Archive Note
The four leaders, three Mohawk and the Mahican Etow Oh Koam, traveled to the court of Queen Anne and sat from life for John Verelst, who depicted three of them with tattoos on the face, chest, and limbs, including bands, geometric panels, animal figures, and tally marks. The portraits, now in the National Archives of Canada, are the earliest extensive Western portrait record of Northern Iroquoian and adjacent Algonquian tattoo motifs, and the iconographic vocabulary is read as part of a single Northern Iroquoian visual system shared with the earlier Jesuit-era descriptions.