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Captain John Smith’s Indian “Maskarado”
MARGARET WILLIAMSON HUBER
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Mary Washington
Fredericksburg, Virginia
SUMMARY A frequently overlooked bit of seventeenth-century Powhatan Indian
ethnography is Capt. John Smith’s enigmatic description of a women’s transvestite dance
that he witnessed on a visit to the Powhatan principal town, Werowocomoco, in 1608.
While he took this to be an impromptu entertainment for his benefit, this paper argues
that it was the conclusion of extensive harvest celebrations, and that it ushered in a
new year. After Smith’s description to contemporary English culture, this paper offers
an analysis of the ritual in Powhatan terms, confirming earlier work relating to
Powhatan notions of gender and the significance of women as well as the central
importance of Werowocomoco politically and cosmically. [Powhatan, gender, cosmology, “Booger” dance]
In the fall of 1608 Captain John Smith travelled to Werowocomoco, then
the principal town of the Powhatan paramount chief, the mamanatowick
Wahunsonacawh, to acquaint him with Captain Christopher Newport’s intention to bestow gifts from King James I of England on the chief, including a
crown that would acknowledge Powhatan’s rule over Virginia and his subordination to the English Crown. While they awaited Wahunsonacawh’s arrival
from another town, the people of Werowocomoco invited the English to
observe what Smith calls a “maskarado:”
In a faire plaine field, they made a fire before which he [Smith] sitting uppon a mat;
suddainly amongst the woods was heard such a hideous noise and shriking, that they
[the English] betooke them to their armes, supposing Powhatan with all his power
came to surprise them; but the beholders which were many, men women and children
[of the Powhatan], satisfied the Captaine there was no such matter, being presently
presented with this anticke, 30 young women came naked out of the woods (only
covered behind and before with a few greene leaves), their bodies al painted, some
white, some red, some black, some partie colour, but every one different; their leader
had a faire paire of stagges hornes on her head, and an otter skinne at her girdle, another
at her arme, a quiver of arrowes at her backe, and bow and arrowes in her hand, the next
in her hand a sword, another a club, another a pot-stick, all hornd alike, the rest every
one with their severall devises. These feindes with most hellish cries, and shouts
rushing from amongst the trees, cast themselves in a ring about the fire, singing, and
dauncing with excellent ill varietie, oft falling into their infernall passions, and then
solemnely againe to sing, and daunce. Having spent neere an houre, in this maskarado;
as they entered; in like manner departed; having reaccomodated themselves, they
solemnely invited Smith to their lodging, but no sooner was hee within the house, but
all these Nimphes more tormented him than ever, with crowding, and pressing, and
hanging upon him, most tediously crying, love you not mee? This salutation ended, the
Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 39, Issue 2, pp 184–204, ISSN 1559-9167, online ISSN 1548-1409.
© 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1111/anhu.12057.
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feast was set, consisting of fruit in baskets, fish, and flesh in wooden platters, beans and
pease there wanted not (for 20 hogges), nor any Salvage daintie their invention could
devise; some attending, others singing and dancing about them; this mirth and
banquet being ended, with firebrands (instead of torches) they conducted him to his
lodging. [Smith [1612] 1986 I:235–236]
Because Smith seems to have found the whole thing enigmatic and distasteful, certainly not the personally entertaining spectacle that he assumed the
performers intended, his including it in his account raises a number of questions. Chief among these is why he bothered to include it at all, because it is
apparently without consequence. He offers no indigenous explanation for the
performance, as he does for the two other rituals he describes, nor does he say
anything about what effects the performance had or should have had, other
than his having an intimate interlude with the dancers—which, he implies, he
refused to do. Another obscurity is why he called this a masquerade. The use
may well be ironic, but even so it refers to something the understanding
of which may help us make sense of what he took to be a one-off event. The
greatest puzzle is what the Powhatan performers were really doing. Was this
indeed a celebration of Smith’s arrival? If not, what was it?
I propose that Smith was mistaken to assume that the performance was
intended for his personal enjoyment; instead, what he saw was a ritual, regularly
performed at that time and in that way. As such, it ought to be able to provide us
with information about the Powhatan, especially the roles of women and gender
definition, that we could not necessarily get from an impromptu entertainment.
This analysis has two complementary parts addressing questions similarly
related. The first has to do with Smith’s motivations for writing about this ritual
and characterizing it as he did. The second offers an answer to the question,
what was really going on here? Answering that depends on answering the first.
First, though, we need to ask whether it is worthwhile to expend any thought
on this brief account. Other writers about the Powhatan—apart from Mossiker,
who calls it a Green Corn Dance (1976:113)—have paid minimal attention to it,
if they have noticed it at all. Neither Swanton (1987) nor John Witthoft (1985)
mentions it. Frederic Gleach (1997), who analyzes the Indian motivations for the
“conjuration” or divination they performed over Smith while he was their
captive, has nothing to say about this dance. Helen Rountree accepts Smith’s
interpretation that it was an entertainment for his benefit, observing correctly
that the Powhatan thought a guest poorly welcomed if they did not dance for
him on his arrival (Rountree 1989:89, 98–99).
Such neglect may be warranted. This is, after all, a limited description of a
perhaps unique performance conducted four hundred years ago by a group of
anonymous Native women. Caution in using such evidence as the basis for
cultural interpretation is desirable. Besides, although the material about
Powhatan is comparatively slender, nevertheless it is sufficient to allow persuasive reconstructions of their culture, both its material form and the ideas that
motivated it (Rountree 1989; Gleach 1997; Williamson 1979, 1992, 2003; Gallivan
2003, 2007), without referring to this tantalizing description. Thus it could be
argued that to attempt its analysis serves no anthropological purpose, especially
when the results of the exercise are more suggestive than conclusive. But as
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Robert Darnton observes, in history as in cultural anthropology it is precisely in
such odd material that we may expect to find the greatest insight into an other
mentalité (1984:78, 3–4).
We can be even more particular. The study of Powhatan women has been
minimal, and it has concentrated almost entirely on their productive and reproductive activities (Rountree 1989, 1998, 2001; Rountree and Turner 2002; Brown
1995; but see Williamson 2003:209–17). Such an approach replicates the stereotype of women as no more than food producers and child bearers (e.g., Kidwell
1995, Perdue 2001), and so it must lead to dubious generalizations about their
importance to society and, more important, about gender definitions and
gender relations. Even a cursory review of the Jamestown documents shows
that although they were gardeners and cooks, and they did rear children and
keep house, Powhatan women had considerable responsibilities as political
figures, diplomats, traders, and ritual participants as well. This analysis is a
means of drawing attention to these other aspects of women’s activities and at
the same time an attempt to refine our ideas of Powhatan categories of
“woman,” “man,” “female,” and “male.”
Masquerade
Smith’s calling this a maskarado reflects a number of late Renaissance
English ideas. His interpretation of the dance is an example of “civilizing” the
Powhatan (Williamson 2003:73–94), translating the culture of the Powhatan
into terms Smith and his contemporaries understood and could approve.
Translating this dance must have presented a challenge, though. Smith was
ambivalent about the Powhatan (Williamson 2003:74, 85), and in terms of
contemporary English categories the dance itself was ambiguous. In spite of
these uncertainties, he tells us what he thinks was going on in that field at
Werowocomoco. By identifying his preconceptions we can understand why he
used the terms he did and why he chose to include this description in his
account of Virginia. Having cleared away the English preconceptions from
Smith’s account, we may say with more assurance that what was going on was
something completely different and suggest what the Powhatan intended by
their performance.
Smith’s “maskarado” has similarities to two European rituals. One, known
by several names including rough music, the skimmington, the wooden horse,
or riding the stang (Thompson 1972:287–8, 285; Ingram 1985:168), was performed to censure someone in the community. These expressions of “ritualised
hostility” (Thompson 1972:286) took the form of reversals (Ingram 1985:172; see
Needham 1983:93–119). They included most noticeably cacophony but also
animal symbolism including the wearing of antlers to indicate the cuckold and
male transvestism. The aim of these displays ranged from persuading the
offenders to reform their lives to driving them right out of the community
(Thompson 1972:290; Ingram 1985:168–171).
These rituals punished perceived reversals of the “natural” order in which
male was superior to female as monarch was superior to subject and God to
humanity, and the subordinate properly obedient to the superior (Ingram
1985:174). Thus, they also reversed positive celebrations of that natural order,
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which, at that time, were the court masques, the other European ritual to which
Smith implicitly compares the Powhatan dance. The masque was a minor dramatic form that reached its apogee in the early 17th century.
Its heart is the appearance of a group of noble personages dressed in elaborate
disguise to celebrate a particular occasion and to honour their monarch. They perform
some specially designed (and well-rehearsed) masque dances, and then take out the
members of the court audience in the communal dance of the revels. . . .the basic
symbolic assertion of all court masques derived from the moment of the dissolution
of the masque’s fiction into the social reality of the court. [Lindley 1984:1; see also R.
Strong 1984:17; Limon 1990:57]
Unlike theater plays, masques were “written for a specific occasion and rarely
performed more than once” (Lindley 1984:1). The occasions were transitional
situations: the arrival of a new ambassador, a birthday or a wedding, Christmas
(Sullivan 1913:5–7; R. Strong 1984:3; Lindley 1995:x). In addition to being a form
of incorporation, the masques re-presented the cosmic order by means of
music, dance, poetry, and elaborate costumes and sets (Lindley 1984:5; see R.
Strong 1984:5, 22–23).
The formal masque has enough in common with the Powhatan dance to
indicate why Smith called it a maskarado, but at the same time the marked
differences between the splendor of these performances and the “few greene
leaves,” the haphazard paint, and the otter skins with which the Powhatan
dancers were clothed gives us one reason to suspect that Smith’s use of the term
“maskarado” was ironic. The differences go further. While Smith’s dancers
showed no synchrony or grace in their motions, in a masque the music and the
dance were ordered and precise, replicating the ordered movement of the
spheres of heaven, which were thought literally to produce a musical harmony
(Limon 1990:23, 62; Yates 1968). The setting of the masque, too, was a far cry
from the “faire plaine field” at Werowocomoco. Masque scenery excited contemporary awe more than any other aspect of the performance—it was the F/X
or the CGI of the Renaissance. The scenes changed almost instantaneously,
mountains revolving to reveal wonders within, a wilderness dissolving into a
garden. Artful lighting could make luminous celestial bodies appear to shine
for the court alone. All this was achieved by sophisticated machinery manipulating sets designed according to the still-novel laws of perspective, by means of
which a limited space could be made to seem almost infinite in size. Control of
an imitation of nature suggested genuine control over the real thing, an idea that
increasingly informed English attitudes to the natural world in this period (R.
Strong 1984:36ff; Limon 1990:53–54; Nicoll 1980:37–38; Thomas 1983:17–19).
In addition to affording the monarch an opportunity for display, allowing the
welcome of ambassadors and the recognition of changed status, and providing
a good party, English court masques were important politically (Lindley
1995:ix). An invitation to a masque was a mark of royal favor in itself; yet more
telling was the nature of the reception accorded a guest. The ambassador from
a country favored by the King would receive signal notice from their Majesties
at a masque, which might indeed have been organized for that purpose as well
as its ostensible purpose of celebrating a birthday, etc. Pocahontas was so
honored during her visit to London. At the end of the masque the Queen herself
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would “take out” the ambassador for the dance, following which he might feast
alone with the King; or there might be a banquet to which the King would
escort him, accompanied by torchbearers (Sullivan 1913:2–7). The similarities
between the means of showing royal approval of an ambassador and this
occasion at Werowocomoco—a dance that Smith thought was organized in his
honor as Newport’s ambassador, the ladies “taking him out” afterwards, the
feast that followed—further explain his calling this a “maskarado” and his
taking it for an ad-hoc, or anyway occasional, performance rather than an
annual celebration.
In order to heighten the effect of the representation of order in the masque,
it was usual to precede it with an anti-masque, which—like rough music—
relied on strangeness and discord to make its point (Lindley 1984:2; 1995:xiv–
xvii). Smith’s description of the Powhatan dance makes it sound more like an
“anti-maskarado” than a masque proper. The Powhatan costumes were more
“natural” than “cultural.” They seemed to represent no character or person but
rather to express some impulse of the dancer. Unlike properly civil persons, the
performers were both skimpily clad and cross-dressed, and they wore antlers
on their heads, like rough musicians; and to add to the confusion of
categories—from Smith’s perspective—the antler-wearing, cross-dressing
persons were not men but women. To him, the songs were cacophony and the
dance incoherent, implying the savage, unrestrained nature of those who produced and were influenced by it. The “taking out” that concluded the ritual
initiated not an ordered dance but a sexual orgy—or should have done, if Smith
had not been of so upright a character. To crown all, he was escorted to the
feast—which he says consisted of “savage dainties”—not by torches, as he
would have been in London, but by “firebrands.” Why, then, does he call this
chaos a maskarado and not an anti-masque or a skimmington?
That he was writing ironically seems likely, but other points may be made as
well. Far from condemning irregular sexual activity, the ritual was to have been
the prelude to just that, or so Smith thought. (As I discuss below, the Powhatan
saw nothing immoral in the women’s soliciting Smith’s sexual favors.) In other
words, though the form of rough music was there, the motivation was not. The
motivation, so far as Smith was concerned, was like that for a court masque. He
was at Werowocomoco as an ambassador from Captain Christopher Newport,
whom the Powhatan judged to be a weroance almost the equal of their own
mamatatowick (Williamson 2003:144), to arrange a meeting between these two
eminent persons. Immediately upon his arrival he was invited to view a performance that he assumed was for his particular amusement, just as it would
have been in a European court. The fact that the entire community, except for
Powhatan himself, was also present indicated the importance of the event. Like
a masque, it involved costumes, music, and dance, however displeasing Smith
found them; and at the end of it he was “taken out” by the performers, in
keeping with the proper conclusion of a European masque. The fact that this
was a dance rather than a ragged antiprocession (Thompson 1972:289) may have
tipped the balance for Smith. It was rough, but it was clearly a dance. Smith, like
his contemporaries, regarded the Powhatan as savages (cf. Hodgen 1964: Oberg
1999: Pagden 1995: Sheehan 1980: Williamson 2003). Although “savage” could
mean a being completely at the mercy of passion, it could also mean someone
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living in a state of comparative innocence, that is, impulsive and untaught but
fundamentally harmless and not unlike what the English had been not so many
generations earlier (Elliott 1970:42; Sheehan 1980:21–25, 37; Kupperman
1980:2–3). Whether the epithet was charitable or disparaging, it implied that its
subject did not have, and could not be expected to have, an adequate apprehension of cosmic harmony and, thus, no means of expressing it either. The
rituals of such a people would necessarily lack order and beauty, but they could
be recognized as analogues to the harmonious rituals of civilized peoples nonetheless. This, I suggest, is why Smith chose to call this a maskarado—a word
from a language spoken by a people whose relationship to the English was
uncertain—rather than something more opprobrious.
Recognizing his uncertainty about how to classify this event allows us to
suggest the reasons for its inclusion in his account of Virginia. It occurs in the
second part of what is commonly called Smith’s Map of Virginia, the “Proceedings,” a history of events in the Virginia colonies written by Smith and others
(Barbour 1986 I:121–123). A major concern in England in 1612, the time it was
published, was whether the Virginian venture were going to be successful, and
indeed the book was written to assure the public of that success. It begins with
an encouraging description of Virginia, and the second part narrates the means
by which the English have successfully overcome setbacks in the endeavor,
including the hostility of the native Virginians. In 1612 relations between
Powhatan and English were bad, but the backers of the colony had no wish to
advertise that fact. Touting similarities between the Powhatan and English
cultures was a way of suggesting, if not their civility, their potential to be
civilized. That they would perform a masque, however rude and unpolished, for
an ambassador was one such similarity. At the same time, the English presence
at the dance conveys that relations were friendly at the time it was performed, an
amity that might be restored in future; and it exalts the importance of Smith in
those relations. Nevertheless, Smith almost never allows that the Powhatan
might be civilized, and so he describes what ought to be the epitome of civilized
life, a masque, in terms that leave no doubt of its savage nature.
The Powhatan Ritual
Knowing why Smith described this ritual in these terms and with this identification makes it clear that he was interpreting it in terms of European, not
Powhatan, customs; and he seems to have made no effort to find out what the
Indians thought they were doing. Possibly he thought he knew what they were
doing and thus that inquiry was unnecessary; but such lack of curiosity is
uncharacteristic. In the case of the huskanaw (male initiation), by contrast, Smith
says that the English observers wanted to know more about it and that the
attendant weroance told them as much as he might (1986 I [1612]:172). Likewise
he lets us know that he asked the meaning of the “conjuration” performed over
him during his captivity, and he reports what he was told (1986 II [1624]:150).
Still, despite this lapse in his ethnography, it is possible to suggest something of
what the Powhatan were doing in performing this dance.
We can dismiss the idea that it was something intended simply to entertain
Smith and his party. Even though it is virtually certain that the Indians knew
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that he was coming to Werowocomoco, the performance resembles neither the
usual ceremony for welcoming a weroance to a Powhatan town—although the
two have some elements in common—nor what Strachey claims was the usual
way of welcoming the English. According to Smith,
If any great commander [i.e., either a chief, weroance, or a counsellor, cockarouse] arriue
at the habitation of a Werowance, they spread a mat as the Turkes do a carpet for him
to sit upon. Upon an other right opposite they sit themselves. Then doe all with a
tunable voice of showting bid him welcome. After this doe 2. or more of their chiefest
men make an oration, testifying their love. . .. Such victuall as they have, they spend
freely, and at night where his lodging is appointed, they set a woman fresh painted
red with Pocones and oile, to be his bedfellow. [Smith 1986 I [1612]:167–8; see
Strachey 1953 [1612]:84–85]
The typical welcome of an important visitor shares characteristics with the
dance at Werowocomoco: a dance, a feast, the offer of feminine company; but
because we are looking at cultural forms taken from the same repertoire, this is
not surprising.
Descriptions of Powhatan dances show the similarities between those and
the one Smith witnessed, with the difference that dancers were always, or
usually, men. We have an illustration of such dances as well as verbal descriptions. Strachey implies that Powhatan dances differed little from what Thomas
Harriot (1972 [1590]) described for the Outer Banks. The picture of Indians
dancing (Fig. 1) presented in his account of Carolina Algonkians shows a ring of
ten men and four women in a well-marked dance area marked by seven posts
at least as high as a man, each with a face carved at the top on the inner side. In
the center of the circle three women dance facing inwards with their arms about
each other’s shoulders. The dancers are variously attired, most with fringed skin
aprons (the standard garment for these people, as for the Powhatan), some with
another skin behind, one or two with a simple otter-skin loincloth, two in green
branches, and one with feathers stuck into his waistband. None, however, is
obviously cross-dressed. Some carry branches, and two men carry an arrow
each. Most carry a rattle made from a dried gourd or pumpkin shell.
Although we have no images from the Powhatan, the verbal accounts of the
Jamestown colonists describe much the same among them, although, as I have
mentioned, women seem not to have been so prominent as dancers, if they
danced at all. As William Strachey described it,
one of them standeth by with some furre or leather thing in his left hand, vpon which
he beates with his right, and sings withall, as if he began the Quier, and kept vnto the
rest their iust tyme, when vpon a certayne stroke or word (as vpon his Cue or tyme
to come in) one riseth vp and begynns the daunce; after he hath daunced a while
steppes forth an other, as if he came in iust vpon his rest, and in this order all of them
so many as there be one after another who then daunce an equall distaunce from each
other in a ring, showting, howling, and stamping their feet against the grownd with
such force and payne, that they sweat againe, and with all variety of straung minicktrickes and distorted faces, making so confused a Yell and noise, as so many frantique
and disquieted Bacchanalls, and sure they will keepe stroake iust one with another,
but with the handes, head, face, and body every one hath a severall gesture. [Strachey
1953 [1612]:86–87; see Percy 1969 [1614]:146]
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Figure 1.
Typical Carolina Algonkian dance.
Source: Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land
of Virginia, Pl. XVIII.
Another description comes from William White, who saw the beginning of the
huskanaw initiation at Quiyoughcohannock in 1608 (Barbour 1980:148). The
ritual began with dancing:
the people were so painted, that a Painter with his pensill could not haue done better.
Some of them were blacke like Diuels, with hornes and loose haire, some of diuers
colours. . . .they had rattles in their hands; all in the middest had black hornes on their
heads, and greene bowes [boughs] in their hands: next them were foure or fiue
principall men diuersely painted, which with bastinadoes beat forward such as tired
in the dance. Thus they made themselues scarce able to go or stand. When they met
together they made a hellish noise, and euery one flinging away his bough, ranne
(clapping their hands) vp into a tree, and tare it to the ground, and fell into their order
againe: thus they did twice. [White 1969 [1614]:147–8]
Because the literary convention of the time was to use “they” to refer to men
while noting the presence of women specifically with a phrase such as “their
women,” we may assume that these dancers were men. Besides, during the
period of the huskanaw dance, the women were acting the part of mourners and
preparing materials for a child’s funeral, anticipating the “deaths” of the initiates (White 1969 [1614]:148; see Smith 1986 I [1612]:171–2; Strachey 1953
[1612]:89, 92; Beverley 1947 [1705]:204–5; compare Spelman 1910 [1614]:cvi).
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White’s description presents us, then, with a number of men carefully painted
with designs in several colors, some with antlers on their heads, performing
“anticke trickes” and making a “hellish noise.” It reads like Smith’s description
of the masquerading women, with the difference that the dancers are men.
When compared to these descriptions, Smith’s “maskarado” emerges as
something potentially more significant than his bemused description would
suggest. There are no other examples in the Jamestown documents of women
dancing without men or, indeed, at all; nor have we other descriptions of
any Powhatan person, man or woman, cross-dressing; nor does anyone
report a group of women making amorous overtures to any man, native or
European. The dance would warrant investigation even if it were the unique
performance that Smith thought it, but because we can assume that it was a
routine performance, it has the potential to offer us more insight into Powhatan
culture.
The assertion that the women in the “maskarado” were cross-dressed
requires justification. Because Smith reports his “nymphes” carrying weapons,
it is no great stretch to conclude that they were wearing male costume. This
would be an unwarranted assumption, though, because it grounds conclusions
on preconceptions: in this case, about the usual activities of women and of men.
It is not absolutely certain that among the Powhatan only men, and never
women, used weapons, especially because there is evidence from other peoples
that women did so (e.g., Braund 1990:244; Lang 1998:261ff; Leacock 1981:37,
1986:112; Perdue 1998:38); but the evidence in the Jamestown documents allows
no other conclusion for the Powhatan. The colonists describe men using all
these weapons in the pursuit of game and in warfare (Smith 1986 I [1608]:47–49,
75, [1612]:162, 163, 164, 166–7, 175, 249, 251, 255; Spelman 1910 [1614]:xxiii;
Strachey 1953 [1612]:61, 81, 83, 113; Percy 1910 [1625]:lxviii); and while there are
no definite statements that women never did so, there are also none that they
did.1 It seems likely, too, that if the colonists were aware of women participating
in these activities they would have remarked the fact.2 Smith’s description of the
“maskarado” may simply express English astonishment at women acting in
“male” roles.
The women’s appearance in this dance, while different from the everyday
appearance of men, was decidedly more masculine than feminine. The basic
dress of Powhatan women was a skin apron, occasionally supplemented by a
covering for the buttocks as well (Figure 2); to which a woman of means might
add a cloak of skin or of feathers woven together, and on occasion leggings and
moccasins. Commoner women wore nothing on their heads, while those of
high status had a simple headdress of shell beads, pearls, or copper (Strachey
1953 [1612]:65, 71–72, 75).
Like grown women, men wore an apron of skin or grass (Fig. 3) and, if they
had the means, a cloak. These were apparently larger than those that women
wore, and they were decorated with white beads, copper, or both as well as
paint. All men of any rank wore a great variety of things on their heads, in their
pierced ears, and in their hair (Strachey 1953 [1612]:73–74). The headdresses of
the “maskarado” dancers were neither so varied nor so elaborate as were those
of an ordinary man, but they were clearly masculine rather than feminine.
Wearing an antler headdress seems to have been customary, although not
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Figure 2.
A Carolina Algonkian woman and child
Source: Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land
of Virginia, Pl. VIII.
Figure 3.
A Carolina Algonkian chief.
Source: Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land
of Virginia, Pl. III.
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common. Strachey lists “the casthead or Browmantle of a deare” among
the things a man wore on his head (1953 [1612]:74). Sir Walter Cope, writing to
Lord Salisbury in August 1607 soon after the return of Captain Christopher
Newport to England with the colonists” first accounts of Virginia, includes in
his letter this wry description: “pohatan an other of ther kinges3 came stately
Marchinge with a great payre of buckes hornes fastened to hys forehead not
knowing what esteme we make of men so marked. . . .” (1969 [1607]:108). Percy
describes “the King of Paspahey. . .painted all black, with hornes on his head
like a Diuell” (1969 [1614]:147). This may have been a form of headdress
restricted to high-ranking men. Whether wearing antlers was a mark of high
status or not, it was a symbol of masculinity.
The lead dancer of the “maskarado” wore an otter skin at her waist and
another on one wrist. Their function is not clear, but they seem to have been
male items as well. The skin worn at the waist may have been a variety of male
pubic covering represented in the illustrations of the Carolina Algonkians
(Harriot 1972 [1590]:Pls. XI, XII, XIII, XV, XVII). Because Smith says that his
dancers were “naked . . . (only covered behind and before with a few greene
leaves),” the skin may have been a pouch for carrying small personal items.
Carolina Algonkian men are shown with such pouches tucked into their waistbands. The only example to which Harriot draws specific attention is that worn
by the conjurer. The pouch always differs in appearance from the pubic covering (Harriot 1972 [1590]:Pls. XI, XVIII). The skin on the wrist was probably a
bracer, which they made of a fox or otter skin (Smith 1986 II [1624]:148).
Whatever their function, though, it is clear that wearing otter skins was a male
habit not a female one, and it is thus consonant with the interpretation that this
was cross-dressing.
Smith mentions that the women were painted in diverse ways—“some white,
some red, some black, some partie colour, but every one different.” In similar
terms he describes the paint of the warriors who attacked his party at
Kecoughtan: “some blacke, some red, some white, some party-coloured” (Smith
1986 II [1624]:144), and the shamans who conducted the “conjuration” or divination over him while he was a captive: “painted halfe blacke, halfe red: but all
their eyes were painted white, and some red stroakes like Mutchato’s, along
their cheekes” (Smith 1986 II [1624]:149). This variety in body paint contrasts
with the red paint that ordinary women and men wore daily on their heads and
upper bodies (Smith 1986 I [1612]:161; Strachey 1953 [1612]:70). Only mourning
women, shamans in their ordinary activities and men seeking spiritual contact
wore plain black paint, and apparently only boys at the start of the huskanaw
ritual wore plain white paint (Smith 1986 I [1612]:169, 171; White 1969
[1614]:147–8; Beverley 1947 [1705]:207). Leaving aside a comprehensive analysis
of the color symbolism (see Williamson 2003:247ff), we may make two points:
parti-colored paint appears to have been appropriate to men, not to women, and
then only in ceremonial contexts; black paint symbolized the spiritual, as it does
in many Eastern Woodlands cultures.
The paint, headdresses, skins, and weaponry of Smith’s dancing women all
signal masculinity. The only aspect of their attire not so easily explained is the
green leaves with which they were “covered behind and before.” The only other
report we have of Powhatan dancers wearing greenery is William White’s
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account of the huskanaw quoted above. After the initiates had been removed
from their original place under a tree, “the guard teares downe trees, branches,
and boughes, making wreathes for their heads, or bedecking their haire with
the leaues” (White 1969 [1614]:148). This slender clue associates the wearing of
tree branches with men and so implies the reason why Smith’s woman dancers
wore them.
The certain identification of the women’s costume as masculine is not an end
in itself but rather a prelude to addressing the larger and more important
question: Why were the women so attired? More particularly, why was transvestism appropriate at this time of the year, and why was it accomplished by the
women? If this was a celebration of harvest, as the time of year suggests, male
symbols of the hunt and warfare—activities complementary, if not antipathetic,
to horticulture—would seem to be out of place. Or if the dance anticipated the
hunting season just about to begin, why were women doing it instead of men,
the hunters? We must not forget, either, that following the dance the women
resumed their normal appearance and spent some time importuning Smith
sexually—acting, that is, as women not as “men.” A review of all that we know
or can divine about Powhatan cultural categories allows the proposal of acceptable, if not absolutely provable, answers to these questions.
Smith’s “maskarado” is clearly an example of reversal and as such may be
taken as a boundary marker, in this case signalling the change between the
season of horticulture and that of hunting, a shift which was also the beginning
of a new year by Powhatan reckoning.4 This was not simply a shift from one
season to another but also from one moral order to its opposite. The woman
dancers represented not simply men, nor even masculinity, but rather the
moiety of the Powhatan moral order that included masculinity. Most relevant in
this context, if we accept that this dance had to do with harvest in some way, are
the annual round of Powhatan economic activities and allied Powhatan ideas
about space and time. The Powhatan were transhumant, living primarily in
towns in the eastern tidewater part of their territory from early spring until fall,
in temporary hunting lodges in the western part for the next two or three
months, and then in camps by the rivers. They planted their gardens in April,
May, and June, reaping three corresponding harvests in August, September, and
October. Women and children did most, if not all, of the work associated with
gardening (Smith 1986 I [1612]:162). While waiting for the corn and other crops
to ripen, the Powhatan depended on the abundance of wild foods available in
the area. After the harvest they would “reduce themselves into companies, as the
Tartars doe, and goe to the most desert [i.e., unpopulated] places with their
families, where they spend their time in hunting and fowling up towards the
mountaines, by the heads of their rivers [in the western part of their territory],
where there is plentie of game” (Smith 1986 I [1612]:164; see Smith 1986 I
[1608]:91; [1612]:162–5; Strachey 1953 [1612]:82–83; Beverley 1947 [1705]:156). As
we have seen, among the Powhatan hunting seems to have been exclusively the
men’s pursuit, while horticulture was the province of women. The seasonal
distinction between horticulture and hunting is not clear-cut because the
Powhatan were foraging year round even while they tended and harvested their
gardens. Some are reported also to be living snugly in their towns in December
(e.g., Smith 1986 I [1612]:245). It is rather a focus of attention that differs:
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in the warm months, their attention was on their gardens; in the cold ones, on
hunting.
The shift from one activity to another and the associated shift in residence
were consonant with ideas about the cultural significance of space. They associated the Tidewater region to the east with, among other things, the feminine,
life, and vegetation while the Piedmont to the west was associated with their
opposites—the masculine, death, and animal life (Williamson 1979, 2003). The
Powhatan year thus constituted an example of what Mauss calls seasonal variations, involving radical changes in the mode of livelihood, sociality, social
morphology, religious activity, legal institutions, and concepts of the person
(Mauss 1979). Powhatan social morphology altered with the seasons. In the
growing season, people lived in towns comprising between two and twenty
loosely scattered houses. Each house held between six and twenty people,
presumably a nuclear or perhaps extended family consisting minimally of a
man, his wife or wives, and their children, and it seems likely that the heads of
the households in any town were related matrilineally and, possibly, affinally
(Smith 1986 I [1612]:61,162; Spelman 1910 [1614]:cvii; Strachey 1953 [1612]:112).
Such towns were organized into named territorial groups each with its own
chief (weroance) (Williamson 2003:47ff). By contrast, hunting groups were not
only more mobile, living in portable houses and moving with the dictates of the
chase, but they seem to have been larger and more compact than towns, and
they were more promiscuously organized, including people from several different tribes (e.g., Smith 1986 I [1608]:91). Apparently the change of seasons and
of occupations was associated with a change in political relations also. Possibly
there were changes in legal and moral relations, too, as Mauss says occurred
among the Inuit, but on this point we have no information for the Powhatan.
Still, the parallels are suggestive, and they warrant the conclusion that, generally speaking, for the Powhatan summer and winter were not just different
seasons allowing different economic pursuits, but they were morally different
also.
The shift from one season to another seems to have occurred only in the
autumn. Although absence of evidence in the Jamestown documents is not
evidence of absence, the fact is that they comment on autumn celebrations and
say nothing about equivalent ones in the spring, suggesting that there were
none at that time. According to Beverley, “they reckon the Years by the Winters,
or Cohonks, as they call them; which is a name taken from the note of the
Wild Geese, intimating so many times of the Wild Geese coming to them,
which is every winter” (Beverley 1947 [1705]:211). Presumably the southerly
migration in late autumn is meant, rather than the northerly migration in spring,
because Beverley goes on to say that their arrival coincided with freedom to
travel and to hunt. Strachey, however, makes the apparently contrary statement
that the Powhatan “accompt and bring about the yeare” at the “returne of the
leafe,” in terms of which they reckon their ages (Strachey 1953 [1612]:72); but it
is possible that the word “returne” is a mistake for “turn,” that is, the turning
color of leaves in the fall. Whether or not that speculation is warranted, the
weight of this evidence supports the conclusion that for the Powhatan the year
began in the early winter and that it was associated with a change in their mode
of living.
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Our authorities are agreed that this was a period of celebration. Smith writes:
“From September untill the midst of November are the chiefe Feasts and
sacrifice. Then have they plenty of fruits as well planted as naturall, as corne
greene and ripe, fish, fowle, and wilde beastes exceeding fat” (Smith 1986 I
[1612]:156–7; cf Beverley 1947 [1705]:210).
Smith’s maskarado, which represented disorder and nonconformity and
which may have been a mockery of the masculine, seems to been a version of
the Old Man’s Dance of the Creek (Swanton 2000:534), the Booger Dance of the
Cherokee (Fogelson and Bell 1983), or the harvest dance of the Waxhaw of
North Carolina (Lawson 1967 [1709]:44–45). Raymond Fogelson and Amelia
nBell draw attention to the similarities among these dances (1989:60), and I
suggest that the “maskarado” that Smith saw should be added to the list. All the
dances present a picture of confusion, appropriate to a space between regular,
normal periods of time (Leach 1966:135).
Identifying the similarities among rituals from different areas is not an
explanation of their symbolism, however; nor can we safely transfer the interpretation of a symbolic system from one culture to another, even a closely
related one. If Smith’s “maskarado” was a variation of the Old Man’s Dance, or
allied to such a variation, we still need to know why the Powhatan women
danced it rather than the men and why they did it in masculine-style garb rather
than wearing some version of female clothing? Simply to say that they were
symbolizing disorder is insufficient, however true, because in order to be recognizable as such, symbolic disorder must refer to symbolic order and thus
confirm its validity. The possibilities for expressing disorder are nonetheless
considerable, so that it is reasonable to ask why one expression has been chosen
over the alternatives.
There are reasons to think that Powhatan men would have been symbolically
more suitable to perform a ritual that celebrated, and perhaps brought about, a
change from horticulture (a female activity) to hunting (a male one), and with
it the moral and social changes suggested above. Men initiated action that
women then followed up and perfected. While women were associated with the
controlled domestic areas of hearth and garden, men had associations both with
their homes and with the margins of settlements, with the uncertain business of
hunting and the dangers of warfare, and with the wilderness proper. So far as
we can tell, they and not women made contact with spirits, and only men
became shamans. These facts suggest that the men would initiate a season in
which their activities would be of paramount importance for the whole society.
Also relevant is the way the Powhatan assigned gender to persons. They
recognized female and male genders; all women (except possibly woman
chiefs) were gendered female, all shamans were gendered male, and all other
men were gendered both male and female (Williamson 1979, 2003). In their
appearance, secular Powhatan men represented their dual nature in the way
that they wore their hair, long on the left and short on the right (Williamson
1979). They also performed the otherwise female activities of planting and
reaping in the service of the mamanatowick, Wahunsonacawh (Spelman 1910
[1614]:cxii), thus representing themselves as comparatively female to his male
chiefly status (Williamson 1979, 2003:156–7). Powhatan men, according to this
interpretation, alternated between a male and a female role according to
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circumstance. This was particularly true of hierarchical relationships, in which
the superior authority was reckoned male and the subordinate power was
female. Any secular Powhatan man would find himself at different times commander or commanded (Williamson 2003:129ff), which is to say male or female.
The Powhatan metaphorically related the categories of female and male to,
respectively, east and west, life and death, gardening and hunting, and white
and black. To this set of oppositions can be added, again respectively, low and
high (e.g., the lower coastal plain vs. the higher piedmont), wet and dry, fertile
and sterile, ordered and wild, mundane and spiritual, and power and authority.
Representations of gender implied or referred to these other cultural categories
(Williamson 2003:202ff). By this means persons and categories of persons were
related to and made to harmonize with the world as a whole. Maintaining the
order of the world was, we may assume, a human obligation and the sequence
of harvest-time rituals a fulfillment of that obligation. If Powhatan men were, as
would be said in the Plains or the Southwest, of the middle of the structure, the
question of why they did not celebrate the junction between seasons and
between years is even more pressing.
One possibility is that men’s quotidian ambiguity made them unsuitable
celebrants in this case. In their ordinary lives, secular men alternated male and
female as the context demanded, and with their male-and-female hair they
were always to some degree cross-dressed. For them to have assumed female
clothing, which, as I have shown, differed little from ordinary male clothing
anyway, would not have been much of a change. Apparently what was wanted
was something truly disordered and arresting. Women dressing as men provided it. The evidence we have obliges us to say that in the ordinary way women
were never considered male:5 They neither hunted nor approached the spirits,
they were not warriors, and they never initiated changes. Thus for them to
assume distinctive male garb, including items that referred to the shedding of
blood and paint that referred to spiritual contact, for the purpose of beginning
a new year was indeed to turn the world upside down.
The fact that the Powhatan regarded women as more important in the transformation of raw materials into culturally valuable items is relevant to this
argument also. This is most obvious in Powhatan food preparation, which was
entirely the work of women. Pregnancy and childbirth, too, may have been
considered primarily a woman’s transformation of inchoate matter into coherent human form. To these examples we may add their acting as barbers for both
men and women, training their sons in archery, transporting and setting up
housing for winter hunting camps, and electing to adopt prisoners of war as
members of their families. For this end-of-year ritual, they performed the ultimate transformation, making male out of female, if only temporarily, to bring
about the transformation of a female season into a male one and, incidentally, to
transform the old year into a new one. Thus the female power to transform was
melded with the male right to initiate, and the whole presentation, ostensibly an
anti-festival, really affirmed Powhatan ideas about gender.
Then the dancers “reaccommodated themselves,” Smith says, and urged him
to dalliance. In other words the women reverted to their feminine natures.
Strachey, describing Powhatan courtship, notes that “they [the Powhatan] are
people most voluptious, yet the women very Carefull, not to be suspected of
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dishonestie without the leave of their husbandes, but he giving his consent,
they. . .may embrace the acquaintance of any Straunger for nothing,” adding
that both men and women are riddled with “their owne country-disease (the
Pox)” from a young age as a result of their “intemperances” (1953 [1612]:112–3).
Beverley rather obscurely confirms Strachey’s report, although he was writing
nearly a century later (1947 [1705]:170–1). Powhatan women seem to have been
at least as likely, if not more likely, than men to propose sexual congress.
Conclusions
Despite the fact that a thorough explication of this obscure event is impossible, some useful conclusions may be drawn from what is presented here. If
what we learn about Powhatan culture from this analysis is more confirmatory
than revealing, still such confirmation is welcome given the limited information
with which we have to work.
The analysis demonstrates the necessity of understanding Smith’s account in
its own cultural terms—in this case, English ceremony at the beginning of the
17th century. It reminds us, too, that there is more to women’s lives than
producing children and food. However, these observations are, or should be,
comparatively commonplace. The important thing about this analysis is that
it reveals this seemingly unimportant ritual as a quintessential expression of
Powhatan cosmology.
This ritual, as the pivot between the old year and the new, made time move
as it should. It maintained the order of the cosmos in a most fundamental
and far-reaching way. Because it was conducted at Werowocomoco, it confirmed
that Powhatan’s seat was also the seat of that pivot, the still center of the
universe.
The enormous ritual importance of Werowocomoco is suggested in Smith’s
description of the “conjuration” or divination that the shamans conducted over
him (1986 [1608]:59; see also Gleach 1997:114–5). That ritual, too, was held at
Werowocomoco, and for it the shamans created a microcosm of the world that
placed the Powhatan at the center. The recent archaeological discoveries at the
site of Werowocomoco (Gallivan 2007) show that it had been an important—
probably the most important—ritual center in the region for centuries before
Wahunsonacawh established his residence there. The fact that this cosmically
critical ritual was carried out there confirms the ritual importance of the place.
A corollary of asserting that Werowocomoco was the cosmic center of the
Powhatan world is the recognition that its principal resident, Wahunsonacawh,
was much more than a political leader: he was a semidivine ruler, and as such
he was responsible for the order of the world. We may understand his so-called
political actions—his wars, his punishments, and his human sacrifices—as
means to ensure that order (Williamson 2003). As Martin Gallivan (2007) argues
persuasively, his move to Werowocomoco was not the cause but rather a consequence of his becoming accepted as the just governor of the world. It is
possible indeed that the Powhatan view was that the place was so powerful that
only a divinely sanctioned person could live there. Whether that were so or not,
we find a consonance between the ritual importance of the ruler and that of the
place he lived in.
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Assuming the validity of all this, what does it say about the status of Captain
John Smith? We know already that Wahunsonacawh and his council made an
attempt to incorporate Smith and the Jamestown colonists into their empire
when they captured him and made a pretence of executing him.6 It would appear
that at this point, anyway, Wahunsonacawh had not given up hope of achieving
this goal. Allowing Smith and his party to participate in this consequential ritual
was to extend once again the offer of inclusion in the Powhatan order.
Not surprisingly, Smith did not understand this, or perhaps he chose not to;
rather, he presented it as confirmation that the Powhatan had some way to go to
achieve true civilization. His ethnographic impulse, though, allows us to understand the event from the other side, thus to expand our understanding of
Powhatan culture and thus our appreciation of how that culture affected the
course of English colonization in Virginia.
Notes
1. One seeming exception to this generalization must be noted. Percy reports that
one William Ratcliffe, sent to Powhatan to trade for food for the starving colony, was
captured and “. . .caused [by Powhatan] to be bownd unto a tree naked wth a fyer before
And by woemen his fleshe was skraped from his bones wth mussell shelles and before
his face throne into the fyer. And so for want of circumspection miserably [per]ished”
(1922 [1626]:266; see Spelman [1910 {1612}civ-cv] for another account, which does not
mention women). Even if this did happen as Percy says, though, it is not an exception to
my generalization because the women are reported to have used mussel shells, which
they also used to shave themselves and their husbands, not bows and arrows or other
weapons of war.
2. Woman cross-dressers, although rare, were known at this period in Europe; the
practice was not approved by most people (Dekker and van de Pol 1989), which strengthens the supposition that had Powhatan women assumed male dress and roles in this way,
even for brief periods of time, the English would have recorded the fact.
3. This was not the mamanatowick, whom at that time the English had not met, but the
“little” Powhatan, one of his sons, chief of Powhatan Tribe at the falls of the James
(Barbour 1969 I:110n).
4. While there is no necessary association between reversal and boundaries, including changes in time (Needham 1983:118; see Leach 1966:134), the weight of ethnographic
example supports this interpretation, as does the Powhatan evidence itself.
5. As I have noted earlier, woman chiefs (weroansqua) may have been gendered male,
but the evidence is simply insufficient to determine that.
6. Work on the still-contentious subject of this episode includes Puglisi 1991; Lemay
1992; Williamson 1992; Quitt 1995; Gleach 1997; Donaldson 1999; P. Strong 1999;
Rountree 2001, 2005; Townsend 2004; Custalow and Daniel 2007; see also Rountree 1998.
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