Indians of Virginia

Wooldridge spent his career in London and never himself encountered Native Americans. Indians of Virginia is a composite of vignettes from several engravings of Carolina Algonquians made by Theodore de Bry in 1590. De Bry’s images, in turn, were based on watercolors by John White, who is best known today as the governor of the lost colony of Roanoke.
As the first published account of European exploration, De Bry’s illustrations were influential in both establishing widespread notions of what people in America were like, and generating enough interest in the New World to fund future voyages. Although inhabitants were presented as exotic, savage, and mysterious, the depictions also looked reassuringly familiar to Europeans. These images emphasized complex and sophisticated cultures, differentiated the status of individuals, described apparel and weapons, and showed organized religion and agriculture. Further, the artists posed standing and reclining figures in familiar positions based on established Renaissance models.