A woman is standing to the front with her head turned half-right and with a child standing at her left side, facing half-left. The woman is wearing an apron-skirt of fringed skin of which only the part in front is visible, edged at top and bottom with a single row of white beads. Her hair is fringed in front, long behind and caught up at the nape of her neck. A headband, probably of woven beadwork, is shown running across her forehead and under the hair at each side. A close-fitting three-string necklace with a pendant is either worn or suggested by painting or tattooing on the skin. She also wears a long three-strand bead necklace hanging to her waist, through which her right hand is thrust. Painted or tattooed decoration is visible on her forehead, cheek and chin and on her upper arms. She holds in her left hand a large bottle-shaped gourd vessel. The girl's head reaches almost to the woman's waist and her hair is fringed on the forehead, hanging free at the sides and back. She wears a necklace of at least three strands of red and blue or black beads, with a tongue-like pendant which she is holding in her right hand. Her sole article of clothing is a thong or string passing round the waist, where it is tied in front, and through her crutch where it secures a small pad. In her left hand she holds a doll perhaps dressed in Elizabethan female costume.
Inscribed in dark brown ink, at the top, "A cheife Herowans wyfe of Pomeoc. | and her daughter of the age of .8. or. | .10. yeares. "
John White (English artist, c 1540-1593) was an English artist & early pioneer of Britain's efforts to settle North America. He was among those who sailed with Richard Grenville to the shore of present-day North Carolina & Virginia in 1585, acting as artist & mapmaker to the expedition. During his time at Roanoke Island he made a number of watercolor sketches of the surrounding landscape and the native Algonkin peoples. These works are significant, as they are the most informed, eyewitness contemporary illustrations of a Native American society of the North America's Eastern seaboard.
