Close Encounters of the First Kind, 1585-1767

Maryland State Archives: Documents for the Classroom

Merrell Presentation

• excerpts from first hand accounts:

  Understanding Indians: The Problem of Evidence

  • Two Indian customs attributed to John Smith as recounted in James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (New York, 1982), pp. 6-7:
    In this place commonly are resident seaven Priests. The chiefe differed from the rest in his ornaments, but inferior Priests could hardly be knowne from the Common people, but that they had not so many holes in their eares to hang their jewels at. The ornaments of the chiefe Priest were certaine attires for his head made thus. They tooke a dosen, or 16, or more snakes skins and stuffed them with mosse; and of Weesels and other Vermines skins a good many. All these they tie by their tailes, so as all their tailes meete in the toppe of their head, like a great Tassell. Round about this Tassell is as it were a Crown of feathers, the skins hang round about his head, necke, and shoulders, and in a manner cover his face.

    The faces of all their Priests are painted as ugly as they can devise, in their hands they had every one his Rattle, some base, some smaller. Their devotion was most in songs, which the chiefe Priest beginneth and the rest followed him: sometimes he maketh invocations with broken sentences, by starts and strange passions; and at every pause, the rest give a short groane.

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    Not long after, they tooke me to one of their great Counsells, where many of the generalitie were gathered in greater number than ever I had seen before. And they being assembled about a great field of open grasse, a score of their greatest men ran out upon the field, adorned each in brightly hued jackets and breeches, with letters cunnmgly woven upon their Chestes, and wearinge hats uppon their heads, of a son I know not what. One of their chiefs stood in the midst and would at his pleasure hurl a white ball at another chief, whose attire was of a different colour, and whether by chance or artyfice I know not the ball flew exceeding close to the man yet never injured him, but sometimes he would strike att it with a wooden club, and so giveing it a hard blow would throw down his club and run away. Such actions proceeded in like manner at length too tedious to mention, but the generalitie waxed wroth, with greate groaning and shoutinge, and seemed withall much pleased.

• John Lawson, an Englishman, made a tour of the Carolina interior in the winter of l70l, publishing an account of his experiences in A New Voyage to Carolina (l709) . The following encounter occurred along the Santee River:
  "At these Cabins came to visit us the King of the Santee Nation. He brought with him their chief Doctor, or Physician, who was warmly and neatly clad with a Match-Coat, made of Turkies reathers, which makes a pretty Shew, seeming as if it was a Garment of the deepest silk Shag. This Doctor had the Misfortune to lose his Nose by the Pox. . . In the Time of his Affliction [he] withdrew himself (with one that labour'd under the same Distemper) into the Woods. These two perfected their Cures by proper Vegitables, &c. of which they have Plenty, and are well acquainted with their specifick Virtue. . .

  "After these two had perform'd their Cures at no easier Rate than the Expence of both their Noses, coming again amongst their old Acquaintance so disfigur'd, the Indians admir'd to see them metamorphos'd after that manner; enquir'd of them where they had been all that Time, and what were become of their Noses? They made Answer, That they had been conversing with the white Man above, (meaning God Almighty) how they were very kindly entertain'd by that Great Being; he being much pleas'd with their Ways, and had promis'd to make their Capacities equal with the white People in making Guns, Ammunition, &c. in Retalliation of which, they had given him their Noses. The Verity of which, they yet hold, the Indians being an easy credulous People. . .

• In June l759 South Carolina Governor William Henry Lyttelton sent James Adamson to the Catawba Indian Nation to report on conditions there. Adamson's letter to the governor is in the Lyttelton Papers, Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan:
  "Governor Dobbs [of North Carolina] ordered Major McClanahan to Let the Indians have Beef, and he gives them nothing But ould Bulls which Hagler [chief of the Catawbas] Cut the Cod off one and Tuck it tied to his Sadle all the way to Salisbury [North Carolina] Cort, and tould the Court McClanahan gave him nothing but Stalion Cows and charged the Contrey a great price....

• Maps & Wampum

  PDFs ca. 1720, "A Map Drawn by an Indian Cacique"

  Schematic plan of village-burial spatial relationships in the piedmont of South Carolina, near the North Carolina border.
  Herman Moll, map of Carolina
  Iroquois Wampum Belts

• supplemental reading:

  James H. Merrell. "Some Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians." William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XLVI, no. 1, January 1989, pp. 94-119.

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