Abstract. – An ethnohistory-of-communication approach is applied to examine such extra-linguistic behavior as greeting and religious gestures in seventeenth-century Powhatan. A case is made for early colonial documents as a source of data for descriptions of bodily movements. Incorporating ethological, interactional, semiotic as well as pragmatic perspectives, it is suggested that Powhatan greeting gestures are extensions of invocative kinesic motions. [North America, Algonquian peoples, Powhatan, language, ritual gestures, colonial contact]