Chief Powhatan - Appearance

Appearance

In A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Happened in Virginia (1608), Smith described Powhatan thus: "...their Emperor proudly upon a bedstead a foot high upon ten or twelve mats, richly hung with many chains of great pearls about his neck, and covered with a great covering of Rahaughcums . At his head sat a woman, at his feet another, on each side, sitting upon a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men on each side the fire, ten in a rank, and behind them as many young women, each a great chain of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted in red, and with such a grave a majestical countenance as drove me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage."

"Powatan's Mantle" is the name given to a cloak of deerskin, decorated with shell patterns and figures, held by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It allegedly belonged to Chief Powhatan, although the evidence is questionable. The Mantle is certainly one of the earliest North American artifacts to have survived in a European collection. It must have originally belonged to a Native American of high social status, as it was manufactured from numerous valuable native shell beads.

In his 1906 work Lives of Famous Chiefs, Norman Wood described the chief, based on English reports. He was said to be a "tall, well-proportioned man with a sower looke, his head somewhat gray, his beard so thinne that it seemeth none at all, his age neare sixtie, of a very able and hardy body, to endure any labor."