the History of Ideas, no. 3, 1942, 51–73, and no. 4, 1942, 190–219, 59. 17 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 43. See also Sloan, supra n. 2, 33. 18 Sloan, supra n. 2, 33. 19 J.M. Major, Sir Thomas Elyot and Renaissance Humanism, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1964, 61–7, discusses Elyot’s attitude to the Fine Arts. 20 Ibid., 44; Houghton, supra n. 16, 58. 21 K. Hearn, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530– 1630, London, 1995, 107, cat. 57.


22 For an account of Hilliard’s career see Coombs, supra n. 6. 23 W.H. Clennell, ‘Bodley, Sir Thomas’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed online 21/5/2007, 2. 24 Lehmberg, supra n. 15, 3; Sloan, supra n. 2, 33. 25 Edmond, supra n. 8, 25. 26 For an account of the Painter Stainers see A. Borg, The History of the Worshipful Company of Painters, otherwise Painter-Stainers, Huddersfield, 2005. 27 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 43. 28 Edmond, supra n. 8, 62. 29 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 63. 30 Ibid., 45. 31 A. Bermingham, Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art, New Haven and London, 2000, 15–18 32 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 45. 33 Ibid., 45. 34 A very proper treatise, wherein is briefly sett forthe the arte of Limming [sic], London, 1573, title page. 35 For Peacham’s biography see ‘Introduction’, in H. Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman, G.S. Gordon, ed., Oxford, 1906, v–xxiii. 36 H. Peacham, The Art of Drawing with the Pen, and Limming in Water Colours etc., London, 1606, facsimile reprint, Amsterdam, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; New York, 1970, Opening remarks ‘To the Reader’. 37 All information and quotes relating to ‘armoury’ taken from John Neitz, Heralds and Heraldry in Elizabethan England, at http:// elizabethan.org/heraldry/heralds.html, accessed 14/03/2007. 38 H. Peacham, The Compleat Gentleman, London, 1622 (3rd impression, 1661), 130. 39 Limming, supra n. 34, f.vii.b. nota [3]. 40 P. Hulton, America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White, Chapel Hill and London, 1984, 7. 41 Peacham, 1622, supra n. 38, 125. 42 J.M. Muller and J. Murrell, eds, Edward Norgate, Miniatura or the Art of Limning, New Haven & London, 1997. 43 Peacham, 1622, supra n. 38, 125. For an extremely useful and extensive account of earlier manuscript illumination, see T. Kren and S. McKendrick, eds, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe, Getty Publications, Los Angeles, 2003. 44 Muller and Murrell, supra n. 42, 73. 45 Ibid., 79. 46 See, e.g. J. Murdoch et al., The English Miniature, New Haven and London 1981, and Coombs, supra n. 5. 47 C. de Hamel, Medieval Craftsmen: Scribes and Illuminators, London, 1992, 5, and R. Marks and N. Morgan, The Golden Age of English Manuscript Painting 1200–1500, London, 1981, 31–2. 48 For an account of Horenbout family see Coombs, supra n. 6, 15–16, and pl. 4, 14 for Lucas Horenbout, Portrait of Henry VIII, (Fitzwilliam Museum). 49 For an account of Teerlinc see ibid., 24. 50 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 49. 51 Marks and Roberts, supra n. 47, 30. 52 E. Auerbach, Tudor Artists: A Study of Painters in the Royal Service and of Portraiture on Illuminated Documents from the Accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I, London, 1954, 126–7. 53 E. Auerbach, ‘Portraits of Elizabeth I on some City Companies’ Charters’, The Guildhall Miscellany, no. 6, February 1956 (offprint). 54 E. Auerbach, Nicholas Hilliard, London, 1961, 272, pl. 240. 55 A.R.J.S. Adolph, ‘Segar, Sir William’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed online 14/5/2007. 56 On the Continent a separate tradition of watercolour was encouraged by interest in, for example, subjects such as natural history. The implications of this tradition for limning in England, and the possible effect on John White’s own limning practice is discussed in Florike Egmond’s introduction to part two of these conference proceedings. 57 Muller and Murrell, supra n. 42, 12. 58 Ibid., 58. 59 See ‘The Life of Edward Norgate’ in Muller and Murrell, supra n. 42, 1–9. 60 Hilliard, supra n. 1, 45.

Through an Artist’s Eye: Observations on Aspects of Copying in Two Groups of Work by John White c. 1585–90 Sally Birch Introduction For more than a decade I have been a practising and teaching botanical artist,1 following a career mainly in editing and writing international illustrated nonfiction books.2 Using historical botanical illustration extensively in my teaching, I have made a particular study of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues.3 Through his work I became interested in John White, and the links between White, Le Moyne, and the collection of related works known as the Sloane volume (see below). Although I am not an academically qualified art historian, several years ago I began exploring aspects of White’s work, particularly concerning evidence of copying and the sequence of drawings. In 2007 I visited the exhibition A New World and conference at the British Museum and found juxtapositions between the exhibition, catalogue and conference papers that were relevant to my personal study. I was encouraged by the last paragraph on page 225 of the catalogue, where Kim Sloan acknowledges the uncertainties regarding the status of the drawings currently attributed to John White and of the related Sloane volume works. I also noted that her interdisciplinary list of expert contributors4 did not include an artist, and ventured to fill this gap. I therefore offer my personal perspective to the lively debate over the work of White and his contemporaries. In so doing I emphasise that these are essentially preliminary observations, particularly concerning the issue of copying, as seen in just two groups of White’s work. Part 1 considers some of White’s natural history drawings that correspond to drawings in the Sloane volume; and Part 2 considers the ‘Pictish drawings’. I further emphasise that while I have outlined some of my own ideas arising from this research, I hold that all of the related groups of work must be considered both separately and together before any substantial hypothesis can be advanced. These groups of work include: costume studies, Inuit studies, Indian life in Virginia, Indian portraits, Florida Indians, natural history studies, Brazilian Indians, birds, fishes, and plants; both in the John White album and in the Sloane volume (see below). I hope to continue my exploration in this field and would welcome feedback from interested readers. I acknowledge an immense debt of gratitude to Kim Sloan (together with her colleagues in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum) for her generous and openminded encouragement and support. Her catalogue A New World (2007) is an essential reference, as are the works by her predecessor at the British Museum, Paul Hulton.5 Botanical and other scientific illustration A practising botanical artist studying historical work soon becomes aware not of how much difference the centuries

make, but how little. One is essentially trying to do the same task as an artist centuries ago, with slightly different tools. Once this becomes apparent, one can look at historical paintings with greater insight and discretion, rather than the overwhelming awe that often glazes the sight of the newcomer to this intensely focused genre. The main requirement of a scientific illustration is that it should be ‘fit for purpose’: i.e., ‘Authenticity [of species], Accuracy, and Artistry’.6 Artistic effects, ornamentation, and personal style are subsidiary and indeed may be actively discouraged by the scientist, although of course, this term was not used in the 16th century as it is today. In discussing the iconography of prehistory, Stephanie Moser7 points out ‘Scientific illustrations are ... based on observation or objective methods of study’ but in some cases they may ‘make theories for which evidence is limited seem credible’; White’s Pictish drawings are among her examples. In assuming that White’s drawings were accurate documentaries of what was seen at the time, we must also identify with the artist and be aware of the various influences that may have had a bearing on the works we see today. For example, it is apparent that White’s colleague Thomas Harriot had an approach to his New World studies that most would now describe as ‘scientific’ and that this influenced White. However the ‘lay’ patron of scientific illustration (such as Raleigh, perhaps), while impressed by its meticulous precision, may also be seduced by embellishments such as the metallic pigments seen on some of White’s work; such effects are discouraged by modern convention. Meanwhile publishers have always sought the visual impact that will encourage sales, in artwork presented in a technically appropriate format, often to impossible deadlines: in this respect one suspects that Theodor de Bry was entirely typical of his profession, and through my former career I am familiar with such constraints. Finally, of course, available materials and the end-purpose of a drawing may dictate different techniques. These are some of the influences I have considered when assessing these works. The drawings of John White For those readers who are not familiar with these two groups of work, I will try to summarize very briefly the background that is described fully by Sloan and contributors in the catalogue A New World.8 The 75 watercolour drawings attributed to John White were sold in an album to the first Earl of Charlemont in 1788. It was clear from the outset that many of the drawings, although nowhere signed by White, were closely related to the engravings made by Theodor de Bry (who credited them to White) for the first volume of his international book series about the New World, America, published in 1590.9 The drawings must have been made during or after Raleigh’s European Visions: American Voices | 85

Birch expedition to Virginia in 1585, and the text of the book consists mainly of Thomas Harriot’s report from that voyage. It is the contents of this ‘John White Album’ that are referred to here as the ‘John White versions’ and abbreviated by me in the present paper to JWV. In 1865 the album was taken for sale to Sotheby’s in London, where it was damaged by a warehouse fire, and even more by the water used to extinguish it. As a result many of the saturated drawings were ‘offset’ on to the interleaving sheets, which were subsequently separately bound. Both albums were sold to the British Museum in 1866.10 It was also clear that there was a relationship between White’s work and that of a Huguenot artist in Elizabethan London, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, whose drawings of Indian life in Florida in 1564 were published by de Bry in America, Volume II, three years after Le Moyne’s death in 1588. Paul Hulton11 also attributed the original watercolour A Daughter of the Picts12 to Le Moyne; coincidentally, it is the only Pictish subject not included in the John White album. The Sloane volume In about 1715 the founder of the British Museum, Sir Hans Sloane, purchased an album of drawings – apparently sold by White’s descendants, and annotated as ‘Mr Raughley’s (Raleigh’s) book’ – that also clearly related to many of those by White, as mentioned above. It is this second album of drawings that are referred to here and in the relevant catalogues, as the ‘Sloane volume’, and its contents the ‘Sloane versions’, abbreviated here to SV. There is a tantalizing mixture here of drawings that are either (a) extremely similar to the John White versions; or (b) related but substantially different or (c) apparently not related at all, other than by inclusion in the same album. While some groups are decidedly inferior, others are of very comparable standard to works in the John White album. Although Sir Hans Sloane initially thought that these were the originals, they were subsequently dismissed, often disparagingly, as copies after John White. This was the view of Hulton13 although he did contradict himself on occasions. A.L. Rowse14 refers to the Sloane drawings as ‘by an unknown hand corresponding to but not copied from the original by John White’ (see my conclusions, below). Some recent writers

Figure 1 Pineapple, John White version (left, JWV)(BM 1906.0509.1.41) and Pine Sloane version (right, SV) (BM P&D SL,5270.24r)


including Sloan15 have acknowledged that the distinction between the works attributed to White and the works in the Sloane volume is far from clear-cut. It is the questions arising from these different groups of related works that have long fascinated me and have led to the present study. This is an inadequately brief summary of the background to these drawings and readers unfamiliar with the works mentioned above should consult the books by Hulton, Hulton and Quinn, and Sloan (cited in notes 3,4 and 5 below). Sloan is not only comprehensive and up-to-date, but also includes reproductions of all illustrations, in colour. Part 1: Observations on those natural history subjects by John White with corresponding works in the Sloane volume In this part I address the question: Where there are two similar versions of a drawing, is the SV copied or derived from the JWV, or vice versa? In so doing, I emphasize that here I am specifically only considering those natural history subjects by White that have corresponding drawings in the Sloane volume: see para. 4 of the Introduction, above. I set out below, observations on four of the corresponding pairs of drawings that seem significant to me, to demonstrate my approach. Space does not permit discussion of the rest, but they have been taken into account in my conclusions. a) Pineapple16 The SV pineapple is, while not a superb or inspired work, a very competent botanical illustration. Although a little heavy of touch it is well observed – apparently from life – and cleanly executed. There is some light green colouration and limited shading on the leaves, but the fruit is strongly formed and coloured, and depicts the lifelike irregularities of scale shape and placement on its axis. There is an assured attempt at the texture and shading of the individual scales. None of these elements is evident on the JWV. The JWV on the other hand, is clearly unfinished. I suggest the following sequence of events: 1. The artist – we are assuming White – has set out quite confidently to do a freehand copy of the SV. He has made a good oval outline on a reduced scale from the SV, (SV 282mm deep, JWV 235mm) but has placed the cut stalk on the central axis of the fruit rather than set slightly to the side as on the SV. He has also placed his fruit vertically on the paper rather than at a slight angle to the right. (Of course, neither of these amendments is ‘wrong’ in the sense of changing the botanical nature of the fruit, but they betray a somewhat automatic approach.) 2. He has noted that the scales of the pineapple follow a diamond pattern that can be used as a grid on which to base the drawing. He has drawn in a grid, but without close observation and perhaps even drawing of the individual scale outlines, he has over-confidently and prematurely started to paint in the details. 3. He has sketched in the leaves, probably largely freehand, but has not added any green. He has made a light yellowishbrown wash over the fruit. He has mixed a shade of reddish brown water/body colour, and tipped in some of the leaves following the SV, before going through the scales on the fruit painting in a series of rough but very similar cross shapes. At this stage he has abandoned his drawing. Why? I suggest that he has now realized several points.

Through an Artist’s Eye a) His grid, drawn freehand with black lead (not traced – we have a change of scale from the SV drawing), but possibly ruled since the lines are very evenly spaced, is to a smaller proportion than the SV. This has given him at least a dozen extra pineapple scales to draw in. This means a lot more work, as each scale has to be observed and depicted with its own colour, perspective, light, shadow, and texture. Because of his grid he has to do about 62 of these, and has models on the SV for only 49 of them. b) He has noticed that despite following a basic diamond grid pattern, the outline of individual scales is often quite irregular, as exemplified in the lower right area of the SV fruit. Because he has started painting, he cannot now amend his grid. Perhaps (with a foreboding familiar to botanical art students) he knows he will ‘get lost’. c) Having started to draw in dark shadow outlines around some of the upper central scales, he has perhaps looked again at the SV and noticed that the scales do not adjoin each other directly, but are positioned in slightly raised form on the fruit surface, separated from each other in visual terms by narrow parallel light-coloured ‘valleys’ on each side. Because of his small grid there is no space to amend his drawing accordingly. d) Because his grid is not curved at the edges of the fruit to indicate its spiral construction, he is already beginning to have trouble representing the perspective of the scales: the fruit appears very two-dimensional, and his cross-shaped brown painted markings are overly uniform and lack clarity. I strongly suspect that on realizing these basic problems with his drawing so far, and finding that pineapples are a rather slow and tedious subject to paint, he has at this point abandoned his work, but saved it as a pretty, delicate, unfinished sketch of a novel and exotic fruit. Conclusion I would therefore argue that the SV pineapple cannot be after the JWV. It is possible that the JWV was an initial sketch for the SV which would then also be by White. According to this

scenario, White would have made his initial, very formulaic sketch, with the errors described above, and then abandoned it and made the SV, a much more realistic and well-observed drawing from life. This possibility might necessitate reconsidering all the Sloane volume drawings as being (a) by White and (b) sequentially secondary to the JWVs. At present, and given that these are preliminary observations, I believe that this is unlikely. I cannot see how any single artist could make two immediately sequential drawings that display such difference in skill. I think it is entirely possible, however, and indeed probable that the JWV is after the SV, and that the SV is therefore by a different artist. b) Land crab17 I note that the two drawings are the same size, so it seems very possible that one was traced from the other. If so, the fact that the JWV is on much finer paper than the SV would make it more likely that this was the traced outline.18 The SV is, again, a crisp, confident, and workmanlike natural history drawing. The JWV is in his style: softer, sketchier and more stylistic. The SV is strongly coloured in pinkish-brown shades, while the JWV is only lightly coloured with pink and grey washes (oxidation of body colour may have contributed to the grey). None of these observations would prove that the JWV is after the SV. However, I propose that the evidence lies in the indentation marking at the base of the crab’s shell. On the JWV this is virtually invisible in printed reproduction, and hard to see on the original. However the SV shows a distinctive rectangular detail of concave double scalloped lines, shaded away to indicate indentation on the shell surface. On studying closely the original JWV it is clear that this marking has been attempted in faint black lead more than once. There are overlying lines and indentations, of disproportionate size, which appear to have been rubbed or washed out. They are not evenly and clearly depicted as in the SV. I therefore suggest that White tried to copy this marking freehand, could not get it right, and left it unfinished and almost entirely erased and disguised by the colour wash of the shell. Conclusion If the JWV were the initial drawing, this shell detail would not have been a strong enough reference for the SV to have been constructed from. Again, I can only conclude that in this case the JWV must have been copied from the SV rather than the other way round.

Figure 2 Land crab, John White version (upper, JWV)(BM 1906,0509.1.56) and Sloane version (lower, SV) (BM P&D SL,5270.16r)

c) Flying fish19 These two drawings are evidently extremely similar, and it is easy to be distracted by the water damage to the JWV and the degeneration of the silver pigment used to accentuate the fish scales and fins. Even so, I find the SV slightly more meticulous in execution – a fine scientific illustration, whose author resisted the excessive embellishment of silver fins. This suggests to me that it was the initial drawing of the two. As they are the same size one can assume that the outline of one was traced or otherwise closely copied, from the other. I note, however, that the upper fin tip of the JWV is shorter and more rounded than the same part of the SV. I suggest that this European Visions: American Voices | 87

Birch SV puffer fish is therefore the initial drawing of the two.

Figure 3 Flying fish, John White (left, JWV) (BM 1906,0509.1.46) and Sloane version (right, SV) (BM P&D SL,5270.21r)

slight truncation is due to the JWV paper having been cut a little too short for the tracing, so White had to round off this top fin to get it on the sheet. Given such precise copying in this case, I think that if the SV had been traced from the JWV the top fin would have been equally rounded. It could be that the paper was subsequently cut very close to the picture, as has happened elsewhere, but that would not explain the slight variation in fin shape. The blues on both these versions are so similar to the eye that it would be interesting to know if they are chemically identical: suggesting that a) it was the same artist, b) the artists were working alongside each other or c) using the same pigment mixture at different dates. Conclusion Again, although these two drawings are extremely similar, I would argue on the basis of the above observations that the JWV is after the SV. d) Puffer fish20 The JWV at 159mm long is shorter than the 188mm SV, and is reversed. The execution of the JWV is distinctly sketchy, with uncharacteristically rough brush markings across the back of the fish. The outline perspective of the head and the placement of the fins are slightly wrong, so they appear to come directly out of the corner of the fish’s eyes (one being hidden of course). There is also sketchy shading under the lower jaw of the fish in the JWV, rather than the evenly graduated shading of the SV. These are minor and essentially insignificant differences. The markings on the back of the JWV, however, are distinctly different from the SV where they are neatly delineated. I suspect that White was looking too quickly from the SV to his copy and drew in the main oval shape towards the right side of the fish body of the fish, as it appears in the SV; realized it was wrongly placed on the mirror image, and then tried to replicate the other markings in reverse; finding this impossible, he finished his drawing to a rather indecisive and scruffy standard. As with the pineapple (see above) White realized that he had made mistakes which would not allow him to produce a good copy. Conclusion Again, while the JWV could have been copied from the SV according to this scenario, the opposite seems impossible. The 88 | European Visions: American Voices

Conclusions to Part 1 Space does not permit me to consider here, each of the other pairs of drawings in this group (natural history drawings with corresponding subjects in the Sloane volume). The similarities and differences between some pairs of drawings are extremely subtle, making it difficult to say which one of each pair was made first. In the examples given above, however, I would argue that the Sloane versions were made before the White versions, rather than after as has been widely assumed. There are several other pairs of corresponding drawings in this group, where this seems to me the probable sequence. There are other pairs that are indeterminate – either being virtually identical, or of equal skill – where either drawing might have been made after its equivalent in the other album. I can see no definite evidence, however, of a SV having been copied or adapted from the equivalent JWV. I therefore conclude that John White copied the ‘Sloane version’ of all the drawings in this group. What other possibilities remain? Several writers have raised the possibility that there were other, intermediary, drawings related to those outlined above, that have not survived; and that the versions in the John White album and the Sloane volume are actually originals of, or copied from, versions we have never seen. This clearly cannot be proved or disproved. Also it would not change the sequence of copying in those corresponding pairs of drawings discussed above.21 It seems unlikely to me that some drawings were copied in one sequence (SV–JWV) and some the other way (JWV–SV). Apart from the stylistic differences, the versions in either album are on noticeably different paper supports. The JWVs are on a finer paper, which could have been used to trace an initial outline from the heavier, handmade SV paper. Nor does it seem likely that both versions were made by the same artist, although at this stage I would not rule it out completely. Firstly, the style of these White drawings is consistent with other works attributed to him; it is quite distinct from many of the Sloane works in this category, although very close in other cases, e.g. the flying fish.

Figure 4 Puffer fish John White version (upper, JWV)(BM 1906,0509.1.51) and Sloane version (lower, SV)(BM P&D SL,5270.21r)

Through an Artist’s Eye Secondly, I believe that if one artist was making both versions, errors such as those described above would not have occurred: an artist competent enough to make the SV pineapple (first in sequence) would be able to make an equally competent copy if required. This leads, of course, to some very interesting possibilities regarding the authorship of the Sloane versions, and the reasons and circumstances for this sequence of work. One might also ask why some of the copies are so much better than others. I have considered several scenarios and no doubt others will arise from further study of other groups of these works. One suggestion is that White was learning his craft by the traditional method of copying. His somewhat sketchy approach indicates that he was new to scientific illustration and the rigours of precise observation and depiction. He may also have been new to miniaturism. He was evidently a quick learner and an excellent copyist. It seems possible that he was working very closely with, and learning from, a professional artist specializing in this type of work. We know that Thomas Harriot was a meticulous scientist; was on this voyage with White; would already have known White through his service to Raleigh and is known to have worked with painters – limners – at other stages of his life. The artist of the Sloane versions might have been a skilled professional ‘scientific’ artist, perhaps trained by and working for Harriot. Of course there is no evidence to support this, other than a limner being mentioned in Harriot’s will.22 Was there another artist on the 1585 voyage? Or was White working with another, immediately after the voyage, either to make copies for his patrons or to prepare work for de Bry’s publication? One must also consider the significant possibility acknowledged by Kim Sloan23: that the Sloane versions might actually have been drawn by John White, and that the collection attributed to White since the 18th century is by someone else. If this were so, however, it would raise problems with other groups of the works, for example the Indian engravings by de Bry (America, Volume I), which he clearly acknowledges as White’s; the relevant originals of which are stylistically similar to the JW works discussed here and which were found in the same album of work. However, there are related ‘Indian’ works in the Sloane volume, apparently by a different hand. It is a tantalizing puzzle. Part 2: An analysis of copying in the watercolours of Picts and Britons Introduction Many readers will be aware that at the end of America, Volume I (1590) the publisher Theodor de Bry included a section containing five engravings of human subjects, three of which were described as ancient Picts and two as ancient Britons. His introduction and captions explain that in the distant past, ‘we’ Europeans were once as savage as ‘they’ – the American Indians that form the main part of the book, based on White’s drawings. In the Charlemont album of White’s watercolours (see introduction to Part 1, above) there were five drawings, three related to the engravings of Pictish subjects and two Britons. A further ‘Pictish’ subject related to the engraving of the Daughter of the Picts was subsequently discovered, a stunning miniature painting on vellum that was attributed by

Hulton24 to Jacques Le Moyne on the grounds of its botanical artistry. This attribution was more recently questioned by Christian Feest.25 Since different writers have referred to these figures by different titles, I am naming them as closely as possible to the titles of de Bry’s engravings.26 I have tried to reduce confusing verbiage where possible by abbreviating these titles within the diagram captions. Unless specified as ‘engraving’ the titles refer to the original artworks. The material on the following pages was put together by myself alone out of my own interest, working with a computer and scanned images. It was because of copying one of these onto thin paper that I noticed that Warrior Pict with Severed Head and Pict with Spear were not only similar but mirrorimage identical. Based on accurately sized copies, I made transparencies and was quickly able to find many more instances in the Pictish paintings where copying was possible or even likely. I do not think that this amount of correspondence is accidental. In looking at the Pictish series, I raise the question: who might have made these drawings, in what sequence, and what is the evidence of copying? a) Style and skill In the case of the Pictish drawings, the quality of imagination is a major factor in what are otherwise intended to be accurate and ‘scientific documentary’ illustrations. The significance of artistic imagination in creating icons of prehistory has been explored by Moser,27 Smiles28 and others. The Pictish paintings are significant examples, which have helped to create a whole genre of visual imagery, lasting several centuries. The imagination, flair and artistic skill exhibited in Warrior Pict with Severed Head seem to me to have very little in common with other drawings attributed to White, such as the costume studies or the domestic studies of Indians in Virginia. b) Errors A fundamental aspect of my observations of the work attributed to John White, particularly evident in this group of his works, concerns what I believe to be his use of metallic white body colour to obscure minor errors in his work (see following diagrams). Time has revealed these cover-ups by oxidizing the paint to appear black or grey. Coincidentally in the present circumstances, this technique in artwork is often called ‘whiting-out’. It is sometimes seen as a lazy and unprofessional technique. In particular, artists preparing text and illustrations in publishing houses for printing made use of this technique, since the error was never going to be seen in the printed version. (This has of course been superseded by computerized printing in the past couple of decades. Even its more recent comparable application in products such as Tipp-Ex® is now falling into disuse.) In the case of the Pictish drawings, I have considered whether the oxidized markings on the drawings are indeed covered-up errors due to hasty and careless copying. c) Possible copying methods in the 16th century Although I am no expert on drawing and copying methods of that time, it is well known that copying, both by tracing and freehand, was extremely widespread. The Pictish originals by European Visions: American Voices | 89

Birch White are on a fine paper support, which would permit tracing of outlines especially if held up to a good light. I have also tested the reflection method (holding a glass sheet at right angles to the original and ‘tracing’ the mirror image) and found it to be surprisingly accurate and easy. Of course it also leaves no mark or damage to the original drawing. Also, once one has both a drawing outline and a reversed (mirror image) copy of it, one has a versatile template for putting together elements in different combinations.

Diagrams Since it is easier to express my ideas visually at this stage, there follows a selection of my diagrams and captions using scanned copies of published versions of the Pictish drawings. My own conclusions to date, based on this research, follow this Diagram section.

The six Pictish original watercolours

A Young Daughter of the Picts attributed to Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, c. 1585, watercolor and gouache, touched with gold, on parchment (The Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.2646)

Pictish Woman, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.27)


Warrior Pict with Severed Head, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.24)

British Woman, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.25

Pict with Spear, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.26)

British Man, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.28)

Through an Artist’s Eye Diagram 1: Creation of template from Warrior Pict with Severed Head

1a) Warrior Pict with Severed Head, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.24)

1b) Tracing of Fig 1a

1c) Tracing reversed

1d) Tracing superimposed on Pict with Spear, John White, (BM 1906,0509.1.26). The tracing aligns perfectly either on the upper body (as shown here) or lower body, suggesting that the artist paused and moved the template slightly before continuing his tracing, using the navel/belt as a reference point.

Diagram 2: Left arm of Pict with Spear compared with right forearm of Warrior Pict with Severed Head

2a) Right hand of Warrior grasping the Severed Head

2b) Tracing of right hand of Warrior, reversed, superimposed on left hand of Pict with Spear; only the thumb and two fingers can be traced, because in the original, the hand is holding the Severed Head and is obscured by hair.

2c) Detail of forearm of Pict with Spear, showing rather ill-defined representation of hand and shield handle. The shadow on the edge of the shield does not correspond with normal lighting or with the shadow underneath the forearm; the fingers and the shield handles have not been completed; and the end of the sword handle has been painted in so lightly that the artist has had to add a coarse dark line to differentiate it from the edge of the shield.


Birch Diagram 3: Pictish Woman torso and arms compared with tracings of Warrior Pict with Severed Head

3a) Pictish Woman, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.27) with tracing of Warrior, Fig 1b,superimposed. Note correlation of head, left arm and shoulder, and left side of torso. There is a strong correspondence in the head, left shoulder, upper left arm, and left line of torso, between the Pictish Woman and a tracing of Warrior (outlined). In fact, the only part of Pictish Woman that could not have been traced from templates of Warrior and Pict with Spear is her right foot (see Diagram 5).

3b) Right arm of Pictish Woman with tracing of left arm of Warrior (verso) superimposed and addition of thicker dark paint (highlighted with red circles). The wide masculine arm of Warrior has been ‘slimmed down’ at elbow level by the addition of thicker dark painted hair (see red circle). The hand, of course, has had to be replaced by a right hand, which is in fact an almost exact tracing of her left hand, i.e., the left hand of Pict with Spear (see Diagram 4). Similarly the broad torso line of Warrior has been reduced to create a more feminine waistline, by the addition of thicker dark paint within the hair (see red circle).

Diagram 4: Arm of Pictish Woman compared with tracings of other Pictish drawings


4a) Note that on the original of Pictish Woman there is a ‘whited-out’ error at the elbow, which has oxidized to leave a black mark.

4b) Note corresponding tracings from Warrior Pict with Severed Head (black outline) and its mirror image, Pict with Spear (red outline). It can be seen that the Warrior tracing corresponds exactly to the torso line, neck and upper arm of Pictish Woman, while the Pict with Spear tracing corresponds to the forearm and wrist. The careless addition of the latter forearm section could have left an overlapping pencil line, which the artist obscured with a flick of body colour (white). This would not have been noticeable at the time.

4c) Detail of A Young Daughter of the Picts attributed to Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (The Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.2646) (see complete image above, p. 90, and author’s conclusions below)

4d) The tracing of the left forearm of Pictish Woman (green outline) and of Daughter of the Picts (blue outline) coincide exactly except for the different hand positions. However I suggest that given the problems of copying from the Daughter original (see my conclusions, below) the copying was probably as indicated in 4b.

Through an Artist’s Eye Diagram 5: Legs of Pictish Woman compared with those of Warrior Pict with Severed Head There are close correspondences between the legs of Pictish Woman and Warrior. Where they correspond there are coincidentally several ‘whited-out’ marks, now oxidized to appear black.

5a) Left leg of Pictish Woman with tracing of left leg of Warrior superimposed. Note red circles to highlight: the ‘whitedout’ error on left thigh corresponding to superimposed position of Warrior leg; the ‘whited-out’ mark at the back of the left calf of Pictish Woman, where the calf line of Warrior may have been slimmed down to suit a female subject; and the messy painting of her left foot toes, where the artist has tried to reduce the excessively large masculine foot by painting over the drawn outline of the toes with body colour (now oxidized) and adding a smaller set of toes on top.

5b) Right leg of Pictish Woman with tracing of right leg of Warrior superimposed. If the right leg of Pictish Woman had followed the traced Warrior leg exactly, her right foot would have been somewhat unnaturally turned out, so an alternative had to be found. Is the right foot of Pictish Woman original, or have we seen it somewhere before?

5c) Compare the lower leg of The wyfe of an Herowan of Secotan, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.18). This original is also the same size as Pictish Woman. This is much more in White’s usual style, with its jaunty big toe. Indeed if White had already added this right leg copied from the female Indian subject, he may have subsequently adjusted the toes on the left foot (see 5a) to match the right foot and look less masculine.

Diagram 6: Indian Werowance or Chief compared with tracing of Warrior Pict with severed head 6a) An Indian Werowance or Chief (BM 1906,0509.1.12) superimposed with a tracing of Warrior Pict with Severed Head. As can be seen, both originals are the same size. It is apparent that the image has been rather hastily traced; the tracing aligns with the figure either on the upper body (above left) or the legs, suggesting that the template tracing was moved possibly several times against the paper. Again, the navel has been used more or less as a reference point. Much less care, however, was taken with this tracing than Pict with Spear, which suggests that this was a later and sloppier derivation from the Warrior template.

6b) If the left arm tracing of Warrior is rotated it fits the right arm of the Chief fairly closely. This, however, would also have been easy to draw in freehand. Given that the Chief is clearly derived from Warrior Pict with Severed Head, it seems likely that the tattoo/body paint designs of the Chief are also derived from Warrior and the subsequent Pictish paintings.


Birch Conclusions to Part 2 I must emphasize again that my studies and the ideas arising from them, are entirely personal and that these are essentially preliminary findings concerning only the groups of work discussed here. They may be subject to development and change in the light of further exploration of these and other groups of work. I have based my conclusions on diagrammatic research, of which several examples are offered above. The evidence may be interpreted in different ways by others, and I welcome alternative points of view in the interests of answering the questions around the works of John White and his contemporaries. Errors and copying: an inescapable link I believe that the oxidized body-colour markings on the Pictish originals attributed to John White indicate places where the artist ‘whited-out’ or covered up an error of drawing, probably unwanted lines of black lead or pencil (graphite). In a few places he may have used a black pigment for the same purpose, e.g. in hair (see Diagram 3 above). It would therefore seem that White made some drawing errors and did not use an eraser (I do not know at what time erasers came into use). In general, I have observed that drawings attributed to White frequently show the use of this kind of ‘whiting-out’ of errors. The oxidized markings often occur where inaccurate tracing or other forms of copying, might have caused unwanted lines. These two elements – copying and ‘whiting-out’ of errors – would therefore appear to be connected. I acknowledge that there are exceptions to this rule that warrant further study. By contrast, however, I have yet to see any picture attributed to Jacques Le Moyne in which an error has been covered with body colour. He has used body colour on subjects, such as pale flowers, where it has oxidized, but never to cover any errors. Likewise I note there are no ‘whited-out’ marks on the corresponding Sloane volume drawings. Sequence The above studies and diagrams suggest to me that White made a traced outline copy of Warrior Pict with Severed Head, and used it as the template for the rest of the Pictish drawings (except Daughter of the Picts – see 1, below); and at least one of the Indian subjects (see 7, below). Because copies tend to degenerate and become more careless with repetition, and since little fresh imagination seems to have been brought into play since Warrior, I believe that this drawing was the first of the series of Pictish subjects made by White. We have noted, however, that one original did not appear in this album, i.e., the Daughter of the Picts attributed to Jacques Le Moyne (see Introduction to Part 2, above). I believe that the Daughter preceded Warrior and the rest of the group. In the circumstances I am extending the discussion to include this painting. Number 1: Daughter of the Picts Although this paper is concerned with a series of drawings by White, inevitably one must begin the sequence by considering a drawing that has never seriously been attributed to him. Based on the above research I suggest that Daughter of the Picts was the first of the sequence, and was painted by Jacques Le 94 | European Visions: American Voices

Moyne, as asserted by Hulton.29 While acknowledging expert reservations about this painting, I have studied this original as well as other works by Le Moyne, and would agree with Hulton that it is indeed by Le Moyne. Of course questions remain about this painting, such as that it includes a background – unlike the other Pictish subjects – that is very similar to the relevant engraving in America, Volume I. One possibility is that that the background might have been added to the original after the engraving – for various reasons – perhaps by Le Moyne, or de Bry, or more likely (to my mind) by White, after Le Moyne’s death. Alternatively, although White rarely included backgrounds to his figures, we have no evidence that Le Moyne did not. No drawing relating to the relevant engraving in America, Volume I was included in White’s album of drawings. Perhaps significantly in the light of the above research, the original Daughter of the Picts is of similar size to the other Pictish originals, but larger than the relevant engraving. As it is on a relatively opaque vellum support it might not have been suitable for tracing, although it could have been copied by techniques such as the reflection method mentioned above. I do not think it was used as a template, although there are correspondences with the other Pictish drawings, e.g. the left arm of Pictish Woman (see Diagram 4 above). The different restrictions of painting on vellum versus paper should also be considered. If we accept that the original Daughter of the Picts is by Le Moyne, we must assume that it was made first in the Pictish sequence, as Le Moyne died in 1588. After Le Moyne’s death, and with the rest of the Pictish originals for America, Volume I supplied by White, de Bry would have had no need to confuse his readers by crediting one original to Le Moyne but all the rest to White.30 I suggest that he compensated for this omission by the singular praise he included in his caption: ‘... this present picture a thinge trewlly worthie of admiration’ – surely de Bry was referring to this amazing original painting by Le Moyne, rather than to his own engraving, which is of comparable quality to the others. In his introduction to the book, headed ‘To the gentle Reader’, de Bry enthusiastically anticipates publishing Le Moyne’s drawings in the next volume in the America series: suggesting again the superior quality of Le Moyne’s work. We may also recall that de Bry and Le Moyne were united by their devout Huguenot beliefs. What if the Daughter of the Picts is not the original by Le Moyne, but is an extremely skilled later version (but not a direct copy) after the relevant engraving? One must then postulate a further (unknown) painting of equivalent standard by Le Moyne or someone else (but presumably not White since the original would then have been with his other Pictish originals), made at the right time and place to be used for the engraving in America, Volume I. One must also postulate, if not White or Le Moyne, a third, (unknown) artist of the Daughter who despite doing such fine work, left no record of his identity. The simplest solution certainly seems attractive. One might also ask if Daughter of the Picts is by Le Moyne, why did he not do the others? I would suggest that Le Moyne was known to be expensive31 (he knew he was good, and was used to high-level patronage); this painting would have taken a long time to complete – perhaps too long for de Bry, who was hungry for originals to engrave for his great book, and perhaps

Through an Artist’s Eye too expensive for the backers of the enterprise. We also know that Le Moyne died in 1588 during the preparation period for America, Volume I; he may have been ill before then, and physically unable to do more. Finally, Daughter of the Picts and Warrior Pict with Severed Head make a superb pair: entirely different but complementary; iconographic of gender; imaginative, detailed, and stunningly original in approach. Perhaps that is what they were intended to be – a couple, male and female Pictish archetypes, by a single artist. Number 2: Warrior Pict with Severed Head I consider that Warrior was the second Pictish drawing completed in the sequence, and the source of all the following subjects. This accomplished painting is of a confident Mannerist style, with detail and imagination that complement Daughter of the Picts but has nothing in common with other paintings by White.32 It is clear that the body ornamentation design owes basic elements to the drawing of ancient Britons by another Huguenot artist, Lucas de Heere,33 but de Heere was dead by this time so cannot be the Warrior artist. The sheer wit of the cross-eyed owl motif on the Warrior’s chest is unmatched in White’s work, but has some affinity with the owl in Le Moyne’s book La Clef des Champs.34 It seems clear that since the original Warrior was included in White’s album, on similar fine laid paper and offset by water damage like the others, it was indeed painted by White. I can only suggest, however, that it was either copied from a lost original probably by Le Moyne, (but see reservations above) or that Le Moyne made a drawing that was very carefully copied and/or coloured by White. There are no ‘whited-out’ errors in this original and all the brushwork is perfect. White evidently took extreme pains over this drawing. Numbers 3–6: The other ‘Pictish’ subjects White, however, clearly had less imagination and patience than Le Moyne. In continuing further images of Picts – presumably at the request of de Bry – I believe he adapted and copied first Pict with Spear and then Pictish Woman. As I have shown above, Pict with Spear is an almost exact copy of Warrior, which is perhaps why de Bry only borrowed the spear element of it to incorporate into the Warrior engraving for America, Volume I.35 Pictish Woman is becoming quite careless in its execution, with several ‘whited-out’ errors, and the body decorations are becoming diluted with repeated adaptation. It is also obvious that the female subjects, Pictish Woman and British Woman, are very masculine in their appearance due to having been derived from the masculine template Warrior Pict with Severed Head. Using the above-mentioned templates, I suggest that White subsequently drew British Man and British Woman, although to save space I have not included them in the examples provided here. There are obvious correspondences with the Warrior tracing, and several examples of ‘whiting out’ of errors. Lacking images of body paint and given only rudimentary clothing (the line of the bodice of British Woman corresponds to the traced pectoral line of Warrior, for example), they do not show any particular imagination or

originality. Indeed I suggest this is why de Bry changed these drawings so much for the equivalent engravings in America, Volume I. Number 7: An Indian Werowance or Chief Finally, it seems likely that the image of the Indian Werowance or Chief was derived, probably last in this sequence, from the Warrior template. The markings on his lower legs are evidently adapted from those on the thighs of Warrior, and the vague circles on his chest and shoulders may owe some inspiration to the second figure in the drawing by de Heere mentioned above. There is little doubt in my mind that the Indian Chief was drawn and painted later than the Pictish paintings, and after the 1585 voyage to Virginia; it was not painted from life. It may have been made in England to augment de Bry’s publication, or even derived from the corresponding figure in the Sloane volume. I have not, however, had an opportunity to research this group of works at this stage. Notes 1

A note on terms: these are somewhat subjective but broadly speaking, a botanical artist follows similar constraints of precise observation and technical accuracy to those required by a botanical illustrator, but with a decorative rather than a specific scientific purpose. A flower painter’s work may be much more subjective and interpretative, even impressionistic, and is not bound by scientific accuracy. In common with the terminology of the time, and many books since then, I refer to ‘Indians’ rather than ‘Native Americans’. 2 It is believed that the America series of books by Theodor de Bry, starting with the volume illustrated by John White and discussed here, was the earliest instance of international publishing of large illustrated non-fiction books. 3 Le Moyne was artist and mapmaker to the 1564 French expedition to Florida led by Laudonnière, which was routed by the Spanish. He became a superb botanical artist in France and later in London where he died in 1588. See P. Hulton, The Work of Jacques le Moyne de Morgues, London, 1977. 4 K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007, 14. 5 P. Hulton and D.B. Quinn, The American Drawings of John White, London and Chapel Hill, N.C., 1964; P. Hulton, America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984. 6 Specifically, in that order. Brian Mathew, Royal Horticultural Society: botanical art seminar, RHS, 2005. 7 S. Moser, Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Human Origins, Gloucestershire, 1998, 18. 8 Sloan, supra n. 4. 9 T. Harriot A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, by Theodor de Bry, Frankfurt, 1590; see also 1972 facsimile Dover ed., N.Y., with an introduction by P. Hulton. 10 In the present paper I have not referred to the offset album, although I naturally took its contents into account when researching the works discussed here. It provides, however, a useful guide to which are the works currently attributed to John White. 11 Hulton, 1977, supra n. 3. 12 Miniature on vellum, in the Paul Mellon collection at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. 13 Hulton, 1964 and 1984, supra n. 5. 14 A.L. Rowse, The First Colonists: Hackluyt’s Voyages to North America, London, 1986. Despite acknowledging a different authorship of White/Sloane volume drawings, Rowse does not speculate as to the identity of a possible second artist, or to the possible sequence of drawings, or to evidence of copying. 15 Sloan, supra n. 4, 224ff. 16 Hulton, 1964, supra n. 5: JWV no. 11a, SV 11b; Hulton, 1984, supra n. 5: JWV plate 11, SV fig. 64; Sloan, supra n. 4: JWV cat. no. 41, SV fig. 116. 17 Hulton, 1964, supra n. 5: JWV no. 5a, SV 5b; Hulton, 1984, supra n. 5: JWV no. 5, SV fig. 55; Sloan, supra n. 4: JWV cat. no. 58, SV fig. 133. 18 I am aware there are other possibilities regarding copying that


Birch cannot be entered into here. 19 Hulton, 1964, supra n. 5: JWV no. 27a, SV 27b; Hulton, 1984, supra n. 5: JWV no. 27, SV fig. 61; Sloan, supra n. 4: JWV cat. no. 48, SV fig. 124. 20 Hulton, 1964, supra n. 5: JWV no. 100a, SV 100b; Hulton, 1984, supra n. 5: JWV no. 54, SV fig. 53a; Sloan, supra n. 4: JWV cat. no. 53, SV fig. 127. 21 This possibility becomes much more significant when considering the drawings by White that have no corresponding equivalent in the Sloane volume. This is a category that I have not yet had the opportunity to study, either on its own or in relation to the White/ Sloane corpus as a whole. 22 Sloan, supra n. 4, 37. 23 Sloan, supra n. 4, 225. 24 Hulton, 1977, supra n. 3. 25 C. Feest, ‘Jacques le Moyne Minus Four’, European Review of Native American Studies, vol. 2 no. 1, Vienna, 1988. 26 All the figures are reproduced in colour in Sloan, supra n. 4. 27 Moser, supra n. 7. 28 S. Smiles, The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination, New Haven and London, 1994. 29 Hulton, 1977, supra n. 3. 30 Hulton, 1984, supra n. 5, 18. Hulton suggests ‘de Bry may well have taken away drawings of Picts by both artists in 1588 and without realising his error, attributed Le Moyne’s figures to White’. I suggest that such confusion would have been even less likely at the time than it is today. I believe that de Bry and Le Moyne understood each other very well and that the ‘delay’ in publishing Le Moyne’s work second when it chronologically came first, was not due to any resistance by Le Moyne, as has been suggested elsewhere, (other


31

32

33

34 35

than, perhaps, a desire for appropriate payment) but to the lucrative attention of Raleigh, Hakluyt and the backers of the colonization movement for Virginia, promoting the account of Harriot and White. ‘The same with divers other things of chiefest importance are lively drawn in colours at your no small charges by the skilful painter James Morgues’ from Hakluyt’s letter to Raleigh, l May 1587; (my emphasis). This difference of style and skill between Warrior Pict with Severed Head and other work attributed to White is so marked that it drew me to study the correspondence between the work of White and Le Moyne in the first place, more than six years ago. I still cannot believe that a man who could, for example, paint (or even copy?) an image of an Indian girl with two right feet, (see Sloan, supra n. 4, cat. no. 18, 130–1) could envisage and produce a painting of the dynamism, flair, detail and wit of Warrior Pict with Severed Head. De Heere, ‘Les premiers anglois’, watercolour drawing from costume book Theatre de tous les peoples et Nations de la terre, MS 2466, Ghent, 1577; see Hulton, 1964, supra n. 5 and Moser, supra n. 7. One of the only three extant copies of this book is held in The British Museum Prints & Drawings Department. I am bearing in mind that at the time de Bry was preparing America, Volume I, containing only 23 illustrations by White including a map, he had already seen at least 48 detailed and vivid colour paintings by Le Moyne associated with the Laudonnière voyage of 1564, together with a long written account and captions, which de Bry was anticipating publishing. Sadly Le Moyne’s death in 1588 preceded the publication.

Section 4

American History

American History Introduction and Summary Peter C. Mancall In the late 16th century along the mid-Atlantic coast of North America, the locals had the upper hand. The Americans understood the territory. They had the better access to supplies of food. They knew how to get from one place to another. Their allies could usually be counted on for support in times of crisis. They knew where to hunt for game, when to lower their seines to catch fish, how to burn out the center of a tree trunk to make a canoe, how to maintain the fertility of their fields, when to erect palisades around their towns, how to honor their comrades, and how to propitiate the deities who controlled their world. The Europeans, who arrived in the region often tired and weak from a transatlantic journey, came as supplicants, though they did not realize it. Without American support, many would soon have perished. Europeans attributed their success to what they believed was their superior technology and superior god. Believing themselves to be civilized and the Americans to be savages, the newcomers presumed that those who met them at the shore would soon abandon their primitive ways and embrace the ideas and goods that the Europeans brought. That stubborn vision doomed the earliest English settlers and almost prevented colonization before it began. It has now been more than 400 years since the first generation of failed settlements. Scholars continue to struggle with how to understand the early sustained contacts between Americans and Europeans. The problem exists because the documentary and material record privileges the views of the newcomers who eventually took control of eastern North America. The English always proposed that they would eschew the brutal tactics that the Spanish had employed in earlier settlement ventures, chronicled so brilliantly by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, first published in Seville in 1552. That book appeared in London in an English language edition entitled The Spanish Colonie in 1583, only a year before the first English settlers landed on the outer banks of modern-day North Carolina. Las Casas’ text inspired what became known as the ‘black legend’ of the Spanish conquest, a story so violent and stomach-churning that any reasonable reader would recoil from the savage tactics employed by the invaders. The Catholic profession of these invaders touched a nerve among the newly Protestant English, who saw in Spanish-perpetrated horrors the logical result of a degenerate form of Christianity. Rather than kill the Americans, the English reasoned, wouldn’t it make more sense to share the benefits of European civilization and Protestant Christianity?1 Those were among the most important issues circulating in Elizabeth’s realm in the early 1580s when the English launched the first of what would become four expeditions to Roanoke. The second of those journeys produced two 98 | European Visions: American Voices

artifacts that have remained central to the modern understanding of what happened when Europeans met Americans in the 16th century: a series of watercolor paintings by a talented artist named John White, and a text – part natural history, part ethnography – by the brilliant young mathematician Thomas Harriot. In 1590, through the guiding hand of the younger Richard Hakluyt, who was at the time the most avid promoter of English expansion to North America, White’s images and Harriot’s text became fused together and printed in the first European book about the Americas simultaneously published in four languages, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. Every scholar who has tried to understand the encounter in coastal North Carolina has had to wrestle with this book. It is, to begin, a very complex text. In the early modern age, authors and illustrators might work together to produce a book, but the visual artist’s role was usually subordinate to that of the scholar. The first images of Americans to circulate in Europe appeared in a Basel imprint of the so-called Barcelona Letter of Christopher Columbus. It contained crude woodcuts depicting naked natives cowering from fully dressed, technologically sophisticated Spaniards. The images were obviously added to the text by someone who had no idea what a Taino or Carib looked like in life. Other contemporary illustrators did a much better job. Take, for example, the brilliant early work of entomology known as The Theatre of Insects, the posthumously published masterpiece of Thomas Moffett, which first appeared in an English-language edition (after an earlier Latin imprint) in London in 1658. It is a marvel of 17th-century typography, with insects quite literally walking across many of its pages. Yet again there is no doubt that the text came first, and that the artist then tried to craft images to match the descriptions, quite likely without actual specimens to study. The book alternated the minutiae of text with representations of the insects being discussed. Images served as illustrations for the already existing text, although more effectively than the images of the 1493 edition of Columbus’ account. That was not the case for A briefe and true report. Instead, as Joan-Pau Rubiés demonstrates in his characteristically insightful essay for this collection, the visual images and the text had independent points of origin. Obviously White and Harriot knew each other well, and they quite likely collaborated on the production of the 1590 edition. But that book was in all likelihood not the original idea. After all, Harriot published the text, without illustrations, in a small pamphlet in 1588. The next year Harriot allowed Hakluyt to include his work, again without illustrations, in the first edition of the Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation. It was only after it had been printed twice that the collaborative book appeared with Theodor de

American history: Introduction and Summary Bry’s engraved versions of White’s paintings. As Rubiés notes, close analysis of the captions for the engravings reveal that this was an after-the-fact collaboration, with those captions most likely written by Harriot (though presumably influenced by Hakluyt). The organization of the book makes this printing history evident: Harriot’s observations on the regional environment (and its potential) and the customs of the Carolina Algonquians precede the engraved versions, which then carry substantial captions clarifying points in the text, or making new observations, to enable the reader to understand each image. Scholars, including some whose work appears here, have made much of the differences between de Bry’s engravings and White’s work. There can be no doubt, however, that each, as Rubiés stresses, tried to represent the reality that they saw – White on the ground at Roanoke, de Bry from White’s images. The book, however, cannot be understood in isolation. As Ernst van den Boogaart demonstrates so well, the 1590 edition reflected the tradition of so-called ‘costume’ books. It is no coincidence that the title page inserted in the middle of the book introducing the images notes that the reader will find ‘the true pictures and fashions’ of the Americans described by Harriot. The costume book had already become a useful device for theatrical staging but it was also a kind of ethnography. Hakluyt’s older cousin (also named Richard) recognized the utility of the genre when he instructed the English explorers Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman to take such a book (in all likelihood Hans Weigel’s Habitus Praecipuorum Popularum, published in Nuremberg in 1577) through the Northeast Passage to China with them in 1580. That mission failed, as did every other attempt to find such a route to East Asia. But Hakluyt believed that this illustrated volume, with its hundreds of pictures of Europeans (and assorted other people, including Tupinambas from Brazil) would allow the Chinese to see ‘those things in a shadow’.2 Van den Boogaart does more than remind us that A briefe and true report needs to be understood as a certain type of book. It also needs to be seen as a cultural product of a particular place and audience – in this case, de Bry’s Frankfurt, where many in his potential audience, who inhabited a city with a vibrant tradition of botanical literature, would be drawn to the observations of American flora. Although de Bry produced the book in Germany, it is without question English in its conception. No one makes that point more effectively than Sam Smiles, who situates the last pictures in the volume (of the Picts and other ancient Britons) in contemporary antiquarian debates. Smiles recognizes that the appearance of the book at this particular time reflected not only English expeditions to North America but also a cultural response to Britain’s history, in particular to William Camden’s efforts to supplant the nostalgic version of Britain’s past, created by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century. Camden’s Britannia, first published in 1586 (at the urging of the brilliant Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius) provided the intellectual context for seeing the Picts as the true ancient inhabitants of Britain and not, as Geoffrey had it, as figures on the margins. That intellectual transformation had to take place for the last cultural lesson

of A briefe and true report to work: the Algonquians could become civilized because the barbarous Picts had long ago become Britons; had the Picts always lived on the margins then there was no lesson to be applied to the Americans. This context, available only through close examination of contemporary English texts, makes the last part of the Harriot/White/Hakluyt/de Bry project make sense. Understanding the European context of A briefe and true report – the relationship between image and caption, the importance of the local publishing climate and the ways that this book reflected current learned opinion – is crucial, but is not enough on its own. To understand what the encounter meant we need to read these texts against the grain, using White’s paintings, de Bry’s engravings and Harriot’s words to extract what the encounter meant to the Algonquians, a people eventually destroyed by colonization. Michael Leroy Oberg tackles this task with inventive gusto, using these works and others (including Hakluyt’s volumes) to produce a new version of what took place on the ground in the mid-1580s. The English, he reminds us, were invited guests in Roanoke. When they outwore their welcome, as they eventually did (especially when they decided they would execute and decapitate the man known first as Wingina and later Pemispan), the Algonquians decided to take matters into their own hands. In essence, they determined the course of events and hence wrote history as they saw fit. They did not write on paper, and so scholars have often seen them as historically mute. But they knew exactly what happened to the famous ‘lost’ colonists. There is no mystery here, at least not if we approach the subject from the vantage point of the Americans. Rubiés, Smiles, van den Boogaart and Oberg all wrestle with texts and images. But the enormous intellectual chasm that separates the late 16th century from the early 21st century can only be closed if scholars use all of the tools in their arsenal to understand what happened at that moment of encounter. Audrey Horning’s thoughtful essay, part archaeological report and part political manifesto, reveals what we can learn from looking at material remains as well as European books and images. Did White and de Bry, trained through analysis of antiquity, classicize the Algonquians and their settlements? Archaeological digs that reveal the shape of dwellings suggest that they might have, though the record is sufficiently rich (as she shows) that it is possible they did not introduce as many alterations to the historical record as scholars have long believed. Field work in the region where the English landed has revealed much that corresponds to A briefe and true report, suggesting again the extraordinary value of that document’s text and images for understanding one of the earliest encounters between Americans and the English. All books and images are products of a particular culture. Each work communicates to the reader or viewer through what Rubiés aptly calls ‘rhetorical codes’. Scholars have examined A briefe and true report for so long within English and European contexts that they have missed many of the signs that it communicated. The reappearance in the public eye of the original watercolors, which coincidentally also marked the 400th anniversary of the English founding of Jamestown, forces us to think again about how we can comprehend the views of the indigenous. They controlled the initial encounter, at least until the moment when European diseases began to European Visions: American Voices | 99

Mancall devastate their bodies. The Algonquians believed that the newcomers came with others, ‘invisible & without bodies’, as Harriot put it, who ‘did make the people to die in that sort as they did by shooting invisible bullets into them’.3 That explanation made sense in an Algonquian cosmos, along with the idea that the English were not born from women and that others would soon come to seize their territory. Though it was not produced by the hands of a Carolina Algonquian, the effort by Harriot and White to represent what this world was like enables us to continue our struggle to understand how now-silent and long-gone native peoples crafted American history.


Notes

1

2 3

A generation later, in Jamestown, the English would reveal their own capacity for cruelty. For an eyewitness account see M. Nicholls, ‘George Percy’s “Trewe Relacyon”: A Primary Source for the Jamestown Settlement’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 113, 2005, 213–75; for an analysis see P.C. Mancall, ‘Savagery in Jamestown’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 70, 2007, 661–70. Hakluyt to Pet and Jackman, in Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, London, 1589, 460–6. T. Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, Frankfurt, 1590, 29.

Lost Colonists and Lost Tribes Michael Leroy Oberg

There have been, of course, many accounts of the Roanoke ventures, but far too many of them rely on assessments of what the English did or did not do for their explanatory power. If only Raleigh’s men had done one thing, or avoided another, things might have turned out differently. Because the resulting story focuses on the English, historians attribute whatever successes and failures that occurred to their actions. All these explanations, as a result, overlook an important and fundamental truth: Raleigh’s Roanoke ventures failed because those native people in the region that they called Ossomocomuck, and who initially had welcomed the newcomers, decided to withdraw their support and assistance.1 In this paper I shall focus upon the native peoples who first encountered Sir Walter Raleigh’s explorers in 1584, and then again in 1585, 1586 and 1587. I would like to place them at the center of the story. While English settlers would later establish Jamestown in Virginia, and the Pilgrims would settle their plantation at Plymouth in New England, the men Raleigh sent across the Atlantic visited briefly Croatoan, Hatorask, Dasemunkepeuc, Secotan, and Roanoac. The land was not enough theirs to warrant renaming. When the first reconnaissance voyage arrived off of the Carolina Outer Banks in the summer of 1584 the English newcomers came ashore and performed the requisite ceremonies of possession, but they seemed to lack a precise plan for what to do next.2 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe and their men hung about the Hatorask Inlet, waiting for something to happen. After three days, Barlowe tells us, scouts sent from Roanoke approached the Englishmen, initiating the processes of exchange and ritual Algonquians intended to transform the newcomers from strangers into kin. Ultimately Granganimeo, the ‘brother’ of the Roanoke werowance Wingina, and clearly a werowance in his own right, invited the English to visit the Algonquian village on Roanoke Island, a site there is no reason to believe that they would otherwise have found. The English, in this sense, did not discover Roanoke. They came as invited guests.3 At Roanoke Island, the ritual process continued, with confident Algonquians greeting, welcoming and sizing up nervous newcomers. Wingina, the werowance in charge of Roanoke and at least some other villages in the vicinity, could not meet with the newcomers: he was recovering from wounds suffered in battle. He had been shot through the body twice, Barlowe tells us. He may have suffered these wounds from his enemies at the mainland village at Pomeiooc.4 In any case, the Algonquians on Roanoke clearly saw the English as potential allies in their wars with their native neighbors. Granganimeo and his followers, Barlowe noted, ‘offered us very good exchange for our hatchets and axes, and for knives, and would have given any thing for swords’. When the English fired their guns, Granganimeo’s people ‘would tremble thereat for very feare, and for the strangeness of the same’. The Algonquians

marveled at English weaponry that demonstrated tremendous power. It was loud, dramatic, and capable of immense damage on those occasions when it found its target.5 If the Indians perceived the English to have value as potential friends for a people at war, the source of this belief lay in the power Granganimeo’s people perceived in the objects and items that the English possessed. And by engaging in exchange with the Roanokes, even if the newcomers did not provide Granganimeo with all that he wanted, the English had transformed themselves into allies.6 Granganimeo put this new alliance to the test shortly before the departure of the English reconnaissance voyage. He attempted to persuade Barlowe to attack his and Wingina’s enemies at the village of Pomeiooc. The Roanokes, Barlowe noted, ‘promised and assured us that there will be found in it a great store of commodities’. The English did not take the bait, for Barlowe had too few men to engage in so risky a venture.7 Still, the Roanokes had achieved something. A small group of men in strange ships arrived off their shores. They brought with them a technology suggesting great power – a concept that Harriot later learned the natives called montoac – that intrigued and interested Granganimeo and Wingina particularly within the context of their rivalries with other native communities in Ossomocomuck. But they wanted to know more. The werowances thus selected two men, Manteo and Wanchese, to accompany the Englishmen to their homeland to learn what could be known about them, and to report back what they found.8 By the time these two envoys returned to Roanoke Island in the summer of 1585, along with the men Sir Walter Raleigh had sent to establish an outpost on American shores, they each had arrived at very different interpretations about the meaning of the English. Manteo, impressed by the power of the English, remained steadfast in his connection to the newcomers, and saw in them a powerful ally. Wanchese, on the other hand, had concluded after his sojourn in England that these men posed a mortal threat to his people’s way of life. He would promptly abandon the English and return to Wingina once the newcomers arrived on the Outer Banks in the summer of 1585.9 Other Algonquians wavered between these two poles, as they attempted to learn about their allies. After the English arrived, the newcomers explored the Carolina Sounds. They attacked Wingina’s enemies at Aquascogoc over the theft of a silver cup and, perhaps, another hostile village somewhere along the northern bank of the Albemarle Sound.10 If the Aquascogoc attack seemed unnecessarily savage and violent, the burning of the town may as well have demonstrated to Wingina that he could find the English useful in his conflicts with his neighbors, an extremely dangerous weapon, if he could control them. He and Granganimeo met with Manteo, whose account of the English contrasted starkly with that of European Visions: American Voices | 101

Oberg Wanchese. Wingina announced that he would allow the English to establish a post on the northern end of Roanoke Island, close to the village there. Wingina thus kept the Englishmen near his people and effectively isolated from native rivals who may have wished to establish relations with the newcomers on their own. Wingina would attempt to control access to Raleigh’s colonists.11 It is, I would argue, an important point. The familiar image of stalwart European explorers, climbing from their boats, planting the flag, and claiming the New World, does not entirely fit the reality of what occurred at Roanoke. Once again, English colonists came to Roanoke not as discoverers but as guests. They settled on Roanoke because Wingina allowed them to do so. They did not have the power to dictate to native peoples the terms under which they took possession of American soil. They took what they were given.12 The initial relations in 1585 were peaceful. Wingina and other Roanokes traded with the newcomers, acquiring the magical and otherworldly items – items infused with montoac – that allowed their English allies to do things that ordinary human beings could not. Yet if the English technology deeply impressed the Roanokes, and left them wondering whether the newcomers were, in Harriot’s words, gods or men, the power of English disease perplexed and frightened them.13 Some of Wingina’s followers believed that the English controlled the disease, that it was something that might be deployed as a weapon, invisible bullets fired by the English God. But the Roanokes fell ill as well. Their own priests and shamans could not halt the spread of the disease, so some Roanokes, including Wingina, began to adopt English rituals in an effort to curb the onslaught. Wingina and his followers tried to understand the sources of English power and to incorporate that power into their accustomed ways of living. They attempted to understand the reasons for the misfortunes that had befallen them. They joined the English in prayer. They learned to sing their psalms. They assessed carefully how best to protect the interests of their community when confronted by visitors who appeared to have the power to do things that Algonquians could not.14 Doing so, of course, required a significant willingness to experiment. For Wingina, this effort was nothing less than profoundly disillusioning. Buffeted in a world of rapid change, Wingina experimented with English cultural forms and practices to secure the power that preserved and bestowed so many benefits upon the colonists. The English prayed, read from books, and gathered together to worship their God. They did not fall ill. They did not die. English power, however, provided few answers for Wingina’s increasingly beleaguered people. Indeed, English montoac, it seemed, could manifest itself in malevolence, in death and in suffering. Wingina arrived at the conclusion that his people’s problems stemmed from contact with the English.15 So he changed his name and his identity and became Pemisapan, and abandoned Roanoke Island.16 He led his people away from the newcomers who he had welcomed, but who had brought such misery to his people. The governor of the English outpost, Ralph Lane, became convinced that Pemisapan had organized a conspiracy to wipe out the English settlement, but he appears to have learned this only from Pemisapan’s native rivals. Lane attacked, and his men killed and beheaded 102 | European Visions: American Voices

Pemisapan. Less than two weeks later, Lane’s colonists abandoned Roanoke Island.17 It was this act – this event – the killing of a werowance, that in many ways determined the fate of Raleigh’s Roanoke ventures. A small holding party left by Sir Richard Grenville on the island in the summer of 1586 was quickly wiped out by Wanchese and his followers.18 When John White returned in 1587 his colonists had been on the island for only a short time before one of his principal men, George Howe, was found stuck like a pincushion with dozens of Algonquian arrows, his head bashed to bits by the warriors’ weapons.19 White’s attempts to secure justice resulted in an uncomfortable encounter on Croatoan Island where the colonists confronted the legacy of the previous colony’s violence – maimed Indians injured by Lane’s men. No native attended the council White called to ‘receive’ the Indians and to forgive and forget past misdeeds. When he retaliated for the killing of Howe, White’s misdirected wrath inadvertently fell upon the last Indians in the region willing to speak with the English, Manteo’s Croatoan kin.20 Facing hostile Indians and short supplies, White returned home to England. When he finally returned to Roanoke in the summer of 1590, on his granddaughter Virginia Dare’s third birthday, his colonists were gone. White and his men saw in the sand the fresh footprints of Algonquians who had heard the Englishmen arrive. When these natives fled from the island they deprived White of his last, best, opportunity to find out what had happened. Surely they knew.21 Instead of finding the people he had left behind, White found the famous signs carved by his countrymen. But Raleigh’s colonists were lost only to those Europeans who failed to find them. Indian people knew what had happened to them, but only small traces of what they knew reached the Englishmen who wrote the documents on which historians

Figure 1 A Werowance, possibly Wingina, John White, (BM 1906, 0509.1.21)

Lost Colonists and Lost Tribes rely. Whether the colonists moved to the Chesapeake, to the north shore of the Albemarle Sound, or to the Chowan River Valley, there has emerged something of a consensus that wherever they found shelter, they fell victim to an attack by the Powhatan leader now most commonly called Wahunsonacock, but better known simply as Powhatan. Some of the colonists, the scant evidence suggests, survived this attack. If they were lucky they found shelter in native communities, into which they necessarily would have assimilated to survive. The descendants of these few survivors would have been socialized in native village communities in the Eastern woodlands. They became Algonquians and were no longer English men and women.22 The mystery of the Lost Colonists, then, disappears when we turn the story around. White’s surviving colonists shared in the fate of the Algonquian peoples who sheltered them. The native peoples of the land called Ossomocomuck, before it became Virginia, Carolina, and, ultimately, North Carolina, suffered the same sorts of dislocations and losses that Indians elsewhere in early America experienced: population loss from disease and warfare, the loss of their lands and the foundation of traditional economies and a resulting descent into poverty.23 As for Pemisapan’s people, they disappeared from the historical record for several decades after the killing of George Howe in 1587. In 1654, the Virginian Francis Yeardley traveled to Roanoke Island. ‘The great Commander of those parts’, Yeardley wrote, received the adventurer’s party ‘civilly, and showed them the ruins of Sir Walter Raleigh’s fort, from whence I received a sure token of their being there’. Yeardley acquired more than souvenirs. He purchased the island and a strip of the adjoining mainland from the ‘great Commander’, in return for payment and a promise to build the werowance a ‘fayr house’. The Roanoke werowance apparently respected Yeardley or hoped to benefit by his presence in the region. He visited the Englishman often, and left his only son to receive an education that would enable him ‘to speak out of a book and to make a writing’. The ‘great Commander’, whom Yeardley never named, ‘expressed himself desirous to serve that God the Englishmen served, and that his child might be so brought up’.24 We can imagine how memories of earlier English voyages to Roanoke conditioned the behavior of this ‘great Commander’. We do not know if Pemisapan’s people preserved the story of how their werowance, three-quarters of a century earlier, had grown weary of the powerful newcomers and moved away from them, how the English treacherously attacked him and took his head as a trophy, but these stories may have survived, passed around the fire and from one generation to another as a beleaguered people studied their past in an effort to understand their present and their future. They may have preserved in their oral traditions stories of the illnesses that swept through Ossomocomuck after the newcomers first arrived, of the strange astronomical phenomena that accompanied their arrival, and of the technology that allowed the Englishmen to do things that ordinary men and women could not do. As increasing numbers of Englishmen began pushing into North Carolina in the 17th century, werowances once again felt the need to maneuver to protect their peoples from the destructive forces that they remembered European settlement could bring. The ‘great

Commander’ sought alliance with Yeardley, a close relationship through which he could acquire a patron, a broker and an interpreter. Through his son, he could learn about the newcomers and what they wanted, and how their presence in his territory could help or harm the members of his community. Wingina, of course, before he became Pemisapan, tried to establish a relationship with the newcomers that was similar in important ways to what the ‘great Commander’ hoped to achieve.25 Wingina allowed the English access to his territory, and sent emissaries to accompany the newcomers home to England. He experimented with the rituals of the colonists’ religion to secure the benefits that he believed the English received. He sought peace and an alliance. He became Pemisapan after the colonists’ diseases slashed their way through his community, and as their technology left him and his people debating whether the colonists were ‘gods or men’. When English demands for food surpassed what he could safely provide during a period of sustained drought, Pemisapan withdrew to the mainland and decided to feed the colonists no longer. Ralph Lane concluded that Pemisapan had orchestrated a massive Indian uprising, and to preempt this threat Lane ordered the assault that led to the werowance’s death. This murder doomed Lane’s colony, and eliminated any possibility that White’s colonists would be able to remain on Roanoke Island in 1587. We know nothing more of the fate of the ‘great Commander’ who greeted Yeardley, or of his son. We can, however, reconstruct something of the community’s history. By the early 1700s they were part of the polyglot community known as the Machapunga or Mattamuskeet, after the town on the mainland where they lived. These survivors were few in number, but they were not willing to acquiesce in their own subjugation. They treated roughly those settlers who encroached on their lands. These settlers demanded that the colonial government take some speedy and effectual method... for restraining the insolency and continued abuses of the Matchepungo Indians by killing and destroying our hoggs and beating one of our neighbours for endeavouring to prevent the same.

The settlers believed that they lived ‘in such dayly jeopardy of our lives’ that the colony’s Executive Council must take action to defend them from ‘these barbarous heathen’.26 These early North Carolina settlers failed to recognize what must seem obvious to those familiar with the long history of Anglo-Indian relations: what the colonists saw as aggression the Mattamuskeets saw as an attempt to protect a way of life that had come under siege. Encroachments on Mattamuskeet land by the English and their voracious livestock threatened Algonquian subsistence and Algonquian lives. Despite the periodic directives of colonial officials, the frontier population, according to one missionary, treated the Algonquians in a manner ‘more barbarous and unkind than the savages themselves’.27 So when the Iroquoian Tuscaroras began their attacks on the colony in September 1711, the Mattamuskeets joined them. At first the colony’s leaders felt they had little to fear from the small coastal bands. That soon changed. Early in 1713, according to acting governor Thomas Pollock, 50 Mattamuskeets attacked ‘the inhabitants of Alligator River, European Visions: American Voices | 103

Oberg and, as they conjectured had killed and taken 16 or 20 of the inhabitants the rest having escaped’. The Mattamuskeets killed or carried away another 20 English colonists on Roanoke Island. English forces from South Carolina, aided by their much more numerous Indian allies, pursued the hostile Mattamuskeets, but Pollock feared that ‘it may be to no purpose, they having advantage of such dismal swamps to fly into’.28 The Mattamuskeets fought longer than the Tuscaroras, enduring destructive raids by the English and their native allies in 1713 and 1714. Not until February 1715 did the Mattamuskeets arrive at a peace with the colonists, through which they were guaranteed a reservation near Mattamuskeet Lake, the former Lake Paquippe. There they lived on the margins of Carolina society. They fished in coastal waters, hunted in the wetlands and planted corn and other crops where they had sufficient land. As a community they struggled to survive. Under the leadership of John Squires, described in the surviving English records as ‘King’ or ‘Chief’ of the Mattamuskeet Indians, and his two close advisers John Mackey and Long Tom, they asserted their right to preserve their lands along the Carolina coast and, in effect, to continue to exist as a separate people.29 Squires probably helped mediate disputes between members of his community. He represented the Mattamuskeets in their relations with outsiders. Though we cannot tell how his followers viewed him and what community functions he performed, we do know that the very small number of Mattamuskeets respected him deeply. His plantation of 150 acres along New Mattamuskeet Creek, where he grew rice, tended his orchards and his other crops, fished and hunted, became the center of Mattamuskeet life, not unlike the central villages depicted by John White a century and a half before.30 Squires and the Mattamuskeets faced nearly constant pressure from neighboring whites to sell their reservation. Squires sold 640 acres to Henry Gibbs in 1731 ‘for and in consideration of the Sum of Tenn pounds good Lawfull money of the Province of North Carolina’. In 1738 and 1739, more sales took place, a couple of hundred acres here and a couple of hundred there. Despite the deeds Squires, Mackey and Long Tom signed, they preserved a small central core of the Mattamuskeets’ land base, approximately 10,000 acres. Charles Squires succeeded his father at some point late in 1746 or early in 1747, but he clearly was not his father’s equal. In 1752, along with George, Joshua, and Timothy Squires, ‘chief men of the Malimuskeet Indians’, he deeded the Mattamuskeet reservation in its entirety to ‘William Stevenson, Pedlar and trader’, in return for the sum of 83 pounds. The community repudiated the transaction, and forcefully rejected the variety of leadership offered by John Squires’ sons, but no effective alternative emerged. Nine years later, Charles Squires sold for 100 pounds the remaining 10,000 acres of the reservation.31 Significant cultural changes followed on the heels of the loss of the reservation. Only a handful of Mattamuskeets continued to reside in the area. By early in the 19th century, women headed the households that remained. Mattamuskeets likely took the dangerous jobs deemed suitable for men on the margins. They fought in colonial and revolutionary armies, or put to sea as whalers, mariners and marines. Many of these men did not return home. The women who remained behind faced a new assault. Their families were now under siege. The story of Joshua Longtom can 104 | European Visions: American Voices

help to illustrate the point. The ‘base born’ son of ‘Jane alias Jenny Longtom Indian’, 10-year-old Joshua was ‘supposted to have been begotten by a wight father’. Stephen Fletcher, a white sea captain who coveted the boy’s labor, told the Hyde County Court in 1804 that the boy ‘is going at random with out that control & nutrition So essential to his own future good & that of the Community at large’. Offering to take Joshua in by ‘Lawfull Indenture’, the county court bound the boy to Fletcher ‘to learn the art of Seaman & mariner... Untill he attains the age of Twenty one years’.32 Joshua Longtom’s experience was not unique. Nine-yearold Jordan Longtom was apprenticed to Captain Little John Pugh at the same 1804 session of the County Court. Simpson Mackey, ‘a base born person of Cullor’, was bound to Thomas Spencer. His brother, Shadrach Mackey, found himself bound to a planter named Washington Gibbs. The labor of children, the mixed-race descendants of Algonquians, Africans and Englishmen, became a commodity distributed by county leaders to those willing to mouth the requisite platitudes about educating and training their servants. Removed from the care and the protection, and the love, of their parents, and isolated from each other and whatever there was that remained of the Mattamuskeet community, these children, and scores of others, found themselves in a poor position to carry on and sustain a culture. Aboriginal cultures did not disappear in early America; they were destroyed. We know that some Mattamuskeets remained in Hyde County. In 1843 Marina Mackey, a descendant of one of the boys apprenticed in 1804, was brought before the Hyde County Court on the charge that she ‘did unlawfully intermarry with a certain male slave named Riley’. Mackey, as a ‘free woman of colour’, could not legally marry the black slave with whom she ‘did unlawfully cohabit and live together as man and wife’. Her case was unique. Those Mattamuskeets who remained, classified legally as free people of color, attempted to remain invisible. They had few rights and few legal protections. Despite laws against marrying slaves, they intermarried with others on the margins, poor whites and free blacks, so that by the early 20th century, according to the anthropologist Frank Speck, the appearance of the members of the community ranged ‘from individuals with pronounced Indian characteristics, through people with noticeable white or Negro features, the latter sort predominating in the younger generations’. They were, in Speck’s view, a ‘remnant’, a lost tribe.33 Because of the community’s isolation, Speck hoped to find traces of Algonquian culture still in practice. He hoped to find a people, remote from the modern world, living elements of an earlier existence. Perhaps they were. They were fishing, hunting fowl, getting by. They had changed. There was no doubt about that. Change has been one of the few constants in Native American history. Speck knew this, but still he was disappointed. Speck found that not one member of the community ‘knew a single word of the Indian language and not one knew of any definite Indian customs or traditions, not even the name of their tribe’. All that, Speck believed, had been lost.34 We choose the stories that we want to tell, and there is no reason why we cannot alter our focus. We can write, if we choose, about the efforts of the English to plant colonies on

Lost Colonists and Lost Tribes American shores. These are worthwhile stories. But we must recognize that there is a flip side to stories such as these. There are the Indians, the ‘natural inhabitants’ who confronted these colonizers. They welcomed the English. They saw the English newcomers as useful, as trading partners and as prospective allies in their wars against their native enemies – wars that according to Arthur Barlowe left the country devastated. They learned, in time, that the English brought destruction and death with them as well, and they withdrew their support. That difficult decision, in turn, emerged from the anguished conversations and rich debates that took place in the Algonquian village communities that lined the waters of the Carolina Sounds, among those awed and those in mourning; amongst the affrighted, the aggrieved and the injured; and among those who had come to hate the Englishmen and those who merely looked forward to a better day, one which they hoped might dawn on a world without newcomers. Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6

7 8

9

10 11 12 13

This paper briefly summarizes issues covered in my recent book, The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians, Philadelphia, 2007. Readers will find a more full discussion of the native history of Roanoke there. On these ceremonies, see P. Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640, Cambridge, 1995, 17–39. D.B. Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584–1590, London, 1955, 94–110. Ibid., 100. Ibid., 112. On the symbolic value of intercultural trade, see C.L. Miller and G.R. Hammell, ‘A New Perspective on Indian-White Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade’, Journal of American History, 73, 1986, 316, 318, 325; B.M. White, ‘Encounters with Spirits: Ojibwa and Dakota Theories About the French and Their Merchandise’, Ethnohistory, 41, 1994, 369, 373, 380. I have explored this issue in M.L. Oberg, ‘Gods and Men: The Meeting of Indian and White Worlds on the Carolina Outer Banks, 1584–1586’, North Carolina Historical Review, 76, 1999, 367–90. Quinn, supra n. 3, 113–14. Ibid., 91. On Manteo and Wanchese, see the following: M.L. Oberg, ‘Between Savage Man and “Most Faithfull Englishman: Manteo and the Early Anglo-Indian Exchange, 1584–1590”’, Itinerario, 24, 2000, 146–69. Oberg, supra n. 8, 146–69; See also K.O. Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America, 187–9; A.T. Vaughan, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s Indian Interpreters, 1584–1618’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 59, June 2002, 348. Quinn, supra n. 3, 191. Oberg, supra n. 1, 66–7. Ibid., 67. On the specific outbreak of disease at Roanoke, see P.B. Mires, ‘Contact and Contagion: The Roanoke Colony and Influenza’,

14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Historical Archaeology, 28, 1994, 32–4. For the scholarly debate as to how and why American Indians proved so susceptible to European epidemic diseases, see A. Crosby, ‘Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 30, 1976, 176–207; D.S. Jones, ‘Virgin Soils Revisited’, William and Mary Quarterly, 60, October 2003, 703–42; D.S. Jones, Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality Since 1600, Cambridge, 2004; and J. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500–1676, Cambridge, MA, 2001. Quinn, supra n. 3, 377–8; Oberg, supra n. 6, 380–1. Quinn, supra n. 3, 378; Oberg, supra n. 6, 382–3. Quinn, supra n. 3, 265, 893–4. My interpretation of the significance of Wingina’s new name has been informed by the following: H.C. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture, Norman, OK, 1989, 80; K.O. Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, Savage, MD, 1984, 76; D.N. Durant, Ralegh’s Lost Colony, New York, 1981, 76; C. Townshend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma, New York, 2003, 13–14, 127–8. Quinn, supra n. 3, 265–94; Oberg, supra n. 1, 81–100; M.L. Oberg, ‘Indians and Englishmen at the First Roanoke Colony: A Note on Pemisapan’s Conspiracy, 1585–1586’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 18, no. 2, 1994, 75–90. Quinn, supra n. 3, 528–9. Ibid., 525–6; Oberg, supra n. 1, 115. Quinn, supra n. 3, 531; Oberg, supra n. 8, 163–5. Oberg, supra n. 1, 125–6; Quinn, supra n. 3, 611–16. In addition to the sources mentioned above, see L. Miller, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, New York, 2000; J. Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America, New York, 2005, 144; and T.C. Parramore, ‘The “Lost Colony” Found: A Documentary Perspective’, North Carolina Historical Review, 78, January 2001, 67–83. For a highly readable and useful review of this history, see D.K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America, Cambridge, 2001. Francis Yeardley to John Farrar, 8 May 1654, in W.L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 vols, Raleigh, NC, 1886, 1, 18. Ibid., and Oberg, supra n. 1, 155–6. R.J. Cain, ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 2nd ser., vol. 7, Records of the Executive Council, 1664–1734, Raleigh, NC, 1984, 397–8. H.T. Lefler and W.S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History, New York, 1973, 65–7. Thomas Pollock Letter, 30 April 1713, in Saunders, ed., North Carolina Records, 2, 39. See the records of the Executive Council, for its meetings held on 11 November 1718, and for 16 April 1724, in the Records of the Executive Council, 77, 142. See also Lefler and Powell, supra n. 27, 79. P. Garrow, ed., The Mattamuskeet Documents: A Study in Social History, Raleigh, NC, 1975, 25–6. Ibid., 54–70, Appendices 6–33. Ibid., 72–3, Appendices 36–37. Ibid., 75, Appendix 39. F.G. Speck, ‘Remnants of the Machapunga Indians of North Carolina’, American Anthropologist, 18, April–June 1916, 271–2.


John White and British Antiquity: Savage Origins in the Context of Tudor Historiography Sam Smiles The five engravings of Picts and ancient Britons, included as a supplement at the end of Harriot’s A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia are not customarily regarded as having the cultural impact associated with White’s images of Indians; thus this paper is itself, perhaps, something of a supplement to the majority of the papers in this collection, oriented as they mainly are, and rightfully, to White’s engagement with the New World. But the relationship between White’s illustrations of ancient Britons and developments in Tudor historiography shows that here, too, his work was innovative and had a lasting influence. In this case, however, as I hope I will be able to demonstrate, White’s achievement can best be understood as crystallizing emergent thought rather than documenting new experiences. What I will argue is that his watercolours, and the engravings derived from them, participate in a widespread debate about British history and cultural identity, a debate whose partisans took up their positions not only in antiquarian publications but also in the theatre and in popular entertainments. The five plates are introduced with a brief prefatory text, which offers a point of departure for any analysis of them. The reader is primed to take these illustrations seriously because they are of a piece with what has come before: just as A briefe and true report’s overall title page had identified a time (1585) and a place (Virginia), so the sub-title page for the ancient British appendix likewise fixes chronology (‘in the old tyme’) and place (‘one part of the great Britainne’). And just as John White is described earlier as diligently collecting and drawing ‘the true pictures and fashions’ of the Algonquians,

Figure 1 The true picture of one Pict, Theodor de Bry, 1590, engraving after John White (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, G.6837)


so here, all the plates are entitled ‘the true picture’ of the Picts and their neighbours. White’s images of Indians are vouchsafed textually by the affidavit ‘sent thither specially’ for the purpose of making these visual records. A reader who agreed, on the basis of the Virginia plates, that White had professionally discharged his pictorial duties in America, would also be ready to accept the most curious part of the supplement’s inscription: ‘The painter ... gave me also these 5. Figures followinge, fownd as hy did assured my in a oolld English chronicle... .’ I will come back to the idea of an old English chronicle later in this paper, but for now let us concentrate on the images. As is immediately obvious, what White painted and what de Bry engraved are not identical. What we are shown in the printed supplement are a Pictish man, a Pictish woman, a yonge dowgter of the Pictes and two ‘neighbours of the Picts’: a man and a woman (Figs 1–5). Only two of these engravings, the Pictish man and woman (Figs 1–2), are closely derived from White’s watercolours (Figs 6–7). The engraved neighbours of the Picts (Figs 4–5), especially the man, are only loosely related to their prototypes in White’s drawings (Figs 8–9) and the daughter of the Picts (Fig. 3) is engraved from a picture not by White but by Jacques Le Moyne (Fig. 10). With respect to this last, it was perhaps for reasons of variety that de Bry substituted Jacques Le Moyne’s watercolour, for the White image of a Pictish man he discarded (Fig. 11) is, essentially, a reversed pose of the picture de Bry selected for engraving (Fig. 6).

Figure 2 The true picture of a woman Pict, Theodor de Bry, 1590, engraving after John White (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, G.6837)

Figure 3 The true picture of a young daughter of the Picts, Theodor de Bry, 1590, engraving after John White? or after Le Moyne? (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, G.6837)

John White and British Antiquity and very greedy of slaughter, content to bee armed onely with a narrow shield and a speare, with a sword besides hanging downe by their naked bodies.2

Figure 4 The true picture of a man of nation neighbour to the Picts, Theodor de Bry, 1590, engraving after John White (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

Figure 5 The true picture of a woman neighbour to the Picts, Theodor de Bry, 1590 engraving after John White (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, G.6837)

Jacques Le Moyne’s Daughter of the Picts is the only surviving work by him of this type (Fig. 10). The use of flowers to cover the body has been repeatedly commented on, given that it bears no direct relation to the classical accounts of the Picts or other British tribes. I think it worth suggesting here that Le Moyne followed Bede’s idea that the Picts originated in Scythia, and so turned to Xenophon who, in the Anabasis, records that the warlike peoples on the Black Sea coast included the fair-skinned Mossynoicoi, whose chestnutfattened children were ‘tender and very white... with backs and breasts variegated and tattoed all over in flower patterns’.1 The only other artist known to have attempted illustrations of ancient Britons in this period was Lucas de Heere, who probably made them in the mid-1570s. His depiction, which occurs in two variants, one in the British Library (Fig. 12), the other in the library of the University of Ghent, seems to have taken its cue from Herodian’s account in his Roman History: Their very bare bodies they marke with sundry pictures, representing all maner of living creatures; and therefore it is verily, that they will not be clad, for hiding (forsooth) that painting of their bodies. Now they are a most warlike nation,

Figure 6 A Pictish warrior holding a human head, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.24)

Figure 7 A Pictish woman, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.27)

De Heere’s rather sober approach to the illustration of the Britons is a fortunate survival insofar as it throws White’s illustrations into relief. For when we compare de Heere’s ancient Britons to White’s, it is immediately apparent that White has classicized his subjects. The disposition of White’s Pictish man and Pictish woman (Figs 6–7) have something of the poise and grace that derives, ultimately, from high art examples: for the man, a hint borrowed perhaps from the Apollo Belvedere (first engraved in the 1530s); for the woman, a reference, possibly, to the School of Fontainebleau’s Artemis, an anonymous picture of the goddess as hunter painted c. 1550–60. Likewise, the developed musculature of the man and woman neighbours of the Picts (Figs 8–9) are Mannerist and the man has more than a passing resemblance to the print illustrating Gad in Joos Lambrecht’s Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (Ghent, 1552). The muscularity of all these figures may also remind us of the work of another artist associated with Fontainebleau, Rosso Fiorentino, as for example his pictures of classical gods engraved by Jacopo Caraglio in the 1520s. The point of these observations about style, however, is not to insist absolutely on White’s practice stemming from such and such a tradition but to point out that, whatever his influences, his characteristic treatment of these figures has the effect of dignifying them by association. As I will argue later, this has important implications for White’s attitude to British antiquity. White’s drawings of ancient Britons carry no inscriptions, but two texts were supplied in the published volume that bear on them.3 The first of these, ‘Interpres/lectori’ (‘Translator/to the reader’), only appears in the original Latin edition of 1590. It provides a brief digest of descriptive extracts from Caesar, Pliny and Herodian on the Britons and two lines from Claudian on the defeated Picts and Scots.4 The material on the Britons has been selected to comment on their appearance: the men’s unshaved upper lip, the use of woad by men and women, their nakedness, body decoration and weapons of war. The lines from Claudian, however, offer no descriptions and talk only of the Emperor Honorius’ military successes against the Picts and Scots. These sources provide a

Figure 8 Ancient British man, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.28)

Figure 9 Ancient British woman, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.25)


Smiles Figure 10 A young daughter of the Picts, attributed to or after Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, c. 1580s, watercolor and gouache, touched with gold, on parchment (The Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection B1981. 25.2646)

background of sorts for the engravings after White’s watercolours, but not an explicit context for them that would make the images subservient to these Classical texts. First, the descriptive sources concern Britons, while the images illustrate Picts and their neighbours. Second, the letterpress accompanying the images makes no specific mention of the sources adumbrated in ‘Interpres/lectori,’ but offers instead a series of assertive remarks, some indeed derived from Classical authority but many others merely fanciful embroidery. Thus, rather than the engravings and their letterpress illustrating and extending the body of knowledge rehearsed in ‘Interpres/lectori,’ they offer a supplement to that knowledge.5 Moreover, whereas the letterpress to the images is insistent that the women were armed and played their part in warfare, at the very bottom of ‘Interpres/lectori’ is added a remark that completely undermines these belligerent women of the engravings: ‘In truth, no one [i.e., no Classical author] writes about their women, armed and advanced in war’ (‘armatus ad bellum profectas’).6 There is, in other words, a disjunction between the scholarship that underpins ‘Interpres/lectori’ and the

Figure 11 Pictish man, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.26)

Figure 12 Ancient Britains, Lucas de Heere (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, MS Add. 28330, fol. 8v)


more exuberant fancy detectable in the images and their accompanying letterpress. As to the relation between the letterpress and the engravings, rather than the text determining the iconography, the flow of information seems to be in the opposite direction: the detailed accounts of body decoration and clothing found in the letterpress to the engravings may be better understood as verbal descriptions of the images White and Le Moyne had already produced. But while the letterpress accompanying the engravings is not to be regarded as securely founded on Classical scholarship, it is remarkable for its ambition: ‘to showe how that the Inhabitants of the great Britannie haue bin in times past as sauuage as those of Virginia’. The point is reiterated in the first plate (Fig. 1), showing a Pictish warrior brandishing the head of an enemy, with another at his feet, the accompanying text stating that: ‘In tymes past the Pictes, habitans of one part of great Bretainne, which is now nammed England, wear sauuages... .’ The elision of England and Great Britain here is hazy and ambiguous in its intent, but it is noteworthy none the less. Contemporary readers, or those of them who knew anything about the Picts, would have regarded them as a separate people, whose ancient territories lay in the modern kingdom of Scotland. Associating the Picts with England in any way was therefore unorthodox. Here, however, while the aggressive, naked Picts may look more primitive than their semi-clad neighbours, they not only occupy contiguous territories – as ‘neighbours’ – but are also placed in England. We can make some sense of this statement by comparing it with what William Camden had said in Britannia, published four years earlier in 1586: ‘... the Picts... were verie naturall Britans themselves, even the right progenie of the most ancient Britans.’ It is possible that Camden’s temporal concentration on lineage has been condensed and misleadingly rephrased here as a spatial observation: ‘habitans of one part of great Bretainne, which is now nammed England.7 If the letterpress accompanying the plates owes something to Britannia, as I suggest it may, that itself is significant. An author making use of Camden would be allying himself with the most advanced antiquarian thinking in Britain at this period. And this humanist scholarship, we should note, was the only intellectual context that would support the equation of ancient Britons with Algonquians.8 Camden’s Britannia used classical accounts to describe the culture of the people inhabiting the country before Caesar’s invasion: primitive tribes, varying only in degree in their lack of sophistication. From that evidence Camden concluded that it was not until the Roman occupation that Britain achieved anything resembling civil society. Thus, when the supplement to A briefe and true report asserts that Pictish peoples occupied ‘one part of great Bretainne, which is now nammed England’, not only is the overall thesis of a savage past underlined but also barbarism is relocated from the periphery of Britain into a more central position. And it is primarily this insistence on the primitive, hypertrophied in Pictish nakedness and head-hunting, that supports the wider point: ‘the Inhabitants of the great Britannie haue bin in times past as sauuage as those of Virginia.’

John White and British Antiquity This new emphasis on a barbarous past was a late 16thcentury revelation. Camden’s Britannia was written at the prompting of Abraham Oretelius who, Camden tells us, arriving heere in England... , dealt earnestly with me that I would illustrate this Ile of Britaine, or (as he said) that I would restore antiquity to Britaine, and Britaine to his antiquity; which was as I understood, that I would renew ancientrie, enlighten obscuritie, cleare doubts, and recall home veritie by way of recovery, which the negligence of writers and credulitie of the common sort had in a manner proscribed and utterly banished from amongst us.9

Camden’s work would eventually dismantle one very important example of ‘credulitie of the common sort’, the long-standing historiographic tradition stemming from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey’s account, produced sometime around 1136, provided a glorious history for his homeland, beginning with the fall of Troy and the journey of Aeneas’ great-grandson, Brutus, to the country then called Albion. When the colonists arrive the giants inhabiting the land are defeated, among them Gogmagog, and the Trojans rename the country Britain after Brutus. A long-lasting dynasty is then established among whose rulers may be found Lear and Cordelia, Cymbeline and Arthur. And on the banks of the Thames a capital city, Trinovantum, Troynovant or New Troy is founded, which will later be renamed London after King Lud. The chronological span of ancient British history, in Geoffrey’s telling, runs from the sack of Troy, c. 1240 bc, to the death of Cadwallader in ad 689. The overall import of the Galfridian account (from Galfridus: Geoffrey) is that Britain’s civilization antedated that of Rome, that Britain acquired through conquest an extensive continental empire and that British history was as glorious as anything found in Classical annals. Indeed, rulers like Belinus and Brennus, who sacked Rome, and Arthur, who conquered all Europe and was about to attack the Roman emperor Leo, had not Mordred’s treachery called him home, were far superior to their Mediterranean counterparts. Although some medieval writers questioned Geoffrey’s History, others elaborated its authority. Some later monarchs had invoked the Galfridian history for their own purposes, especially Edward IV, and it was still invoked in the Tudor period, not least perhaps because Geoffrey’s account of Merlin’s prophecies seemed to legitimize the Tudors as preordained rulers.10 For example, in 1486 Henry VII christened his oldest sn Arthur at Winchester and was formally welcomed into Bristol by his ‘cosyn’ Brennus. In 1530 the Duke of Norfolk told the Imperial Ambassador that Henry VIII could rule absolutely because an Englishman (Brennus) had once conquered Rome.11 The day before her coronation, in January 1559, Elizabeth made an official passage through London where at Temple Bar she was greeted with images alluding to the defeat of Gogmagog by Brutus’ lieutenant Corineus. Arthur and the Lady of the Lake took part in the Earl of Leicester’s pageants at Kenilworth in 1575.12 The Galfridian account of British history provided that sense of deep continuity and historical pedigree that reaffirmed the nation’s current status and ambitions. When Elizabeth went to give thanks at St Paul’s Cathedral for the defeat of the Armada, she was presented with a copy of Henry Lyte’s The Light of Britayne. A record of the honorable originall and antiquitie of Britaine, a book in the full Galfridian tradition.13 Two years later, in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, it is Geoffrey

of Monmouth’s narrative that informs the history of Britain given in the contents of two books, found by the knights Arthur and Guyon, that reveal the genealogy and high antiquity of Britain’s rulers, while Britomart prophesizes the rise of New Troy. In the theatre, the earliest known play treating the Galfridian material is Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Tragedy of Gorboduc (1562); from 1588 and into the 1610s at least 20 further plays were performed whose concern was the earliest history of Britain and the Arthurian tradition, including, of course Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605) and Cymbeline (1610–11) and Beaumont and Fletcher’s Bonduca (1610–11).14 But although Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account was still a publicly accepted point of reference in the 1580s and 1590s, humanist scholars throughout the 16th century had become increasingly sceptical of it.15 To summarize these debates and their often bitter invective is not easy and Kendrick’s classic study British Antiquity is still the best account of a complex episode in historiography.16 Suffice to say that before Camden, the most vigorous critics of Geoffrey were John Major in his Historia Majoris Britanniae of 1521 and, decisively, the Italian scholar Polydore Vergil, whose Anglica Historia was published in 1534. Geoffrey’s defenders were quick to reply, most notably Sir John Price in his Historiae Britannicae Defensio, written at mid-century but not published until 1573. By the close of the century, however, the new learning was in the ascendant, typified by George Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582) and especially by Camden’s Britannia, first published in Latin in 1586, with a further five editions before its translation into English in 1610. As we shall see, although Galfridian ideas survived in popular and courtly culture beyond the 1580s, after Camden no serious scholar could adequately defend Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. Yet, even among the antiquaries there was some ambivalence about the extinction of the Galfridian history. Camden was at pains to show the proper respect for Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Britannia contains several passages where we can witness Camden attempting to mollify Geoffrey’s supporters. Camden’s balancing act is most obviously on show in his statement that: ‘I have impeached no mans credit, no not Geffray of Monmouth whose history (which I would gladly support) is held suspected amongst the judicious.’17 John Stow took this equivocation a step further. His famous Survey of London (1598) mentions Geoffrey’s account of New Troy only to refute it, paraphrasing Caesar’s Gallic War to describe pre-Roman settlements in England not as cities, but merely ‘thicke and combarsom woodes plashed within and trenched aboute’.18 But in the other book Stow published that year, The Summarie of the Chronicles of England, he presents an image of pre-Roman Britain very much closer to the world Geoffrey had imagined. As Bart van Es has pointed out, this vacillation over the status of the Galfridian account may be explained by a distinction shared by Stow and his readers between an antiquarian survey, where accuracy was of prime importance, and a chronicle narrative, where teaching by example was the major concern.19 Where, then, does this leave White’s Britons and de Bry’s engravings of them? De Bry published A briefe and true report European Visions: American Voices | 109

Smiles in 1590, at the moment when the Galfridian history had been fatally wounded by Camden’s careful accumulation of evidence. The figures de Bry includes are presented as barbarians, according to humanist scholars’ insistence that the authority of Classical texts warranted no other representation of ancient Britons. But in giving up Geoffrey’s colourful account of Trojan settlement and imperial glory, de Bry had to confront the public’s nostalgia for an account of British history that had done good service for 400 years. He needed, I believe, a device to vouchsafe his illustrations as authoritative. Here I want to return to the opening text, which informs the book’s readers that ‘The painter ... gave me also these 5. Figures followinge, fownd as hy did assured my in a oolld English chronicle... .’ Clearly, being able to demonstrate that the illustrations were copied from an ancient chronicle would help establish their pedigree for a readership still unsure about the revisionist history associated with modern antiquarianism. And, with respect to that readership, when it came to narratives of ancient Britain, old chronicles had already appeared twice before to validate them. Readers in the year 1590, had they seen a copy of the newly published The Faerie Queene, would have remembered that ‘An auncient booke, hight Briton moniments’ and ‘another booke, That hight Antiquitie of Faerie lond’ had been discovered by Arthur and Guyon in the House of Alma.20 It is worth considering that Spenser here was deliberately echoing Geoffrey of Monmouth’s authentication statement in the History of the Kings of Britain, how Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford... presented me with a certain very ancient book written in the British language. This book, attractively composed to form a consecutive and orderly narrative, set out all the deeds of these men, from Brutus, the first King of the Britons, down to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo. At Walter’s request I have taken the trouble to translate the book into Latin. 21

The invocation in Harriot’s A briefe and true report of an ‘oolld English chronicle’ is thus the third in a relay of texts concerning ancient sources whose survival from antiquity into the present guarantees the authenticity of their narratives. In the circumstances of the 1580s and 1590s, the emergence of an old chronicle in which Britons as savages had already been recorded was propitious, to say the least. It had the important and immediate benefit of sidestepping the controversy about the value of Geoffrey’s history vis-à-vis the new antiquarian learning. Even though White’s drawings support Camden’s position on British antiquity, because they are purportedly derived from an ancient source they do not rely on Camden’s scholarship but carry their own authority with them. White’s drawings were also participants in a new sensibility about the uncivilized that was developing in this period. Earlier in this paper I talked about the deportment and poise of White’s figures and suggested that they were enhanced by their association with instances of high art and the classical tradition. Their dignified and monumental treatment offsets, by this means, the negative connotations of the ‘savage’ epithet the text employs to describe them. The new scholarship may have proposed that aboriginal Britons lacked refinement, but on one reading there was evidence enough to suggest that they were nevertheless estimable 110 | European Visions: American Voices

people. This concurs with the ‘hard primitivism’, as Lovejoy and Boas called it, we associate with Montaigne’s essay ‘On the Canniballes’, first published in 1575 and translated into English in 1603.22 An early example of its English equivalent can be found in the middle of Stephen Gosson’s anti-theatrical tract, The Schoole of Abuse (1579). Here Gosson contrasts the hardihood of the primitive Britons with the degenerate lifestyle of his Elizabethan contemporaries. Dion [i.e., Cassius Dio] sayth, that english men could suffer watching and labor, hunger and thirst, and beare of al stormes with hed and shoulders, they vsed slender weapons, went naked, and were good soldiours, they fed vppon rootes and barkes of trees, they would stand vp to the chin many dayes in marishes without victualles: and they had a kind of sustenaunce in time of neede, of which if they had taken but the quantitie of a beane, or the weight of a pease, they did neyther gape after meate, nor long for the cuppe, a great while after. The men in valure not yeelding to Scithia, the women in courage passing the Amazons.23

If Brutus and his Trojans had to be given up in the annals of the nation, these hardy Britons might yet become equally worthy heroes of its early history.24 Here, though, a further issue arose, for once the Galfridian history of Britain was supplanted, there was considerable uncertainty about who the ancestors of the present-day inhabitants of Britain actually were. The reputation and identity of the Britons recorded in classical texts, for all their hardihood and martial valour, did not offer a secure point of reference for an Elizabethan reader. Those who had received civilization – the Britons south of the Roman wall – had also been defeated by waves of invaders and, it was presumed, had been supplanted by the Saxons. Seen from a metropolitan point of view, those who had never succumbed to the Romans – the inhabitants of what were now the Celtic fringes – had remained reluctant converts to civilization even in modern times. Neither seemed to have much to do with contemporary England, increasingly identified with the Saxon settlement, and many educated Englishmen would not wish to claim descent from the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain. For example, in talking about linguistic study, Camden drew a distinction between the ancient Britons and the modern English. I have made recourse to the British, or Welsh tongue (so they now call it) as being the same which the primitive and most ancient inhabitants of this land used, and to the English-Saxons tongue which our Progenitours the English spake.25

Antiquarians of a Saxonist persuasion made much of the distinction between aboriginal Britons and those who replaced them. Sir Henry Spelman in his tract Of the Union, published in 1604 was adamant that the roots of English culture did not extend beyond the Saxon settlement and that the modern historian should not try: to restore the memory of an obscure and barberouse people, of whome no mention almoste is made in any notable history author but is either to their owne disgrace or at least to grace the trophyes and victoryes of their conquerors the Romans, Pictes and Saxones.26

Whether or not the aboriginal Briton was a worthy progenitor of the modern citizen would remain an issue up until the later 19th century.27 But the severing of any lineage leading to the present from the Britons the Romans encountered had the great advantage that it allowed a relatively disinterested

John White and British Antiquity altogether unwarranted in poetry: since it is a favour of antiquity to few cities to let them know their first authors.28

Figure 13 Ancient Britaines from John Speed History of Great Brittaine, 1611, (Courtesy of University of Plymouth Library Special Collections)

scrutiny of British barbarism to take place. If these peoples were not ancestors, they held up no mirror to the contemporary reader. Their savagery was as remote in time as that of the Virginia Indians in place. I have argued thus far that White’s drawings and de Bry’s use of them make sense as a response to the world of Elizabethan antiquarian scholarship, whose major achievement in the 1580s was Camden’s Britannia. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s chronicle of Mediterranean origins, imperial glory, chivalry and courtly behaviour was eclipsed, for all the unease engendered in accepting Britain’s barbarous past and the primitive peoples who had once inhabited it. And just as Camden’s work passed through many editions in his lifetime and was then comprehensively updated and expanded in 1695, in 1722 and again in 1789, so White’s images were transmitted through the 17th and 18th centuries. They first reappear in John Speed’s History of Great Britain (1611) (Fig. 13). In the title page to this book, Speed presents the figure of the Briton, an aboriginal presence surrounded by the invaders who settled in Britain; a Roman, a Saxon, a Dane and a Norman (Fig. 14). Speed’s work went through numerous editions in the 17th century and the illustrations derived from White/de Bry were picked up and re-used in the 18th and early 19th centuries, too, as for example in Thomas Jefferys’ A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Ancient and Modern (1757–72), in A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies (London, 1799) and in George Lyttleton’s History of England (London, 1803). Yet, although the antiquarian learning reflected in White’s images would be transmitted to new audiences, its immediate effect outside scholarly circles was limited. When James I succeeded Elizabeth, Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson wrote the ceremonial script to accompany his ceremonial entry into London in March 1604 (delayed for a year because of plague). At the Fenchurch triumphal arch, the Genius Loci giving the Speech of Gratulation, made reference to Brutus. Jonson, in a note provided for the published script, provided a judicious mixture of scepticism and practicality about this allusion: Rather than the City should want a founder, we choose to follow the received story of Brute, whether fabulous, or true, and not

Jonson’s reservations were overtaken the following year, when the playwright Anthony Munday devised the 1605 pageant for the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Leonard Halliday. Munday’s pageant, The Triumphs of Re-United Britannia, contains the most extensive treatment of Galfridian material ever presented to the public, tracing the whole Brutus myth and the founding of Troynovant and moving on to consider the reigns of Brutus’ sons, among whom the kingdom had been divided, before personifications of British rivers sing prophetically of the land eventually reunited under ‘our second Brute, Royall King James’.29 In 1612 the Lord Mayor’s pageant, devised by Thomas Dekker, was entitled Troia-Nova Triumphans.30 The see-saw of popular demand and scholarly research can be found nicely balanced in Michael Drayton’s topographical poem Poly-Olbion, also published in 1612, dedicated to Prince Henry. Drayton’s poetry makes use of the Galfridian tradition, but he also employed John Selden to write an antiquarian gloss employing the new scholarship.31 This paper has been focused very much on the idea of the British savage, but I would like to conclude with some brief remarks about the importance of the comparison with the Algonquians. Clearly, the point of including the five British plates in Harriot’s A briefe and true report was to put them in dialogue with the American images presented there. But it is a dialogue of distinction as well as similarity. The most obvious difference is that no Indian is shown to be as ferocious as a head-hunting Pict, who we are told, ‘when they hath ouercomme some of their ennemis, they did neuer felle to carye a we their heads with them’. Regarding the women, while their Indian counterparts are always shown in peaceful occupations, all three of the British women are armed. As the accompanying text to plate V (Fig. 5) states: ‘the[y] did carye suche waeppens as the men did, and wear as good as the men for the warre.’ One way of thinking about this comparison is

Figure 14 Title page to John Speed The History of Great Britaine, 1611, (Courtesy of University of Plymouth Library Special Collections)


Smiles that the British plates, in their display of a fierce and martial race, help to insinuate a positive response to the Indians living near the Virginia colony. The British warriors prompt the reader to consider how much more peaceable the Indians are and how tractable they would be in receiving the fruits of civilization from Europeans.32 As events proved, of course, the docile image of the Algonquians that White provided was a fiction. Resistance to English domination would become as much a feature in America as it had been at home, most persistently in Ireland but elsewhere, too, as for example the assertion of Cornish linguistic separation in the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. As for White’s Picts and Britons, the idea of a ‘savage’ aboriginal population coloured a deal of pejorative reactions to the peoples of the British archipelago. Indeed, the text’s intended comparison of ‘how that the Inhabitants of the great Britannie haue bin in times past as sauuage as those of Virginia’ could easily be brought up-to-date for entirely prejudicial purposes. As a polemicist declared in 1652, ‘We have Indians at home – Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland.’33 Notes

1

2

3

4 5

6

7 8 9

Xenophon, Anabasis, V, iv. The Scythians’ body decoration was also a reference point for humanists like Peter Martyr, who describes the body painting of the people of Caxinas in Central America as including ‘flores aut rosas, aut implicitos laqueos’ (‘flowers or roses or intricate knots’) and compares it with the Scythian tribe, the Agathyrsi. See P. Martyr, De Orbe Novo, I.7.5 and III.4.5. My thanks to Peter Mason for this reference. Herodian, Roman History, III.xiv.7–8, from Philemon Holland’s translation of Camden’s Britannia, 1610, 30. For Lucas de Heere see Th. M Chotzen and A.M.E. Draak, eds, Beschrjving der Britische Eilanden. Door Lucas de Heere. Een geillustreerd geschrift uit zijn Engelsche ballingschap, Antwerp, 1937(with English summary). For de Heere, see Michael Gaudio’s paper in this collection. I would like to thank Kim Sloan for bringing this text to my attention. It is reprinted in a modern facsimile edition in S. Berg, K.O. Kupperman and P. Stallybrass, eds, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. Thomas Hariot. The 1590 Theodor de Bry Latin Edition, Charlottesville and Leiden, 2007. Ceasar, De Bello Gallico, V; Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XXII, ch. I; Herodian, Historia, III; Claudian, De Tertio Consulatu Honorii Augusti, 55–6. The sources that may have been drawn on include Caesar, Herodian, Diodorus Siculus and Dio Cassius. It is probable that the author made use of Camden’s Britannia to access them. See S. Piggott, Ancient Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination, London, 1989, 74–85. Given the authority of this remark and its implicit criticism of the women depicted in the engravings, it is tempting to suggest that the author of ‘Intepres/lectori’ was a scholar familiar with the new understanding of the Britons seen in Camden’s Britannia, perhaps even Camden himself. Camden was, of course, an associate of Richard Hakluyt, who encouraged de Bry’s enterprise. Camden, Britannia (1610 edition, translated by Philemon Holland), 115. Samuel Daniel in his History of England (1612) also compared the way of life of the ancient Britons with what his contemporaries had reported of the Indians. Camden, supra n. 7, Preface.


10 However, Sydney Anglo is sceptical that the early Tudors maintained as much interest in the British History as is often claimed. See ‘The British History in Early Tudor Propaganda’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1961, 17–48. 11 For Henry VII and the Duke of Norfolk see P. Schwyzer, ‘British History and “The British History”: the same old story?’ in D.J. Baker and W. Maley, eds, British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, Cambridge, 2002, 15. 12 For Elizabeth and Leicester’s entertainments see D.M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry 1558–1642, London, 1971, 22, 30–5. 13 See T. Marshall, Theatre and Empire: Great Britain on the London Stages under James VI and I, Manchester, 2000, 114. 14 For the Galfridian influence on playwrights see G. McMullan, ‘The Colonisation of Early Britain on the Jacobean Stage’, in G. McMullan and D. Matthews, eds, Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, Cambridge, 2007, 119–140; J.E. Curran, Jr., ‘Royalty Unlearned, Honor Untaught: British Savages and Historiographical Change in Cymbeline’, Comparative Drama, vol. 31, part 2, Summer 1997, 277–303; J.E. Curran, Jr., ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth in Renaissance Drama: Imagining a Non-History’, Modern Philology, vol. 97, part 1, August 1999, 1–20; M. Floyd-Wilson, ‘Delving to the root: Cymbeline, Scotland, and the English race’ in D. Baker and W. Maley, British Identities and English Renaissance Literature, Cambridge, 2002, 101–15. 15 Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher’s deployment of the Galfridian material was not uncritical either. 16 T.D. Kendrick, British Antiquity, London, 1950. See also A.B. Ferguson, Utter Antiquity: Perceptions of Prehistory in Renaissance England, Durham, NC, 1993. 17 Camden, supra n. 7, Preface. 18 J. Stow, A Survey of London, London, 1598, 3. 19 Bart van Es, Spenser’s Forms of History, Oxford, 2002, 14. 20 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1590, Book II, Canto IX, 59, 60. Spenser describes Arthur and Guyon as ‘burning both with feruent fire,/Their countries auncestry to vnderstond’. Ibid., T.P. Roche, Jr., ed., London, 1987, 326–7. 21 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, Harmondsworth, 1966, 51. 22 A.O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, 2nd edition, Baltimore and London, 1997. 23 Quoted in M. Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama, Cambridge, 2003, 97. 24 In this context it is worth remarking that the Latin text from Caesar’s Gallic Wars printed in ‘Interpres/ Lectori’ edits out a passage on the Britons’ promiscuity. In place of the original ‘uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes...’ (‘Groups of ten or twelve men share their wives ...’) all it says is ‘Uxores habent, &c.’ A reader unfamiliar with this passage and therefore unable to fill in the ‘&c’ in ‘uxores habent, &c’, might understand it to mean something quite civilized and monogamous – simply ‘they have (hold or possess) wives’ – as opposed to its real meaning. 25 Camden, supra n. 7, Preface. 26 Sir Henry Spelman, ‘Of the Union’, p. 170; quoted in M. FloydWilson, supra n. 23, 173. 27 See S. Smiles, The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination, New Haven and London, 1994. 28 For a transcript see R. Dutton, ed., Jacobean Civic Pageants, Keele, Staffordshire, 1995. 29 See Dutton, ibid. Also, Bergeron, supra n. 12, 141–5. 30 Bergeron, supra n. 12, 164. 31 For a recent survey of the Trojan myth in Jacobean culture, see Marshall, supra n. 13. 32 For a discussion of relations with the Algonquians see Joyce Chaplin ‘Roanoke “Counterfeited According to the Truth”’ in K. Sloan, ed., A New World: England’s first view of America, Chapel Hill, 2007, 51–64. 33 ‘An Eminent Person’ [Roger Williams], The Hireling Ministry none of Christs, London, 1652. Quoted in A.H. Williamson, ‘Scots, Indians and Empire: the Scottish Politics of Civilization 1519-1609’, Past and Present, no. 150, 1996, 56.

Serialized Virginia: The Representational Format for Comparative Ethnology, c. 1600 Ernst van den Boogaart The Virginia watercolours by John White from the Earl of Charlemont’s album, now in the British Museum, and the True Pictures and Fashions of Virginia, engraved by Theodor de Bry after another set of models by John White, both claim to show how the Virginians actually lived.1 At the same time the two collections make an argument about the Virginian way of life. To understand the argument the viewer must not merely look at the images individually, but also concern himself with the sequence in which they have been placed. He has to study the grouping of images according to visual topic, conceptual theme, or both. He must determine how the groups are

connected – visually and conceptually – into a coherent series and establish the relationship between the Virginia sequence and the preliminary and additional images. In the case of the engravings he has in addition to analyze the relationship between the images and the accompanying texts. In both collections the nine images showing the costumes of the Virginians make up one group; in the album these are supplemented with the man and woman ‘sitting at meate’ and with the Florida couple by way of comparative digression. The views of Secotan and Pomeiooc and the related images, showing details of these overviews, constitute another group. It consists of five images in the album of watercolours and seven in the book of engravings. The book of engravings contains a third group of images, five in all, dealing with the procurement, preparation and the consumption of food; they are based on four watercolours in the album. In both series the major groups are preceded by two introductory images: a coastal map-cum-view, showing English ships, indigenous canoes and diverse small figures, and a closer view showing in more detail human activity in the coastal waters (Figs 1–4). The introductory images locate the scenes that follow in space and indicate the occasion on which the English made their observations. In the rest of the series the English remain out of view, while the figures from the costume group reappear throughout, thus connecting the groups into a coherent series. The observer is led to understand that what the images offer is an ethnography (not a colonial encounter) and that he is supposed to immerse himself fully in a foreign society. The grouping indicates that the images are not merely representations of specific ethnographic observations, but Figure 1 La Virginea Pars: map of the East coast of North America from Chesapeake Bay to Cape Lookout, John White (BM 1906, 0509.1.3.)

Figure 2 Indians fishing, John White (BM 1906.0509.1.6)


Boogaart

Figure 3 Americae pars, nunc Virginia dicta. Map of Raleigh’s Virginia, Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White, from The True Pictures and Fashions of… Virginia, Frankfurt 1590 (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

Figure 4 The arrival of the Englishemen in Virginia, Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White, from The True Pictures and Fashions of… Virginia, Frankfurt 1590 (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

should also be looked at as parts of a more general ethnographic classification. The alteration of overview and details in the introduction and in the village views suggests the same intention. In both the album and the book the preliminary and additional images indicate further dimensions of the ethnographic format. The images of the Picts (in the album accompanied by inhabitants of Florida, Inuit and diverse Asians) are a sign that the ethnographic interest shared by the artists, patrons and buyers of these works was comparative, historical and evaluative.2 By drawing parallels between ancient Britons and contemporary Americans they made the New World young and the Old World modern.3 In the English album the numerous pictures of plants and animals extend the comparative interest to the natural environment of the diverse parts of the earth. The sunflowers and pumpkins in the engraved view of Secotan, perhaps added on suggestion of the botanist Carolus Clusius, indicate a similar curiosity to be found in Frankfurt where the de Bry book was published. Finally, the Adam and Eve that accompanied the foreword to the plate section of the de Bry edition warned the readers that they should study and discuss the customs of the peoples of the world with Christian as well as secular concerns in mind, a 114 | European Visions: American Voices

preoccupation certainly shared by the English viewers of the album, although it does not contain a specific warning on this point. The watercolours have been repeatedly contrasted with the engravings, because it was assumed that they represented an earlier version. They were considered to be closer to the field sketches, truer to the observed facts, less distorted by colonialist interests and Eurocentric preconceptions than the engravings. This encouraged a study of the watercolours as individual, documentary images, not as parts of a series presenting an argument. Particular attention was given to questions of mimetic accuracy, less to questions of representational construction.4 In this paper I re-address the question of the format in which the images were presented in both the album and the de Bry publication and of the intellectual concerns to which they testify.5 What I will term the nine costume images offer probably the easiest access to the visual and conceptual framework of the series. They show erect individual men and women seen from the front in the watercolours, while in the engravings six of them are shown from the front and back and all are set against a landscape background.6 Most of these figures do not perform any clear action. They pose to express their social position. Their clothes are rudimentary and made of animal skins instead of textiles. The men have their hair ‘cut like a cokes combe’. Some of the men and women, occasionally accompanied by a child, constitute couples. They represent the household, which affectively and educationally binds together the two sexes and the different age groups, while at the same time uniting them for production and consumption. In addition, the men and women represent different social statuses. Most of them are described as nobles, distinguished by elaborate necklaces and copper ornaments.7 The old man from Pomeiooc and the woman with toddler may be examples of commoners, carrying simpler ornaments. In this regard the couples demonstrate the social hierarchy and the political bond between rulers and ruled. Two men are designated as priests. The one who maintains a dignified pose reappears in the group of village views as the priest taking care of the tomb of the chiefs. The other gesticulates wildly. He is a ‘coniuerer’ who consorts with evil spirits. They refer to the religious ties binding the Virginians. The men and women in this first group of costume images embody the institutions that, according to anthropological notions current at the time but derived from classical and Christian traditions, were believed to be universal characteristics of human society: household, polity and religion.8 Taken together the figures in the costume images represent Virginian social structure, held together by domestic, political and religious bonds. In the series of engravings a separate group of images more specifically shows the economic bonds, the preserve of the household. We see mostly unadorned people, supposedly commoners. Men are making a canoe through the skilful application of fire and with the help of stone tools. This is followed by three ways of fishing in one image. Men spear them or catch them in a weir during the day. During the night they attract them by fire in a canoe and catch them in a net.9 Next, two ways of preparing food for consumption are depicted: men grill fish above a fire and a man and a woman cook meat and corn in a large ceramic pot, made by the woman

Serialized Virginia

Figure 5 The towne of Pomeiooc, Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White, from The True Pictures and Fashions of … Virginia, Frankfurt 1590 (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

Figure 6 The towne of Secota, Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White, from The True Pictures and Fashions of … Virginia, Frankfurt 1590 (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

according to the caption. A couple, seated on a simple mat on the ground, takes the cooked food with their hands from a common plate, but in an orderly manner. The sequence of the plates follows the logic of the subsistence economy: making the tools for the work that keeps one alive, hunting or growing what one needs to survive, and consuming what one has hunted or grown. The group of images constructed around the views of Pomeiooc and Secotan are visually connected by the two town views, but it is harder to determine what conceptually connects these different types of settled communities (Figs 5–6). The View of Pomeiooc centres on a communal celebration, described in the engraving showing it in more detail as Their manner of prainge with Rattels abowt te fyer. The caption explains that the gathering is a thanksgiving after surviving calamities of nature and war. In the de Bry series the legend to the village view directs the attention first to the ‘Temple’ (letter A), then to the ‘King’s lodginge’ (letter B). Letter C points to the artificial pond outside the palisade, more an economic than a religious or political feature. The View of Secotan lacks a central scene. The legend of this engraving equally combines religious, political and economic features. It starts with the religious building ‘wherin are the tombes of their kings and princes’ (letter A), followed by a place where they make their solemn prayers (letter B). The circle dance around posts ‘carved with heads like to the faces of nonnes’ (letter C) is probably a thanksgiving for the harvest, a celebration uniting several neighbouring villages in dances and a common meal (letter D). Letter K indicates another place for solemn feasts. The other letters

point to agricultural activities. The texts inscribed in the watercolour versions of the views of Pomeiooc and Secotan contain a similar mixture of social dimensions. In the watercolour series the village views constitute the first group of images and may have been intended as the general overview of Virginian social structure, just like the costume plates in the series of engravings. The enclosed village could represent the community as a defence against death, the open village the community as the conduit of life. The costume plates in the watercolour series may either be seen as a closer look at the diverse types of people shown in the village views, highlighting the political and religious bonds or as an alternative way of presenting Virginian social structure. The final watercolour, the man and woman sitting ‘at meate’, catches the attention by forming a contrast to the standing figures preceding it (Fig. 7). In this position it is the counterpart of the introductory image showing communal fishing and may represent the household meal as metaphor of the social bond. In the watercolour series the diverse dimensions of social structure are recognizably represented, but what is emphasized is their interconnection, not their specificity. In the series of engravings the specificity of the social dimensions receives stronger emphasis. Two plates were added to the group connected to the views of Pomeiooc and Secotan: the idol Kiwasa, a close-up from the Tombe of their Werowans, and – as the final plate – the warrior with bow, referring to the small figure shown on the first plate, the introductory coastal map. Depicted from behind, the warrior flaunts the tattoo of European Visions: American Voices | 115

Boogaart Figure 7 Their sitting at meate, John White, (BM 1906.0509.1.20)

Figure 8 The marckes of sundrye of the chief mene of Virginia. Theodor de Bry, engraving after John White, from The True Pictures and Fashions of … Virginia, Frankfurt 1590 (© British Library Board, All Rights Reserved c.38.i.18)

his chief (Fig. 8). The plate looks out of place, a last minute addition. But it is not. The back marks are referred to in the caption to Their dances which they use att their hyghe feastes. The caption to the preceding plate, the Tombe of their Werowans, mentions the reverence of the Virginians for their ‘princes’ even after their death. The back marks demonstrate the inscription of this loyalty while the chiefs are alive. Thus, the plate undoubtedly belongs to this group and stresses the civil character of the cult of the dead chiefs and Kiwasa. The two additions give this group a stronger religious and political accent than in the series of watercolours. The series of engravings then consists first of the group of costume plates giving an overview of Virginian social structure, followed by a group dealing with the dimension of the household and a group primarily focused on the religious and political dimensions. The addition of landscape backgrounds in the costume plates multiplies the visual crossreferences between plates belonging to different groups. These links instruct the viewer to keep the general theme of the series in mind, while at the same time familiarizing him with the foreign ways. The naturalistic depictions are meant to convince the viewer that the Virginians are shown in a matter-of-fact way. At the same time, the images, and even more so the captions, present evaluations. By showing that the Virginians lived in households, maintained a social hierarchy and respected political and religious authority, the plates indicated that these people clothed in animal skins and sporting animal-like haircuts were nevertheless fully human and possessed the same mental capacities as the English. Simultaneously, the position of the Virginians on the scale of civility is established by grading them according to criteria of social organization, technological and intellectual skill, material wealth and morality. The images showed their knowledge of basic skills. The Virginians knew how to light, maintain and control a fire, a feature stressed in the village views. The plates demonstrate their capacity to make tools for obtaining food and building shelter. Nonetheless, the viewers must have noticed that their skills were rather limited. The Virginians did know how to make pots of clay, but were ignorant of spinning and weaving. While they had obtained metal from other tribes, they did not know how to use it in making tools. They had domesticated plants, but did not breed cattle or horses. The absence of 116 | European Visions: American Voices

domesticated animals in the village views, except for the English (?) dog in the view of Pomeiooc, would have struck any 16th-century European viewer. Virginians held few, if any possessions that were valuable in European eyes. They lacked writing, in 16th-century anthropological theory the necessary tool for any form of higher learning and advanced technology. These technical and economic deficiencies were one of the reasons why the Virginians were called savages in the captions, although more often neutral designations like the ‘inhabitants of this country’ were used. The political and religious arrangements of the Virginians were not depicted or described as particularly savage in the sense of extremely cruel or otherwise devilishly deranged. No sacrifice of a firstborn to the king is shown, nor the scalping of captive enemies, as occur in the Le Moyne album on Florida, known to White, Harriot and de Bry at the time when the designs for the engravings were created.10 The worship of the dead chiefs and the anthropomorphic idol Kiwasa were undoubtedly pagan, but probably somewhat less so than the adoration of the sun by the people of Florida. Some of the mores of the Virginians were quite respectable, even superior to those of the English, according to the captions of the engravings. They did not desire riches nor hanker after novelties. On the contrary, they were ‘free of all care of heapinge opp riches for their posteritie, content with their state, and living frendlye together of those thinges which god of his bountie hath given unto them’.11 But not all was said about the mores of the Virginians.12 The ‘coniuerer,’ who consorted with evil spirits and the palisades of Pomeiooc, indicates that were some facets of the religious and political life of the Virginians that were not described. Not only are the description and evaluation of the Virginians in the True Pictures and Fashions incomplete, but also at closer inspection the viewer notices discrepancies between the images and the accompanying texts. In line with the promotional character of Harriot’s A briefe and true report, the captions of the True Pictures and Fashions repeatedly suggest that the Virginians were a people easy to befriend, eager to learn from the more civil English and ripe for conversion to Christianity. The images, however, do not show any Indians stunned by admiration for English guns and perspective glasses or stroking their bodies with the bible, merely a girl showing off the exotic trifles handed out at first contact. Nor does the visual program of the True Pictures and

Serialized Virginia Fashions, in which after the introductory images the English are absent, play heavily on the contrast between ‘civilized’ us and ‘savage’ them, far less so than the numerous images in Le Moyne’s album in which well-dressed French observers watch some stunningly savage actions performed by naked Floridians. Instead, the images of the True Pictures and Fashions immerse the viewer in the customs of the Virginians and make him aware of a Virginian point of view. Would the Virginians be willing to convert to Christianity, if it meant giving up worshipping the chiefs to whom they were devoted, he might ask himself after reading the comments that suggest that they would? Would the chiefs encourage this change? The viewer might notice that the warrior who on the first plate faces the English ships approaching the coast in the final picture turns his back to the overseas public, showing the tattoo that testifies to his devotion to the indigenous chief. The discrepancy between the visual program and the accompanying texts indicates that the series was not narrowly conceived to turn the viewer into an unquestioning believer in the English colonial enterprise.13 In fact, the plate of Adam and Eve, the comparisons with the people of Florida in the captions, the images and texts on the Picts suggested a number of other topics that he might consider. The format of the two Virginia series is open-ended and on certain points deliberately indeterminate to encourage the viewer’s curiosity and independent judgement. Partly, this is a consequence of the abstract and general character of its subject: society in its diverse dimensions. What can be shown and described is always only part of what is covered by the broad concepts that are used to construct the sub-groups of images and the series as a whole. The same subject can be treated extensively or more concisely, as the engraved and the watercolour versions show. The inbuilt comparative approach is an additional inducement to bring up new points for consideration. Finally, the flexibility of the format resulted from the social uses of this type of pictorial material. Albums such as that of the Earl of Charlemont and sets of prints such as the True Pictures and Fashions were shown and discussed in company.14 They were copied and exchanged among collectors and publishers in an ongoing process of coming intellectually to terms with an expanding world. They were designed to prompt inquisitiveness and questioning rather than for doctrinaire or propagandist purposes. The format of the series illustrates that a more theoretically informed discussion of the peoples of the New World had taken shape in the course of the 16th century. The most outstanding examples of this trend were the examinations of indigenous societies by Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de las Casas and José de Acosta.15 Their theoretical efforts were largely triggered by the observed differences between the larger, more specialized societies in Middle America and the Andes and the smaller, less specialized societies in the Caribbean and the east coast of South America.16 To analyze, classify and explain the differences they used concepts and criteria derived from Greco-Roman and Christian anthropological traditions that allowed a more controlled, less emotionally charged application of the savage/civilized and pagan/Christian distinctions. While accepting colonization as a fact, they were at the same time highly critical of the Conquista and many

aspects of Spanish colonial policy. In these early exercises in comparative ethnology the authors drew on the same stock of anthropological topics as were used in constructing the format of the Virginia images. Eager to defend man’s pre-eminent position in the natural world, they were concerned with distinctions between man and beast. These distinctions they found in the social institutions of household, polity and communal religion, all dependent on the productive and communicative technologies created by man’s god-given ingenuity. They graded indigenous societies according to degrees of civility and paganism to gauge their capacity for perfectibility and Christianization. Special attention was given to the techniques of domesticating plants and animals, the skills of constructing shelter and means of transport and the arts of producing ceramics, textiles and metal tools. They also considered the arrangements through which the indigenous peoples organized social control of the sexual and aggressive passions. Did they know publicly sanctioned matrimony? Did rulers dispense justice and organize armies? Did priests officiate in communal celebrations and give moral instructions to the community of believers? By observing the clothing, ornaments and tools with which people appeared in public it was possible to collect information on many of these topics, even during a short visit. The arrangements of public space in the indigenous settlements provided another source of information. Were there palaces, noble houses, temples and markets? The growing stream of manuscript and printed reports on New World societies were eagerly studied to collect information on these topics. A format consisting of costume plates as the core group and one or more groups of other plates was particularly suitable for the illustration of the more theoretically-oriented ethnographic descriptions. The grouping of scenes would encourage the viewers to figure out the general concepts that were used for the groupings. As argued above, costume plates offered an easily understandable representation of the very general concept of res publica, the structure of social bonds that then could be treated more specifically in the other groups of plates. They presented the cast of players that in the other groups acted in the economic, political and religious scenes. Moreover, the repetition of couples of costumed men and women invited comparison and surreptitiously introduced a criterion for evaluation. The extent to which a figure was covered in textiles gave a rough indication of his place on the scale of civility: the more covered, the more civil. The format combining a group of costume plates with groups of other scenes seems initially to have been used for comparison between societies. If one applies a minimalist definition, one can recognize the format in the woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair that accompany Balthasar Sprenger’s report of his journey to India, published in 1508.17 Four couples, some standing erect, others sitting, are shown accompanied by child. They represent the inhabitants of three regions in Africa and of Malabar in India. To this group is added the large plate depicting the King of Cochin in procession and a scene of scarcely clad herdsmen. This work was copied and remodelled several times in the early 16th century, i.e., for the broadsheet De Novo Mondo by the Antwerp printer Jan van Doesborch, published c. 1520 in a Latin, Dutch and English version.18 The European Visions: American Voices | 117

Boogaart format resurfaces in the middle of the century in the Codex Casanatense, a large series of watercolours.19 The costume plates show representatives of most of the peoples of Portuguese Asia. Regions in India are singled out for more extensive treatment through scenes dealing with agriculture, commerce, trades, the public appearance of rulers and religious ceremonies. During the century, however, the format does not seem to have become a well-established formula. Rather, it seems to have been reinvented, when the occasion called for it.20 This changed with the publication of the True Pictures and Fashions. This time the format was mainly used for the representation of a single society. In 1591 followed a similar application in the illustrations of the Relatione del reame di Congo by Duarte Lopez and Filippo Pigafetta, published in Rome.21 The de Bry edition of the True Pictures and Fashions made the format popular in the Northern Netherlands. The illustrative program of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Itinerario (Amsterdam, 1595–6) used it again for comparative purposes. The artfully constructed series invited the viewer to systematically compare the societies of China, Portuguese Goa, the Kingdom of Ballagate, east of Goa, and the principalities of Malabar.22 The comparative use was repeated in the illustrations of the reports of the first and second Dutch fleets to Asia in the following years. In Pieter de Marees’ Beschrijvinge ende historische verhael vant Goutkoninrijck van Gunea (Amsterdam 1602) it served the extensive representation of a single society on the African Gold Coast. Between 1598 and 1609 all these works, together with the Relatione del reame di Congo, were republished by Theodor de Bry’s sons in their India Orientalis series.23 By this time the format had gained acceptance as the leading formula for ethnographic representation.

5

6

7

Notes

1

The watercolours are reproduced in the restored sequence of the Charlemont album in K. Sloan, A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007, 95, 104–45, the de Bry engravings with Latin and modern English text with coloured plates in T. Harriot, A brief and true report of the new found land of Virginia, facsimile edition of 1590 Latin edition, Charlottesville, 2007, and with English text in P. Hulton, America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White, Chapel Hill and London, 1985, 105–29. On pages 62–79 of this work one finds the watercolours in the sequence that has strongly influenced the way scholars looked at them for decades. They were first put in this order in D.B. Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590: Documents to Illustrate the English Voyages to North America under the Patent Granted to Walter Raleigh in 1584, 2 vols, second series, no. CIV, London, 1955 and in P. Hulton and D.B. Quinn, eds, The American Drawings of John White, 2 vols, Chapel Hill and London, 1964. 2 Hulton, 1985, supra n. 1, 130–3. Sloan, 2007, supra n. 1, 93–103, 146–223. In the True Pictures and Fashions of Virginia the inhabitants of Florida are not depicted, but are referred to several times in the captions to the plates. They were to be the subject of the second volume of de Bry’s America series. 3 S. Burghartz, ‘Alt, neu oder jung? Zur Neuheit der ‘Neuen Welt’, in A. von Müller und J. von Ungern-Sternberg, eds, Die Wahrnemung des Neuen in Antike und Renaissance, München and Leipzig, 2004, 195–200. 4 This is the Quinn/Hulton approach, to which the late William C. Sturtevant made important ethnographical contributions. Their admirable scholarship made it the reigning paradigm for half a century. The approach was a major inspiration for what Karen O. Kupperman wrote about the watercolours and engravings and has largely been followed, though not uncritically, in the catalogue of the recent BM exhibition. U. Kuhlemann, ‘Between reproduction,


8

9

10

11 12

invention and propaganda: Theodor de Bry’s engravings after John White’s watercolours’, in Sloan, 2007, supra n. 1, 79–89. According to this perspective Harriot and White contributed significantly to objective, scientific knowledge and depiction of American topography, plants, animals and people. Through empirical inquiry and naturalistic representation they discarded the cobwebs of literary and pictorial traditions that prevented up to then a clear view of the realities of the New World. Instigations for a revision of the Quinn/Hulton approach have come from different sides and have addressed various issues, all pointing out the socially determined relativity of Harriot’s and White’s objectivity. The image of The flyer has been used to elucidate diverging scientific styles at the Elizabethan court. White’s and De Bry’s images have been interpreted as demonstrations of ‘coloniology’ or illustrating shifts in the rhetorical strategies of the Virginia project. S. Greenblatt, ‘Invisible bullets’, in M. Payne, ed., The Greenblatt Reader, Oxford, 2005 and in the defense of Harriot, the scientist, by B.J. Sokol, ‘The problem of assessing Thomas Harriot’s A briefe and true report of his discoveries in North America’, Annals of Science, 51, 1994, 1–16; J.R. Solomon, ‘“To know, to fly, to conjure”: situating Baconian science at the juncture of early modern modes of reading’, in Renaissance Quarterly, 44, 1991, 513–58; M.B. Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY, 1999, 51–67; S. Miller, Invested with Meaning: the Raleigh Circle in the New World, Philadelphia, 1998, 114–52. The groupings within the series of engravings have of course been noted earlier. The series, however, has not been discussed as a format with a topical structure that was used more widely. A. Greve, Die Konstruktion Amerikas: Bilderpolitik in den Grands Voyages aus der Werkstatt de Bry, Cologne, Weimar and Berlin, 2004, 94–6. Kuhlemann, 2007, supra n. 4, 85. The view from the rear is unusual in costume plates. In a plate in Linschoten’s Itinerario it was used to refer to homosexuality among Muslim men. E. van den Boogaart, Civil and Corrupt Asia: Image and Text in the Itinerario and Icones of Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Chicago and London, 2003, 12. There seems to be no indication that this might be the intention in the Virginia series. Its function in this case is not entirely clear, especially since only in the final engraving the marks on the back are shown. Remarkably enough only the Weroan or great Lorde of Virginia is shown with bow and arrows, the other males are unarmed. The designations nobleman, prince and king may be somewhat jocular just as the Renaissance pose of the ‘great Lorde’. J. Spicer, ‘The Renaissance elbow’, in J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg, eds, A Cultural History of Gesture, London, 1993, 84–128. The uses of the term Weroan teaches the viewer that there is an indigenous way of speaking about social rank. A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge, 1982, 15–24, 68–80. J.-P. Rubiés, ‘New worlds and Renaissance ethnology’, in History and Anthropology, 6, 1993, 157–97; Rubiés, ‘Travel writing and ethnography’, in P. Hulme and T. Youngs, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge, 2002, 242–60; Rubiés, ‘Travel writing and humanistic culture: a blunted impact?’, in Journal of Early Modern History, 10, 2006, 131–68. See also Rubiés’ Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology, Farnborough, 2007. De Bry shows a less strict division of labour between the sexes. In the engraving the figure to the right of the fire in the canoe is a woman, instead of the man, recognizable as such by his haircut, in the watercolour. P. Hulton, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues: A Huguenot Artist in France, Florida and England, 2 vols, London, 1977, vol. 2, pls 107–8, 126. It can be argued that the first three volumes of Theodore de Bry’s America series represent increasing degrees of barbarism. This is done, although not very convincingly, by P.-P. Gossiaux, ‘L’Iconographie des Grands Voyages’, in P. Denis, ed., Protestantisme aux Frontières: La Réforme dans le duché de Limbourg et dans la principauté de Liège (xvie -xixe siècles), Aubel, 1985, 99–169. Hulton, 1985, supra n. 1, 119. Just as other early English sources, Harriot and White did not excessively idealize or demonize the Indians and were able to make fair assessments. K.O. Kupperman, Indians & English. Facing Off in Early America, Ithaca and London, 2000. See for the use of

Serialized Virginia

13 14 15

16

Harriot and White as ethno-historical sources: C.F. Feest, ‘The North Carolina Algonquians’, in B.G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Washington, 1978, 271–81. W.E. Washburn and B.G. Trigger, ‘Native peoples in Euro-American historiography’, in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, vol. 1 North America, part 1, Cambridge, 1996, 61–81. Shannon Miller made the same point about this final plate, though in an argument that I find in large parts unconvincing. Miller, 1998, supra n. 4, 123–5. The social position of the makers of images such as the Virginia watercolours is discussed in Sloan, 2007, supra n. 1, 23–37. Solomon, 1991, supra n. 4. Pagden, 1982, supra n. 8, 119–97. C.M. Burgaleta, S.J., José de Acosta, S.J. (1540–1600). His Life and Thought, Chicago, 1999, 71–102. Fermín del Pino Diaz, ‘Humanismo renacentista y origines de la etnologia: A proposito del P. Acosta, paradigma del humanismo antropologico jesuita’, Berta Ares et al., eds, Humanismo y Vision del Otro en la España Moderna: Cuatro Estudios, Madrid, 1992, 379–429; Ares, ‘Texto y dibujo. La Historia Indiana del jesuita Acosta y sus versions alemanas con dibujos’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 42, 2005, 1–3. F.W. Sixel, ‘Die deutsche Vorstellung vom Indianer in der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Annali del Pontifico Museo Etnografico, 30, 1966, 139–217; B. Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought, New Brunswick, N.J., 1971; Keen, ‘The Inca image in Western thought’, in Keen, ed., Essays in the Intellectual History of Colonial Latin America, Boulder, Colorado, 1998, 154–73; S. MacCormack, ‘Ethnography in South America: the first two hundred years’, in F. Salomon and S.B. Schwartz, eds, The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, vol. III South America, part 1, Cambridge, 1999, 96–187.

17 The woodcuts are reproduced F.W.H. Holstein, German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts, ca. 1400–1700, vol. 5, Amsterdam, 1957, 133; the texts in F. Hümmerich, ‘Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Fahrt der ersten Deutschen nach den portugiesischen Indien 1505/6’, Abhandlungen der Königlich Baierischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Philosophischphilologische und historische Klasse, vol. 30, part 3, München, 1918, 12–20; R. Kleinschmid, ‘Balthasar Springer (Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung)’, Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, vol. 96/97, 1967, 147–90. 18 The broadsheet is reproduced in M.E. Kronenberg, ed., De Novo Mondo. Antwerp Jan van Doesborch [About 1520], The Hague, 1927. 19 Luis de Matos, ed., Imagens do Oriente no século XVI: Reprodução do códice português da Biblioteca Casanatense, Lisbon, 1985. 20 Alternative ways of illustrating ethnographical descriptions are briefly surveyed in C. Feest, ‘John White’s New World’, in Sloan, 2007, supra n. 1, 65–9. As Feest remarks, during the 16th century there was no clearly defined canon of the emerging field of visual ethnographic representation. 21 E. van den Boogaart, ‘De Brys’ Africa’, in S. Burghartz, ed., Staging New Worlds: De Brys’ Illustrated Travel Reports, 1590–1630, Basel, 2004, 95–155. 22 E. van den Boogaart, 2003, supra n. 6, 9–34. 23 The paradoxical link between flexible and polysemic ways of representation and the formation of canons has been attributed to the accumulation and increased circulation of images facilitated by the expansion of the printing industry and – more generally – of international capitalism. S. Burghartz, ‘Mimetisches Kapital und die Aneignung Neuer Welten. Zur europäischen Repräsentationspraxis um 1600’, in Werkstattgeschichte, 13, 2004, 24–48.


Texts, Images, and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in Early Modern Europe: What We Can Learn from White and Harriot 1

Joan-Pau Rubiés The question of what artistic images can really tell us about European perceptions of Native Americans is methodologically complex, because, as argued in this paper, what was perceived is not to be taken as being identical with what was represented. White’s paintings are so exceptional in their quality and closeness to an observed experience that they can tell us a great deal about this problem. At the same time, however, because of this very exceptionality, it will always be risky to analyze them in isolation from the wider contemporary corpus of texts and images about the New World. Therefore, I will propose a wider perspective informed by earlier materials, followed by a close analysis of the relation between text and image, and of the role of artistic licence, in the creation of the Harriot–White corpus.

American savage (Fig. 1). Thus you will see him as he usually is in his country, and, as far as his natural condition is concerned, such as you will see him portrayed in the following illustration, wearing only his crescent of polished bone on his breast, his stone in the hole in his lip, and, to show his general bearing, his unbent bow and his arrows in his hands. To fill out this plate, we have put near this Tupinamba one of his women, who, in their customary way, is holding her child in a cotton scarf, with the child holding on to her side with both legs.2

The description was accompanied with what was to become one of the most iconic early-modern images of the

Not content with this single image, Léry also described a number of variations, or, as he called them, four additional ‘contemplations’ for the European imagination, in which, like in a game of dressing up dolls, the Tupinambá appeared with a feathered body, traditionally ornamented, half dressed with European clothes (a ludicrous image), or equipped with maracas and araroyes made of feathers for dancing. The latter image was also illustrated in a woodcut (Fig. 2). Interestingly, Léry assumed responsibility not only for the literary description, but also for the design of the visual representations. He understood that only the combination of image and text, on the basis of a personal experience (what one has seen and heard), may allow the traveller to transmit to his European audience the reality of a New World which was especially admirable because the ancients had never described it.3 Léry is, in terms of lineage, important because he was a precedent to Harriot and White in the Protestant theme and iconography of a savage who was in some ways a ‘good savage’, that is, a natural man whose virtues were uncorrupted by civilization while at the same time an idolater heading for eternal damnation. The interaction between the humanist

Figure 1 Tupinamba family, Jean de Léry, woodcut, from Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre de Bresil, ch. 8, Paris: Antoine Chupin, 1578, (©British Library Board, All Rights Reserved, G 7101)

Figure 2 Tupinamba men dancing, Jean de Léry, woodcut, from Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre de Bresil, ch. 8, Paris: Antoine Chupin, 1578, (©British Library Board, All Rights Reserve, G 7101)

Mental images and artistic images: a Renaissance perspective We can take as a starting point what I call ‘the mental images of Jean de Léry’, the French Huguenot colonist who famously described the Tupinambá of Brazil in a book first published in 1578 (although his personal observations date from 1557): If you would picture to yourself a savage ... you may imagine in your mind [vostre entendement] a naked man, well formed and proportioned in his limbs, with all the hair on his body plucked out; his hair shaved in the fashion I have described; the lips and cheeks slit, with pointed bones or green stones set in them; his ears pierced, with pendants in the holes; his body painted; his thighs and legs blackened with the dye that they make from the genipap fruit that I mentioned; and with necklaces made up of innumerable little pieces of the big seashell that they call vignol.


Text, Images, and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in Early Modern Europe theme of the tragedy of civilization (what we might call ‘Stoic primitivism’) and the Christian theme of the fall into sin (here tinged with the Léry’s Calvinist Augustinianism) reflects the fundamental clash between the ‘languages’ of Christianity and civilization in 16th-century ethnological discourse.4 Léry is in fact an outstanding example of how subtle and complex the image of the savage – even the cannibal – could be, against the tendency to simply emphasize stereotypes. That the same hospitable and faithful men who were able to live in peace and tranquillity ‘guided solely by their nature (even corrupted as it is)’, putting to shame those hypocritical Christian Europeans ‘who have both divine and human laws’,5 could also be described in matters of religion as ‘a people accursed and abandoned by God’,6 provides a model for one of the most striking captions to John White’s illustration of the Algonquians of Virginia fishing, as published by de Bry: Doubtless it is a pleasant sight to see the people sometimes wading, and going sometimes sailing in those rivers, which are shallow and not deep, free from all care of heaping of riches for their posterity, content with their state, and living friendly together of those things which God in his bounty has given unto them, yet without giving him any thanks according to his desserts. So savage is this people, and deprived of the true knowledge of God.7

That the possible echoes of a Golden Age amongst the savages did not contradict their fallen condition and their sinfulness was one of the key axioms held by European readers of travel literature from as early Columbus’ humanist interpreter Peter Martyr of Anghiera. It remains nevertheless an important question whether and when Jean de Léry’s Voyage was read in England by the circle under Walter Raleigh’s patronage to which belonged Richard Hakluyt as travel collector, Thomas Harriot as a man of applied learning and the artist John White. It is most likely that Hakluyt learnt of the Voyage, first published in French in 1578 and again in 1580 (always in Geneva), some time between 1583 and 1588, since during this period he was in Paris and made contact with the royal cosmographer André Thevet, Léry’s rival and target of criticism.8 As a Protestant chaplain, Hakluyt would have been sympathetic to the Calvinist pastor Léry, and the presence of a community of Huguenot refugees in London (including the artist Jacques Le Moyne) must also have facilitated the circulation of his account.9 The first substantial translation of Léry’s narrative into English by Samuel Purchas would only appear in 1625, but of course Purchas had inherited many books and papers from Hakluyt, including, it would seem, his copy of Léry’s Histoire d’un voyage.10 De Bry, however, was quick to add Léry’s Latin text (which had been published in 1586) to his series, and John White seems to have copied the five original engravings of the Tupinambá into one of his albums, the so-called Sloane volume, and coloured them.11 We may conclude that while it is not entirely clear at which particular moment Léry’s work began to circulate within the Raleigh–Hakluyt circle, the evidence suggests that it was eventually well known. We could add that it is more likely to have been known in 1588–9 (when the de Bry publication was planned) than in 1585–6 (when Harriot and White did their work in North Carolina). That is, Léry’s book may not have been a model for the observation of the Algonquians, but its excellent ethnographic standards, its detailed woodcuts, and its sharp Protestant interpretation of the savage condition, all could have contributed to shape de Bry’s project of 1590.

Léry is not only important for understanding the context for the publication of the Harriot–White folio volume by de Bry, but also for establishing a methodological point: here is someone who was writing his final text with the engraved image in front of him, and who understood the image as being much more than an echo of the text, that is, he understood it as an element that offered information autonomously, and that was in fact necessary to cover the distance between the marvellous and the culturally comprehensible. Léry set this model of authentic observation in opposition to his Catholic rival Thevet, who (he alleged) often wrote from hearsay rather than experience, and who amplified and invented – and indeed, lied – driven by vanity or by religious sectarianism, rather than by honest learning.12 It was not enough to ‘have been there’ to claim authority. In pursuit of true learning, one also needed to offer an artistic complement to the text (however imperfect text and image still were), in order to produce as faithful a representation as was feasible. The engravings for Léry’s Voyage were created under the author’s direction but were obviously conditioned by culturally specific artistic conventions, some quite similar to those we later encounter with de Bry. Figures are presented as general types rather than individuals. For economic reasons – because cutting engravings was expensive – the artist filled his images with additional visual information, like the pineapple and the hammock behind the Tupinambá family. Most decisive, the general composition, and the human figures in particular, were somewhat rigid according to a widespread classicizing tendency. The more detailed the woodcut or the engraving, the more powerful these conventions became. Consider the two versions of the dramatic illustrations that accompanied the equally famous narrative of Hans Staden’s captivity amongst the Tupinambá; the original woodcuts of the German edition (1557), crude but ethnographically rich, which were meant to offer an exemplary narrative, and Theodor de Bry’s copper engravings of the same scenes for the third volume of his American series of Grandes Voyages (which included the accounts by Staden and Léry), published in 1593. Under de Bry the bodies became more handsome and the composition more harmonious, obviously with the intention of making the images more attractive, rather than more accurate (Figs 3–4). Thus the complex relationship between text and image, so central to interpreting the work by Thomas Harriot and John White (including de Bry’s subsequent intervention as publisher and engraver), invites a broader reflection about the way artistic images with ethnographic subjects can be used as historical evidence. Modern historiography about European images (literary and visual) of non-European peoples has tended to emphasize the importance of these rhetorical distortions. From this perspective, two types of explanations have been proposed. The first would suggest that these distortions were driven by ideology. In particular, they were the result of the desire to either denigrate ‘the other’ according to colonial ideologies or, alternatively, to idealize nonEuropean cultures, sometimes (albeit not often) to support an anti-colonial stance. Hence Columbus’ theme of the Caribs as cannibals who preyed on the more peaceful and innocent peoples of Hispaniola and Cuba can be seen as initially expressing a desire to confirm the proximity of Marco Polo’s Asia, but has also been interpreted as offering support for the European Visions: American Voices | 121

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Figure 4 Cannibal scene with Tupi Indians, Theodor de Bry, American series of Grandes Voyages, vol. III (Frankfurt, 1593) (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, G.6625.(3.))

Figure 3 Cannibal scene with the Tupi Indians, Hans Staden, Wahrhaftige Historia, Marburg, 1557 (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, G.7100)

selective practice of enslavement in a rapidly growing colonial system, helping circumvent the paternalistic rhetoric of the Crown of Castile by which the natives were to be turned gently into Christian subjects. At its most extreme, some historians would argue that native cannibalism was no more than a European fiction.13 From the opposite perspective, the notorious writings by Bartolomé de Las Casas, which were meant to influence the Crown’s policies towards natives but which also helped inspire the Spanish Black Legend (a theme also exploited by de Bry), offer a clear example of the rhetorical elaboration of a positive image of the American Indians, in this case presented as fully capable of self-rule and innocent victims of European rapacity. The anti-colonial theme developed by the International Protestant community that in the 1570s and 1580s produced the plethora of works by Jean de Léry, Renée Lauddonnière, Girolamo Benzoni (as edited by Urban Chauveton), and of course Richard Hakluyt, culminating in some of the most emblematic volumes produced by Theodor de Bry, was specifically anti-Spanish. However, it offered an interpretation of Native American humanity that Harriot could not have ignored even as he sought to propose an alternative model for English colonization. Clearly, his depiction of the Carolina Algonquians in A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia as men whose technology is inferior to ours but who are capable of civilization is driven by a promotional colonial agenda. Although opportunistic and imperialist uses of images of the American Indian certainly existed, including Harriot’s A briefe and true report, the problem with these explanations is that they fail to account for the complexity of perceptions that most primary ethnographies bear witness to, and the many uses to which they were put. For example, those who have argued that Native American cannibalism was little more than a European fantasy often underestimate the extent to which the literary elaboration of travel narratives such as those by 122 | European Visions: American Voices

Staden and Léry (often rewritten in Europe in the light of fresh ideological concerns) does not necessarily or entirely contradict their ethnographic value. Similarly, while a polemical narrative like the Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Las Casas can be read as offering a very simplistic image of the Indian (in this case as victim), other writers that were being read at the time – not only Spanish historians of the conquest like Francisco López de Gómara, but also French Protestant authors like Laudonnière, who sought to develop a less imperialistic approach to colonization – depict complex relationships in which European colonizers had to come to terms with a wide range of possible interactions with resourceful natives. In fact the same author could adopt a very different tone in different contexts. We therefore need to consider that Harriot wrote the captions for The True Pictures with a slightly different emphasis from that apparent in A brief and true report; one not driven by immediate colonial aims. He may have left other recorded observations for future publication, especially if (as it seems likely) he had collected materials towards a wide-ranging natural history of ‘Virginia’. A second type of explanation has emphasized that Europeans were unable to assimilate radical cultural differences, and inevitably sought to ‘domesticate’ such differences according to pre-established cultural patterns. Hence Cortés described ‘Mosques’ in Mexico, and André Thevet described Amazons in Brazil, mixing hearsay with classical learning. Analogies with the Old World, especially with antiquity, were used and abused. Some authors have interpreted this as manifesting a problem of attitude: Europeans only saw what they expected to see, projecting their dreams onto the open spaces they sought to dominate, even refusing to accept cultural differences by simply assuming the universality of their own. To paraphrase David Beers Quinn, for example, Europeans ‘saw in the new the old, altered but not fundamentally changed... novelty was interpreted as an extension of the old rather than as novelty itself’.14 But to what extent was there such a rejection of novelty? A careful reading of the evidence would in fact suggest that many Europeans sought to come to terms with the empirical reality and (to some extent also) the legitimacy of cultural

Text, Images, and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in Early Modern Europe differences, provided customs were not contrary to natural law; analogies with ancient parallels (for example Greek and Roman gentilism) often shaped interpretations of native culture and religion, but did not imply a total identification between the old and the new. A more sophisticated version of this approach, based on an openly relativistic perspective, was provided by Anthony Pagden’s argument in the 1990s that the presence of absolute novelty was increasingly impossible to ignore, as more and more reports arrived. The problem persisted, however, understood not as a problem of attitude, but one of cultural capacity: Europeans were simply unable to bridge the incommensurability of what they saw with what they knew. They responded variously, but always through the ‘principle of attachment’, by which the new was made to relate to the old through an arbitrary association or a superficial analogy. In his view, Jean de Léry is an example of that, as his description of the Tupinambá was not a triumph of description, but an example of the impossibility of making commensurable a culture chasm. The European could not become a savage, and the savage could not become a Christian, without losing his nature.15 The emphasis on the European unwillingness or inability to perceive properly cultural differences has a limited use when explaining the growth and evolution of European ethnography. What is the cultural logic that can best explain European literary and visual ethnographies as a succession of cultural events? To answer this, it is necessary to distinguish sharply between image and perception, or to use Léry’s idiom, between artistic image and mental image. Both need to be contextualized as distinct. Although Léry obviously trusted the power of literary and visual descriptions, the print and the woodcut, he was aware that artistic representations were necessarily limited. As he explained (assuming an Aristotelian understanding of human psychology), his difficulty was not the observation of novelty, because the mind has a universal capacity to represent that which is seen, but how to describe that novelty to those who had never been to Brazil. Having observed things carefully, in his mind he could still see the Tupinambá 20 years later (‘still today it is as if I had them in front of my eyes, and will forever carry in my mind their idea and image’). He could not, however, represent their gestures and their expressions with words and with images, because ‘they are so different from ours’. No representation could fully substitute direct experience. Without that experience, it was difficult to fight against cultural prejudices and against selfinterested lies. His problem was not the perception of novelty, but experience, authenticity, and the techniques of representation. What Jean de Léry understood so well invites us to distinguish clearly the mental images of direct observers like him, or Harriot and White, that is, primary mental images that in turn generated original literary and artistic representations, from those secondary mental images that were produced when Europeans subsequently read and interpreted any published accounts. Between the mental images of the primary observer and those of his readers there stood a text, often illustrated, which could be ideologically very complex. Certainly what Léry offered in his book, by word and picture, went beyond the denigration of the savage as cannibal, or his idealization as a

good savage. It does not seem obvious either that Léry is a prophet of incommensurability, proclaiming the absolute alterity of the savage to the ends of time. Léry never denies two principles that most 16th-century educated Europeans would have shared: as a Christian, that Christ died for all mankind, and as a man educated in a humanistic understanding of the history of civilization, that all European nations were once barbarians. However Calvinist (hence a predestinarian), Léry does not argue that the Christianization of savages is impossible, but in fact suggests that their fallen spiritual condition could be reversed if only true Christians (as opposed to Catholics) genuinely worked towards that aim. Any interpretation of Léry based on radical anthropological relativism would appear to be anachronistic. If we accept that the European observer knew that his words and his pictures could not fully capture the natural and cultural diversity of the New World, any attempt to write a history of perceptions of other peoples cannot use the visual and literary material without considering a number of conditioning factors. In the same way that we have learnt that an ethnographic text does not declare a simple perception of reality, but always works within a set of rhetorical codes, we should approach visual material cautiously. The first issue to consider is the relation of images to texts. As an artist-observer, White is quite exceptional (as Léry also was). If we consider the wider iconographic corpus of the 16th and 17th centuries, however, what predominated were engravings based on literary descriptions. De Bry himself, or those working under him, relied on interpreting texts when they could not avail themselves of direct artistic impressions – in this respect, an exclusive concentration on the engravings that Theodor de Bry based on John White and Jacques Le Moyne can be misleading of his entire production. The artist working from a text but who had never seen America was of course bound to get many things wrong. As an example, consider the case of those early woodcuts of Brazilian Indians inspired by the letters by Vespucci (Fig. 5). The 1509 German translation of the Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi (Florence, 1505), made from the Latin version by Martin Waldseemüller (1507), contained two images probably prepared by an artist working for the editor Johannes Grüninger in Strassburg. They showed entirely naked men and women cutting human limbs on a flat surface like butchers, urinating in public without any shame, or, as seen here, surrounding a naïve European male who was about to be hit from behind (to be captured and feasted on) while trying to communicate with a group of native women. Although not entirely made up (these were cannibals of the same Tupinambá culture that Léry would eventually describe), this is earlymodern sensationalism rather than early-modern ethnography. In particular, the woodcuts of the German edition offered an interpretation by an artist who relied on a text that had been edited and interpolated, for commercial purposes but also to enhance Vespucci’s self-promotion.16 However, it would be an exaggeration to say that ‘the earliest prints of America conflated Old World images with New World captions’.17 Rather, the artist who faithfully tried to follow a text in all its details, without the privilege of having travelled to those lands, had to rely on his iconographic prejudices. He was bound to European Visions: American Voices | 123

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Figure 5 Scene with Brazilian cannibal women attacking European man, Amerigo Vespucci, woodcut, (German edition of the Four Navigations: Diss büchlin saget wie die zwen durch lüchtigsten herren her Fernandus K. zü Castilien and herr Emanuel K. zü Portugal haben das weyte mör ersüchet unnd funden vil insulen unnd nüwe welt… (Strassburg: Johannes Grüninger, 1509) (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, c. 32.f.2, E.IV)

make mistakes of interpretation, but no rejection of novelty was necessarily involved. Artistic images based on more or less edited texts rather than on direct drawings made from direct observation must be seen as the usual pattern in the publication of engravings. By contrast, the woodcuts accompanying the narratives by Hans Staden, André Thevet and Jean de Léry represent a new mode, prevalent in the second half of the 16th century, where the writers played a role in the preparation of the images, and that seems to have been primarily linked to representations of the Brazilian Tupinambá.18 Paradoxically, however, this new mode was accompanied by the adoption of classicizing conventions in some of those engravings (in particular those produced in France and Geneva for the accounts by Thevet and Léry), probably because the artists involved in their production were trained to seek those forms. This evolution of artistic conventions is therefore the second issue to consider, and this must be done in relation to a variety of genres. Towards the end of the 16th century natural history, the costume book and the illustrated travel book, all bore close relations to each other, although they eventually developed in distinct directions. This is the context in which John White’s drawings and watercolours ‘taken from life’ are best understood. As artistobservers, Jacques Le Moyne and John White made a unique contribution to the European iconography of the American savage, especially as the publication of their pictures by de Bry also marked the introduction of a new technology for the engravings (copper), in the context of a new publishing model (the lavishly illustrated travel book). But perhaps the most fruitful insights have come from the obvious exercise of 124 | European Visions: American Voices

comparing the original drawings (where we have them) with the published image, a path taken by many others before me. Here the decisive role of artistic conventions is particularly apparent. While White’s albums of watercolours, based on sketches, could be quite free as they sought to capture native features, gestures and movement, what was appropriate for the engraver unacquainted with the Americas – what would soon constitute de Bry’s emblematic style – was obviously conditioned by strong classicizing ideals, similar to those that transformed Léry’s Tupinambá into something akin to classical figures. The possibilities offered by different artistic mediums were of course highly relevant to how these conventions evolved. Drawings, woodcuts, copper engravings and oils could not only be tied to different genres, but they obviously also had distinct costs and could be subject to peculiar limitations. For example, copper engravings allowed for more detail than woodcuts, but production was laborious, the images had to be printed separately and the plates had a shorter life. They became associated therefore with a luxury product, and in de Bry’s case, with a relatively expensive series of travel books. A higher degree of precision did not however mean more ‘realism’; it was in the new medium of the copper plates that Staden’s sketches (first seen in the cruder woodcuts) became more harmonious and the bodies more beautiful. The new medium quickly became associated with the aesthetic conventions that united a group of artists and their elite audiences. In effect, the casual reader of the different volumes published by de Bry was offered a harmonious aesthetic of the exotic under which co-existed radically different levels of artistic authenticity. Close reproductions of the drawings by John White and Jacques Le Moyne were followed in subsequent volumes by elaborate versions of simpler narrative woodcuts, and eventually by a substantial quantity of invented images produced by artists who often had to rely on simply following information in texts. Engravings and paintings based on combining elements from previous images that had been published or simply collected and exchanged became more common throughout the 17th century. Some of the later volumes issued by the heirs of Theodor de Bry ended up transferring ethnographic elements and human figures from the original context to another that was no longer appropriate. This of course implies that in assessing the distance between direct observations and published images we must also consider the role of the market, obviously linked to the expectations of the audience, but also to the fact that producing illustrated travel books became a flourishing business. A final issue is the extent to which the aesthetic principles of a series such as de Bry’s might have been associated with a particular ideological agenda – for example, Protestant and anti-Spanish (de Bry having been a religious exile who fled from the Spanish Netherlands). Although the editor’s sympathies are apparent in some of the volumes’ prefaces and iconography, in reality the emphasis varied from volume to volume, as the texts also did (consider for example de Bry’s largely neutral version of Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies).19 While the elaboration of an international Protestant mythology that combined the Indian as victim of Spanish cruelty and the dream of an alternative Protestant colonization of the New World was important in the years preceding the publication of the Harriot–White volume, in the long term cosmopolitan

Text, Images, and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in Early Modern Europe scientific ideals and ecumenical market forces seem to have been more decisive in shaping the iconography of exotic peoples. There was no simple relation between the production of images of the savages and a nationally defined political programme, although by considering the interaction between scientific ideals (as understood within the humanist discipline of natural history), religious perspectives, a variety of localnational identities, and, occasionally, particular colonial projects and circumstances, it may be possible to speak about the emergence of somewhat different visual cultures within the European republic of letters and the arts. Reconsidering White and Harriot: text and image From the perspective of the history of ethnography, the pictures by White are unique, both in their iconographic influence (through de Bry) and in the extent to which they worked as an autonomous creation independent from a master text. Whether White decided on his subjects independently, or under Harriot’s direction, spontaneously as he visited a number of villages in the summer of 1585, or according to a previous plan, the albums he produced did not illustrate Harriot’s text, but on the contrary, Harriot ended up writing captions around the images. The range of White’s pictures clearly shows that his interests were broad and were not limited to the immediate needs of a colonial project or the obligations imposed by his employment. We do not know what would have happened had Harriot not lost many of his papers, or had he completed the more ambitious project he often referred to.20 It seems that White did have the status and autonomy to let his artistic principles dictate some important choices (in this he is apparently comparable to Jacques Le Moyne).21 Most other examples we have of contemporary visual ethnographies, by contrast, suggest that the artist was usually simply doing what he was told by the author of a text who either was responsible for the primary observations and may have even prepared sketches (this is the case for Léry, and possibly also for André Thevet, Hans Staden and Jan Huygen van Linschoten), or whose superior status allowed him to offer directions to artists working in situ (we could consider those artists who worked for Francisco Hernández in New Spain). Harriot’s intervention must be judged in relation to a variety of genres; the publication of a report in 1588 obeyed a particular circumstance – it was a response to criticisms in England to Walter Raleigh’s Virginia project – and must be distinguished from the various materials that he might have compiled in the field, but which are now unfortunately lost. I would suggest that the original compilation of materials is best understood as a natural history project, widely conceived according to the humanist tradition, that is as a cartographic and natural historical survey with political and economic aims, often complementing a historical narrative of conquest and colonization. Natural history thus contributed to curious learning, but also to practical science (most notably, to medicinal uses).22 It certainly included ethnography and antiquarian speculation.23 In A briefe and true report, Harriot in fact refers to the pictures of animals and plants – those White actually preserved – as part of his project. Harriot’s survey of the natural history of Virginia was therefore conceived in coordination with John White’s paintings, probably as

instructed by Raleigh, and possibly with Hakluyt’s advice. White’s albums, therefore, with their combined focus on maps, ethnography, flora and fauna, are best understood as also compiled within a shared natural history project, although the ethnographic pictures could be presented to the European public according to the conventions of a ‘book of costumes’.24 Harriot’s A brief and true report, by contrast, is the result of a complex creative process that can be succinctly defined as adapting natural history to propaganda. As his preface to the 1588 publication makes clear, Harriot wrote against those whose reports doubted the viability of the colonial project, instead seeking to prove that the nation in general, and the ‘favourers and adventurers’ in particular, would benefit from the colony patronized by Raleigh in Virginia. He did so with the unique authority that came from his having spent a whole year in Virginia ‘in the discovery and in dealing with the natural inhabitants especially employed’, unlike others (including some who returned after being punished for ill-dealing) whose stays were briefer, or who had not explored beyond Roanoke Island, or cared for anything but gold and the comforts of English city life. Harriot’s deliberative rhetoric has of course many echoes of Hakluyt’s own writings in defence of plantations. His is in fact an economic prospect study, in which ethnography plays a complementary part.25 Leaving a more detailed discourse for another occasion, Harriot begins by openly declaring that he is writing only to establish that the naturals will not trouble ‘our planting and inhabiting’ and ‘are not to be feared’, but instead ‘shall have cause both to fear and love us’, succinctly deploying a Machiavellian language of power relations. What is less clear is whether in a different context, speaking privately to Raleigh or to White for example, Harriot might have said otherwise – that is, whether he would have been more sceptical about the natives’ capacity for civilization, their desire for Christianization, and their military inferiority.26 Hence Harriot’s ethnography follows a clear logic within this rhetorical strategy: in fact, the systematic analysis by thematic categories hides what amounts to a rhetorical oration.27 The initial emphasis is on the limited demographic power and poor offensive and defensive technology of the savages. Their dress is simple, their tools lack sharpness and their weapons are limited; their towns are few in number and small in size, and they lack political unity, with the most powerful lords commanding at most 800 fighting men. They must, therefore, rely on ambushes and surprise attacks, but do not dare engage in set battles unless protected by trees. The conclusion is inescapable. In any conflict ‘between us and and ordinance; as for the natives, their best defence is flight. Not content with this, Harriot continues with a general assessment of the relative inferiority of the native civility and economy. Therefore, ‘in respect of us they are a poor people’. European trifles they esteem as things of great value, as they lack both skill and judgement to know better. There is no Adario-like savage critic here to declare that they live more happily with their simple life than the Europeans with their corrupt luxury. However, it is also crucial to Harriot’s argument that this does not by any means imply a lack of intelligence, but simply a lack of arts, crafts and science. Theirs is a relative lack; they are not of inferior natural capacity. The following passage has been often quoted, albeit too often out of its rhetorical European Visions: American Voices | 125

Rubiés context: ‘Notwithstanding in their proper manner, considering the want of such means as we have, they seem very ingenuous’, and indeed ‘in those things they do they show excellencie of wit’. As they learn to appreciate European technological and cultural superiority (‘our manner of knowledges and crafts’), they will ‘probably’ desire English friendship and love, and (if the colonial government applies the right policies) ‘in short time be brought to civility, and the embracing of the true religion’. In this optimistic vision, Christianity and Civilization go hand in hand, in a way very reminiscent of the official Spanish rhetoric of empire in the Americas. The capacity of the natives was expected to lead them to European culture. The argument is completed with a generous account of native religion such as they already have, which (not surprisingly in this context) is duly presented as a preparation for the gospel, ‘far from the truth’ but reformable, in a way that would have appealed to Christian apologists in antiquity, and to Las Casas or Inca Garcilaso in their interpretations of Amerindian religions. Emphasizing a monotheistic core, they believe in one eternal God and a hierarchy of inferior gods, created by the first for the purpose of making the world in its diversity. Mankind was created by making a woman whom the gods impregnated (this departure from Biblical models is explained away as a result of the lack of letters of the natives, who have to rely on oral tradition). The gods they represent as of human shape with images called Kewasowok, which they place in temples where they worship (this could stand as a traditional account of gentile idolatry, except that Harriot for obvious propaganda purposes avoids making the connection explicit in order to minimize the distance from Christianity). They also believe in the immortality of the souls, and on rewards and punishments in the soul’s afterlife (again exaggerating similarities with the Christian moral system). All this is helpful to lords and priests, who can use the fear of the afterlife to make themselves obeyed more readily by the people (a Machiavellian touch). What Harriot nevertheless wants to emphasize is that this belief system is fragile when confronted with the reasons of the Christians, as he experienced in conversation with their priests. Harriot’s preaching, he claims, was met with hunger for knowledge, and a great desire from the native lords to partake in the effects of the power that the Christian God conferred on the English. Extraordinary droughts and mysterious but devastating new illnesses – which always appeared after the English had visited – were in fact attributed to the power of the Christian God ‘by means of the English’, in a cruel touch. It was above all this religious fear that would make the natives, such as the chief Wingina, obedient to English wishes (Harriot omits to explain that in fact the English eventually executed this chief, not waiting for him to come round). Wishing to establish this point as the basis for his hope of subjecting the Algonquian Indians to both Christian belief and English dominion, Harriot is very explicit about the resulting fears of the natives, after observing that the English were immune to those illnesses. Some thought that the English themselves were immortal gods (especially as they came without women), others that they had been sent to exterminate the Indians and that more would follow to take their lands (a tragically prophetic vision). What Harriot thought – and many natives agreed – was that God in his mysterious ways made the 126 | European Visions: American Voices

Indians sick to benefit the Christians, a thoroughly Providentialist view, which he supported with astrological interpretations of eclipses and comets. (This is of course a remarkably similar pattern that one found in the Franciscan accounts of the Mexican interpretation of their collapse – there is nothing uniquely Protestant about it.) To conclude, the ‘oration’ therefore follows a double movement: first, to assure the English readers that the natives cannot seriously derail colonization, and second, to offer a horizon of native incorporation in an inferior status, rather than one of systematic marginalization and continuous warfare. From the assumptions of Hakluyt’s and Raleigh’s colonial ideology, it was of course paramount that Protestant imperialism offered a clear path of integration for the natives, one that could compete with the Spanish model of Catholic imperialism. As an alternative to the increasingly influential narrative of the Spanish Black Legend, well publicized within the Hakluyt circle since the translation of Las Casas’ diatribe into English in 1583, Harriot participated in the creation of an English myth of profitable piety – one that both the Queen and many investors could buy. What happened in practice was of course another matter – the English could always count on their superiority to impose their terms, and as both Harriot and Hakluyt put it to Raleigh, the naked and unarmed savages of North America had no choice but to accept subjection or be destroyed. In the report, Harriot downplayed much of the violence against natives that ensued (after the glorious reconnaissance trip of the summer of 1585 when the drawings were made), only referring to it obliquely as ‘some of our company towards the end of the year showed themselves too fierce in slaying some of the people in some towns, upon causes that on our part might easily enough have been borne withall’, and in the end justifying this harshness as teaching the natives to fear the English. (He seems to be referring to the treacherous murder of the leading chief of Roanoke Wingina, ordered by Ralph Lane in the midst of a parley as a kind of preemptive strike in the face of growing resistance.) In effect it was scepticism about the ease of colonization and the difficulty of making a profit from it which Harriot, like Hakluyt in 1587, was writing against.28 It seems likely that if Raleigh’s initial reaction in 1586 was not to publicize Harriot’s material outside selected court circles (obviously his supporters Sidney and Walsingham), either for the sake of secrecy or to avoid dwelling on what went wrong, he had changed his mind throughout 1587 as the difficulties of a new expedition increased, and it became necessary to support White’s stranded colony – with A briefe and true report.29 We must therefore distinguish two separate products, the album produced by White for Raleigh, probably for circulation within the court (also involving, perhaps, a limited promotional aim), and the text published by Harriot in 1588, which was more selective in the presentation of the materials because it developed a particular rhetoric for a particular debate about the costs and benefits of colonization in Virginia. By the time Hakluyt and de Bry conceived a third product, the publication of 1590, they re-used preexisting materials, with their slightly different emphases, which means that two different rhetorical strategies, and indeed two titles, co-exist under the same covers – in effect making a composite work. What connected the two sections was of course that both

Text, Images, and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in Early Modern Europe authors worked together with the publisher and the facilitator. The Christian Protestant theme evident in the iconography of the frontispiece and throughout the various texts (including de Bry’s preface to The True Pictures, and the accompanying image of Adam and Eve), provided a sense of unity. It is tempting to imagine that in late 1588 or early 1589 the four men sat together in London to discuss the project. If that was the case, it remains puzzling that in his prefatory words de Bry made a number of errors that Hakluyt subsequently corrected in the English version of the publication, including the idea that Hakluyt himself had been to Virginia. What seems more certain is that it was through Hakluyt that de Bry met White and obtained Harriot’s material. Hakluyt’s role is therefore crucial, as he suggested publication to de Bry, helped him acquire a set of pictures from White and translated captions for The True Pictures from Latin into English. The most mysterious issue concerns the production of the captions to The True Pictures. That they were written in Latin (a language de Bry could read) is implied by the fact that Hakluyt translated them into English. What adds to the confusion is that Harriot’s name is not mentioned by de Bry in the prefatory material to The True Pictures, while in his dedication to Raleigh he almost suggests that he has personally added the captions. It is however impossible to imagine that de Bry, or Hakluyt, wrote the captions by simply interpreting the pictures, because many of the descriptions – from the first one concerning the arrival of the Englishmen in Virginia – include a number of first-person statements that make it clear that the writer was one of the travellers. Consider for example plate VIII (concerning the lady of Pomeiooc and her daughter), ‘the puppets and babes which we brought out of England’; plate XVII (concerning their manner of praying with rattles about the fire) ‘as myself observed and noted down at my being among them’, and plates IV, XIV and XIX, which include specific comparisons that make it clear that the writer had seen the women and towns of Florida, and had observed their methods for making fire. As is known, a Florida man and woman were also drawn by White in one of his albums.30 In general, the captions include numerous details not obvious from the drawings alone, and while de Bry might have tampered with them, he certainly worked from a source. White must have produced in 1585 or 1586 various albums for Raleigh and his other patrons, probably very similar to the British Museum’s set of watercolours, which is obviously also extremely close to the set used by de Bry in 1589. These albums included brief captions in English that are similar to, but far less elaborate than, the captions published by de Bry. Close attention to the captions of The True Pictures suggests that they were written specifically for de Bry’s publication after A briefe and true report had already been published (rather than earlier, to accompany the first watercolour albums), probably towards the end of 1588 or early 1589, when de Bry was in England and John White was waiting for an opportunity to return to Roanoke. (In 1587, White had left there a small colony that included his daughter, but the threat of the Spanish Armada prevented him from leading a rescue expedition in 1588.) Although it would be tempting to consider the hypothesis that White intervened in the composition of the captions, one detail suggests that they were actually written by Harriot. In plate XVI, the image of a couple eating, the writer refers to his own description of maize in A briefe and true report, that is,

‘maize sodden in such sorte as I described in the former treatise’. As David Quinn once observed, this is Hakluyt’s English version, the Latin actually reads ‘eo quo superiore scripsimodo’, that is, ‘as I wrote above’. So Hakluyt is the one who unambiguously declares Harriot’s authorship.31 Did Harriot possess his own album from as early as 1585, with his own separate notes? It seems likely that Harriot (still under Raleigh’s patronage) worked in close contact with John White, not only in Virginia in 1585, but also in London in 1588–9 to prepare the captions, although at some points he relied on his memory. This is suggested by those descriptions that interpret the composite bird’s-eye view of the town of Secotan by a system of letters, and also by the inclusion of the images of the ancient Picts and Britons, which de Bry attributed directly to White’s research, making Harriot’s intervention secondary. (I am not convinced with Paul Hulton that Jacques Le Moyne was the author, and that de Bry made a mistake.)32 In general, the extended captions describe the images very closely, and thus follow White’s thematic logic of a systematic ethnography understood as part of natural history. When the captions were written, the propaganda constraints were less rigid than in 1587–8, and new themes could emerge. However, a vaguely Protestant religious theme functioned as a kind of ideological glue for the 1590 composite publication. In addition, the crucial theme of the capacity for civilization of the natives remained a common thread between the two parts of the work, although with two distinct emphases. First, the native capacity for civility in A briefe and true report is part of a Machiavellian discourse of love and fear (they will love us because they fear us), but also of profit through empire (we will dominate this fertile land and this capable but technologically backward people). The True Pictures focuses instead on a minimalist but positive image of social and economic life (the savages have the basics of civilization), with the addition of Stoic primitivism (they are happy and healthy because uncorrupted). The Europeans are absent here, and no references are made to violence. In relation to this ‘Stoic primitivism’, let me clarify that Harriot and White participate in a humanist paradigm that was generally influential across the European republic of letters (from as early as the generation of Peter Martyr and Polydore Vergil), and which of course included the contemporary work on Roman Britain by the antiquarian William Camden.33 It is also reflected in the essays of Montaigne. This paradigm made the juxtaposition of the ancient primitive and the exotic savage, so powerfully illustrated by Theodor de Bry’s volumes, almost inevitable. It consisted of not simply assuming the superiority of civilized Europe, but also of expressing a nostalgia for the virtues of simplicity, austerity, courage, freedom and lack of greed of a less corrupt, healthier, more natural lifestyle. This tragic vision was clearly modelled on those Roman sources, from Ovid to Seneca and Tacitus, that expressed nostalgia for the virtues of a primitive condition, and which inspired humanist writers. At its most extreme, the paradigm referred to the myth of the golden age, when the lack of private property made justice reign without the need for laws and rulers. What is crucial is that this nostalgia did not imply a rejection of civilization, but was almost invariably accompanied with a positive celebration of the process of civilization, with the growth of cities, roads, laws, trade and learning (to which, in European Visions: American Voices | 127

Rubiés

Figure 6 Dance scene, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.10)

the European context, true religion was only the corollary). Rather, what this paradigm highlighted was that the transition from barbarism to civilization (and the static dichotomy barbarian-civilized was here effectively replaced by a historical perspective) was not one of absolute gains, but instead one of tragic loss in the context of obvious gains; that is, the gains were quite impossible to renounce, however tainted by moral decline. There was no turning back. Encounters with native Americans – very clearly in the case of Jean de Léry – brought alive this sense of the virtues of the savage, not simply reflecting an Old World theme, but dynamically intersecting with a fresh antiquarian approach to Europe’s own barbarian past. In contrast with this relatively positive interpretation of the healthy lifestyle of the Indians, in the extended captions the religious theme is present in particularly negative terms, almost as a necessary counterpoint to the idealization of the natural life. The emphasis on devils and idols (the conjurer who speaks with devils in plate XI, also the observation in plate XXI that they have no other knowledge of God than their idols) is all less accommodating than the Deistic emphasis of A briefe and true report, which Christianized native beliefs about a supreme God and immortal human souls, and which had described the image of Kiwasa more neutrally, without using the term ‘idolatry’ (particularly abhorred by Calvinists). In effect, the captions increased the religious distance between the English and the Algonquian Indians. These are however subtle differences, and must not be interpreted as a contradiction. As de Bry’s preface suggests, the Stoic theme of natural primitivism did not seek to question the fallen condition of mankind into idolatry. Even if different texts by Harriot displayed different rhetorical emphases, they all assumed that the natives are ingenuous, economically effective, well organized and thus capable of civilization and possibly Christianization. The heart of the difference was that A briefe and true report was more limited in scope and concentrated on the key conclusions that the English needed to reach in their dealings with the natives, namely that they were not to be feared, and that there existed a sufficient basis for bringing them to Civilization and Christianization. The natural-scientific mode of The True Pictures by contrast was more positive towards the virtues and happiness of a primitive, austere and uncorrupted life, while (almost as a necessary balance) possibly more emphatic about the distance between 128 | European Visions: American Voices

Figure 7 Their dances which they use at their high feasts, Theodor de Bry, in A brief and true report, Frankfurt 1590 (© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, c.38.i.18)

native idolatry and true religion. While A briefe and true report’s language was at heart Machiavellian, The True Pictures was more clearly imbued with a combination of Stoic and Protestant-Augustinian themes. If in the White-Harriot corpus the relation between texts and images reveals a complex interaction, with various stages of production before publication, when considering the transition from picture to engraving the key point is surely the extent to which de Bry was faithful to both the images he had been given, and to the text that it was meant to illustrate. The changes he introduced have often been commented on, for example the classicizing influence, which led to the rigid, statuesque muscularity of the engraved images, or their more conventional gestures. The dance scene, for example, reveals de Bry’s attempts to reproduce White’s wild gestures, but also his failure to interpret the status of the three young women in the centre (Figs 6–7). Consider also the mother with girl holding a European doll, where the scene loses a great deal of naturality and gracefulness as the girl is pictured too big and too muscular, and is placed farther away from her mother, while the mother herself (the wife of the werowance of Pomeiooc) slightly changes the position of her legs, and adopts an indirect and vacuous gaze (Figs 8–9). One further change is the substitution of the girl’s gesture of showing her (supposedly European) necklace to her mother with her right hand, for one of her holding an additional European toy with it, an alteration possibly caused by de Bry’s seeking a more clear visual message. Here the key theme seems to be that the natives can become civilized, symbolized by the child’s adoption of European toys, in particular a fully dressed doll – a possible future for the chief’s daughter.34 All these changes can be judged to be relatively minor, although they are not to be dismissed. It was inevitable that some information would be lost, since de Bry had not seen the Algonquian peoples portrayed by the artist – he lacked John White’s mental images – and therefore could not judge the relative accuracy of the native facial features and gestures that White had attempted to capture. He might not have even been in a position to appreciate the importance of those details.

Text, Images, and the Perception of ‘Savages’ in Early Modern Europe Figure 8 Wife of the werowance of Pomeiooc with girl, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.13)

Figure 9 A chief lady of Pomeioc, Theodor de Bry, in Brief and True Report, Frankfurt 1590 ((© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved, G.7100) c.38.i.18)

Many of his alterations, however, respond to other factors, in particular to the conventions of how to represent human figures in the new medium of copper engravings, which explains their classicizing proportions, and perhaps to stricter rules of decorum when offering naked backs. (White’s aprons seem to leave the back uncovered, unless we believe that in the version of the album that he gave to de Bry, the aprons also covered the back, as suggested in the variants of the Sloane manuscript.) We can also detect de Bry’s desire to offer additional information and possibly a fuller sense of a pictorial representation by adding details (often taken from White’s other studies) in the background, creating synthetic scenes, inevitably idealized, of the natural landscape of Virginia, where White probably only had figures of people or animals. I do not think that White prepared the backgrounds himself, as his albums clearly differentiate a few general views (the native villages of Pomeiooc and Secotan, and a fishing scene) from the more abundant figures of decontextualized individuals or small groups engaged in particular activities. De Bry, probably driven by commercial considerations, thus innovated in the direction of the pictorial tradition, perhaps influenced by the famous series of ‘Theatres of the Cities of the World’ by Braun and Hogenberg (Civitates Orbes Terrarum, 1572). However, White’s figures are not free from artistic conventions; for example, they seem inspired by the then emerging genre of ‘Books of Habits and Customs’ often linked to travellers’ ethnographies, as represented by Abraham de Bruyn’s Omnius Pene Europae, Asiae, Aphricae atque Americae gentium habitus (Antwerp, 1581), or previously by Nicolas de Nicolay’s Navigations et Peregrinations Orientales (Lyon, 1567). Therefore, the opposition of the naturalistic White to the classicizing de Bry needs to be relativized in the sense that White also followed some artistic conventions, and that de Bry shared White’s desire for an accurate portrayal of savages in their natural state. As far as he was concerned, he was being very faithful to the drawings. As far as White was concerned, his drawings were very faithful to the native realities he sought to portray. Despite the fact that early-modern representations often stereotyped and manipulated the complex reality of native peoples, or offered highly selective views, it remains important to recognize the commitment to empirical truth that lies behind emblematic productions of exceptional travel

writers like Jean de Léry, or exceptional artists like John White. Notes

1

A more extended discussion of the issues discussed in the first half of this article has appeared in Spanish as ‘Imagen mental e imagen artística en la representación de pueblos no europeos. Salvajes y civilizados, 1500–1650’, La Historia imaginada. Construcciones visuales del pasado en la Edad Moderna, J.L. Palos, and D. Carrió-Invernizzi, eds, Madrid, 2008, 327–57. 2 Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, translated and introduction by Janet Whatley, Berkeley, 1990, 62. I have compared Whatley’s translation with the French original and introduced small modifications; Histoire d’un Voyage en Terre de Brésil, F. Lestringant, ed., Paris, 1994, 227. 3 Léry’s attitude is revealed by the note in the first edition of 1578 (Histoire, 93), where for the following editions he promised more illustrations not only of natives and their customs, but also of flora and fauna, all for the sake of making familiar what was unique or different in the New World. This iconographic programme places Léry close to a natural historian comparable to the Spanish Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. In 1580, however, he noted sadly that the Geneva printer (Antoine Chupin) was not willing to incur the additional cost of making new woodcuts – in fact, this second edition included instead three additional scenes of little value pirated from Thevet’s Singularitez de la France Antarctique (1557). 4 As argued in my ‘New Worlds and Renaissance Ethnology’, History and Anthropology IV, 1993, 157–97, now reprinted in Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology, Ashgate: Variorum, 2007, II. 5 Léry, supra n. 2, History, 158. 6 Ibid, 150. 7 The True Pictures and Fashions, 1590, Plate XIII, ‘Their manner of fishing in Virginia’. I have modernized the spellings of this and other quotations from Hakluyt’s English translations of the captions, and from Harriot’s report. 8 By contrast, Léry was not included in Hakluyt’s list of travellers and cosmographers composed in 1582. See E.G.R. Taylor, The Original Writings & Correspondence of the two Richard Hakluyts, London, 1933, 171–2. 9 Although at some point Hakluyt acquired a copy of the narrative, and he must have been interested, there is a striking lack of references to Léry’s Histoire d’un voyage or to Brazil more generally in his extant writings, in contrast to, for example, the powerful presence of Giovanni Battista Ramusio as a model for his travel collection, or the immediate attention that he paid to the account of the French colony in Florida by Renée Laudonnière. For a recent discussion of Hakluyt’s various interests see P. Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America, New Haven and London, 2007, noting for example (p. 80) his plan to colonize the island of Saint Vincent off Brazil c. 1579. Page 121 discusses Hakluyt’s shifting relationship to Thevet.


Rubiés 10 K. Andrews, ‘Latin America’, in D.B. Quinn, ed., The Hakluyt Handbook, 2 vols, London, 1974, 236. 11 As has recently been argued, the attribution of the Sloane album to White can be questioned. See K. Sloan, ed., A New World: England’s first view of America, London, 2007, 224–4. I believe nevertheless that White’s authorship of at least the oldest drawings of this album remains likely, since it was acquired from his descendants, and that we have in effect two versions of the artist’s material: one, a monographic Virginia album, drawn for a patron (the BM album, very similar to a third album that must have been produced for de Bry), and the other (the Sloane album), more eclectic, kept for the artist’s own use. For an earlier discussion see P. Hulton and D.B. Quinn, The American Drawings of John White, London, 1964. The recent catalogue reproduces the five watercolours (see Sloan, A New World, 226), but the assumption in the comment (p. 227) that Léry worked from Thevet’s images and adapted them must be questioned as far as these five images are concerned. 12 For Léry’s invective against Thevet see the ‘preface’ to his Histoire d’un voyage en la terre du Brésil, according to the 2nd edition of 1580, F. Lestringant, ed., Paris, 1994, 61–99. 13 For a critical reassessment of this colonialist perspective see F. Barker, P. Hulme and M. Iversen, eds., Cannibalism and the Colonial World, Cambridge, 1998. 14 D.B. Quinn, ‘New geographical horizons: Literature’, in F. Chiappelli, ed., First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, Los Angeles, 1974, 636. Here Quinn seems influenced by John Elliott’s classic discussion The Old World and the New 1491–1650, Cambridge, 1970, 21. 15 A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World, London and New Haven, 1993, 23, 43. 16 For a discussion of Vespucci’s letters with a reliable text see L. Formisano, Lettere di Viaggio, Milan, 1985. 17 B. Schmidt, Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, New York, 2001, 56. 18 There was of course one significant Spanish precedent, the drawings by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo to his Historia General y Natural de las Indias. Unfortunately, the illustrations printed in 1535 (to accompany the first part of the work) were relatively few and had been conceived in abstract terms as a mere support for the text. 19 F. del Pino Díaz, ‘Texto y dibujo. La Historia Indiana del Jesuita Acosta y sus versions alemanas con dibujos’, Jahrbuch für geschichte Lateinamerikas, 42, 2005, 1–31, who notes that de Bry omitted the name of Acosta but otherwise his iconography followed the Jesuit’s text faithfully. 20 Harriot mentioned a ‘larger discourse’ various times in A briefe and true report, for example when introducing the ethnographic section (p. 24), and again in the epilogue (32–3), where it is made explicit that a more extensive account was already written and included a chronicle of the affairs of the colony. This chronicle must be distinguished from the illustrated natural history project, which included things like the native names and drawings of American fauna, and was still ongoing (p. 20). Within the late humanist paradigm, colonial (or imperial) history and natural history were usually considered as complementary. As for the loss of papers, Ralph Lane explained how when leaving Roanoke Island in a rush, the sailors cast overboard all the maps and writings of the expedition. See D.B. Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages 1584–1590, London, 1955, 293. Although Quinn believed this was an exaggeration, in his analysis (ibid., 54) he also reached the opinion that A briefe and true report was an extract from a wider natural history project. For a synthesis of Quinn’s views see his ‘Harriot and the Problem of America’, in R. Fox, ed., Thomas Harriot: An Elizabethan Man of Science, Ashgate, 2000, 9–27. 21 Harriot’s status came from his university education, but it is not clear that we should assume his seniority over White (as suggested by Quinn). A partnership between scholar and painter seems more likely, as White, about 20 years older, was no mere technician, and after all he would next sail as Governor. Both can be described as men with specialized skills and a relatively high status at the service of an entrepreneurial courtier, Raleigh. 22 See the introduction by Florike Egmond and papers by Deborah Harkness and Karen Reeds in this collection. 23 A similar breadth applies to Spanish natural histories of the New World, from Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo to Francisco Hernández. See Florike Egmond’s introduction in this collection. 24 See Michael Gaudio’s paper in this collection.


25 See papers by Stephen Clucas and Ernst van den Boogaart in this collection. 26 That is, we should not read Harriot’s account as a cold, detached assessment of the proclivities of the Algonquian Indians, however much he actually had learnt about them, but as a piece of propaganda, one that may or may not have agreed with his private beliefs. As the confusion about his own religious views testifies, what Harriot said in private and what he publicized when working for a patron could be quite different. When considering A briefe and true report as evidence we must therefore keep in mind that a public tract, and in particular a promotional tract, could not fail to be orthodox in its basic theology. His vision of the religion of Roanoke cannot therefore be taken as a ‘window into his religious sensibility’ as proposed by Scott Mandelbrote, and in particular not as an image of ‘the pristine faith and practice of a prelapsarian world’ (‘The Religion of Thomas Harriot’, in Fox, supra n. 20, 271). Harriot’s natives were clearly people who had fallen into idolatry, according to a Protestant theology of salvation. The evidence suggests that Harriot was a man interested in heterodox religious views, and who subjected faith to rational scrutiny (through scepticism) in the 1590s, but not necessarily an atheist. 27 For the importance of classical deliberative rhetoric in English promotional literature see A. Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonization 1500–1626, Cambridge, 2003, 102–7. 28 In the aftermath of the failure of the 1585–6 expedition, Hakluyt reasserted his arguments for the colonization of Virginia in his Latin preface to a fresh edition of Peter Martyr’s decades, dated February 1587 and dedicated to Raleigh, and later the same year in the preface to the English translation of Laudonnière. See Taylor, supra n. 8, 39–41. 29 At the end of the dedicatory epistle prefacing Laudonnière’s account of Florida, published in 1587, Hakluyt suggests that he had been urging Raleigh to ‘suffer’ Harriot to publish his account of Virginia. Towards the end of A briefe and true report, as subsequently published, Harriot referred to the fact that his detailed chronicle of the colony should be publicized ‘when time shall be thought convenient’. Alas, that time never came. 30 It has always been assumed that these images were based on drawings by Le Moyne (recorded in 1564) that White saw in London. Comparisons in the captions (for example, on the length of women’s nails, or the quality of the fortifications) might have been based on a close study of those drawings in the late 1580s, when Hakluyt and then de Bry had access to both sets. However, the engravings that de Bry eventually printed based on Le Moyne’s paintings are sufficiently different on a number of details from John White’s two watercolours (consider the tattoos), to raise the question of whether an independent act of observation could have taken place, possibly as the Tyger sailed north from the Bahamas in May and June 1585. (White’s map of the journey records many locations in Florida, mostly in French but also giving native names.) The recurrence of comparisons with the Florida Indians in the captions is certainly striking. 31 Elsewhere in plate XIII (on their manner of fishing), but less decisively, a reference is also made to the earlier discussion of the savages’ limited knowledge of God, implying that the writer of the captions had A briefe and true report in mind. There are also some intriguing differences between Harriot’s extended captions and those found in the BM album, presumably by White. Hence, Harriot’s conjurer is called ‘The flyer’ in White’s album; more puzzling, the young woman described as ‘one of the wyves of Wyngyno’ by the artist, becomes ‘a younge gentill woeman doughter of Secota’ in de Bry (who shows the image in reverse and with a back section), with a decorous caption that talks about the modesty of virgins of good parentage who cover their breasts. An additional difference is that this same caption makes explicit that the deerskin worn around the middle covered the back as well as the front, while White’s BM watercolour suggests otherwise (and the same things happen with the image of a chief Herowan of Roanoke). It seems likely that these two captions were not written from direct notes, and were done quite arbitrarily from memory. 32 P. Hulton, America 1585: The complete drawings of John White, Chapel Hill and London, 1984. 33 See Sam Smiles’ paper in this collection. 34 In addition, de Bry seems to have over-interpreted the gesture of the mother pointing down with her finger.

Past, Present and Future: Exploring and Restoring Native Perspectives on Roanoke and the Chesapeake Audrey Horning

The seeds of racial discrimination [and] separation of people crossed the ocean with the invaders... . Unfortunately, those seeds grew and infected the nation with much destruction for my people. Chief G. Anne ‘Little Fawn’ Richardson, Rappahannock Tribe.1

Introduction For historians, the words of Thomas Harriot and the watercolours of John White have long served as the principle window into native life in North Carolina as encountered by the English settlers. Their words and images, however, provide at best a brief and biased snapshot of regional native cultures, belying the complexity and the diachronic continuum of native identities. Physical data from contact-period Algonquian sites ground and complicate the portraits drawn by White and Harriot, while native understandings challenge scholarly assumptions and notions of historical ‘truth’. For example, while the fate of the lost Roanoke settlers may remain a mystery to scholars, there is no lack of certainty for members of North Carolina’s state-recognized tribal groups. They know that the colonists were absorbed into native society by their ancestors, as noted by Christopher Oakley: ‘every Indian community in the state has, at one time or another claimed a relationship to the ill-fated settlement’.2 Reliance on the documentary and pictorial record over alternative historical sources and narratives impedes the aim of moving beyond European visions to acknowledging the cacophony of past and present American voices. For a more complete understanding of the meaning and ongoing significance of the John White watercolours to emerge, the contributions of archaeology and the voices of the descendant communities must be taken into consideration. This discussion therefore prioritizes consideration of the tangible physical evidence about 16thcentury native life and addresses the more intangible complexities of contemporary native identities and their connections with the past. On the eve of colonization Evidence from Late Woodland and protohistoric period sites (the Late Woodland phase in eastern North America prehistory is generally dated from c. 900 until c.1500, the protohistoric from 1500–1607) in the wider Roanoke region reflect and complicate the White illustrations and the texts of Harriot and later Virginia commentators including John Smith, Henry Spelman and William Strachey (Fig. 1). These commentators agree on the presence of highly stratified native societies, dependent on horticulture, and by the 1580s, well accustomed to European contacts. In general, Algonquian-speaking polities in the North Carolina and Virginia coastal plain shared a similar settlement pattern that included intensive use of fertile soils alongside navigable rivers in inland areas, and intensive use of the sandy loam uplands in the outer coastal plain.

Primary native settlements were centred around towns, some occupied seasonally and others on a year-round basis, supported by a range of seasonal resource-collection sites. The towns themselves were often highly dispersed. It is worth noting that while the size of these settlements clearly varied from what might traditionally be termed hamlets and villages to larger towns, some of today’s Virginia Indians prefer that the settlements of their ancestors be referred to as towns, as expressed in a statement issued by the former chair of the Virginia Council on Indians in 2006: ‘Terms like “village” or “hamlet” consistently applied to Native American communities imply that our towns were primitive or quaint.’3 One can also extrapolate Native settlement patterns from looking at subsequent English settlement, as places described as ‘Indian Fields’ in Virginia and North Carolina were routinely acquired and planted with colonists in the 17th century. This pattern continued in Maryland, with the establishment of the principal settlement, St Mary’s City, atop a native town.4 By contrast, the lack of any native settlement on what became known as Jamestown Island doubtless served as an encouragement to the English settlers in 1607. Although the settlers’ decision to make their permanent base on the swampy Jamestown Island has often been derided, the site was defensible from Spanish attack through its position on the James River, as well as being uninhabited. Recent finds of Late Woodland materials underlying James Fort period deposits, including a nearly complete Townsend cooking pot, suggest that the island had not been long abandoned before English arrival.5 The likelihood of a cleared and open landscape on the

Figure 1 Location of sites discussed in this chapter


Horning island must have enhanced the appeal of the site for the English. Another possibility is that Jamestown Island, like Roanoke, was only being used on a seasonal basis. Happening on both locales when they were temporarily uninhabited, the English settlers presumed a lack of occupation and hence ownership, as they would have understood it. By the time of the arrival of the English at Jamestown in 1607, native society in the Virginia coastal plain was organized as a paramount chiefdom, with Chief Powhatan, or Wahunsenacawh, exerting leadership over 32 individual polities in a territory encompassing more than 6,500 square miles from northern North Carolina, to the Eastern Shore, as far north as the Potomac River and as far west as the fall line, marking the transition between the coastal plain and the Piedmont region.6 Ethnohistoric accounts suggest that this polity was known as Tsenacommacah to its members, and in anthropological terms, represented an unequal stratified society or complex stateless society. Population estimates for Tsenacommacah range from 13,000 to 22,000 at the time of English arrival, figures that may or may not reflect population densities before the effects of European exploration began to be felt. Despite the richness of the ethnohistoric data in describing the social complexity of the Powhatan world, until recently little had been revealed archaeologically to support the long-term presence of a paramount chiefdom in the Coastal Plain region.7 Most scholars therefore argued for the relative newness of Tsenacommacah as a polity encouraged and established by Wahunsenacawh himself, with European contact possibly serving as a catalyst through encouraging regional alliances and providing a new set of prestige goods.8 However, recent archaeological research in Virginia is beginning to de-centre European influences on native social complexity by revealing indigenous societal change occurring in the centuries preceding European expansion.9 Before considering this evidence, it should be noted that the following discussion of the Virginia coastal plain is not intended to imply that the Virginia Powhatan case can adequately stand for that of the Weapomeoc, Chowanoke, Secotan, Roanoke, Croatoan, and other documented North Carolina Algonquian-speaking peoples, believed to have been organized into about nine separate polities.10 Nor does it imply that we can uncritically read the John White watercolours as readily applicable to the protohistoric Chesapeake societies. There was undoubtedly a range of recognizable differences between all of the Algonquian-speaking peoples who once occupied the region that we now divide between Virginia and North Carolina, even though those differences are as yet poorly understood. Direct contact between Europeans and the Indians living in the eastern North Carolina and Virginia region is usually traced to the mid-16th century, when a Spanish Jesuit mission was established on the York River during the period 1570–2. However, Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese vessels began extensively plying the waters of the Atlantic and the eastern coast of North America from the late 15th century, precipitating the first regional contacts between Europeans and natives.11 The effects of Spanish colonization were probably felt not long after Juan Ponce de León’s 1513 landing on the coast of Florida, while Hernando de Soto’s 1539–43 brutal westward expedition has been linked to major 132 |European Visions: American Voices

alterations in the social structure of a number of southeastern Indian tribes. De Soto’s mission has been described as a ‘biological wrecking ball’, although it should be pointed out that this assertion is not supported by known mortuary evidence.12 Spanish reports from the establishment of the York River mission refer to famine and death experienced by local native communities.13 Their observation can be linked not to the impact of European disease, but to the existence of a protracted drought revealed by dendrochronological analysis of bald cypress trees along the Blackwater and Nottoway rivers. Tree-ring data indicate that rainfall during the growing season was well below average between 1562 and 1571. Periods of extreme drought were also identified for the years 1587–9, corresponding to the struggles of the Roanoke colony, and between 1607–12, relating to the so-called ‘Starving Time’ at Jamestown.14 Arguably, the continued willingness of scholars today to uncritically accept the notion that European diseases rapidly decimated native societies constitutes an a priori denial of native contributions to post-contact American society, as well as continuity in native identities. Like so many other aspects of scholarship on the contact period, the issue of biological impact has reverberations in the present. Excavations at Werowocomoco, the seat of the Powhatan mamanatowick (paramount chief) and the setting for John Smith’s tale of his dramatic rescue by Wahunsenacawh’s daughter Pocahontas (which, if it actually occurred, was almost undoubtedly an adoption ritual rather than rescue)15 are providing the most complete and convincing evidence for the existence of a complex, stratified society in the region well before the arrival of Europeans. Located on Purtan Bay on the York River, the site was visited by the English six times between 1607 and 1609, when Wahunsenacawh left the village and headed inland to the town of Orapaks, near present-day Richmond. As described by John Smith, the chief’s house was spatially separated from the principal village, which housed a population of around 133 to 200 persons. The discovery of two parallel ditch features running for at least 210m and separating the riverside from an area of higher ground are believed to relate to above-ground earthworks. The dates for the Werowocomoco ditches, derived from radiocarbon as well as artefact types, indicate continued use from the 13th century into the 17th century. Powhatan’s house was likely on the rise east of the ditches, separate from the village site itself and on higher ground. The symbolism of this placement would have been readily understood not only by members of Tsenacommacah, but also by the English. Social and political hierarchy expressed through architecture and landscape was well established in the cultural grammar of late-medieval England. The character of the site as encountered by the English appears to have great time depth, thus the cultural complexity of protohistoric Tsenacommacah cannot be read as a response to European incursions. Werowocomoco was clearly a dominant centre of spiritual and political power in the past. In the present, as noted by the Werowocomoco Research Group (which includes Powhatan descendants), ‘the site also encompasses a historical setting that, for contemporary Virginia Indian communities, is charged with political authority and sacred power’.16 Turning back to the White watercolours from North Carolina, similar manipulations of landscape can be intuited from the careful

Past, Present and Future spatial separation of activity areas evident in the painting of Secotan, while the double-palisaded entry depicted by White for Pomeiooc could be understood as directing the path of those entering the village (Figs 2–3). Documentary and archaeological sources indicate that native Algonquian towns in North Carolina incorporated a range of 10 to 30 houses, with populations of 120 to 200 persons, dependent in part on maize cultivation.17 While more contact-period Algonquian sites have been examined in Virginia than in eastern North Carolina, there are several important excavations that are adding to understanding of native life in the Roanoke region. One example is the Amity site (31HY43), located in Hyde County.18 Scatters of Colingtonphase ceramics (associated with Algonquian settlements, dated c. 800–1650) in association with European goods initially supported the possibility that the Amity site was the contactperiod village of Pomeiooc.19 Further excavation unearthed evidence for a palisade as well as two houses, measuring 46ft by 21ft (14.02m by 6.40m) and 30ft by 20ft (9.14m by 6.09m). While the site was ultimately dated to the mid-17th century, its physical characteristics appear rooted in the Late Woodland period, complementing the White depictions and suggesting post-contact cultural continuity. The archaeological traces of the houses, or yahecans, present within the Amity site and other Algonquian villages differ from their depiction by John White. While White portrays the longhouses as rectangles with flat faces, their archaeological signature shows the structures to be subrectangular or oval in shape. Marked by patterns of post moulds, the soil stains from where thin structural posts (usually bent saplings) intruded into the ground, the structures vary in size and in the presence of internal divisions. One of the Amity houses included post-mould evidence suggestive of the presence of benches, presumably for sleeping, sitting, and storage, placed along the long walls of the dwelling.20 Experimental archaeology indicates that the houses, built by lashing together bent saplings, are self-supporting and thus may need to be of this rounded shape for stability.21 Thomas Harriot described the houses as ‘made of small poles made fast

at the tops’ and constructed ‘in rounde forme after the maner as is used in many arbories in our gardens of England’.22 White also alludes to this construction technique in describing the Pomeiooc buildings as ‘all compassed about with smale poles stock thick together in stedd of a wall’, yet deviates from a more accurate depiction through showing the structures with flat faces and angled corners. Arguably, by giving the houses corners, White is to some degree anglicizing them – making them appear familiar as dwellings and in so doing, urging his audience to regard their occupants as ‘familiar’ (Fig. 4). While White may have anglicized elliptical native houses in northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, it is worth noting that Late Woodland-period rectangular structures have been unearthed in Carteret and Onslow counties, North Carolina. The Shelly Point site (31CR53) includes traces of a rectangular structure, while a site on Cape Island in Onslow County also exhibits a rectangular postmould pattern.23 Excavations at the Broad Reach site (31CR281) unearthed post-mould patterns for dozens of structures exhibiting a complex array of architectural forms ranging from rectangular to oval to completely round. The archaeological and ethnohistoric data on these southern North Carolina coastal sites indicate cultural dynamism, with no clear consensus among scholars as to whether the inhabitants were Algonquian, Siouan or Iroquoian. The rectangular houses may be hinting at significant cultural differences between these groups and those in the Roanoke region. Alternatively, John White may have been extrapolating from one of possibly many house types encountered in the Carolina Algonquin heartland, or as suggested, merely translating the shape for English eyes. While the Amity site was later interpreted as a 17th-century seasonal settlement, the presence of a stockade supports the White painting and other ethnohistoric descriptions of Algonquian towns. For example, the early 18th-century commentator Robert Beverley observed of the Virginia natives: Their Fortifications consist only of a Palisado, of about ten or twelve foot high; and when they would make themselves very safe, they treble the Pale. They often encompass their whole Town: But for the most part only their Kings Houses, and as many others as they judge sufficient to harbour all their People, when an Enemy

Figure 2 (left)Secotan, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.7)

Figure 3 (right) Pomeiooc, John White (BM 1906,0509.1.8)


Horning comes against them. They never fail to secure within their Palisado, all their Religious Reliques, and the Remains of their Princes. Within this Inclosure, they likewise take care to have a supply of Water, and to make a place for a Fire, which they frequently dance round with great solemnity.24

The function of the Amity stockade, only 16m in diameter, may have served as an occasional retreat, as suggested by the Beverley description. Another possible function for the palisades may be protection against predators.25 Alternatively, the spatial separation provided by the palisade may have related to social status or spiritual beliefs. For example, a small palisade at the Patawomeke site, a protohistoric village on the Potomac River in northern Virginia, enclosed two ossuaries and a small possible mortuary structure.26 The more sizable defensive features depicted by White and revealed archaeologically at a range of Virginia sites may have become a necessity because of increasing European contacts or because of occasional conflict between native polities. Algonquian villages in the North Carolina coastal region were threatened by the aggressiveness of the expanding Powhatan paramount chiefdom to the north, as well as by sporadic conflict with Siouan and Iroquoian groups immediately to the west. Protohistoric Siouan-speaking groups in the North Carolina region include the Monacans and Manahoacs, while Iroquoian-speaking peoples include the Tuscarora, Meherrin, and Nottoway. Certainly the Chesapeack Indians had good reason to palisade their principal town. The Chesapeack homeland was located close to what are now the boundaries of Virginia and North Carolina. Unusually for the Virginia coastal region, the Chesapeacks resisted incorporation into the Powhatan paramount chiefdom, but paid dearly for their resistance. The Chesapeack people were reportedly wiped out

by Powhatan forces in 1607, around the time of the Jamestown settlement. Excavations in the 1980s on the west bank of Broad Bay near Lynnhaven Inlet, within the city of Virginia Beach, unearthed the most likely candidate for the principal Chesapeack settlement. Designated 44VB7 and known as the Great Neck site, excavations revealed the presence of a timber palisade, dwellings, and burials.27 Like White’s painting of Pomieooc, the longhouses at Great Neck were situated parallel to the principal palisade. Like the Amity site structures, the longhouses were subrectangular to oval in shape, rather than rectangular. Visits by Ralph Lane and by Thomas Harriot with the Chesapeack people are well documented. The positive relations between the Chesapeacks and the English, to the extent that White was intent on settling in their territory in 1586, have led to speculation about their role in the fate of the ‘Lost Colony’. Research by David Beers Quinn suggested that the survivors moved closer to the Chesapeake, affiliating themselves with the Chesapeacks. Alden Vaughan has further asserted that the lost colonists ‘melded during the next two decades with neighboring natives to produce, to some extent, an ethnically and culturally mixed society’,28 although it should be noted that there is no undisputed documentary or archaeological evidence to ground this possibility. Whatever the character of relations between the Chesapeack people and the lost colonists, the Chesapeacks must have been well aware of the dangers of opposing the Powhatan polity, as underscored by the archaeological evidence for the incorporation of defensive elements into the town at Great Neck. Virginia’s palisaded native sites are all located in zones of potential conflict, often near the boundaries of the Powhatan sphere of influence.29 Patawomeke, for example, was on the northerly edge of the

Figure 4 Postmould patterns from the Algonquian Paspahegh site, Virginia (James River Archaeology)


Past, Present and Future Powhatan world, and most likely populated by recent emigrants to the region, while the Buck site in Charles City County was associated with the Chickahominy, a polity physically located in the Powhatan heartland that nevertheless successfully resisted incorporation.30 Returning to North Carolina, archaeological projects searching for the principal settlement of the Croatoan have concentrated on a range of prehistoric and 17th-century deposits at the native Cape Creek site in Buxton, on Hatteras Island.31 The site appears to have supported occupation from c. 500 into the 18th century, and may have accommodated 10 to 15 dwellings in the protohistoric period.32 Work by David Phelps at Cape Creek in the 1990s included the discovery of a 16thcentury signet ring bearing the insignia of the Kendall family. Although viewed by many as concrete evidence for the presence of Roanoke colonists at Buxton (a Kendall was part of the Lane colony), the ring itself was recovered from a mid-17thcentury context. The fact that the ring appeared to be highly curated (worn and missing much of its shank) suggests that it may have been an heirloom dating back to the Roanoke colony but passed down through Croatoan family lines.33 More important than the ring is the evidence for long-term native use of the Buxton vicinity, use that can be attributed to the historic Croatan Indians and their ancestors. Excavations in 2006 concentrated on a household midden dating to the Late Woodland period and potentially still in use in the 1580s.34 North Carolina and Virginia Algonquian sites are also often characterized by the presence of ossuaries – effectively pits filled with secondary deposits of disarticulated human remains.35 Such ossuary burials represent a common feature of Late Woodland Algonquian society up and down the East coast, as well as a powerful symbol for contestation in the present. Significant numbers of Algonquian ossuaries were excavated during the 20th century, often with little to no consideration of the concerns of Native descendant communities. Policies regarding the treatment, repatriation, and reburial of the human remains from these excavations vary from region to region, as do native attitudes towards the future of these assemblages and towards the value or sacrilege of osteoarchaeological analysis. While keeping these concerns in mind, the following discussion will nevertheless focus first upon the interpretation of ossuary evidence, considered in light of John White’s depiction of an Algonquian mortuary house and Thomas Harriot’s description of mortuary practices. Prioritizing the consideration of the evidence itself is not intended to downplay contemporary sensitivities, but rather to acknowledge that mortuary data provide an invaluable key to unlock the complexities of the past native societies that underpin contemporary native identities. The use of ossuaries by eastern Algonquian societies corresponds well with the ethnohistoric descriptions of the storage of the defleshed remains of priests, werowances, and other elite individuals in special structures as painted and described by John White: ‘the tombe of their Cherounse or cheife personages, their flesh clene taken of from the bones save the skynn and heare of theire heads, the flesh is dried and enfolded in matts laide at theire feete ...’. While White’s description has been taken to imply that the preserved remains of the priests were stored permanently in the ‘temples’,36 it is clear from burial evidence that many if not most individuals

whose remains were initially stored above ground were ultimately interred. Evidence from ossuary burials at the Patawomeke site, for example, underscore the above-ground storage of human remains before interment through the recovery of mud-dauber’s nests within excavated crania.37 Closer examination of the White depiction reveals the presence of reed chests, painted red, in the rear of the building. These chests most likely were used to store dried and disarticulated human remains before inhumation. The recovery of human bones exhibiting mat impressions and red staining from the Baum site, discussed below, confirms the detail in the White watercolour.38 Known North Carolina ossuaries include between 42 and 145 individuals. The North Carolina coastal ossuaries, like Algonquian ossuaries elsewhere, include the remains of male and female individuals of all ages.39 A radiocarbon date of 1168 retrieved from the excavation of a small ossuary at the Broad Reach site (31CR281) hints at the possibility of a long continuity in burial practice, and by extension cultural beliefs, in the coastal North Carolina region. The ossuary at Broad Reach included the remains of 10 individuals in the form of bundle burials, consistent with the storage of bones above ground in a mortuary house.40 The Broad Reach evidence has been used to interpret ‘a series of dynamic mortuary processes, whereby the remains of the deceased were physically moved through one or more treatment stages before final interment’.41 Excavations between 1972 and 1983 at the Baum Site (31CK9), located on Currituck Sound in Currituck, North Carolina, uncovered three Colington-phase ossuaries.42 Two of the ossuaries included panther bones (portions of a muzzle and claws), possibly indicating that the human remains had been wrapped in or laid out on top of panther skins within a charnel house. Panthers appear as religious symbols associated with higher status individuals in many southeastern North American cultures.43 Osteoarchaeological analysis identified one individual who was suffering from a treponemal facial infection, as indicated by the presence of healed and unhealed lesions on the cranium. Similarly, the skeletal remains of an individual excavated at the Cape Creek site (31DR1) on Hatteras Island exhibit cranial lesions as well as evidence for infection throughout much of the body. Treponemal lesions indicate the presence of syphilis, most likely the non-venereal, childhood strain known as endemic syphilis or bejel, or more commonly as yaws. Such a condition was painful and disfiguring, but not necessarily fatal. Any discussion of the significance of the pathological data gleaned from osteoarchaeological examination of Algonquian ossuaries must also consider the social context of illness and healing. For every individual that suffered from a condition quantifiable through skeletal pathology, there was a family, kin group or community that facilitated the recovery of that person. Furthermore, the burial context suggests that these individuals were not treated as social pariahs because of their evident physical problems, but rather were accorded treatment akin to non-afflicted individuals. Illness did not impact on one’s place in the social hierarchy as reflected through burial practices. Several other Late Woodland Colington-phase sites have also yielded evidence for ossuaries, including the Tillet site (31DR35) on Roanoke Island, a site on Hatteras Island (31DR38), a village site on the Chowan River (31CO5) and sites European Visions: American Voices | 135

Horning in Currituck County (31CK9) and Carteret County (31CR14).44 David Phelps has suggested that a common feature in the placement of ossuaries in Colington-phase villages is on the periphery or just outside of a village. It should also be noted that mortuary practices in the Late Woodland Algonquian societies included non-ossuary burials, as at the Tillett site on Roanoke Island, where a flexed inhumation and a secondary bundle burial were recorded.45 While John White’s watercolour of the mortuary house represents a snapshot in time in one locale, the archaeological record of sites occupied over hundreds of years reveals continuity in the practice of ossuary burial as well as variability in custom, possibly according to social status, family custom or variation over time. Complexity appears to be the hallmark of mortuary custom in eastern Virginia as well, with the suggestion that variability in practice increased during the protohistoric period. Maryland archaeologist Dennis Curry has recently summarized the excavation of nearly 40 ossuaries in Tidewater Maryland, providing a context for interpreting data from North Carolina sites. Some of the features incorporated the remains of up to 600 individuals, speaking to a considerable time depth and continuity for Late Woodland complex society. First, and concurring with the observations of Harriot and White as well as Phelps’ observations from North Carolina, the ossuaries tended to be found in association with village sites, albeit separate from habitation areas. Second, osteoarchaeological examination of the human remains highlight the commonalty of dental caries related to a diet relying on maize, as well as the common occurrence of fractured bones. As was the case at the Baum site discussed earlier, evidence for treponemal infection was in evidence in the majority of the ossuaries.46 The ossuary data from Maryland suggests a range of preinterment treatments ranging from the scaffold burial and storage in a mortuary house recorded by White and Harriot, to in-ground interment, to cremation. One site, Nanjemoy Creek ossuary 3, was situated next to the traces of a 6m-wide structure that has been interpreted as a mortuary house akin to that depicted by White. A calibrated radiocarbon date was obtained from a charcoal sample within a post mould of this structure that pinpoints its use to c. 1447.47 Ethnographic sources do not mention cremation, yet 45% of the ossuaries examined by Curry contain evidence for the burial of cremated remains, most likely wrapped in bundles akin to the burial of remains previously stored above ground. The differential treatment of human remains before their interment in an ossuary may reflect the individual’s personal status in life, further evidence that supports the stratified character of Algonquian society. What remains unanswered, however, is exactly what status is indicated by ossuary burial as opposed to primary inhumation or nonburial. Most of the ossuaries examined by Curry were excavated in the early to mid-20th century, a formative period in American archaeology when the concerns of Indian communities were rarely considered, particularly given the concomitant struggle of native people in the southeast against the legislated denial of their Indian heritage. Photographic images of the excavations reveal the casual treatment of human remains and hint at extensive loss of data. One of the few professionals involved in the Maryland ossuary excavations was the Smithsonian anthropologist T. Dale Stewart, well known for advancing 136 | European Visions: American Voices

forensic archaeology but also for filling up the museum stores with thousands of Native American skeletal remains during his tenure from 1924 until 1971. Virginia and Maryland tribal descendants cannot claim these remains under the provisions of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), first because the legislation does not apply to the Smithsonian, and second because NAGPRA claims can only be made by federally-recognized tribal communities. Although the human remains from the North Carolina ossuaries discussed above have not been reburied by contemporary Native Americans, Virginia Indian groups have been organized and vocal regarding repatriation and re-interment of affiliated human remains held by repositories other than the Smithsonian. For example, the Nansemond tribe successfully lobbied the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (VDHR) to repatriate the 64 burials unearthed at the Great Neck site, stressing the documented relations between the protohistoric Nansemond and the Chesapeack. Led by Nansemond Chief Emeritus Oliver Perry, a ceremony was held to mark reburial at First Landing/ Seashore State Park in 1997.48 Similar cooperation between state organizations and Virginia’s First People regarding repatriation and reburial is evident in the re-interment of human remains excavated at the protohistoric Paspahegh settlement of Cinquoteck, near Jamestown, and ongoing discussions over the repatriation of Chickahominy human remains uncovered during surveys along the Chickahominy River in the 1960s.49 Artefacts found in association with protohistoric burials reflect the stratified nature of Algonquian societies. The copper gorgets depicted by White have clear archaeological counterparts in the recovery of gorgets and tubular copper beads from burials. Three (one primary and two secondary) of the 21 burials excavated at the extensive Paspahegh town of Cinquoteck contained copper artefacts including tubular beads and pendants. Compositional analysis of the 31 copper objects revealed that 23 were made from European copper, possibly traded through native groups in the southeast or obtained directly from the Jamestown settlers.50 Native sources for copper include sites in central and western Virginia and the Appalachian Mountains, as well as the Great Lakes. (See Karen O. Kupperman’s paper in this collection.)The religious and social significance of copper in part dictated the relations between the eastern Algonquians and the Siouan and Iroquoian peoples who controlled the flow of copper.51 Little wonder that the availability of European copper was viewed by Wahunsenacawh as a means to further cement and expand his power base through reducing Powhatan reliance upon the Siouan Monacans and Manahoacs. New evidence from the ongoing excavations at the site of the James Fort on Jamestown Island, sponsored by the Association for the Preservation for Virginia Antiquities, highlights the initial importance of the copper trade between the English and the Powhatans.52 Long recognized as a critical element in expressions of rank in Powhatan society, copper was a preciosity underscoring Powhatan power in the Chesapeake and beyond. Most likely based on the reports of Harriot, the Jamestown colonists recognized the cultural significance of copper and came prepared to manufacture copper ornaments as well as shell beads. Waste from the production of such items has been recovered from even the earliest of deposits at

Past, Present and Future Jamestown. Indeed, the flooding of the market with English copper may have ensured the survival of the English in the early years of the colony.53 However, the influx destabilized the native trade and political order.54 The rapid devaluation of copper was noted by John Smith: ‘We gave them liberty to truck with or trade at their pleasures. But in short time, it followed, that could not be had for a pound of copper, which before was sold for an ounce. Thus ambition, and sufferance, cut the throat of our trade.’55 Smith’s observation is supported by an analysis of the copper artefacts from Jamestown and surrounding sites, conducted by Seth Mallios and Shane Emmett. They noted the rapid drop in demand for English copper following the initial flooding of the market, ‘... the devaluation of copper in Algonquian society transformed the elasticity of demand. Native demand for copper became price inelastic; it remained minimal even though supply decreased drastically.’56 The every day material culture associated with Algonquian Late Woodland sites includes a range of recognizable ceramics. The conoidal-base cooking pots depicted by White were coilbuilt using local clays mixed with crushed and burned shell as a temper. While never quite the enormous size seen in the Theodor de Bry engravings, archaeological examples from North Carolina include pots with rim diameters of up to 40cm. In addition to the cooking pots, Algonquian potters produced round and flat based jars, bowls, and small cups and dippers.57 The exteriors were often incised, fabric impressed or simple stamped. The appearance of these ceramics (known as Colington) in North Carolina during the Late Woodland period may be indicative of the late intrusion of Algonquian groups into the region from the north.58 Colington ceramics were excavated from 16th-century deposits on Roanoke Island in the 1950s, and during the investigations in the 1980s and 1990s that unearthed traces of the 1585–86 workshop of Joachim Ganz. A total of 782 native pottery sherds, including some from the Cashie series, associated with Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people in the inner coastal plain, were recovered. Seventy-seven percent of the sherds were derived from several cooking pots, which likely made their way into English assemblages not just as useful pots for cooking and for scientific experiments, but also as containers filled with Indian foodstuffs. The Cashie wares may relate to trips to the interior, or to inter-tribal trade.59 Stone tools associated with Late Woodland Algonquian sites include triangular projectile points, for tipping arrows made of wood or reeds, hafted triangular knives and a range of specialized tools such as drills and scrapers. Although Harriot argued for an absence of stone in the Roanoke vicinity, local sites have yielded projectile points fashioned from jaspers, which appear in pebble and cobble form on the Outer Banks.60 Throughout the Virginia Tidewater region, native peoples principally relied on quartz and quartzite for their flaked tools, rather than the more easily worked flints and cherts found in other regions. While some of this ‘exotic’ material did make its way into the coastal plain, native flintknappers overwhelmingly relied on local materials. In considering the far-flung extent of trade for copper, it is clear that the Algonquian peoples did possess the long-distance connections to acquire such materials. That they chose instead to concentrate their long-distance procurement efforts on copper

again illustrates its religious and socio-political significance. Native peoples enjoyed a rich material life that employed a range of organic materials that seldom survive archaeologically. How many of the thousands of marginella shell beads that have been excavated from Algonquian sites once decorated long-decayed leather items, such as the famed Powhatan’s mantle, can only be guessed at. Powhatan’s mantle, which consists of four deer hides sown together with sinew and decorated in marginella shells depicting the figure of a human, 2 quadrupeds, and 30 shell discs, is believed to have been collected by John Tradescant the Younger in Virginia in 1637. The object now serves as a centrepiece in the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. Another 17th-century Algonquian artefact in the Ashmolean is an arrow-shaped, leather pouch decorated with nearly 6,000 shells. Designed to be folded and worn over a belt, this surviving pouch was one of several in the Tradescant ‘cabinet of curiosities’, providing a tantalizing hint of the variety and quality of Algonquian leather and bead work. Algonquian people were also skilled woodworkers, as attested to by occasional finds of canoes and by the White depictions not just of canoes but also of carved figurines and wooden platters. Other organic items that can generally only be inferred from archaeological data are baskets and textiles. Indirect evidence for basketry techniques can be found in pottery impressions, while scant traces of the waterproof mats woven by native women (according to the ethnohistoric record) have been recovered. A Middle Woodland period cremation burial at the Baum site was found wrapped in a juncus grass mat, a rare survival.61 More recently, fragments of a woven mat were recovered from within the confines of the early 17thcentury English James Fort on Jamestown Island.62 Colonial entanglements Archaeological evidence for significant and complex interactions between European settlers and native communities is abundant, albeit often ignored if not entirely denied. The abundant native ceramic assemblages at Roanoke would seem to be overt evidence for the extent of colonial reliance on native foods and attendant psychological support, yet discussion of the material has long concentrated instead on whether or not the materials predate the Roanoke colony. The desire to separate ‘prehistoric’ activity (read native activity) from ‘historic’ activity (read European) has characterized much archaeological research up and down the East Coast; research split by the artificial divide between prehistorians and historical archaeologists. For example, evidence from Flowerdew Hundred, the site of a fortified settlement established by Governor George Yeardley in 1618, indicates continual Native American occupation from the Paleo-Indian period to the years just immediately preceding Yeardley’s acquisition of the land from Abraham Peirsey. Excavations in 1982 revealed that immediately underlying the rectangular enclosure built by Yeardley was evidence for an Indian palisade in the same riverside locale.63 The closeness of the two settlements is reflected in the artefactual record, as described by Norman Barka: ‘... 27,368 artifacts were found within the Enclosed Settlement site ... approximately 64% are European derived and date to the period of the Enclosed Settlement, and 35% are pre-site or Indian in origin’.64 Despite the confidence of the European Visions: American Voices | 137

Horning excavator in separating the use of these objects as exclusively native or European, it is far more likely that a percentage of the European objects entered the material realm of the Weanock occupants, just as the English incorporated native material culture into their own repertoire. As argued by Edward Chaney and Julia King, ‘studies in Chesapeake historical archaeology have generally minimized the day-to-day role Native Americans played in English settlement’.65 In fact, too often native presence is simply rendered invisible, as at Flowerdew Hundred. Presumptions of temporal separation accord well with cultural myths about settlers conquering the frontier, but take us no further in addressing the reality of colonial interactions. At the very least, native ceramics serve as a direct reflection of the trade in the contents of those pots: food, so desperately sought by many early colonists. A revised reading of the Roanoke workshop ceramic evidence underscores the reliance of Harriot, White and Ganz on the Roanoke people not only for food, protection and local knowledge, but also for the vessels used to carry out their experiments. The tendency to assume a separation between native and English occupation on the basis of artefacts rather than superimposed features may also be blinding us to the realities of intercultural sharing of residences and settlements. Materials recently unearthed in the James Fort site reflect the complicated and variable relations between the English interlopers and the people of Tsenacommacah. Approximately half of the excavated ceramics dating to the period 1607–11 are of native manufacture. A significant number of complete jasper and chert projectile points found within Fort-period contexts have been interpreted as tangible evidence of gift-giving to the English from native peoples, possibly groups from the Eastern shore, North Carolina border and Appalachian regions where these lithic materials can be found. That these items found their way to James Fort as gifts rather than on the end of an arrow fired at the English is supported by their pristine condition, given the fragility of the lithic material.66 The presence of lithic debitage (waste products from stone tool production) suggests that a native flintknapper was at work. Some of these items include points made from English flint. Jamestown archaeologists are now speculating that native women were resident in the fort, before the arrival of English women in 1609, hinting at a practice of cohabitation, if not intermarriage, long denied in the documentary record.67 Whatever the realities of the early colonial relations between natives and newcomers, the archaeological record from later 17th-century sites continues to reflect significant daily interaction. Evidence from the Camden site, a native settlement occupied between 1650 and 1700, underscores the selective nature of the incorporation of new practices and objects.68 Homes in this town were European in design, but the majority of the ceramics were native hand-built wares, suggesting continuity in pre-contact foodways. Despite outward appearances, the adoption of English-style dwellings does not imply that the Indian inhabitants conceived of or used the interior space in the same ways as an English settler. Similar evidence for selective adoption of European goods has been noted in the recent excavations at the Cape Creek site at Buxton, North Carolina. Here, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a mid- to late-17th-century workshop that appears to have been used by the Croatan Indians. Items being 138 | European Visions: American Voices

produced in the Croatan workshop illustrate cultural continuity, including shell and bone beads, and tubular and figurative copper beads. While the raw materials for the latter items were European, the processes and end products were native.69 The Croatan culture of Manteo’s time was clearly still thriving a century later, by then well accustomed to accommodating and rejecting material elements of English colonial society. The recovery of the Kendall signet ring from deposits associated with the workshop serves as one of the more evocative examples of native agency towards European material culture. The meaning attached to the ring by its Croatan owner or owners was surely divergent from whatever meaning it held for its original English owner, as well as being a far cry from the meaning attached to it in the present. The prioritization of the European history of this ring in media reports of the Buxton excavation, rendering it a potent material connection to the ‘Lost Colony’, only serves to alienate the object from its Indian cultural context, arguably continuing the centuries-long erasure of native people from regional history.70 Despite displacement, disease, violence, subjugation and ongoing prejudice, it is clear that native peoples in the North Carolina and Virginia region maintained and indeed continue to maintain individual and community identities as native people. Yet in the 2007 anniversary year of the Jamestown settlement, and despite the potential of archaeological data to significantly alter understandings of the experiences of all those who were caught up in the English colonial experience, and of colonial processes more generally, native people still struggled for public acknowledgement of their history and continued existence. Public interpretation at Jamestown celebrates the proto-American nature of the site, in spite of the more complicated stories suggested by the archaeology. In keeping with the patriotic rhetoric that has long surrounded Jamestown’s interpretation, the latest synthetic publication about the James Fort project begins and ends with the assertion that ‘the American dream was born on the banks of the James River ...’.71 Such overly simplistic treatments of the site’s significance exemplify the symbolic annihilation of Virginia’s native people, an effort so successful that one of the most important issues for today’s tribes, according to Nansemond Chief Barry Bass, is ‘educating the general public that Virginia Indians still exist’.72 Post-colonial conversations As a non-native person, this author can only offer personal opinions and understandings regarding contemporary native perspectives. It is clear that contemporary native tribes and associations possess divergent understandings of their histories and of their identities, as was undoubtedly the case in the past. The 2007 Jamestown anniversary not surprisingly elicited a range of responses from Virginia Indian groups. In recognition of these divergent opinions, the official Virginia Council on Indians distanced itself from active engagement in the plans for 2007. Indian involvement was coordinated by a separate committee associated with the Jamestown anniversary effort. Invariably implicated in attitudes towards the 2007 commemoration are the Federal Recognition efforts of six of the eight state-recognized tribes. Tribes seeking recognition

Past, Present and Future through a direct appeal to Congress (rather than via the lengthier Bureau of Indian Affairs process) include the Rappahannock, Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi, and Monacan. The two that are not participating in this effort are the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi, both of whom still maintain control of reservation lands first granted in the mid-17th century. Publicity and public education efforts provided by the Jamestown anniversary origin provided an obvious vehicle for native voices, and for the tribes seeking Federal recognition, a means to garner public support. That this tactic was partially successful is illustrated by the fact that in April 2007, the Thomasina Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act H-1294 was approved by the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee. One month later, only a few days before Queen Elizabeth II joined in the commemoration activities at Jamestown, the bill was passed by the House. The significance of the date was not lost on the media, as exemplified by a 9 May article in the Virginian-Pilot: ‘As Virginia and the nation prepared to mark the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement at Jamestown, the House on Tuesday paid a longsought tribute to the American Indians whose early hospitality allowed that settlement to survive.’73 This ‘tribute’ is now viewed as a hollow gesture, as the bill remains stalled in the Senate. As expressed by Karenne Wood, a Monacan and former chair of the Virginia Council on Indians, ‘Some people are suggesting that they [House of Representatives] were just making sure that there wouldn’t be public protests to mar the Jamestown commemoration.’74 The recent visit of representatives from Virginia tribes to England, during which time they viewed the White watercolours at the British Museum as captured in a videorecording by Max Carocci and Simona Piantieri, served to highlight that the tribes are already recognized by the British Government as sovereign entities. The statement of Virginia Senator George Allen, presented to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs as part of the Federal Recognition efforts, adequately summarizes the impetus for the visit to England: ‘To put the long history of the Virginia Indians in context, while many of the Federally recognized Indian tribes have signed agreements with the government of the United States of America, the Virginia Indian tribes hold treaties with the kings of England, including the 1677 treaty between the tribes and Charles II.’

Despite these treaties, the existence of the reservations (of the non-petitioning tribes), and the fact that yearly tribute has been paid to the Virginia government for more than three centuries, proving the continuity of community identity for the recognized Virginia groups is hampered by legislated racism in the 20th century. The 1924 Racial Integrity Act designated any person claiming Indian heritage as ‘coloured’. The designation Indian could not be used on birth certificates, nor were parents permitted to give their children Indian names. This policy was developed and instituted by Walter Plecker, Register of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912–46 and an outspoken white supremacist. In the estimation of Pamunkey Chief William Miles, Plecker ‘came very close to committing statistical genocide on the Native Americans of Virginia’. As expressed by Rappahannock Chief Anne Richardson ‘we were not allowed to be who we are in our own country, by officials in the government’.75 Because of Plecker, the extensive paper trail

generally required for Federal Recognition simply does not exist for many Virginia native communities. Between 2006 and 2007, the following groups presented letters of intent to pursue Virginia State Recognition: Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia; Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia; Appalachian Intertribal Heritage Association, Inc.; United Cherokee Indian Tribe of Virginia, Inc.; Blue Ridge Cherokee, Inc. and the Tauxenent Indian Nation of Virginia.76 North Carolina boasts the largest native population in the East, numbering approximately 100,000 persons. A significant percentage of this number are members of the Federally recognized Eastern Band of the Cherokee, the descendants of the Iroquoian-speaking peoples who survived the forced removal of the Cherokee, known as the Trail of Tears, in the 1830s. Other tribal groups and associations in North Carolina include the Coharies, Haliwa-Saponis, Lumbees, Meherrins, Occaneechi-Saponis, Indians of Person County, Tuscarora and Waccamaw-Siouans. Unlike the Cherokee, these groupings are the result of 20th-century re-tribalization, with names selected by community members. For example, the name HaliwaSaponi comes from a combination of the names of the counties where the community members were located, and the adoption of the historic tribal designation of Saponi.77 Illustrating the complexity of contemporary native North Carolinian identities, and the dichotomy between native perspectives and that of officialdom, is the 1930s effort of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to determine whether or not those who self-identified as Indian in Robeson County were in fact native. Previously, the group then calling themselves Indians of Robeson County, and now known as Lumbee (after the Lumber River) had called themselves Croatans. Croatan was dropped as a name because of the derogatory use of the shortened version ‘Cro’ by whites in reference to Jim Crow legislation and the desire to label the Indians as black or ‘coloured’, as was the case in Virginia. The BIA sent Harvard anthropologist Carl Seltzer to North Carolina, where he proceeded to measure the facial features of the Robeson County Indians to determine their identity. Seltzer decided that only 22 out of 100 volunteers possessed any Indian ancestry. His determinations have rightly been described as ‘comically illogical’, as in several cases he rejected the Indian identity of the parents and siblings of those he declared likely of Native American heritage.78 Seltzer’s own statements illustrate the complexity of identity, which he believed resided solely in genetic structure: ‘Our task was made difficult at the outset by the fact that these people did not have a clear understanding of the term Indian ... . They considered anybody who lived in their community as one of them.’ Frustration with stringent genetic criteria for recognition is not uncommon, as expressed by Mervin Savoy, Tribal Chair of the Piscataway Conoy tribe, ‘Just because somebody says I’m not an Indian doesn’t mean I’m not. Just as long as I walk this Earth I’ll be Indian,’ and by Patawomeck Chief Robert Green: ‘I have no idea what my blood quantum is. When someone tells me they are pure Indian, I doubt that there are any pure Indians in this part of the country ... . To me, blood quantum doesn’t matter.’79 Identity is indeed a mutable concept. Whether it is genetically or socially constructed, it is no less meaningful at the individual as well as community level. In 1985, the Lumbee Nation of North Carolina European Visions: American Voices | 139

Horning and America was formally denied Federal recognition, while the Piscataway Conoy tribe was denied recognition by the state of Maryland. The Patawomeck still seek recognition by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Conclusion The words of Chickahominy Chief Stephen Adkins, spoken at the 2006 Senate hearings on the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act S-480 of the six Virginia tribes, serves as an appropriate conclusion to this discussion: I would say, that without the hospitality of my forebears, the first permanent English settlement would not have been Jamestown... . The fact that we were so prominent in early history and then so callously denied our Indian heritage is the story that most don’t want to remember or recognize ... . I want my children and the next generation to have their Indian heritage honoured. 80

Similar quotes from other Virginia chiefs appeared at the close of the New World exhibit, reminding us that just as these images served as a powerful tool in the past, be it as purely economic propaganda, or as indicative of the early modern commodification of nature, or as illustrative of the burgeoning and rapacious appetites of naturalists, they now serve as a potent tool in the revitalization and the public promotion of the identity and character of contemporary Virginia Indians. The arguably intentionally ‘positive’ portrayal of the 16th-century North Carolina inhabitants in the White watercolours serves the aims of today’s native population just as they served the aims of colonial propagandists. Today’s Indians see themselves in the images, as many others envision the 16th-century English in the images. John White’s watercolours of the New World reflect all these desires and continually provoke memories of an ever-changing past. Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Kim Sloan for the opportunity to participate in the European Visions: American Voices conference and for her editorial support. Martin Gallivan, Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, David Sutton Phelps and Clay Swindell graciously read through drafts of this chapter and tolerated my forays into their respective areas of expertise. Andrew Edwards, Martin Gallivan, Bruce Larson, Nicholas Luccketti and Clay Swindell kindly provided copies of unpublished archaeological reports, while Nick Brannon served as a critical reader and editor and Debbie Miles-Williams produced the map in Figure 1. I am extremely grateful to all of these individuals for sharing their knowledge and encouraging my efforts; I of course remain responsible for any errors.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

Quoted in D. Moretti-Langholtz and A.L. Daniel (quote dated 2004), ‘A seventeenth-century chronology drawn from colonial records with contemporary Native perspectives,’ in A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: the First Century, Yorktown, VA, 2006, http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/jame1/ moretti-langholtz/chap7.htm. C.A. Oakley, Keeping the Circle: American Indian Identity in North Carolina 1885–2004, Lincoln, NE, 2005, 36. Virginia Council on Indians, September 2006, ‘Journalists’ Guide to Virginia Indians and American Indians’. H. Miller, ‘Discovering Maryland’s first city’, St. Maries Citty Occasional Papers 2, St. Mary’s City, MD, 1986; S.R. Potter and G. Waselkov, ‘Whereby we shall enjoy their cultivated places’, in Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake, P. Shackel and B.J. Little, eds, Washington, DC, 1994. David Givens and William Kelso, pers. comm., June 2007.


6 E.R. Turner III and A.F. Opperman, ‘Archaeological Manifestations of the Virginia Company Period: A Summary of Surviving Powhatan and English Settlements in Tidewater Virginia, circa 1607–1624’, in The Archaeology of Seventeenth Century Virginia, T.R. Reinhart and D.J. Pogue, eds, Special Publication No. 30 of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, Richmond, 1993, 70. 7 M. Gallivan, James River Chiefdoms: the Rise of Social Inequality in the Chesapeake, Lincoln, NE, 2003; J. Hantman, ‘Between Powhatan and Quirank: reconstructing Monacan culture and history in the context of Jamestown’, American Anthropologist, 92(3), 1990, 676–90; J.F. Scarry and M.D. Maxham, ‘Elite Actors in the Protohistoric: Elite Identities and Interaction with Europeans in the Apalachee and Powhatan Chiefdoms’, in C.B. Wesson and M.A. Rees, eds, Between Contacts and Colonies: Archaeological Perspectives on the Protohistoric Southeast, Tuscaloosa, AL, 2002; E.R. Turner III, ‘A re-examination of Powhatan territorial boundaries and population, ca. C.E. 1607’, Quarterly Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, 37, 1982, 45–64; Turner 1992. 8 H. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: their Traditional Culture, Norman, OK, 1989; H. Rountree, Pocahontas’ People: the Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries, Norman, OK, 1990; R.J. Dent, Jr., Chesapeake Prehistory: Old Traditions, New Directions, New York, 1995; also summarized in Gallivan, ‘Reconnecting the contact period and late prehistory: household and community dynamics in the James River basin’, in Indian and European Contact in Context: the Mid-Atlantic Region, D.B. Blanton and J.A. King, Gainesville, FL, 2004, 22–46. 9 M.D. Gallivan, 2003, 2. 10 D. Phelps, ‘Summary of Colington-phase sites in Tidewater North Carolina’, Archaeology Laboratory, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, East Carolina University, 1982; Clay Swindell, pers. comm., 24 September 2007. 11 D.B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1606, New York, 1974; F.W. Gleach, Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures, Lincoln, NE, 1997. 12 R. Saunders, ‘Seasonality, sedentism, subsistence, and disease in the Protohistoric: archaeological versus ethnohistoric data along the lower Atlantic coast’, in Between Contacts and Colonies: Archaeological Perspectives on the Protohistoric Southeast, C.B. Wesson and M.A. Rees, eds, Tuscaloosa, AL, 2002, 45. Examination of archaeological data from the Piedmont region of North Carolina revealed that the impact of European diseases was not evident until the second half of the 17th century, nearly 100 years after initial contact with Europeans. See H.T. Ward and R.P. Stephen Davis, Jr., ‘The impact of Old World disease on the Native inhabitants of the North Carolina Piedmont’, Archaeology of Eastern North America, 19, 1991, 171–81. 13 Quirós and Segura in C.M. Lewis and A.J. Loomie, Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570–1572, Chapel Hill, NC, 1953, 7; ibid., 39. 14 Gleach, 1997, supra n. 11, 91; D.B. Blanton, ‘Drought as a factor in the Jamestown colony’, Historical Archaeology, 34(4), 2000, 255– 82; D.W. Stahle, M.K. Cleavland, D.B. Blanton, M.D. Therrell and D.A. Gay, ‘The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts’, Science, 280(April), 1998, 564–7; D.B. Blanton, ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another: the added challenges of weather and climate for the Roanoke Colony’, in Searching for the Roanoke Colonies, E.T. Shields and C.R. Ewen, eds, Raleigh, NC, 2003, 169–76. 15 M.H. Williamson, ‘Pocahontas and Captain John Smith’, History and Anthropology, 5, 1992, 365–402. 16 M.D. Gallivan, ‘Powhatan’s Werowocomoco: Constructing place, polity, and personhood in the Chesapeake, C.E. 1200–C.E. 1609’, American Anthropologist, 109(1), 2007, 85–100; M.D. Gallivan, T. Harpole, D.A. Brown, D. Moretti-Langholtz, E.R. Turner III, Werowocomoco Research Project: Background and 2003 Archaeological Field Report, College of William and Mary Department of Anthropology Archaeological Research Report Series No. 1, Williamsburg, VA, 2006, and Virginia Department of Historic Resources Research Report Series No. 15, Richmond, VA, [date?]; E.R. Turner III, ‘Ye Seate of Powhatan’, Notes on Virginia, 47, 2003, 41–5; Gallivan et al., 2006, 3. 17 P. Gardner, Excavations at the Amity Site: Final Report of the Pomeioc Project 1984–1989, Archaeological Research Reports 7, Archaeological Laboratory, Greenville, NC, 1990, 9; H.T. Ward and R.P. Stephen Davis, Jr., Time before History: the Archaeology of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 1999. Gardner and Ward and Davis cite 12 to 18, David Phelps (pers. comm., October 2007) notes

Past, Present and Future

18 19

20 21

22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35

36 37

38 39

that Thomas Harriot’s description of 10 to 30 houses may be more accurate. Gardner, 1990, ibid. Colington-phase is used to distinguish coastal Algonquian Late Woodland sites from interior sites peopled by Iroquoian- or Siouan-speaking peoples, labeled Cashie phase. Cashie sites are associated with the protohistoric Tuscarora, Nottoway and Meherrin. While projecting linguistic and cultural affiliations based on protohistoric information is clearly problematic, there are distinctive material differences between Colington and Cashie- phase artefacts, particularly ceramics. Gardner, 1990, supra n. 17. E.R. Turner III and H. Rountree, Before and After Jamestown: Virginia’s Powhatans and their Predecessors, Gainesville, FL, 2002, 15. In the 1980s, I participated in the replication of a yahecan based on a find from the Great Neck site (Virginia Beach) at the Jamestown Settlement Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. This structure was far more stable than the rectangular reproductions, which tended to sag in the centre. However, this may be more a problem of contemporary inability to replicate native technology rather than any inherent flaw in the use of arches. T. Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, 1590, 24. M.A. Mathis, Mortuary Analysis at the Broad Reach site, Office of State Archaeology, Archaeology and Historic Preservation Section NC Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC, 1993; D.C. Jones, C.T. Espenshade and L. Kennedy, Archaeological Investigations at 31ON190, Cape Island, Onslow County, North Carolina, Garrow and Associates, Atlanta, GA, 1997. R. Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia 1705, L.B. Wright, ed., Chapel Hill, NC, 1947, 177. It should be noted that Beverley was likely conflating his own observations with much earlier descriptions. Gardner, 1990, supra n. 17, and also suggested by archaeologist Clay Swindell, pers. comm., 24 September 2007. See D.B. Blanton, S.C. Pullins and V.L. Deitrick, The Potomac Creek Site (44ST2) Revisited, Virginia Department of Historic Resources Research Report Series No. 10, Richmond, 1999. K. Egloff and E.R. Turner III, ‘The Chesapeake Indians and their predecessors: recent excavations at Great Neck’, Notes on Virginia, 24, 1984, 36–9. A.T. Vaughan, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s Indian Interpreters, 1584–1618’, William and Mary Quarterly, 59(2), 2002. Turner and Rountree, 2002, supra n. 21, 47. See Blanton et al., supra n. 26, 1999; S.D. Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: the Development of Algonquian Culture in the Potomac Valley, Charlottesville, VA, 1993. W.G. Haag, ‘The Archaeology of Coastal North Carolina’, Louisiana State University Studies, Coastal Study Series 2, Baton Rouge, LA, 1956. Clay Swindell, pers. comm., 24 September 2007; Accession record, 16th-century signet ring from Cape Creek site, Buxton, Special Collections Department, Joyner Library, East Carolina University; N. Gray, ‘Unearthing clues to lost worlds: an archaeological dig on the Outer Banks of North Carolina reveals evidence of the Croatan Indians and possible links to the Lost Colony’, The East Carolina University Report, 28(2), Greenville, NC, 1997; D. Magoon, ‘Chesapeake pipes and uncritical assumptions: a view from northeastern North Carolina’, North Carolina Archaeology, 48, 1999, 107–27. Accession record, 16th-century signet ring, ibid. C. Kozak, ‘Seeking the Lost Colony: Archaeologists look for signs of English among the Croatans.’ Virginian-Pilot, 2 July 2006. C.C. Boyd and D.C. Boyd, ‘Late Woodland mortuary variability in Virginia’, in Middle and Late Woodland Archaeology in Virginia, T.R. Reinhart, ed., Richmond, 1992; Dent, 1995, supra n. 8; Turner and Rountree, 2002, supra n. 21, 59. C.F. Feest, The Powhatan Tribes, New York, 1990, 30–1. Boyd and Boyd, 1992, supra n. 35, 261; T. Dale Stewart, ‘Excavating the Indian village of Patawomeke (Potomac)’, in Explorations and Fieldwork of the Smithsonian Institution in 1938, Washington, DC. 1938, 87–90; Dale Stewart, ‘Further excavations at the Indian village of Patawomeke (Potomac)’, in Explorations and Fieldwork of the Smithsonian Institution in 1939, Washington, DC, 1940, 79–82. David S. Phelps, pers. comm., October 2007. D.S. Phelps, ‘Archaeology of the North Carolina coast and coastal

40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50

51

52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59

60

plain: problems and hypotheses’, in The Prehistory of North Carolina: an Archaeological Symposium, M.A. Mathis and J.J. Crow, eds, Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh, 1983, 41–3, and updated numbers from D.L. Hutchinson, Foraging, Farming, and Coastal Biological Adaptation in Late Prehistoric North Carolina, Gainesville, FL, 2002. E. Monahan, ‘Bioarchaeological analyses of the mortuary practices at the Broad Reach site (31CR218), coastal North Carolina’, Southern Indian Studies, 44, 1985, 37–69. M.A. Mathis, ‘Mortuary practices at the Broad Reach site,’ Office of State Archaeology, Archaeology and Historic Preservation Section, North Carolina Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC, 1993, 3. D.A. Hall, ‘The Baum Site (31CK9) Currituck County, NC’, Newsletter of the Friends of North Carolina Archaeology, 3(2), 1987. I am grateful to David Phelps for bringing this information and interpretation to my notice. Phelps, 1983, supra n. 39, 41–2. D.S. Phelps, Archaeology of the Tillett Site: the first fishing community at Wanchese, Roanoke Island, Archaeological Research Report No. 6, Archaeology Laboratory, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Economics, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, 1984. D. Curry, Feast of the Dead: Aboriginal Ossuaries in Maryland, Crownsville, MD, 1999, 76. Ibid., 45; C.A. Jirikowic, ‘The political implications of a cultural practice: a new perspective on ossuary burial in the Potomac Valley’, North American Archaeologist, 11, 1990, 353–74. B. Geroux, ‘64 given proper burial: Indians’ remains returned to earth’, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Sunday 27 April 1997. M.D. Gallivan, pers. comm., October 2007. M.E.N. Hodges and C.T. Hodges, Progress Report on Archaeological Investigations at 44JC308 at the Governor’s Land at Two Rivers, James City County, Virginia, Williamsburg, VA, 1991; N.M. Lucketti, M.E.N. Hodges and C.T. Hodges, eds, Paspahegh Archaeology: Data Recovery Investigations of Site 44JC308 at the Governor’s Land at Two Rivers, James City County, Virginia, Williamsburg, VA, 1994; B. Straube and N. Luccketti, 1995 Interim report, Jamestown Rediscovery Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Richmond, VA, 1996. Copper and its impact on Powhatan has been discussed by Hantman, 1990, supra n. 7; S.W. Mallios and S. Emmett, ‘Demand, Supply, and Elasticity in the Copper Trade at Early Jamestown’, Journal of the Jamestown Rediscovery Center, http://apva.org/ resource/jjrc/vol2/smtoc.html, 2004; S. Potter, ‘Early English effects on Virginia exchange and tribute systems in the seventeenth century: An example from the Tidewater Potomac’, in Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, P. Wood, G. Waselkov and T. Hatley, eds, Lincoln, NE, 1989, 151–72; M.D. Gallivan, James River Chiefdoms: the Rise of Social Inequality in the Chesapeake, Lincoln, NE, 2003; M.D. Gallivan and M. Klein, ‘Economy, architecture, and exchange: conjuncture and event in the Chesapeake, ad 1200–1607’, Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology, 20, 12–20. Mallios and Emmett, 2004, ibid. Hantman, 1990, supra n. 7; Potter, 1989, supra n. 51. D. Blanton and C.C. Hudgins, ‘Archaeological evidence for Native prestige commodity devaluation: An example from the Chesapeake associated with the Jamestown Colony’, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown website, www.nwsy.navy.mil/press/ blanton.html, accessed 6 December 2004; Hantman, 1990, supra n. 7; Potter, 1989, supra n. 51. J. Smith, A Map of Virginia, Oxford, 1612, 1612. Mallios and Emmett, 2004, supra n. 51. David S. Phelps, pers. comm., October 2007. Ward and Davis, 1999, supra n. 17 . B. Keel, ‘Talcott Williams, “Pinky” Harrington, and other searchers for the “Lost Colony”’, in Searching for the Roanoke Colonies, E.T. Shields and C.R. Ewen, eds, Raleigh, NC, 2003, 119– 31; Harrington, Search for the Cittie of Ralegh: Archaeological Excavations at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, North Carolina, Archaeological Research Series, No. 6, National Park Service, Washington, DC, 1962. D.S. Phelps, The Carolina Algonkians: Archaeology and History, (text of slide presentation), http://homepages.rootsweb.


Horning com/~jmack/algonqin/phelps1.htm, 1988, 7. 61 Phelps, 1983, supra n. 39, 33; David Phelps (1988) notes that charred fragments of mats have been recovered from other sites in Dare and Currituck counties, although the sites are not specified. 62 Dan Gamble, Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, pers. comm., May 2007. 63 J. Deetz, Flowerdew Hundred: the Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619–1864, Charlottesville, VA, 1993, 31. 64 N. Barka, ‘The Archaeology of Peirsey’s Hundred: Virginia within the context of the Muster of 1624/5’, in J.B. Stoltman, ed., Archaeology of Eastern North America, Archaeological Report 25, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, MS, 1993, 330. 65 J.A. King and E. Chaney, ‘Did the Chesapeake English have a contact period?’, in Indian and European Contact in Context: the mid-Atlantic Region, D.B. Blanton and J.A. King, eds, Gainesville, FL, 2004, 193–221. 66 D.B. Blanton, V. Deitrick and K. Bartels, ‘Brief and true report of projectile points from Jamestown Rediscovery as of December 1998’, Journal of the Jamestown Rediscovery Center, 2001, 1, http:// www.apva.org/resource/jjrc/vol1/dbtoc.html. 67 W. Kelso, Omohundro Institute of Early American History conference panel, ‘Jamestown Archaeology’, 7 June 2007. 68 M.E.N. Hodges and E.R. Turner III, ‘Historic contact at Camden’, CRM, 7, 1995, 25–7; M.E.N. Hodges, ‘Camden: another look seventeen years after registration’, Notes on Virginia, Camden site report, 1986. 69 Clay Swindell, pers. comm., 25 September 2007. 70 Consider the following newspaper headline written by Catherine Kozak, ‘Seeking the Lost Colony: Archaeologists look for signs of English among the Croatans’, Virginian-Pilot, 2 July 2006. 71 W. Kelso, Jamestown: The Buried Truth, Charlottesville, VA, 2006. 72 Cited in S. Waugaman and D. Moretti-Langholtz, We’re Still Here:


73 74 75

76 77 78 79

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Contemporary Virginia Indians Tell their Stories, Richmond, VA, 2000. D. Eisman, ‘House Oks recognition to 6 Indian tribes’, VirginianPilot, 9 May 2007. K. Wood, quoted in ‘Frustrated Indians still without official status’, Daily Press, 26 November 2007, B7. The activities and lasting impact of Plecker remain a central concern for Virginia Indians today, and have been discussed by numerous scholars. See S.R. Cook, ‘Anthropological advocacy in historical perspective: the case of anthropologists and Virginia Indians’, Human Organization, 62(2), 2003, 191–201; Rountree, 1990, supra n. 8 ; J.D. Smith, The Eugenic Assault on America: Studies in Red, White, and Black, Fairfax, VA, 1993; Waugaman and Moretti-Langholtz, 2000, supra n. 72 ; P. Hardin, ‘Documentary genocide: Families’ surnames on racial hit-list’, Richmond TimesDispatch, 5 March 2000. Virginia Council on Indians. Oakley, 2004, supra n. 2; G. Sider, Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity, and Indian Identity in the Southern United States, Cambridge, 1993. Oakley, 2004, supra n. 2. Mervin Savoy quoted in M. Hirsch, ed., We Have a Story to Tell: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region, National Museum of the American Indian Education Office, Washington, DC, 2006, 14; Chief Green quoted in D. Moretti-Langholtz and A.L. Daniel, ‘A seventeenth-century chronology drawn from colonial records with contemporary Native perspectives’, in A Study of Virginia Indians and Jamestown: the First Century, Colonial National Historic Park, Yorktown VA, 2006, http://www.nps.gov/history/ history/online_books/jame1/moretti-langholtz/chap7.htm. Chief S.R. Adkins, Testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act S-480, 21 June 2006, Washington, DC.

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