Document: New Netherland in 1627. Letter from Isaack de Rasieres to Samuel Blommaert, found in the Royal library at the Hague, and transmitted by Dr. M.F.A.G. Campbell to the N.Y. Historical Society. Image 008

As an employment in winter they make sewan, which is an oblong bead that they make from cockle-shells, which they find on the sea-shore, and they consider it as valuable as we do money here, since one can buy with it everything they have. They string it, and wear it around the neck and hands; they also make bands of it, which the women wear on the forehead under the hair, and the men around the body; and they are as particular about the stringing and sorting as we can be here about pearls. They are very fond of a game they call Senneca, played with some round rushes, similar to the Spanish feather-grass, which they understand how to shuffle and deal as though they were playing with cards; and they win from each other all that they possess, even to the lappet with which they cover their private parts, and so they separate from each other quite naked. They are very much addicted to promiscuous intercourse. Their clothing is almost naked. In the winter time they usually wear a dressed deer skin; some have a bear’s skin about the body, some a coat of scales, some a covering made of turkey feathers which they understand how to knit together very oddly, with small strings. They also use a good deal of duffel cloth, which they buy from us, and which serves for their blanket by night, and their dress by day. The women are fine looking, of middle stature, well proportioned, and with finely cut features, with long and black hair, and black eyes set off with fine eyebrows. They are of the same color as the men. They smear their bodies and hair with grease, which makes them smell very rankly. They are very much given to promiscuous intercourse. They have a marriage custom amongst them, namely, when there is one who resolves to take a particular person for his wife, he collects a fathom or two of sewan, and comes to the nearest friends of the person whom he desires, to whom he declares his object in her presence, and if they are satisfied with him, he agrees with them how much sewan he shall give her for a bridal present. That being done, he then gives her all the Dutch beads he has, which they call Machampe, and also all sorts of trinkets. If she be a young virgin, he must wait six weeks more before he can sleep with her, during which time she bewails or laments over her virginity, which they call Collatismarrenitten. All this time she sits with a blanket over her head, without wishing to look at anyone, or anyone being permitted to look at her. This period being elapsed, her bridegroom comes to her. He in the meantime has been supporting himself by hunting, and what he has taken he brings there with him; they then eat together with the friends, and sing and dance together, which they call Kintikaen. That being done, the wife must provide the food for herself and her husband, as far as breadstuffs are concerned, and she must buy what is wanting with her sewan.