Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Powhatans and other Woodland Indians as Travelers Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Helen C. Rountree # of Pages: 17 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2017-11-10 08:56:20 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:18 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:18

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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40 POWHATAN FOREIGN RELATIONS bow their faces to the ground and scratch the earth with their nails as the newcomers passed. The chiefly host and the leading guest would then stroke each other by way of greeting.”? Then, when entertaining outdoors, the chief would lead the guests to a mat, seating himself or herself on one side, the guests opposite, and che councillors in attendance on a third side. If the reception was being held inside a chief's house, the chief would be seated on an elaborately decorated “bed” along the end wall of the house, with wives (in the case of a male chief) and councillors ranged on mats in perpendicular rows in front, and visitors would be formally conducted down the length of the house to face the assemblage. Orators would then formally welcome the travelers at great length, with magniloquent language and emphatic gesticulations, after which a tremendous feast would be served. The visitors would be given much more than they could eat, with the understanding that they were to share it with the retinue they would undoubtedly have brought with them. “This is a generall custome, that what they give, not to take againe, but you must either eate it, give it away, or carry it with you.” After dinner, a pipe was smoked and the townspeople of both sexes danced; if the guest was staying overnight, then conversation was general, with real business being left for the next day. Dignitaries staying the night were finally conducted to a private house, where they were provided with beds and also with female bedfellows. Hospitality at other Indian towns followed a similar course. Visitors were an excuse for a party, and “feasts serveled] as the great bells of the country” to summon people from far and wide. The Nottoways and Meherrins set aside houses for visitors when they arrived and provided them with food. The Carolina Siouan-speakers erected large, thatched houses (ordinary ones were covered with bark) and expected their leaders to maintain these, play host to town meetings, and entertain visitors in them, Guests would be served with plenty of food as soon as they arrived, no conversation being expected until later. (Indeed, any stranger entering even a private house would sit down and remain silent until addressed by some member of the family, however long it might be.) Dignitaries were seated berween the “king” and his councilmen, as among the Powhatans. After the meal, a pipe would be smoked and the men and women of the town would dance. Among the Lenapes, guests would immediately be taken indoors and fed. It was considered bad manners—and unnecessary, too—to ask for food and drink. Any conversation could wait until after the guest’s hunger, real or otherwise, was appeased and he was ready to talk: “The people though earnestly desiring to know our commission, would not take the liberty to ask The Powhatans as Travelers 41 us.” If the newcomers were on official business, a pipe would be smoked together before eating.*' Any host not offering hospitality, or even a litle bit of food to a stranger too polite to ask for it, was considered to be “an inbuman being”; Lenape warriors felt free to destroy the property of such a person.* [roquois practices were similar. Part of a longhouse would be cleared to receive any strangers, and there they would be given food, perhaps after an official greeting. Conversation that evening would be “on things of no Consequence,” with the important business being kept until the next morning, when everyone was fresh enough to be adept at the lengthy and flowery oratory required." Creek travelers stayed with relatives, however distant; and if they had none in a town, they slept in the public square and were fed as the town’s guests. Non-Indian travelers among the Creeks found that they could move safely about as long as they followed Creek rules of hospitality. Greetings even between acquaintances from friendly towns would be formal. A visitor, being then invited into the house, was promptly invited to sit down and, while being offered a pipe and plied with food, was asked “his residence, destination, and business.” A brief reply to each was all that was needed; however, if the visitor was a stranger, the discourse proceeded with due deliberation: “They accost each other with studied and manifest civility to which they reciprocally receive an answer equally ceremonious and apposite uncil an acquaintance takes place.” Afterward his host would take him to “the assembly,” the evening gathering of the settlement’s men ac the town square, where he was introduced and invited to share in partaking tobacco and cassina drink." Sexual hospitalicy on the part of a town’s women was fairly common in the Eastern Woodlands. The Powhatan case has already been mentioned, though there is no record of the marital status of the women involved. Their services brought no stigma upon them; in fact, married women generally were permitted to have affairs as long as their husbands consented. The Nottoways and Saponis followed similar practices regarding guests. Among the Carolina Siouan-speakers by 1700, traders who stayed a long time or who came regularly would be invited to take a wife, who would then act according to Indian laws of matrimony and kinship for as long as she and the trader maintained the connection (a common practice throughout the Woodlands). Married women among the Siouan-speakers were permitted to take temporary lovers during a husband's absence. Any children born during the union were considered part of the mother’s family.** There were also “trading girls,” set apart by a recognizable hairstyle, who acted as professional prostitutes