A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia – Thomas Hariot

Hariot starts by saying that some of the reports that came out previously had been slanderous. He calls the indigenous the “natural inhabitants”. His report is in “three parts” First, commodities that are already found or raised by planters which can be traded, second the commodities that are natural to the country that are useful for life, and third commodities that are useful for building. So sellable, edible, and buildable. So his “true report” is only about the STUFF that can be used in the country.

First: Sellable

Silk of grass that is easy to sow and plant.

Worm silk – probably easy to grow here by adding mulberry trees.

Flax and hemp – tons here.

Allum – A huge vein of it along the coast (white copper, nitrum)

Wapeih – a kind of earth like terra sigillata, used by surgeons and physicians? From medieval times apparently, it was seen as a proof against poisons.

Pitch, tar, rosin, and turpentine – many trees that have this

Sassafrass – useful for physic

Cedar – good timber and sweet wood

Wine – two kinds of good grapes.

Oil – walnut oil

Furs – lots of otters

Deer skins – lots of deer

Civet cat – native of asia so maybe he meant a skunk?

Iron – found all over

Copper – two towns found with diverse copper plates, and maybe also silver

Pearl – lot of variety of mussels

Sweet gums

Dyes – many different kinds and new to England

Oade and madder – useful for dyers

Sugar cane – it wasn’t preserved well so they couldn’t tell if it would grown. Same with oranges and lemons

Second: Victuals and sustenance

Maize – lots of sweet and mild flavored corn, useful for beer.

Beans – more diverse in color than English beans

Peas

Melons and gourds – several forms and are very good

The ground is very easy to plant, “so much small labor and pain is needed…One many may prepare and husband much ground with less than four and twenty hours of labor, as shall yield him victual in a large proportion for a twelve month”. (page 19)

Tobacco – called “Uppowoc” but called tobacco by Spaniards – The leaves are dried and turned to powder then used to smoke. He writes that it purges the sueperfluous and other gross humors, opens the pores and passages of the body and is seen as being healthy and will prevent many grievous diseases. (Note that this is in the sustenance part, not the sellable part)

He has a section on roots that are useful for ropes or to eat

Then a section on “fruit” included which are chestnuts, walnuts, medlars, grapes, strawberries, mulberries, applecrabs, sacquennummener (?) and a reed that you can eat.

Then beasts, like deer, conies (rabbits/hares), saquennckot and maquowoct (smaller than rabbits—maybe mice/voles/etc?), squirrels, bears, lions, wolves (not good meat), fowls like cockes and hens, partridges, cranes, swans, and geese. Also parrots, falcons, and hawks (not good meat)

Fish: sturgeons, trouts, porpoises, rays, oldwines, mullets, plaice, and many other sorts that have no names. Seacrabs, oysters, muscles, scallops, periwinkles, and crevises, turtles.

Building materials:

Walnots, oaks, firs, rakiock (used to make canoes), cedar,  maple, witch-hazel, holly, willows, beech, ash, elm, sassafras, ascopo (like a laurel), and many others that have no English names.

Stones, bricks, lime

Then he writes about the nature and manners of the people. He writes, “they shall have cause both to fear and love us”. They are “poor” because the “want…skill, judgment in the knowledge and use of our things” and “esteem our trifles before things of greater value”. They have some religion “far from the truth” though they may be reformed.

The temperature is excellent, warmer than England, but not as hot as the tropics.

Origin Myth of Acoma

First, there were two female human beings, born underground. There was no light, so they could only feel each other and grow slowly. The Spirit, called, Tsichtinako, spoke to them and gave them nourishment, and learned language from it. They asked what they were, and it replied they were “nuk’timi” (under the earth) until everything was ready for them. It gave them a present of seeds and little images of all the different animals to be in the world. They were tasked with planting the trees and then use the trees to get into the light. The trees were of different sorts, but the tallest, lanye grew fastest, but didn’t let in enough light. Tsichtinako advised them to find the image of the dyu’p (badger) and tell it to become alive. They instructed Badger to climb up the pine tree and bore a hole in the earth. The locust is then brought to life and told to plaster the sides of the hole but to not go out into the light. The locust disobeys, and is punished by living a short life and having to return to its home when the weather was bad. They then go to the light and are told to worship the sun. Tsichtinako tells them it is not their father, their father is Uchtsiti, who made the world and many other things. He made the sisters to rule and bring life to the rest of the things. Uchtisiti made the world by throwing a clot of his own blood into space and it grew into the Earth. Then Uchtisiti planted the sisters in the earth and nourished them, but now that they are above the earth they must nourish themselves. They’ll never see Uchtisit because he is in the “four skies above” The sisters are named Nautsiti and Iatiku and Iatiku calls her clan the “Corn clan” and Nautsiti is “sun clan”. They then plant the rest of the seeds and are given fire, and told how to make fire to cook food. They then are told to give life to the Ba’shya (kangaroo mouse) to be used as food and they are taught a song to sing to animals in order to make the animals come to life. After planting the trees and grasses, and bringing the small animals to life, Tsichtinako tells them to make mountains. Then they plant more wild fruits and bring the larger animals to life. The snake came to life on its own after the baskets were dropped and tempts Nautsiti and causes them to fight with each other and compete. Even though Tsichtinako had told them that their father forbade them to have children, the snake Pishuni, tells Nautsiti to go ask a rainbow how to make a child. The rain drips into her and conceives twin sons. She gives one she doesn’t like to Iatiku, and then the sisters decide to separate. Nautsiti, on leaving, wants to share her basket items, sheep and cattle, but Iatiku thinks they will be too hard to care for. The same for wheat and vegetables. Also, precious metals and writing, but Iatiku didn’t want any of it. The son Iatiku raises becomes her husband, Tia’muni and they bore many children. Iatiku is “Mother” and instructs her people and names each child after a clan “badger, antelope, red corn, blue corn,” etc. Iatiku also makes the spirits of the seasons, Sha-k’ak (Winter), Morityema (Spring), Maiyochina (Summer), and Shrui’sthia (Fall). She made several other sprits and prayer sticks, to which she told the gods, “this is how the humans will call for you.” She also makes the first house and tells them this is what they will live in. Various rituals are described and the proper building of the medicine hut. Hunting methods and rules are also prescribed.

Discovery of Guiana – Sir Walter Raleigh

In Trinidad he talks about how the soil is “very excellent and wil beare sugar, ginger, or any other commodity that the Indies yield” (4). The Spaniards confess to having found grains of gold in some of the rivers, but didn’t keep looking because they were headed to Guiana. Berreo (a Spaniard) has the island of Trinidad under lock and key, and has told the Indians to not come aboard or trade with Raleigh on pain of death, but the Indian’s displeasure at their treatment by the Spanish seems to be included as a way to show that the English could easily take the island. He lights the city of St. Josephs on fire after he takes it? He captures Berreo. The queen is represented as being a virgin, (Elizabeth) and one who “frees” nations from their oppressors… and the Indians admire the queen’s portrait. Guiana is 600 miles further away than he thought it was. Guiana is supposed to have more gold and riches than all of Peru and Spain. The government and religion is also supposed to be the same as Peru, meaning, I guess, that what worked there in conquering will work in Guiana as well? El Dorado is said to exist here on the shores of a salt lake, but its original name is supposed to be Manoa. The Guianians are called “great drunkards” and there are “cannibals” reported on the island of Dominica. The Indians of Trenedado (Trinidad?) have gold that came from Guiana, so do those in Dominica and those called Tucaris, Choci, Apotomios, Cumanagots, and those inhabiting  Vensuello, Maracapana, and Guanipa. The gold is most likely shaped as a “croissant”.

He then goes into a little bit of a sideline in talking about Amazons and whether or not they existed. In Raleighs account, they do, on the south side of the river in Topago and in some islands near the mouth of the river. He uses classicism, and the myth of Medusa to say these women have histories just like the Greeks and Scithians. The Kings and men gather at the borders of the amazon once a year and the queens take their pick, then the rest “cast lots for their Valentines”. Fo this one month they dance and drink, then if they conceive a son they return him to the father, and if it is a daughter they keep her and nourish her (Raleigh interestingly uses “it” when referring to the female progeny). He does not find it to be true that they cut off their right breast, they do put their prisoners to death though, because they are cruel and bloodthirsty, especially against those who enter their territories. The Amazons also have gold which they trade for green stones which were considered to be healing stones.

Raleigh also does a fair job at trying to trace the many rivers and their origins, although he gets it wrong by suggesting there is another major river outside the Amazon.

In his questioning of Berreo about Guiana, there are several moments where (knowing that there is no gold in Guiana, let alone that El Dorado does not exist), you can see the problems with Berreo’s story. Part of the problem lies in the fact that Berreo is a prisoner, and therefore not the best and most trustworthy witness. He tells Raleigh that he traveled 1000 miles more than he had hoped in his attempt to find it. The indigenous in the area, too, have no reason to tell Raleigh the truth. There is an interesting point when Raleigh, relating Berreo’s narrative, talks about how the indigenous travel along the river “Amapaia” and have drinking water because the river is tawny or red, and he’s told that they fill their pots in the middle of the afternoon, but not when the sun is setting or at night because the river is then poison. The information Raleigh provides, is thus not only second-hand, but third-hand.

On page 39 (of my text) he talks about slavery among the indigenous where they would sell their women and children for 3 or 4 hatchets, which the Spaniards buy and then sell them in the West Indies for 50-100 pesos. This section also compares the female indigenous to the females in England and suggests they can be compared except for their skin color.

Berreo, when he realizes Raleigh intends to find Guiana, tries to convince him not to go, that they will suffer many miseries, that the rivers would fight them in their large ships, that winter was coming and the rivers would be swollen, that the indigenous would not talk to them but instead run away and burn their towns, and that none would trade with them because they knew that the Europeans love of gold would mean future conquering and dispossession.

Raleigh gives an interesting description of traveling the tributaries and around the islands. He writes that “we might have wandered a whole year in that labyrinth of rivers, ere we had found any way, either out or in, especially after we were past the ebbing and flowing, which was in fewer days: for I know all the Earth doth not yield the like confluence of streams and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so fair and large, and so like one to another, as no man can tell which to take: and if we went by the Sun or compass hoping thereby to go directly one way or other, yet that way we were also carried in a circle amongst multitudes of islands, and every island so bordered with high trees, as no man could see any further than the breadth of the river, or length of the breach” (page 46).

He describes the customs of the Tiuitiuas: they have houses on the ground in the summer and in the winter they live in the trees. They never eat anything that is sown (meaning they are still hunters and gatherers) and only eat “that which nature without labor bring forth” (51). They kill deer, fish and pigs, and also harvest fruit. He considers them to be manly, and usually at war with the cannibals, but of late everyone is at peace to make war with the Spaniards. (Here it is clear that the “good” indigenous are given descriptions and the “bad” indigenous are always just “cannibals). The death rituals are described, where after the flesh has fallen off the bones of their leaders, the bodies are hung in the house and ornamented with feathers and gold plates.

Raleigh relates how growing closer to the equator meant it got hotter and the air was harder to breathe.

He also relates that the Spanish used the indigenous women to “satisfy their own lusts” but swears that his crew did no such thing, even though the women were very young and excellently favored and came to them naked (61).

He has a long digression on poison arrows, which he wants to find a cure for. The most deadly poison he relates is the Tupara. Which, apparently, works worse if the afflicted have drank any alcohol. (maybe because it thins the blood?)

The end of the text is a call to other explorers and explains how plentiful the land is and all the animal and plant life to be found. He didn’t find gold, but he does relate other items such as gums, peppers, wood, and that the soil is rich so it will be easy to plant sugar and ginger just like in the West Indies.

On 115 “Guiana is a country that hath yet her maidenhead, never sacked, turned, nor wrought, the face of the earth hath not been torn, nor the virtue and salt of the soil spent by manurance, the graves have not been opened for gold, the mines not broken with sledges, nor their images pulled down out of their temples. It hath never been entered by any army of strength, and never conquered or possessed by any Christian Prince. It is besides so defensible, that if two forts be built in one of the provinces which I have seen, the flood setteth in so near the bank, where the channel also lies, that no ship can pass up, but within a pikes length of the artillerie, first of the one and afterwards of the other: which two fords will be sufficient guard both to the Empire of Inga and to an hundred other severall small kingdoms, lying within the said river, even to the city of Quito in Peru.”