ABSTRACT

Captain William Hawkins was not only one of the great navigators of the Age of Discovery, he also had a taste for the curious and an eye for the sensational. When he returned to London in 1532 from a voyage to the South Atlantic, in addition to the surviving members of his crew, he had on board a Brazilian 'chieftain' whom he presented to Henry VIII 'at the sight of whom the King and all the nobilitie did not a little marvelle, and not without cause'. Illustrations of such 'alien' beings had been circulating in Europe since the early years of the century, but not until towards its end did it occur to anyone to suggest that comparably 'savage' peoples might once have lived in Britain. In 1585 John White, a highly talented artist, accompanied Raleigh on his expedition to Virginia and, in addition to Indians, he drew a series of ancient Britons and Picts, giving them many characteristics in common with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard of America. Many others followed suit, and American Indians were soon being used as sources of analogy in the interpretation of stone tools, and as points of reference for the reconstruction of ancient British society. According to John Aubrey, writing in 1659, the ancient British of Wiltshire 'were 2 or 3 degrees, I suppose, less savage than the Americans'.