An elderly man stands facing half-left, his feet somewhat apart and his arms folded. He is wearing a single apron skirt of fringed deerskin edged with blue (or black) beads or pearls. His hair is thin at the sides and caught up at the back, leaving a roach down the middle of his head. He wears an ear ornament consisting of at least nine dark blue beads or pearls hanging by a loop of skin from the lobe. Around his neck is a short single-string necklace of bluish white pearls or beads and a string suspending, through a hole, a rectangular gorget of yellowish metal, some 6 inches square, which hangs on his chest. He also wears a single bracelet of pearls on the right wrist.
Inscribed in dark brown ink, at the top, "A cheife Herowan."
John White (c 1540-1593) was an English artist & early pioneer of English efforts to settle North America. He was among those who sailed with Richard Grenville to the shore of present-day North Carolina 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 & the native Algonkin peoples. White had been commissioned to "draw to life" the inhabitants of the New World & their surroundings. During White's time at Roanoke Island, he completed numerous watercolor drawings of the surrounding landscape & native peoples. These works are significant as they are the most informative illustrations of a Native American society of the Eastern seaboard. They represent the sole-surviving visual record of the native inhabitants of America encountered by England's first settlers.
