Note 49 — Chapter III

The Englishmen were bewildered by barbaric usages utterly foreign to their experience. Kinship among these Indians, as so generally among barbarians and savages, was reckoned through females only, and when the English visitors were told that The Powhatan's office would descend to his maternal brothers, even though he had sons living, the information was evidently correct, but they found it hard to understand or believe. So when one of the chiefs on the James River insisted upon giving back some powder and balls which one of his men had stolen, it was regarded as a proof of strict honesty and friendliness, whereas the more probable explanation is that a prudent Indian, at that early time, would consider it bad medicine to handle the thunder-and-lightning stuff or keep it about one. See my Beginnings of New England, p. 85.