Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/175

 mummies. The treasure-house of Powhatan at Orapaks must have been a still more imposing structure; it extended fifty or sixty yards in length, and upon each one of its four corners was a figure of a strange and grotesque aspect, one being shaped like a dragon, another having the form and head of a bear, the third resembling a leopard, and the fourth a gigantic man.

The Indians laid off their maizefields and gardens in the vicinity of their wigwams, always selecting the most fertile land for this purpose; in later times, it was everywhere observed that the soil which had been under aboriginal cultivation was as a rule extremely productive. The maizefields spread over an area that ranged from twenty to an hundred acres in extent. There is some doubt as to the character of the tenure; each tribe possessed an absolute title to the division of country in which it was immediately seated, subject only to the general proprietorship of the king, to whom an annual tribute was paid in the form of a certain proportion of maize, beasts, fish, fowl, hides, fur, copper, and beads, but the relation of each family to the different plats of cultivated ground is not so clearly defined. Smith declared that each household knew its own fields and gardens, while Beverley asserted that no special property in land was claimed by individual Indians, but was held in common by the members of a whole tribe. He qualified this remark, however, by saying that the area of uncultivated ground was so extensive, that there was no room for quarrels among them about the appropriation of particular plats. The statement of Smith seems to be confirmed by the relation which the Indian householder