Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/211

 dashed with red puccoon or terra sigillata. The Indian women were accustomed to tattoo their arms, breasts, thighs, and shoulders with the images of flowers, fruits, insects, serpents, and birds. The instrument employed in the operation was a piece of metal which had been heated in the fire. The figures were burnt in the skin, and the colors dropped into the newly seared lines; so thoroughly were these colors absorbed, and so tenacious were they, that neither exposure nor the passage of time was able to obliterate them.

In consequence of the steps taken to foster the physical vigor of the boys, and of the active life in the open air which the adults both male and female led, the Indians of aboriginal Virginia were fine specimens of physical strength and grace. There is no instance of a single deformed individual being observed among them by the English. They differed in size very much. Until the Susquehannocks were discovered, the Rappahannocks, who resided on the southern banks of the Powhatan, presented the noblest type of physical development which the adventurers had seen in the new country. The Susquehannocks were gigantic in frame, the calf of the leg of one warrior measured by Smith being three-quarters of a yard in circumference, and their voices sounded from the chest like a deep and hoarse echo from a vault or cave. The people of Wicocomico, on the other hand, were diminutive in stature. The Indians, whether large or small in size, were erect and comely in figure, and alert and agile in movement. Their noses were broad and flat, their lips full, their mouths wide, their hair straight, black,