Existing comment:
Did native Virginians have tattoos?
The English colonists at Jamestown were curious about -and sometimes astonished by-the Natives surrounding them. John Smith's contemporary, George Percy, recorded his observations of the ornate tattoos worn by Algonquian women: " The women kinde in this Countrey doth pounce and race their bodies, legges, thighes, armes and faces with a sharpe Iron, which makes a stampe in curious knots, and drawes the proportion of Fowles, Fish, or Beasts, then with paintings of sundry lively colours, they rub it into the stampe which will never be taken away, because it is dried into the flesh where it is sered." It is unknown whether Pocahontas wore similar tattoos, though it is likely when she was a child the sides of her head were shaved. This was the custom for Indian girls, who wore their remaining hair in long braids. |