Images of a Legend
A CHEIFF LADYE OF POMEIOOC
1590, Theodor de Bry (after John White)
If she had never been abducted and married into English culture, how
would Pocahontas have appeared as a young woman? What did she look
like as an adolescent, when John Smith first encountered her? A hint
of the answers may lie in this colored engraving based on
watercolors done by John White, an English artist and explorer who
lived among native Virginians in 1585-86, roughly a decade before
Pocahontas's birth. According to White's images and related text, a
Powhatan girl wore no clothing before puberty. From about the age of
12 onward, she donned a deerskin skirt, perhaps decorated with beads
or carved with figures from nature. Powhatan women also adorned
themselves with tattoos and body paint derived from roots, as well
as necklaces, bracelets, and earrings strung with freshwater pearls,
shell beads, copper, animal teeth, or beads of bone.