The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia; expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, together with the Manners and Customes of the People. Gathered and observed as well by those who went first thither as collected by William Strachey, Gent., the first Secretary of the Colony.
London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1849. viii, xxxvi, 203 pp. Illus. with 5 plates,1 facsimile, and 1 folding map. 8vo. Cloth. First edition. Hakluyt Society, First series: No. 6. Spine a bit sunned, wear to head of spine, with small tear, small institutional bookplate to front pastedown; endpapers at hinges ragged and re-glued, mainly unopened (uncut) but two plates with damp stain, one marginal, one just touching the caption but not the image, map about fine, else text very good. Sabin 92664. Field 1514. Pilling 3764. Howes S1053. Item #33592
From British Library, Sloane MS 1622. "The author, of whom almost nothing is certainly known, was evidently a person of some importance in Virginia during the period of which he writes,--- from 1610 to 1612. Book I., pp. 23 to 133, is almost wholly occupied with a description of the Indians of Virginia, their customs and peculiarities. It was written probably some years before Captain John Smith’s General History of Virginia, and is more especially remarkable as having afforded Mr. Deane and Mr. Niel the data to charge the name of Pocahontas with infamy. The following passage will scarcely be considered sufficient evidence to convict the Indian maiden: “Their younger women goe not shadowed amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven, or tuelve returnes of the leafe old, nor are they very much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pochahontas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatuns daughter, sometymes resorting to our port, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boys forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele falling on their hands turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over, but being once twelve yeares, they put on a kind of seme-cinctum lethern apron before their bellies, and are very shamefact to be scene bare.” On the modern interpretation of the word wanton, rests almost all the weight of the arguments against Pochahontas’ chastity. A word used two centuries ago, like “wench,” “quean,” and many other terms, since degraded by use to reproach, is here in the sense of saucy, hoydenish, reckless, and other kindred terms indicating boldness and want of propriety. Like other native girls she was incapable of viewing her nudity with shame, because her youth forbid the association of sexual indulgence, or even desire, with it," (Field, Indian Bibliography, p. 383).
Price: $360.00