People bathed in the streams that ran by their towns, whether these waterways were salty or fresh. Each morning before dawn, people of both sexes and all ages—even babies—washed themselves until the sun came up, after which they went ashore and made an offering of tobacco to the spirit of the sun. Only then did they return home to eat breakfast. The Jamestown colonist John Smith wrote that the Powhatan Indians he observed followed this regimen in all seasons and all weather, leading Smith to assume that they valued hardiness. In fact, they probably also valued cleanliness, which was a luxury Smith knew less about. Familiarity with moving about in the water probably aided young Indians, especially boys who dived for shellfish, in learning to swim. Taken captive in 1571 after a raid led by Paquiquineo (Don Luís), the Spaniard Alonso de los Olmos watched them and reported later that they were good swimmers.

Another method of bathing was the sweat bath, widely practiced in North America. Each village had a sweat lodge located near the waterfront. The lodge itself was low, conical, and closely covered with mats or skins. Inside was a central hearth and room for about eight people to sit on the ground. A "doctor," most likely a priest, was in charge, and it was his responsibility to keep the people in the lodge from fainting or otherwise suffering adverse effects. The hearth was first lined with the pulverized inner bark of the white oak, after which three or four large, very hot stones were laid on the bark. As the lodge began to heat up, the people entered. No colonial writer recorded whether sweat baths were taken by both sexes separately, or in a mixed group, or by men only; however, the people entered the lodge naked and the Powhatans are known to have been modest about members of the opposite sex seeing their uncovered loins, so certain proprieties were probably observed. The doctor then went inside and closed the door. He sprinkled water on the hot stones to make steam, and, as needed, he sprinkled the people as well, to keep them conscious. Everyone stayed in the intense heat for as long as they could stand it, and then they burst out the door and ran into the waterway nearby. The "cure" was said to be very invigorating, though initially the shock to the system made people feel feeble.

Important people, at least, washed their hands before eating: the paramount chief Powhatan is known to have doused his hands in water before and after eating, after which he dried his hands on a bunch of feathers. However, Powhatan Indian culture contained no equivalent of soaps or disinfectants, as far as the records show, so that infections in wounds were a constant danger.

In his History and Present State of Virginia, published in 1705, Robert Beverley Jr. wrote that the Virginia Indians still bathed daily; however, a contemporary of his, the Huguenot traveler Durand de Dauphine, remarked that in the matter of clothing bought from Europeans, the Indians were not as clean—"they never wash anything"—and they wore the garments until they became mere rags. It is possible that the Virginia Indians were continuing a custom they had used for their tougher deerskin clothing; no writer at any period mentioned anything about washing that. Eventually the surviving Indian communities adopted the practices of the Europeans who surrounded them, and daily bathing became a thing of the past until fairly recent times, when hot-water heaters became standard in the houses of most people, Indian and non-Indian alike.