CAPUT III - Of the begynning and originall of the people; the great King Powhatan, his description, and sale of his birthright to the English

Summary

It were, perhappes, to curious a thing to demand, how these people might come first, and from whome, and whence, to inhabite these so far remote, westerly parts of the world, having no intercourse with Africa, Asia, or Europe? And, considering the whole world, so many yeares (by all knowledg receaved) was supposed to be only conteyned and circumscribed in the discovered and knowne travayled bounds of those three, according to that old conclusion in the scholes: Quicquid præter Africam et Europam est, Asia est, —whatsoever land doth neither apperteyne unto Africk nor to Europe, is part of Asia. As also to question how that it should be, that they (if descended from the people of the first creation) should maintayne so generall and grosse a defection from the true knowledg of God, with one kind, as it were, of rude and savadge lief, customes, manners, and religion, it being to be graunted that (with us), infallably they had one and the same discent and begynninge from the universall deluge, in the scattering of Noah, his children, and nephewes, with their families (as little colonies), some to one, some to other borders of the earth, to dwell; as in Egypt (so writing Berosus), Esenius and his household tooke up their inhabitation; in Libia and Cyrene, Tritanes; and in all the rest of Africa, Jupetus Priscus; Attalaas in the east Asia; Ganges, with some of Comerus Gallus’ childrene, in Arabia Felix, within the confines of Sabea, called the frankincense-bearer; Canaan in Damascus, unto the utmost bounds of Palestine.