ATTIRE OF VIRGINIA DAMES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS

It is a matter of deep regret that no "Lists of Apparel" were made out for the women emigrants in any of the colonies. Doubtless many came who had a distinct allotment of clothing, among them the redemptioners. We know one case, that of the "Casket Girls," of Louisiana, where a group of "virtuous, modest, well-carriaged young maids" each had a casket or box of clothing supplied to her as part of her payment for emigration. I wish we had these lists, not that I should deem them of great value or accuracy in one respect since they would have been made out naturally by men, but because I should like to read the struggles of the average shipping-clerk or supercargo, or even shipping-master or company's president, over the items of women's dress. One reason why the lists we have in the court records are so wildly spelled and often vague is, I am sure, because the recording-clerks were always men. Such hopeless puzzles as droll or drowlas, cale or caul or kail, chatto or shadow, shabbaroon or chaperone, have come to us through these poor struggling gentlemen.

There are not to my knowledge any portraits in existence of the wives of the first Dutch settlers of New Netherland. They would have been dressed, I am sure, in the full dress of Holland vrouws. We can turn to the court records of New Netherland to learn the exact item of the dress of the settlers. Let me give in full this inventory of an exceptionally rich and varied wardrobe of Madam Jacob de Lange of New Amsterdam, 1662:--

This is a most interesting list of garments. The sleeves with great lace must from their price have been very rich articles of dress. The yellow lace drowlas, since there were four of them (and no other neckerchiefs, such as gorgets, piccadillies, or whisks are named), must have been neckwear of some form. I suspect they are the lace drowls or drolls to which I refer in a succeeding chapter on A Vain Puritan Grandmother. The rain cloth cap of black silk is curious also, being intended to wear over another cap or a love-hood. The cornet caps with lace are a Dutch fashion. The "lace" was in the form of lappets or pinners which flapped down at the side of the face over the ears and almost over the cheeks. Evelyn speaks of a woman in "a cornet with the upper pinner dangling about her cheeks like hound's ears." Cotgrave tells in rather vague definition that a cornet is "a fashion of Shadow or Boone Grace used in old time and to this day by old women." It was not like a bongrace, nor like the cap I always have termed a shadow, but it had two points like broad horns or ears with lace or gauze spread over both and hanging from these horns. Cornets and corneted caps are often in Dutch inventories in early New York. And they can be seen in old Dutch pictures. They were one of the few distinctly Dutch modes that lingered in New Netherland; but by the third generation from the settlement they had disappeared.

What the words "potto-foo" and "potoso-a-samare" mean I cannot decipher. I have tried to find Dutch words allied in sound but in vain. I believe the samare was a Dutch fashion. We rarely find samares worn in Virginia and Maryland, but the name frequently occurs in the first Dutch inventories in New Netherland and occasionally in the Connecticut valley, where there were a few Dutch settlers; occasionally also in Plymouth, whose first settlers had been for a number of years under Dutch influences in Holland; and rarely in Salem and Boston, whose planters also had felt Dutch influences through the settling in Essex and Suffolk of opulent Flemish and Dutch "clothiers"--cloth-workers. These Dutchmen had married Englishwomen, and their presence in English homes was distinctly shown by the use then and to the present day of Dutch words, Dutch articles of dress, furniture, and food. From these Dutch-settled shires of Essex and Suffolk came John Winthrop and all the so-called Bay Emigration.

I am convinced that a samare was a certain garment which I have seen in French, Dutch, and English portraits of the day. It is a tight-fitting jacket or waist or bodice--call it what you will; its skirt or portion below the belt-line is four to eight inches deep, cut up in tabs or oblong flaps, four on each side. These slits are to the belt line. It is, to explain further, a basque, tight-fitting or with the waist laid in plaits, and with the basque skirt cut in eight tabs. These laps or tabs set out rather stiffly and squarely over the full-gathered petticoats of the day.

I turn to a Dutch dictionary for a definition of the word "samare," though my Dutch dictionary being of the date 1735 is too recent a publication to be of much value. In it a samare is defined simply as a woman's gown. Randle Holme says, rather vaguely, that it is a short jacket for women's wear with four side-laps, reaching to the knees. In this rich wardrobe of the widow De Lange, twelve petticoats are enumerated and no overdress-jacket or doublet of any kind except those samares. Their price shows that they were not a small garment. One "silk potoso-a-samare with lace" was worth £;3. One "tartanel samare with tucker" was worth £;1 10s. One "black silk crape samare with tucker" was worth £;1 10s., and three "flowered calico" samares were worth £;2 10s. They were evidently of varying weights for summer and winter wear, and were worn over the rich petticoat.

The bill of the Salem tailor, William Sweatland (1679), shows that he charged 9s. for making a scarlet petticoat with silver lace; for making a black broadcloth gown 18s.; while "new-makeing a plush somar for Mistress." (which was making over) was 6s.; "making a somar for your Maide" was 10s., which was the same price he charged for making a gown for the maid.

The colors in the Dutch gowns were uniformly gay. Madam Cornelia de Vos in a green cloth petticoat, a red and blue "Haarlamer" waistcoat, a pair of red and yellow sleeves, a white cornet cap, green stockings with crimson clocks, and a purple "Pooyse" apron was a blooming flower-bed of color.

I fear we have unconsciously formed our mental pictures of our Dutch forefathers through the vivid descriptions of Washington Irving. We certainly cannot improve upon his account of the Dutch housewife of New Amsterdam:--

"Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, though I must confess those gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen's small-clothes; and what is still more praise-worthy, they were all of their own manufacture,--of which circumstance, as may well be supposed, they were not a little vain.
"Those were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore pockets,--ay, and that, too, of a goodly size, fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles where all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished to have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly crammed.
"Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbons, or, among the more opulent and showy classes, by brass and even silver chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats; it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and a neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle.
"There was a secret charm in those petticoats, which no doubt entered into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock of petticoats and stockings was as absolutely an heiress as is a Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with plenty of reindeer."

A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting New York in 1704, wrote also with clear pen:--

"The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habitt go loose, wear French muches which are like a Capp and headband in one, leaving their ears bare, which are sett out with jewells of a large size and many in number; and their fingers hoop't with rings, some with large stones in them of many Coullers, as were their pendants in their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as Young."

The jewels of one settler of New Amsterdam were unusually rich (in 1650), and were enumerated thus:--

These jewels were owned by the wife of an English-born citizen; but some of the Dutch dames had handsome jewels, especially rich chatelaines with their equipages and etuis with rich and useful articles in variety. When we read of such articles, we find it difficult to credit the words of an English clergyman who visited Albany about the year 1700; namely, that he found the Dutch women of best Albany families going about their homes in summer time and doing their household work while barefooted.

Many conditions existed in Maryland which were found nowhere else in the colonies. These were chiefly topographical. The bay and its many and accommodative tide-water estuaries gave the planters the means, not only of easy, cheap, and speedy communication with each other, but with the whole world. It was a freedom of intercourse not given to any other agricultural community in the whole world. It was said that every planter had salt water within a rifle-shot of his front gate--therefore the world was open to him. The tide is never strong enough on this shore to hinder a sailboat nor is the current of the rivers perceptible. The crop of the settlers was wholly tobacco--indeed, all the processes of government, of society, of domestic life, began and ended with tobacco. It was a wonderfully lucrative crop, but it was an unhappy one for any colony; for the tobacco ships arrived in fleets only in May and June, when the crops were ready for market. The ships could come in anywhere by tide-water. Hence there were two or three months of intense excitement, or jollity, lavishness, extravagance, when these ships were in; a regular Bartholomew Fair of disorder, coarse wit, and rough fun; and the rest of the year there was nothing; no business, no money, no fun. Often the planter found himself after a month of June gambling and fun with three years' crops pledged in advance to his creditors. The factor then played his part; took a mortgage, perhaps, on both crops and plantation; and invariably ended in owning everything. A striking but coarse picture of the traffic and its evils is given in The Sot-weed Factor, a poem of the day.

Land and living were cheap in this tobacco land, but labor was needed for the sudden crops; so negro slaves were bought, and warm invitations were sent back to England for all and every kind of labor. Convicts were welcomed, redemptioners were eagerly sought for; and the scrupulous laws which were made for their protection were blazoned in England. Many laborers were "crimped," too, in England, and brought of course, willy-nilly, to Maryland. Landlords were even granted lands in proportion to their number of servants; a hundred acres per capita was the allowance. It can readily be seen that an ambitious or unscrupulous planter would gather in in some way as many heads as possible.

Maryland under the Baltimores was the only colony that then admitted convicts--that is, admitted them openly and legally. She even greeted them warmly, eager for the labor of their hands, which was often skilled labor; welcomed them for their wits, albeit these had often been ill applied; welcomed them for their manners, often amply refined; welcomed them for their possibilities of rehabilitation of morals and behavior.

The kidnapped servants did not fare badly. Many examples are known where they worked on until they had acquired ample means; still the literature of the day is full of complaints such as this in The Sot-weed Factor:--

"Not then a slave; for twice two years
My clothes were fashionably new.
Nor were my shifts of linen blue.
But Things are Changed. Now at the Hoe
I daily work; and Barefoot go.
In weeding Corn, or feeding Swine
I spend my melancholy time."

Cheap ballads were sold in England warning English maidens against kidnapping.

In the collection of Old Black Letter Ballads in the British Museum is one entitled The Trappan'd Maiden or the Distressed Damsel. Its date is believed to be 1670.

"The Girl was cunningly trappan'd
Sent to Virginny from England.
Where she doth Hardship undergo;
There is no cure, it must be so;
But if she lives to cross the Main
She vows she'll ne'er go there again.
Give ear unto a Maid
That lately was betray'd
And sent unto Virginny O.
In brief I shall declare
What I have suffered there
When that I was weary, O.
The cloathes that I brought in
They are worn so thin
In the Land of Virginny O.
Which makes me for to say
Alas! and well-a-day
When that I was weary, O."

The indentured servant, the redemptioner, or free-willer saw before him, at the close of his seven years term, a home in a teeming land; he would own fifty acres of that land with three barrels, an axe, a gun, and a hoe--truly, the world was his. He would have also a suit of kersey, strong hose, a shirt, French fall shoes, and a good hat,--a Monmouth cap,--a suit worthy any man. Abigail had an equal start, a petticoat and waistcoat of strong wool, a perpetuana or callimaneo, two blue aprons, two linen caps, a pair of new shoes, two pairs of new stockings and a smock, and three barrels of Indian corn.

We find that many of these redemptioners became soldiers in the colonial wars, often distinguished for bravery. This was through a law passed by the British government that all who enlisted in military service in the colonies were released by that act from further bondage.

In the year 1659, on an autumn day, two white men with an Indian guide paddled swiftly over the waters of Chesapeake Bay on business of much import. They had come from Manhattan, and bore despatches from Governor Stuyvesant to the governor of Maryland, relating to the ever troublesome query of those days, namely, the exact placing of boundary lines. One of these men was Augustine Herrman, a man of parts, who had been ambassador to Rhode Island, a ship-owner, and man of executive ability, which was proven by his offer to Lord Baltimore to draw a map of Maryland and the surrounding country in exchange for a tract of land at the head of the bay. He was a land-surveyor, and drew an excellent map; and he received the four thousand acres afterwards known as Bohemia Manor. His portrait and that of his wife exist; they are wretched daubs, as were many of the portraits of the day, but, nevertheless, her dress is plainly revealed by it. You can see a copy of it here. The overdress, pleated body, and upper sleeve are green. The little lace collar is drawn up with a tiny ribbon just as we see collars to-day. Her hair is simplicity itself. The full undersleeves and heavy ear-rings give a little richness to the dress, which is not English nor is it Dutch.

It is easy to know the items of the dress of the early Virginian settlers, where any court records exist. Many, of course, have perished in the terrible devastations of two long wars; but wherever they have escaped destruction all the records of church and town in the various counties of Virginia have been carefully transcribed and certified, and are open to consultation in the Virginia State Library at Richmond, where many of the originals are also preserved. Many have also been printed. Mr. Bruce, in his fine book, The Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, has given frequent extracts from these certified records. From them and from the originals I gain much knowledge of the dress of the planters at that time. It varied little from dress in the New England colonies save that Virginians were richer than New Englanders, and so had more costly apparel. Almost nothing was manufactured in Virginia. The plainest and simplest articles of dress, save those of homespun stuffs, were ordered from England, as well as richer garments. We see even in George Washington's day, until he was prevented by war, that he sent frequent orders, wherein elaborately detailed attire was ordered with the pettiest articles for household and plantation use.

Mrs. Francis Pritchard of Lancaster, Virginia (in 1660), we find had a representative wardrobe. She owned an olive-colored silk petticoat, another of silk tabby, and one of flowered tabby, one of velvet, and one of white striped dimity. Her printed calico gown was lined with blue silk, thus proving how much calico was valued. Other bodices were a striped dimity jacket and a black silk waistcoat. To wear with these were a pair of scarlet sleeves and other sleeves of ruffled holland. Five aprons, various neckwear of Flanders lace, and several rich handkerchiefs completed a gay costume to which green silk stockings gave an additional touch of color. Green was distinctly the favorite color for hose among all the early settlers; and nearly all the inventories in Virginia have that entry.

Mrs. Sarah Willoughby of Lower Norfolk, Virginia, had at the same date a like gay wardrobe, valued, however, at but £;14. Petticoats of calico, striped linen, India silk, worsted prunella, and red, blue, and black silk were accompanied with scarlet waistcoats with silver lace, a white knit waistcoat, a "pair of red paragon bodices," and another pair of sky-colored satin bodices. She had also a striped stuff jacket, a worsted prunella mantle, and a black silk gown. There were distinctions in the shape of the outer garments--mantles, jackets, and gowns. Hoods, aprons, and bands completed her comfortable attire.

Though so much of the clothing of the Virginia planters was made in England, there was certain work done by home tailors; such work as repairs, alterations, making children's common clothing, and the like, also the clothing of upper servants. Often the tailor himself was a bond-servant. Thus, Luke Mathews, a tailor from Hereford, England, was bound to Thomas Landon for a term of two years from the day he landed. He was to have sixpence a day while working for the Landon family, but when working for other persons half of whatever he earned. In the Lancaster County records is a tailor's account (one Noah Rogers) from the year 1690 to 1709; it was paid, of course, in tobacco. We may set the tobacco as worth about twopence a pound. It will be thus seen from the following items that prices in Virginia were higher than in New England:--

Another bill of the year 1643 reads:--

The extraordinary prices of one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco for making a pair of stockings, and one hundred for a pair of gloves, when making a coat was but forty, must remain a seventeenth-century puzzle. This coat was probably a petticoat. It is curious, too, to find a tailor making gloves and stockings at any price. I think both buff gloves and stockings were of leather. Perhaps he charged thus broadly because it was "not in his line." Work in leather was always well paid. We find tailors making leather breeches and leather drawers; the latter could not be the garments thus named to-day. Tailors became prosperous and well-to-do, perhaps because they worked in winter when other Virginia tradesfolk were idle; and they acquired large tracts of land.

The conditions of settlement of Virginia were somewhat different from those of the planting of New England. We find the land of many Massachusetts towns wholly taken up by a group of settlers who emigrated together from the Old World and gathered into a town together in the New. It was like the transferal of a neighborhood. It brought about many happy results of mutual helpfulness and interdependence. From it arose that system of domestic service in which the children of friends rendered helpful duty in other households and were called help. Nothing of the kind existed in Virginia. There was far less neighborhood life. Plantations were isolated. Lines of demarcation in domestic service were much more definite where black life slaves and white bond-servants for a term of years performed all household service. For the daughter of one Virginia household to "help" in the work in another household was unknown. Each system had its benefits; each had its drawbacks. Neither has wholly survived; but something better has been evolved, in spite of our lamentations for the good old times.

Life is better ordered, but it is not so picturesque as when negro servants swarmed in the kitchen, and German, Scotch, and Irish redemptioners served in varied callings. There was vast variety of attire to be found on the Virginia and Maryland plantations and in the few towns of these colonies. The black slaves wore homespun cloths and homespun stuff, crocus and Virginia cloth; and the women were happy if they could crown their simple attire with gay turbans. Indians stalked up to the plantation doors, halted in silence, and added their gay dress of the wild woods. German sectaries and mystics fared on garbed in their simple peasant dress. Irish sturdy beggars idled and fiddled through existence, in dress of shabby gentility, with always a wig. "Wild-Irish" came in brogues and Irish trousers. Sailors and pirates came ashore gayly dressed in varied costume, with gay sashes full of pistols and cutlasses, swaggering from wharf to plantation. Queer details of dress had all these varied souls; some have lingered to puzzle us.

A year ago I had sent to me, by a descendant of an old Virginia family, a photograph of a curious gold medal or disk, a family relic which was evidently a token of some importance, since it bore tiny holes and had marks of having been affixed as an insignia. Though I could decipher the bold initials, cut in openwork, I could judge little by the colorless photograph, and finally with due misgivings and great precautions in careful packing, insurance, etc., the priceless family relic was intrusted to an express company for transmission to my inspection. Glad indeed was I that the owner had not presented it in person; for the decoration of honor, the insignia of rank, the trophy of prowess in war or emblem of conquest in love, was the pauper's badge of a Maryland or Virginia parish. It was not a pleasant task to write back the mortifying news; but I am proud of the letter which I composed; no one could have done the deed better.

There was an old law in Virginia which ran thus:--

"Every person who shall receive relief from the parish and be sent to the said alms-house, shall, upon the shoulder of the right sleeve of his uppermost garment in an open and visible manner, wear a badge with the name of the parish to which he or she belongs, cut in red, blue or green cloth, as the vestry or church wardens shall direct. And if any poor person shall neglect or refuse to wear such badge, such offense may be punished either by ordering his or her allowance to be abridged, suspended or withdrawn, or the offender to be whipped not exceeding five lashes for one offense; and if any person not entitled to relief as aforesaid, shall presume to wear such badge, he or she shall be whipped for every such offense."

This law did not mean the full name of the parish, but significant initials. Sometimes the initials "P P" were employed, standing for public pauper. In other counties a metal badge was ordered, often cast in pewter. In one case a die-cutter was made by which an oblong brass badge could be cut, and stamps of letters to stamp the badges accompanied it. Sometimes these badges were three inches long.

The expression, "the badge of poverty," became a literal one when all persons receiving parochial relief had to wear a large Roman "P" with the initial of their parish set on the right sleeve of the uppermost garment in an open and visible manner. Likewise all pensioners were ordered to wear their badges "so they may be seen." A pauper who refused to do this might be whipped and imprisoned for twenty-one days. Moreover, if the parish beadle neglected to spy out that the badge was missing from some poor pensioner, he had to pay half a crown himself. This legality was necessitated by actions like that of the English goody, who, when ordered to wear this pauper's badge, demurely fastened it to her flannel petticoat. For this law, like all the early Virginia statutes, was simply a transcript of English laws. In New York, for some years in the eighteenth century, the parish poor--there were no paupers--were ordered to wear these badges.

This mode of stigmatizing offenders as well as paupers was in force in the earlier days of all the colonies. Its existence in New England has been immortalized in The Scarlet Letter. I have given in my book, Curious Punishments of By-gone Days, many examples of the wearing of significant letters by criminals in various New England towns, in Plymouth, Salem, Taunton, Boston, Hartford, New London, also in New York. It offered a singular and striking detail of costume to see William Bacon in Boston, and Robert Coles in Roxbury, wearing "hanged about their necks on their outerd garment a D made of Ridd cloth sett on white." A Boston woman wore a great "B," not for Boston, but for blasphemy. John Davis wore a "V" for viciousness. Others were forced to wear for years a heavy cord around the neck, signifying that the offender lived under the shadow of the gallows and its rope.

But return we to the metal badge which has caused this diversion to so gloomy a subject as crime and punishment. It was simply an oblong plate about three and one-half inches long, of humble metal--pinchbeck, or alchemy--but plated heavily with gold, therefore readily mistaken for solid gold; upon it the telltale initials "P P" had been stamped with a die, while smaller letters read "St. J. Psh." These confirmed my immediate suspicions, for I had seen an order of relief for a stricken wanderer--an order for two weeks' relief, where the wardens of "St. J. Psh." ordered the sheriff to send the pauper on--to make him "move along" to some other parish. This gold badge was not unlike the metal badges worn on the left arm by "Bedlam beggars," the licensed beggars of Bethlehem Hospital, the half-cured patients of that asylum for lunatics.

The owner of this badge with ancient letters had not idly accepted them, or jumped at the conclusion that it was a decoration of honor for his ancestor. He had searched its history long, and he had found in Hall's Chronicles of the Pageants and Progress of the English Kings ample reference to similar letters, but not as pauper's badges. Indeed, like many another well-read and intelligent person, he had never heard of pauper's badges. He read:--

"In this garden was the King and five with him apparyelled in garments of purpull satyn, every edge garnished with frysed golde and every garment full of posyes made of letters of fine gold, of bullion as thick as might be. And six Ladyes wore rochettes rouled with crymosyn velvet and set with lettres like Carettes. And after the Kyng and his compaignions had daunsed, he appointed the Ladies, Gentlewomen, and Ambassadours to take the lettres off their garments in token of liberalyte. Which thing the common people perceiving, ranne to them and stripped them. And at this banket a shypman of London caught certayn lettres which he sould to a goldsmith for £;3. 14s. 8d."

All this was pleasing to the vanity of our friend, who fancied his letters as having taken part in a like pageant; perhaps as a gift of the king himself. We must remember that he believed his badge of pure gold. He did not know it was a base metal, plated. He proudly pictured his forbears taking part in some kingly pageant. He scorned so modern and commonplace a possibility as a society like Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, which was formed of Virginian gentlefolk.

It plainly was a relic of some romance, and in the strangely picturesque events of the early years in this New World need not, though a pauper's badge, have been a badge of dishonor. What strange event or happening, or scene had it overlooked? Why had it been covered with its golden sheet? Was it in defiance or in satire, in remorse, or in revenge, or in humble and grateful recognition of some strange and protecting Providence? We shall never know. It was certainly not an agreeable discovery, to think that your great-grandmother or grandfather had probably been branded as a public pauper; but there were strange exiles and strange paupers in those days, exiles through political parties, through the disfavor of kings, through religious conviction, and the pauper of the golden badge, the pauper of "St. J. Psh.," may have ended his days as vestryman of that very church. Certain it was, that no ordinary pauper would have, or could have, thus preserved it; and from similar reverses and glorifying equally base objects came the subjects of half the crests of English heraldry.

The likeness of Pocahontas (here) is dated 1616. It is in the dress of a well-to-do Englishwoman, a woman of importance and means. This portrait has been a shock to many who idealized the Indian princess as "that sweet American girl" as Thackeray called her. Especially is it disagreeable in many of the common prints from it. One flippant young friend, the wife of an army officer, who had been stationed in the far West, said of it, in disgust, remembering her frontier residence, "With a man's hat on! just like every old Indian squaw!" This hat is certainly displeasing, but it was not worn through Indian taste; it was an English fashion, seen on women of wealth as well as of the plainer sort. I have a score of prints and photographs of English portraits, wherein this mannish hat is shown. In the original of this portrait of Pocahontas, the heavy, sombre effect is much lightened by the gold hatband. These rich hatbands were one of the articles of dress prohibited as vain and extravagant by the Massachusetts magistrates. They were costly luxuries. We find them named and valued in many inventories in all the colonies, and John Pory, secretary of the Virginia colony, wrote about that time to a friend in England a sentence which has given, I think to all who read it, an exaggerated notion of the dress of Virginians:--

"Our cowekeeper here of James citty on Sundays goes accoutred all in ffreshe fflaminge silke, and a wife of one that had in England professed the blacke arte not of a Scholler but of a Collier weares her rough beaver hatt with a faire perle hatband, and a silken sute there to correspond."

Corroborative evidence of the richness and great cost of these hatbands is found in a letter of Susan Moseley to Governor Yardley of Virginia, telling of the exchange of a hatband and jewel for four young cows, one older cow and four oxen, on account of her "great want of cattle." She writes on "this Last July 1650, at Elizabeth River in Virginia":--

"I had rayther your wife should weare them then any gentle woman I yet know in ye country; but good Sir have no scruple concerninge their rightnesse, for I went my selfe from Rotterdam to ye haugh (The Hague) to inquire of ye gould smiths and found y't they weare all Right, therefore thats without question, and for ye hat band y't alone coste five hundred gilders as my husband knows verry well and will tell you soe when he sees you; for ye Juell and ye ringe they weare made for me at Rotterdam and I paid in good rex dollars sixty gilders for ye Juell and fivety and two gilders for ye ringe, which comes to in English monny eleaven poundes fower shillings. I have sent the sute and Ringe by your servant, and I wish Mrs. Yeardley health and prosperity to weare them in, and give you both thanks for your kind token. When my husband comes home we will see to gett ye Cattell home, in ye meantime I present my Love and service to your selfe &; wife, and commit you all to God, and remaine,
"Your friend and servant,
"SUSAN MOSELEY."

The purchasing value of five hundred guilders, the cost of the hatband, would be equal to-day to nearly a thousand dollars.

In the portrait of Pocahontas in the original, there is also much liveliness of color, a rich scarlet with heavy braidings; these all lessen somewhat the forbidding presence of the stiff hat. She carries a fan of ostrich feathers, such as are depicted in portraits of Queen Elizabeth.

These feather fans had little looking-glasses of silvered glass or polished steel set at the base of the feathers. Euphues says, "The glasses you carry in fans of feathers show you to be lighter than feathers; the new-found glass chains that you wear about your necks, argue you to be more brittle than glass."

These fans were, in the queen's hands, as large as hand fire-screens; many were given to her as New Year's gifts or other tokens, one by Sir Francis Drake. This makes me believe that they were a fashion taken from the North American Indians and eagerly adopted in England; where, for two centuries, everything related to the red-men of the New World was seized upon with avidity--except their costume.

The hat worn by Pocahontas, or a lower crowned form of it, is seen in the Hollar drawing of Puritan women (here), where it seems specially ugly and ineffective, and on the Quaker Tub-preacher. It lingered for many years, perched on top of French hoods, close caps, kerchiefs, and other variety of head-gear worn by women of all ranks; never elegant, never becoming. I can think of no reason for its long existence and dominance save its costliness. It was not imitated, so it kept its place as long as the supply of beaver was ample. This hat was also durable. A good beaver hat was not for a year nor even for a generation. It lasted easily half a century. But we all know that the beaver disappeared suddenly from our forests; and as a sequence the beaver hat was no longer available for common wear. It still held its place as a splendid, feather-trimmed, rich article of dress, a hat for dress wear, and it was then comely and becoming. Within a few years, through national and state protection, the beaver, most interesting of wild creatures, has increased and multiplied in North America until it has become in certain localities a serious pest to lumbermen. We must revive the fashion of real beaver hats--that will speedily exterminate the race.

It always has seemed strange to me that, in the prodigious interest felt in England for the American Indian, an interest shown in the thronging, gaping sight-seers that surrounded every taciturn red-man who visited the Old World, no fashions of ornament or dress were copied as gay, novel, or becoming. The Indian afforded startling detail to interest the most jaded fashion-seeker. The Works of Captain John Smith, Strachey's Historie of Travaile into Virginia, the works of Roger Williams, of John Josselyn, the letters of various missionaries, give full accounts of their brilliant attire; and many of these works were illustrated. The beautiful mantles of the Virginia squaws, made of carefully dressed skins, were tastefully fringed and embroidered with tiny white beads and minute disks of copper, like spangles, which, with the buff of the dressed skin, made a charming color-study--copper and buff--picked out with white. Sometimes small brilliant shells or feathers were added to the fringes. An Indian princess, writes one chronicler, wore a fair white deerskin with a frontal of white coral and pendants of "great but imperfect-colored and worse-drilled pearls"--our modern baroque pearls. A chain of linked copper encircled her neck; and her maid brought to her a mantle called a "puttawas" of glossy blue feathers sewed so thickly and evenly that it seemed like heavy purple satin.

A traveller wrote thus of an Indian squaw and brave:--

"His wife was very well favored, of medium stature and very bashful. She had on her back a long cloak of leather, with the fur side next to her body. About her forehead she had a band of white coral. In her ears she had bracelets of pearls hanging down to her waist. The rest of her women of the better sort had pendants of copper hanging in either ear, and some of the children of the King's brother and other noblemen, had five or six in either ear. He himself had upon his head a broad plate of gold or copper, for being unpolished we knew not which metal it might be, neither would he by any means suffer us to take it off his head. His apparel was like his wife's, only the women wear their hair long on both sides of the head, and the men on but one side. They are of color yellowish, and their hair black for the most part, and yet we saw children who had very fine auburn and chestnut colored hair."

John Josselyn wrote of tawny beauties:--

"They are girt about the middle with a Zone wrought with Blue and White Beads into Pretty Works. Of these Beads they have Bracelets for the Neck and Arms, and Links to hang in their Ears, and a Fair Table curiously made up with Beads Likewise to wear before their Breast. Their Hair they combe backward, and tye it up short with a Border about two Handsfull broad, wrought in works as the Other with their Beads."

Powhatan's "Habit" still exists. It is in England, in the Tradescant Collection which formed the nucleus of the Ashmolean Collection. It was probably presented by Captain John Smith himself. It is made of two deerskins ornamented with "roanoke" shell-work, about seven feet long by five feet wide. Roanoke is akin to wampum, but this is made of West Indian shells. The figures are circles, a crude human figure and two mythical composite animals. He also wore fine mantles of raccoon skins. A conjurer's dress was simply a girdle with a single deerskin, while a great blackbird with outstretched wings was fastened to one ear--a striking ornament. I am always delighted to read such proof as this of a fact that I have ever known, namely, that the American Indian is the most accomplished, the most telling poseur the world has ever known. The ear of the Indian man and woman was pierced along the entire outer edge and filled with long drops, a fringe of coral, gold, and pearl. The wives of Powhatan wore triple strings of great pearls close around their throats, and a long string over one shoulder, while their mantles were draped to show their full handsome neck and arms. Altogether, with their carefully dressed hair, they would have made in full dress a fine show in a modern opera-box, and, indeed, the Indian squaws did cause vast exhibition of curiosity and delight when they visited London and were taken sight-seeing and sight-seen.

As early as 1629 an Indian chief with his wife and son came from Nova Scotia to England. Lord Poulet paid them much attention in Somersetshire, and Lady Poulet took Lady Squaw up to London and gave her a necklace and a diamond, which I suppose she wore with her blue and white beads.

Be the story of the saving of John Smith by Pocahontas a myth or the truth, it forever lives a beautiful and tender reality in the hearts of American children. Pocahontas was not the only Indian squaw who played a kindly part in the first colonization of this country. There were many, though their deeds and names are forgotten; and there was one Indian woman whose influence was much greater and more prolonged than was that of Pocahontas, and was haloed with many years of exciting adventure as well as romance. Let me recount a few details of her life, that you may wonder with me that the only trace of Indian life marked indelibly on England was found on the swinging signs of inns known by the name of "The Bell Savage," "La Belle Sauvage," and even "The Savage and Bell."

This second Indian squaw was a South Carolina neighbor of our beloved Pocahontas; she had not, alas, the lovely disposition and noble character of Powhatan's daughter. She was systematically and constitutionally mischievous, like a rogue elephant, so I call her a rogue squaw. Her name was Coosaponakasee. The name is too long and too hard to say with frequency, so we will do as did her English friends and foes--call her Mary. Indeed, she was baptized Mary, for she was a half-breed, and her white father had her reared like a Christian, had her educated like an English girl as far as could be done in the little primitive settlement of Ponpon, South Carolina. It will be shown that the attempt was not over-successful.

She was a princess, the niece of crafty old Brim, the king of two powerful tribes of Georgia Indians, the Creeks and Uchees. In 1715, when she was about fifteen years old, a fierce Indian war broke out in the early spring, and at the defeat of the Indians she promptly left her school and her church and went out into the wilds, a savage among savages, preferring defeat and a wild summer in the woods with her own people to decorous victory within doors with her fellow Christians.