First Nations of Virginia:
Examining Documents, Past and Present
By Pamela McFaden Lobb
The town of Secota
Those of their towns which are not
fenced in are usually more beautiful, as can be seen in this picture of the town of
Secota. The houses are farther apart and have gardens (marked E), in which they grow
tobacco, called by the natives uppowoc. They also have groves of trees where
they hunt deer, and fields where they sow their corn. In the cornfields they set up
a little hut on a scaffold where a watchman is stationed (F). He makes a
continual noise to keep off birds and beasts which would otherwise soon devour all
the corn. They sow their corn a certain distance apart (H), so that one stalk should
not choke the next. For the leaves are large like great reed leaves (G).
They also have a large plot (C) where they meet with
neighbors to celebrate solemn feasts, and a place (D) where they make merry when the
feast is ended. In the round plot (B) they assemble to pray. The large
building (A) holds the tombs of the kings and princes. In the garden on the right (I)
they sow pumpkins. There is also a place (K) where they build a fire at feast
time, and just outside the town is the river (L) from which they get their water.
These people live happily together without envy or greed. They hold their feasts at
night, when they make large fires to light them and to show their joy.
Their towns are small and few,
especially near the seacoast, where a village may contain but ten or twelve
houses—some perhaps as many as twenty. The largest town we saw had thirty
houses. In many cases the villages are walled with stakes covered with the bark of
trees or with poles set close together.
The houses are built of small poles
attached at the top to make them round in shape, much like the arbors in our English
gardens. The poles are covered from top to bottom either with bark or with mats woven
of long rushes. The dwellings are usually twice as long as they are wide; sometimes
they are only twelve or sixteen yards long, but we have seen them as much as
twenty-four yards in length.
In one part of the country, a Weroans,
or chief, may govern a single town, but in other parts the number of towns under one
chief may vary to two, three, six and even eight or more. The greatest Weroans we met
governed eighteen towns, and he could muster seven or eight hundred warriors. The
language of each chief’s territory differs from that of the others, and the
farther apart they are the greater the differences.
Their manner of making war against each other is by a
surprise attack, either in the dawn of day or by the moonlight, by ambush, or by some
such subtle trick. Set battles are very rare. When they do take place, it is
always in the forests, where the natives may defend themselves by leaping behind a
tree after they have shot their arrows.
If we should ever fight the inhabitants,
the results can easily be imagined. We have great advantages over them, for we
have disciplined soldiers, strange weapons, devices of all sorts, and especially we
have large and small ordnance. So far we found their best defense against us
was to turn on the heels and run away.
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