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Chief Outina Leading A Battle March
This striking image represents Chief Outina preparing for war, rendered with dramatic stylization according to European conceptions of noble savagery. Three central Timucua warriors, all wearing elaborate feathered headdresses, chest ornaments, and ritual body paint, dominate the foreground. Behind them, massed ranks of fighters, some bearing bows and arrows, appear arranged in stylized military formation.
The accompanying text emphasizes the contrast between the apparent discipline and ceremony of Outina’s army and the “disorderly” enemies they faced, projecting a moralizing ideal of order, hierarchy, and military preparedness. As with many of the American engravings, the image is as much a reflection of European hopes and anxieties, particularly around empire, religion, and indigenous governance, as it is an ethnographic record. Nevertheless, Le Moyne’s firsthand observations, later mediated by de Bry’s engravers and artists in Frankfurt, lend the image a compelling mixture of authenticity and allegory.
This engraving belongs to one of the earliest visual records of Native North American peoples made available to a European audience. While its details are filtered through a European lens, the image remains a significant and early representation of indigenous Southeastern warfare and leadership, with Outina presented as a powerful, even regal, figure in full martial regalia.
Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) was a prominent Flemish engraver and publisher best known for his engravings of the New World. Born in Liege, de Bry hailed from the portion of Flanders then controlled by Spain. The de Brys were a family of jewelers and engravers, and young Theodor was trained in those artisanal trades.
As a Lutheran, however, his life and livelihood were threatened when the Spanish Inquisition cracked down on non-Catholics. De Bry was banished and his goods seized in 1570. He fled to Strasbourg, where he studied under the Huguenot engraver Etienne Delaune. He also traveled to Antwerp, London, and Frankfurt, where he settled with his family.
In 1590, de Bry began to publish his Les Grands Voyages, which would eventually stretch to thirty volumes released by de Bry and his two sons. The volumes contained not only important engraved images of the New World, the first many had seen of the geographic novelties, but also several important maps. He also published a collection focused on India Orientalis. Les Grands Voyages was published in German, Latin, French, and English, extending de Bry’s fame and his view of the New World.
![Die Einwohner in Magellanica [The Inhabitants of Magellanica]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/94088.jpg)
