it is also possible that she was dressing to Rolfe's income and station and the fact that an American "princess" was not considered equal to a European princess. Seeing as how they weren't quite civilized. It should be noted that if a person was a "chief" or sachem it did not necessarily mean that the children were princes and princess'. This was a way that the Europeans seemed to identified the children of chiefs. Their assumtion of how they thought things ranked. And usually the Europeans did not understand how the system worked within a given tribe or nation. Among the Akwesasne, you became a sachem by election. There was one nation that had royalty/nobility, I think it was the Narragansett but I'm not really sure.
De -----Original Message----- I'm going to use, if I do it, the usual feathers found in my local craft hobby stores. Actually, the Europeans were really fascinated by the so-assumed by them lesser civilized natives of other lands, so I thought using feathers but making an Elizabethan/Jacobean surcoat was a clever, if inaccurate idea. Camilla Townsend's recent biog of Pocahontas does a great job of prising out the real meanings behind the engraving of Pocahontas. She points out that the costume she is wearing, is much more upper-middle class, reflecting almost Puritan morales(the body modestly covered and the high capitain hat, which Queen Anne wore, but few other noblewomen did so in portraits at that time), despite Pocahontas'/Matoaka/Lady Rebecca's high birth which entitled her to wear the full coat costume of low neck and French farthingale. Some authors have surmised that the all covering wear might have hidden tatoos, but it is just as probable that Pocahontas, John Rolfe, the Virginia Company sponsors or any combination of the three, would have preferred a visual representation of the Christian convert Native American "princess" as advertisement for prospective sponsors and settlers not to be deliniated in full court costume(not only Puritans railed against the extravagent required court costumes of the 16th and 17th centuries), thought by many as practically immoral, but in modest, if expensive fabrics. Virginia needed hardworking serious-minded investors and settlers, in order to succeed, not those who wanted to find gold, get rich quickly, and return to Mother England. Cindy Abel _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
