Invisible bullets
The explanation some coastal Algonquians gave Harriot for the deaths in their towns in 1585–1586: the Englishmen yet to come, invisible and without bodies in the air, shot invisible bullets into the sick at the colonists' request.
The Sickness That Followed the English
Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (London, 1588; Frankfurt, 1590), on the colony's year at Roanoke, 1585–1586 · events of 1585–1586; first printed London, dated February 1588 (February 1589 in our calendar); reprinted Frankfurt 1590
Those that were immediatly to come after vs they imagined to be in the aire, yet inuisible & without bodies, & that they by our intreaty & for the loue of vs did make the people to die in that sort as they did by shooting inuisible bullets into them.
They imagined that those who were to come right after us were in the air, invisible and without bodies. They thought that, at our request and for love of us, these beings made the people die as they did, by shooting invisible bullets into them.
To confirme this opinion their phisitions to excuse their ignorance in curing the disease, would not be ashemed to say, but earnestly make the simple people beleue, that the strings of blood that they sucked out of the sicke bodies, were the strings wherewithal the inuisible bullets were tied and cast.
Their physicians confirmed this opinion, to excuse their ignorance in curing the disease. They were not ashamed to say [so]. They earnestly made the simple people believe that the strings of blood they sucked out of the sick bodies were the strings by which the invisible bullets were tied and shot.