University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 7-15-2008 Face to Face: English Uses and Understanding of the Beard in Early Virginian Contacts Jacqueline Colleen Barber University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Barber, Jacqueline Colleen, "Face to Face: English Uses and Understanding of the Beard in Early Virginian Contacts" (2008). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/130 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Face to Face: English Uses and Understanding of the Beard in Early Virginian Contacts by Jacqueline Colleen Barber A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts Department of History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Philip Levy, Ph.D. Giovanna Benadusi, Ph.D. Barbara Berglund, Ph.D. Date of Approval: July 15, 2008 Keywords: Race, Physical Difference, Native Americans, Facial Hair, Early Encounters © Copyright 2008, Jacqueline Barber Table of Contents List of Figures ii Abstract iii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1 Chapter 2: The Beard in Early Virginia 24 25 Chapter 3: Conclusion 47 References 52 Bibliography 56 Appendices 59 Appendix A - Figures 60 i List of Figures Figure 1. “An Ageed Manne in his Winter Garment” 60 Figure 2. “A Werwoan or Great Lord of Virginia” 61 Figure 3. “The Marckyes of Sundrye of the Chief mene of Virginia” 62 Figure 4. “The true picture of one: Picte I” 63 Figure 5 “The true picture of a man of nation neighbor unto the Pict” 64 Figure 6 The Explorers and Settlers 65 ii Face to Face: English Uses and Understanding of the Beard in Early Virginian Contacts Jacqueline Barber ABSTRACT Many historians agree that categories of human division underwent a drastic change due to European New World encounters. The shift from religious divisions to ones based on ethnicity and skin color gradually developed in early modern Europe. Hence, before natives became “red,” and Europeans “white” a period existed where the differences between these cultures were utilized in a variety of means to prove similarity and difference. One element signifying difference during the early contact period was that of the beard. Hair as an identifier has a long history: through the middle ages, wildness was conveyed by hair and at times non-Christians were legally required to grow beards. Early in the sixteenth century the beard became a popular fad for white, Christian-European men, a change which some scholars have traced to European contact with beardless Amerindians. Within Europe, the beard came to represent more than otherness. A thick beard conveyed images of health, particularly sexual health; the beard came to represent virility and the beard helped to separate men from women and boys. iii In this paper I argue that the beard assumed a special significance within early English contacts in the Carolinas and Virginia. I examine the changing meanings of the beard and the English adoption of these meanings. I first examine the European background which helped provide the context for their first permanent colonial settlements in the New World. I next delve into travel accounts, ethnographies and artistic portrayals of the Natives in these colonies to examine how and when both sides evoked facial hair as a signifier of difference. This examination will help reveal English views of Natives during a time when their views regarding the Natives‟ character could affect the success of English colonial ventures. Finally, I examine why the beard failed as a sign of difference between the region‟s Amerindians and the English. This failure led to the adoption of other means of distinction specifically that of skin color. Hence the beard served as a first stepping stone towards what would become a fully conceptualized racial theory. iv Chapter One Introduction One “fatal Friday morning” in 1622 English and Native relations in Virginia took a drastic turn. According to Edward Waterhouse, it was on this morning in March that groups of Amerindians “basely and barbarously murdered” every settler they encountered regardless of “age or sexe, man, woman or childe.” Waterhouse‟s account described this event as a major turn in intra-colonial relations. The English settlers‟ ability to convert the “perfidious and inhumane” barbarian Natives was cemented through this attack and the three hundred forty-seven lives lost on this morning. Those who had too much faith in the humanity of the Indians, such as George Thorpe, were not spared from cruel deaths. Hence according to Waterhouse‟s account, what would for over three hundred centuries be recounted as the Massacre of 1622 marked a deep change in Indian-English relations.1 1 Edward Waterhouse and Virginia Company of London, A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affaires in Virginia With a Relation of the Barbarous Massacre in the Time of Peace and League, Treacherously Executed by the Natiue Infidels Vpon the English, the 22 of March Last. Together with the Names of Those That Were Then Massacred; That Their Lawfull Heyres, by This Notice Giuen, May Take Order for the Inheriting of Their Lands and Estates in Virginia. And a Treatise Annexed, Written by That Learned Mathematician Mr. Henry Briggs, of the Northwest Passage to the South Sea Through the Continent of Virginia, and by Fretum Hudson. Also a Commemoration of Such Worthy Benefactors as Haue Contributed Their 1 Historians have long since agreed with Waterhouse‟s assessment of the changing nature of English-Indian relations in Virginia post-1622. Although earlier English-Native relations were not without problems or strains, the “massacre” alleviated any doubts English settlers had over the character of Natives. According to Bernard Sheehan, the massacre allowed the English to proceed with the systematic conquest and dispersal of the Powhatan people.2 Gone were both the noble qualities previously assessed to Natives as well as any recognition of Indians‟ rights to land and freedom.3 Along with the approximately three hundred fifty English settlers killed, so too were the English‟ hopes for an integrated society. The English settlers quickly dismissed the Indians‟ culture and categorizations of Natives as “brutish” and “beastly” greatly increased after 1622.4 Yet the inhumane descriptions that increased after this turning point were not only due to the negative qualities ascribed to Natives but also because of the positive qualities that were taken away. The previous ambivalence in English attitudes towards the Natives can be seen throughout their early contact literature and art. Although many eloquently Christian Charitie Towards the Aduancement of the Colony. And a Note of the Charges of Necessary Prouisions Fit for Euery Man That Intends to Goe to Virginia. Published by Authoritie (Imprinted at London: By G. Eld, for Robert Mylbourne, and are to be sold at his shop, at the great south doore of Pauls, 1622), 551-553. 2 Bernard W Sheehan, Savagism and Civility: Indians and Englishmen in Colonial Virginia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 7. 3 Alden T. Vaughan, “"Expulsion of the Salvages": English Policy and the Virginia Massacre of 1622,” The William and Mary Quarterly 35, no. 1, Third Series (January 1978): 78. 4Edward J Dudley, The Wild Man Within; an Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), 71. 2 stated this view, such as Waterhouse‟s account of relations prior to the “massacre,” others depended upon visual signposts of similarity and difference. One such road marker was that of the beard. The beard, I argue, served as a proto-racialist symbol in early Virginia. Its use in the descriptions of the Natives coincided with ambivalent English attitudes towards the original inhabitants of their new settlements. The Massacre of 1622 not only changed the Virginian settlers‟ attitudes into ones of condemnation but also lead to the replacement of the beard in favor of other signs. The beard‟s ability to minimize the risk Natives presented to English settlement and its demonstrability of physical similarity between Amerindians and Englishmen were discarded along with English hopes that Natives could be converted to Christianity and hence become civilized in English eyes. As a result, Virginia represented a microcosm of what would become a larger colonial issue of how to understand and handle Amerindians. The situation in Virginia progressed at a faster pace than other parts of the English colonies and as such is useful to study in isolation. Additionally, Virginia represents a unique situation regarding the establishment of race relations to come; primarily with the utilization of African labor and the establishment of differences based solely on skin color. The utilization of the beard was a first step I argue for English settlers on the path to separating races by skin color; yet was not as fully conceptualized as racial theories which would later emerge. The historiography on race in the early modern period has undergone a drastic transformation in recent years. Joyce Chaplin nicely summed up the general position that racial ideas were dependent on the invention of “modern” science, which was not formulated until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, 3 Chaplin concluded that cultural differences did matter to the early English colonists whereas “biological” ones did not.5 The cultural patterns which established men‟s facial hair preferences was one such difference which I believe was embedded with multiple messages. Beards and facial hair in general, experienced a radical shift in meaning within early modern Europe.