Roanoke Read online

  Copyright © 2000, 2011 by Lee Miller

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  First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-331-7

  TO MY PARENTS

  WITH LOVE

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  PART ONE A CASE OF MISSING PERSONS

  1 The Disappearance

  2 A Case of Missing Persons

  3 John White: Governor

  4 Of London

  5 Of Population

  6 Of Religion

  7 The Colonists

  8 In Certain Danger

  PART TWO A CASE OF MURDER

  9 Sabotage

  10 The Second Roanoke Expedition: Grenville and the Secotan (1585)

  11 The Second Roanoke Expedition: Lane’s Command (1585—1586) 97

  12 Chaunis Temoatan and a Murder (1586)

  PART THREE A CASE OF CONSPIRACY

  13 The Lost Colonists (1587)

  14 Raleigh’s Rise to Power

  15 Political Turmoil

  16 The Players

  17 The Motive

  18 The Game

  19 The Fall

  PART FOUR WHO ARE THE MANDOAG?

  20 Raleigh’s Search

  21 Jamestown

  22 War on the Powhatan

  23 Requiem

  24 Deep in the Interior

  25 Who Are the Mandoag?

  26 Epilogue

  Appendix A: Wingina and the Secotan

  Appendix B: The Meaning of Mandoag and Nottoway

  Notes and References

  Bibliography

  PREFACE

  When I first began work on this book, I intended to write a straightforward history, whose ending included a mysterious disappearance that I hoped to solve. However, I was wholly unprepared for what very rapidly emerged as three mysteries in one. It was apparent that I was dealing with a hugely complex sequence of events that did not all begin the moment 116 men, women, and children landed on Roanoke Island, subsequently to disappear without a trace. Their story was vastly more than that.

  Sir Walter Raleigh said that although a prince’s business is seldom hidden from some of those many eyes which pry both into them, and into such as live about them, they yet sometimes… conceal the truth from all reports. What is true of princes is also true of others, and such concealment was certainly the case with the Lost Colony tragedy. Evidence indicates that the truth about the colonists’ fate was known, although misleading official statements were passed off in its place.

  One great flaw in the writing of history is that we often tend to accept easy explanations of events. The job of an historian, said Raleigh, being full of so many things to weary it, may well be excused, when finding apparent cause enough of things done, it forbeareth to make further search…. So comes it many times to pass, that great fires, which consume whole houses or towns, begin with a few straws that are wasted or not seen.

  This was true here. There was something wrong with the Lost Colony story as it had been told. It went like this: Sir Walter Raleigh obtained a royal patent from Queen Elizabeth I for rights to settle North America. In the spring of 1584, he launched an exploratory expedition under Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe which located Roanoke Island before returning home that autumn. The following year, he raised a military expedition headed by Sir Richard Grenville which reached Roanoke Island in the summer, built a fort there, and remained in it until the spring of 1586. Finally, in 1587, Raleigh sent a colony of men, women, and children to the Chesapeake Bay with their governor, John White, with instructions to call at Roanoke on the way. For some reason — White’s ineptitude as a leader, his preference for Roanoke Island, or unruly mariners — they went no farther than Roanoke and settled there in the abandoned military fort. Already short of supplies, White reluctantly returned to England with the transport ships. Unfortunately, his arrival in London coincided with the coming of the Spanish Armada. With England at war, he was unable to relieve the colony until 1590. When he finally did return to Roanoke, the colonists had vanished. Years later, Jamestown officials reported that the “Lost Colonists” had been murdered by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia.

  This story is solidly backed by four hundred years of retelling. It is a myth created to explain glaring inconsistencies, to smooth out the rough edges of unanswered questions. Without the myth, none of the circumstances make sense. Why did John White take his colonists to Roanoke, and not to the Chesapeake Bay as planned? Why did he return to England? If not to fetch supplies, then why did he leave his colony? If not the war, then why didn’t he come back? And if the Powhatan didn’t kill them, then where were the Lost Colonists? The moment the accepted story is pulled away, the questions leap out, demanding answers. The moment the questions are asked, the accepted story no longer fits.

  There is something unsettling about a mystery. When it involves tragedy, it is doubly so. When that tragedy is the loss of 116 people and their inexplicable disappearance, the need to find answers is compelling. When history said there was nothing left to tell, we had only scratched the surface of the puzzle. It is still possible, at this late date, to wring out the facts, to squeeze out more information, to uncover that which it was never intended we should uncover. To learn the truth. To solve a mystery.

  Some will find it jarring. Raleigh himself did not write his own side of the story, though perhaps he gave us his reasons when he wrote, / know that it will be said by many, that I might have been more pleasing to the reader if I had written the story of mine own times. … To this I answer that whosoever… shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.

  A note about methodology is in order. The quotes used in this book date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are interspersed within the text in a way that was intended to be as seamless as possible, but are distinguished from it by being rendered in italics. For ease in reading and to maintain a consistent style, spellings and punctuation have been modernized with the exception of personal names — which have been modernized or not according to context — and Indian names, which I left as they appeared in the original.

  The story of the Lost Colony is America’s oldest mystery. To tell it properly, I felt that it had to be told as a mystery, not simply as a chronological history. This allows the reader to approach the material as a series of questions, each one leading to the next, in order to preserve both a sense of discovery and a sense of the complexity of the data, which at first sight seems baffling, inexplicable, and contradictory.

  Contrary to the impression generally given, clues to the Lost Colonists’ whereabouts abound, although they have never been given equal value in any previous treatment of the subject. As a consequence, the mystery has not been solved. The single most important question surrounding the Lost C
olonists is: Why were they left on Roanoke Island? From this question all else follows: Who was responsible for this, and why? What were the initial reports filtering into London? If the colony was in trouble, why did its governor, John White, abandon it and return to England? Do we know something about his background, or about the colonists themselves, that could explain what was happening? What does John White’s own account reveal of the problem? What were the conditions on Roanoke that would explain the colonists’ disappearance? What of the conflicting reports from Jamestown of Lost Colony sightings?

  Question after question drives us back in time from effect to cause until we finally reach the first plateau: Why were the colonists lost? Only when we understand this, and the danger posed by Roanoke Island and its environs, can we move forward to trace what happened after their disappearance. I chose to tell this story, then, as a series of discoveries generated by key questions. The result is not a traditional history format. If it conveys, as I hope, anything of the tension and drama of the story itself, then I have succeeded.

  Acknowledgements

  linguists in both Canada and the United States; Algonquian speakers from Big Cove, Maliotenam, Whapmagoostui, Abitibi, and Maniwaki; Audrey Shenandoah, and the multilingual translators at the Freedom School at Akwesasne.

  And finally — a thank you to the Secotan, for it was you — across four hundred years of history — who lent me the insight to accomplish this work, and upon your land that I respectfully and humbly began it.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Ayer Company Publishers for extracts from David Beers Quinn, Alison M. Quinn, and Susan Hillier (ed.), New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, New York: Arno Press and Hector Bye, 1979, reproduced by permission of Ayer Company Publishers; Folger Shakespeare Library for extracts from William Harrison, The Description of England, Scotland and Ireland, ed. Georges Edelen, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968, reproduced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library; The Hakluyt Society for extracts from The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, 1606—160g by Philip Barbour (1969), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, edited by Eva G. R. Taylor (1935), The Troublesome Voyage of Captain Edward Fenton, 1582-1583 by Eva G. R. Taylor (1959), and Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583—i5Q4, edited by Irene A. Wright (1951), all published by The Hakluyt Society; University of North Carolina Press for extracts from David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985, © University of North Carolina Press, used by permission of the publisher; University of Toronto Press for extracts from David Beers Quinn and Neil M. Cheshire, The New Found Land of Stephen Parmenius, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972, reprinted with the permission of the publisher.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Sir Walter Raleigh, attributed to “H” (monogrammist), fl. 1588 (courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

  Detail of Whitehall stairs, from Visscher’s view of London, 1616 (copyright © The British Museum, London).

  Elizabeth I, Armada Portrait, attributed to George Gower, from Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire (courtesy of W Tyrwhitt-Drake /Bridgeman Art Library, London).

  John White’s map (courtesy of Rare Book Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).

  Detail from the Zúñiga map (reproduced from The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, 1606-1609, Vol. I, Works issued by The Hak-luyt Society, second series, no. CXXXVI, London, ig6g).

  Indians fishing, by John White (copyright © The British Museum, London).

  Woman and child of Pomeioc, by John White (copyright © The British Museum, London).

  Sir Francis Walsingham, by John de Critz the Elder, c. 1555-1641 (courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

  William Cecil, Lord Burghley, attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (copyright © The Marquess of Salisbury).

  Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, attributed to Meulen (copyright © The Wallace Collection; reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London).

  Sir Christopher Hatton, by an unknown artist, 1589 (courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London).

  MAPS

  PART ONE

  A CASE OF MISSING PERSONS

  1 THE DISAPPEARANCE

  Roanoke Island, North America—July 1587. A mystery is unfolding. One hundred and seventeen people have landed on a remote island off the North American coast. The men, women, and children, sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, are the first English colonists in America. Despite the care taken for their safety, the explicit instructions, the plans for provisions, all will vanish. The only known survivor will be their Governor, John White — an artist and veteran of Raleigh’s previous Roanoke expeditions. He had known, from the moment they landed, that they could not survive on Roanoke Island.

  The commander of the ship that brought them there reported nothing amiss. In the weeks before he left them, the colonists had begun to repair the houses of an abandoned English fort. New cottages were constructed of brick and tile,1 and on August 18, White’s daughter Eleanor and husband Ananias Dare became the parents of a baby girl. Christened Virginia, she was the first English child born in North America. Several days later, another celebration. A boy was delivered to Dyonis and Margery Harvie.2

  And yet the ship’s captain was mistaken, for something was wrong. Terrible events had been set in motion from which there would be no escape. No one on the island knew what form it would take or when it would strike. Defenseless and impotent, they could only wait. In one of the last glimpses we have of them, it has already begun: colonist George Howe has been found dead, floating facedown among the reeds along the shore. With time running out, an envoy is urgently dispatched for help to the neighboring Secotan nation through an Indian liaison named Manteo. There is no response.

  August 27. At the height of the turmoil John White abruptly abandons the island. He leaves behind his daughter Eleanor, her baby Virginia, relatives and close friends, and sails back to England, pledging to return within three months. It is a promise he fails to keep.

  A Four-Hundred-Year-Old Mystery

  From the moment John White left Roanoke, no European laid eyes on the colonists again. He had vowed to rescue them within three months. Yet it was 1590, three years later, and after the opportunity to save them had been lost, before White finally returned…and found no one. The colonists were gone and the island deserted. The fort, partially dismantled, lay empty. Everything marking where people had been: houses — boards, nails and all; belongings; supplies; weapons — had vanished without trace.

  Years after the tragedy, when the English were permanently settled in North America, tantalizing signs of the colony surfaced. Strange sightings were reported in Virginia and again in North Carolina, in areas widely separated. Search parties dispatched from Jamestown combed swamps and unexplored rivers, offering only hints and incomplete fragments. There were rumors and clues. Some genuine, others hoaxes.3

  For four hundred years the disappearance of the Lost Colony has remained a mystery. There is a reason why: it has never been examined as a crime. If it had, it would have been apparent from the beginning that much more was involved than a simple case of missing persons. It is still possible to solve the crime — if only we unravel the clues.

  John White’s Letter

  In the beginning few people in England were told that the colony was missing. Although White’s failed rescue mission was disclosed to Raleigh in the autumn of 1590, it was not until the winter of 1593 — three years after his attempt to rejoin his family — that White composed a letter to geographer and historian Richard Hakluyt, detailing the sad events.4 It appeared to be a farewell letter; afterward, White seemingly vanished. Seven years later it was published:

  4 February 1593

  To the worshipful and my very friend Master Richard Hakluyt, mu
ch happiness in the Lord.

  Sir, as well for the satisfying of your earnest request, as the performance of my promise made unto you at my last being with you in England, I have sent you … the true discourse of my last voyage into the West Indies, and parts of America called Virginia, taken in hand about the end of February, in the year of our redemption 1590. And what events happened unto us in this our journey, you shall plainly perceive by the sequel of my discourse. …

  The Discourse

  March 20, 1590. Three ships put to sea from Plymouth harbor in Devon: the flagship Hopewell, Captain Abraham Cocke, commander, the Little John under the direction of Captain Christopher Newport, and the consort John Evangelist. In tow are two shallops, small shallow-water boats, vitally important to John White aboard the flagship. In fact, they are the only hope he has of ever seeing his family again.

  It has been three years since he left them on Roanoke Island, alone and without supplies. The moment of departure still painful: the memory of parting sorrows, of Eleanor, trembling between hope and despair, clinging to Ananias and their baby, Virginia. White’s eyes lingering upon them, huddled on shore, blurring out of range. Angry at the tiny island receding in the distance, a speck against the wilds of a vast, unknown land.

  Raleigh had selected Roanoke for its inaccessibility. A jagged sliver of island, caressed by a sheet of water thin as tissue paper.5 The sound is so shallow, in fact, that only light craft, buoyant as eggshells, can float upon it. Not warships. Beyond it, the Atlantic rages against miles of unyielding barrier islands. Sand-dune sentinels pressing hard against the sea. Hiding the coast. Its unforgiving shoals and bars forcing shipping into the safety of the open road beyond this Skeleton Coast.6 Impatiently rolling with the waves.