ers, which were men, women and
children, satisfied the captain that there was no such matter.
Then presently they were presented with this antic; thirty young
women came naked out of the woods, only covered behind and before
with a few green leaves, their bodies all painted, some of one
color, some of another, but all differing; their leader had a fair
pair of buck's horns on her head, an otter's skin at her girdle,
another at her arm, a quiver of arrows at her back, and a bow and
arrows in her hand. The next had in her hand a sword, another a
club, another a potstick; all of them being horned alike: the rest
were all set out with their several devices. These fiends, with
most hellish shouts and cries, rushing from among the trees, cast
themselves in a ring about the fire, singing and dancing with most
excellent ill variety, oft falling into their infernal
passions, and then solemnly betaking themselves again to sing and
dance; having spent an hour in this mascarado, as they entered, in
like manner they departed."

They have a fire made constantly every night, at a convenient place in
the town, whither all that have a mind to be merry, at the public dance
or music, resort in the evening.

Their musical instruments are chiefly drums and rattles: their drums are
made of a skin, stretched over an earthen pot half full of water. Their
rattles are the shell of a small gourd, or macock of the creeping kind,
and not of those called callibaches, which grow upon trees; of which the
Brazilians make their maraka, or tamaraka, a sort of rattle also, as
Clusius seems to intimate.

CHAPTER XI.

OF THE LAWS, AND AUTHORITY OF THE INDIANS AMONG ONE ANOTHER.

Sec. 44. The Indians having no sort of letters among them, as has been
before observed, they can have no written laws; nor did the constitution
in which we found them seem to need many. Nature and their own
convenience having taught them to obey one chief, who is arbiter of all
things among them. They claim no property in lands, but they are in
common to a whole nation. Every one hunts and fishes, and gathers fruits
in all places. Their labor in tending corn, pompions, melons, &c., is
not so great, that they need quarrel for room, where the land is so
fertile, and where so much lies uncultivated.

They bred no sort of cattle, nor had anything that could be called
riches. They valued skins and furs for use, and peak and roenoke for
orna