Roanoke Read online

  There are beans, Hariot observes, called okindgier, which are simmered in broths, or sometimes they bruise or pound them in a mortar, & thereof make loaves or lumps of doughish bread. There are melons, squash, and sunflowers — a plant only marginally familiar: a great herb, in the form of a marigold, about six foot in height… Some take it to be planta solis: of the seeds hereof they make both a kind of bread and broth. The gardens are planted in an apparent jumble, corn and beans trailing together. The ground they never fatten with muck or dung, Hariot adds incredulously.16

  The journal is assuming compendious proportions.

  Drought

  As a relentless sun beats down, Hariot traipses through Roanoke gardens with a curiosity that might have been humorous in any other circumstance. But a serious problem is developing throughout the Secotan country, which will have a profound impact on events unfolding. The English are unaware of what is happening. What do soldiers know (or care) of farming? What do London merchants know of the land?

  The blistering sun scorches the earth. Strangely absent is the suffocating humidity of the coast. The soil dries to sand. The climate, observes Lane, is somewhat tending to heat.11 No rain. No rain for weeks. It is at last obvious to everyone what is happening. Roanoke is in the midst of a drought. What is not obvious is its severity: it will be the worst drought to hit the coast in eight hundred years.18 Plants, succulent and green only weeks before, droop, curl — then die. Fruits shrivel on the vine. A dark blight creeps along the edges of corn blades dry as parchment. Sheaths split from cobs, exposing gaping rows of intermittent kernels. The corn began to wither by reason of a drought which happened extraordinarily.19

  Of all the crops, corn is the most critical. A low yield is disastrous. A nonexistent one thrusts the Secotan into very desperate straits indeed. Panic ensues. Many attribute the calamity to their refusal to feed Lane’s troops. Dreading judgment, they rush to Hariot, to the soldiers, desiring them to pray to our God of England, that he would preserve their corn, promising that when it was ripe we also should be partakers of the fruit.,20

  We Will Make You Christian

  Taking the cue, members of the company renew their efforts at proselytizing. Some religion they have already, which although it be far from the truth, yet being as it is, there is hope it may be the easier and sooner reformed. Many are persuaded, Hariot declares, that if they knew not the truth of God and religion already, it was rather to be had from us, whom God so specially loved than from a people that were so simple, as they found themselves to be in comparison of us.21

  To underscore his point, Hariot demonstrates the use of scientific gadgets: the virtue of the loadstone in drawing iron, a perspective glass whereby was showed many strange sights, burning glasses, wildfire works, guns, books, writing and reading, spring clocks that seem to go of themselves… Whereupon greater credit was given unto that we spake of concerning such matters.11

  It would be surprising if the Secotan were not upset by these efforts. To destroy their religion is to destroy their entire way of being. Confounded and shocked, the Secotan world is reeling. And still no rains come.

  Everything Under Christendom

  Toward the middle of September, though we do not know precisely when, a surveying expedition is sent into the interior. Hariot presumably leads it, mapping out the country with parchment and quills, compasses, a cross staff, and calculation tables. The team includes Joachim Ganz, the metallurgist, who will search for ore into the very bowels of the earth.23

  Part of their task is to conduct an inventory of marketable commodities. There is daily discovery, Lane boasts, of somewhat rare growing that Christendom wanteth. Wood of every kind: oak, pine, hickory, beech. Cedar, a very sweet wood & fine timber; whereof if nests of chests be there made, or timber thereof fitted for sweet & fine bedsteads, tables, desks, lutes, virginals, & many things else (of which there hath been proof made already), to make up freight. … will yield profit.24

  There are many strange trees25 Even more striking is their size. They are colossal. Secotan forest management is vastly different from anything Lane’s company has ever known. In England large trees are felled first, leaving hosts of spindly saplings. It is common to regard this as normal; easy to forget that trees ever grew bigger than two hands around. Children growing up have known nothing else.

  The Secotan, on the other hand, weed out saplings, leaving mature trees intact.26 The undergrowth cleared, luxuriant trunks have room to expand to tremendous size. Unlike their English counterparts, Secotan children hide and play among giants, under a vast, living canopy. It is the greatest architecture in the world.

  Pestilence

  The region’s commodities are both rich and abundant. Indeed these parts do abound with the growth of them all, says Lane, but being Savages that possess the land, they know no use of the same.21 Had he wished the Secotan gone, he could not have willed it faster. The first sign was in the sky. On or about September 27 the surveyors first notice it. Directly south over the sound, at nine o’clock at night, a comet blazes close to earth.28 Its trail is clearly visible with the naked eye. Hariot records the spectacle in his journal. And then everything changes.

  The Secotan begin to die. The effects are sudden and devastating. Town after town falls victim to English microbes — to which there is no immunity — startling the surveyors with such a rare and strange accident. Yet some of Lane’s men were ill upon their arrival on Roanoke: sundry that came sick, are recovered of long diseases, especially of rheums.19

  The surveyors push through the land, trailing virulent epidemic in their wake. Within a few days after our departure from every such town, wrote Hariot, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, & in one six score, which in truth was very many in respect of their numbers. … The disease was so strange, that they neither knew what it was, nor how to cure it; the like by report of the oldest men in the country never happened before, time out of mind.30

  The implications of the epidemic are profound, not only in the sheer number of lives lost, but for the holes rent in the fabric of this close-knit society. Now torn asunder. Old people succumb, taking with them lifetimes of knowledge. Priests die, forever silencing religious doctrine and ceremonies and rites. Orators and leaders are struck down. Mothers, friends. The best cooks, the best craftsmen, the best fishermen, the best fighters. People whose lives have barely begun; a nation orphaned by raging disease that casts down multitudes without discretion. People with knowledge are dying. A way of life crumbles into dust.

  Bone-chilling cries float through the swamp forest and along damp trails, swallowed up in the dense canopy overhead. Fires blaze into the night as death blackens the land. Lingering over every town is the foul stench of disease and decay. Exploding the Secotan world into chaos. Wingina, who frequently accompanied the surveying party, is seized with chills. He collapses, filled with infection, so grievously sick that he was like to die, and as he lay languishing. … and thinking he was in such danger for offending us and thereby our God, sent for some of us to pray and be a means to our God that it would please him either that he might live, or after death dwell with Him in bliss. Pathetic requests similarly flow in from all quarters, from many others in the like case?1

  Corpses lie rotting, the living barely able to bury the dead. The English watch as the Secotan dig graves about three foot deep. How many priests are left to perform the proper rites? They believe also the immortality of the soul, that after this life as soon as the soul is departed from the body, according to the works it hath done, it is either carried to heaven … there to enjoy perpetual bliss and happiness, or else to a great pit or hole?32

  Enemies Among Us

  The Secotan, bleary with sickness, eye Lane’s men warily and impute to us the cause or means thereof Relations deteriorate. Some came to prophesy that there were more of our generation yet to come, to kill theirs and take their places, as some thought the purpose was b
y that which was already done. And that the English did make the people to die in that sort as they did. That the epidemic is a visitation by God working on behalf of the soldiers, says Hariot, we ourselves have cause in some sort to think no less.33

  As the surveyors move from town to town, they are no longer welcomed. The English warn that the subtle device[s] now practiced against them will call forth divine retribution. Insomuch that when some of the inhabitants which were our friends, & especially the Wiroans Wingina, had observed such effects in four or five towns to follow their wicked practices, they were persuaded that it was the work of our God through our means, and that we by Him might kill and slay whom we would without weapons, and not come near them.34 If the Secotan think this, then it is clear that their view of Lane’s men has changed. The English are now regarded as both hostile and vindictive.

  The days shorten. The breezes scudding off the water grow brisk. October passes into November and morning finds frost upon the ground. Overhead multitudes of geese darken the sky. They descend from the heavens by the thousands on snowy wings, blanketing the swamps and sounds in the purest white. The surveying party retreats to Roanoke, having reached at least as far west as the town of Secota, but winter also being at hand. … we thought good, says Lane, wholly to leave the discovery of those parts until our stronger supply?35

  Grenville Returns Home

  In England there is great rejoicing. In the West Country, amid a throng of well-wishers, Grenville’s expedition returns home. The first to reach London is John Arundell, who left the Outer Banks some weeks earlier than the others. He is immediately granted an audience with the Queen at Richmond Palace, where, to great fanfare on Thursday, October 14, he is knighted as the first member of the squadron back.36

  Raleigh’s position at Court has dramatically altered in the intervening months since the fleet’s departure. In July, as his ships were arriving at Wococon, he was elevated to the office of Lord Warden of the Stannaries — the tin mines of western England — with judicial power over their parliaments and authority to collect taxes. This was followed, in September, by his promotion to Lord-Lieutenant of Cornwall, a position traditionally held by nobility. In October, Raleigh is returned as a Member of Parliament for Devon. Before the year is out he will be favored yet again: granted the office of Vice-Admiral of both Devon and Cornwall. His brother, Sir John Gilbert, is his deputy. Together, these offices make Raleigh the most powerful military figure in the whole of the West Country.37

  With Arundell back, Raleigh travels to Plymouth to await Grenville’s arrival. October 18. To the rejoicing of divers of his worshipful friends, Grenville enters Plymouth harbor, being by the hand of God delivered from the dangers of the seas.m And of Lane. Grenville sails, not on the Tiger, already safely in port, but on the Santa Maria de San Vicente, a Spanish carrack captured off the coast of Bermuda; the flagship of the Santo Domingo treasure fleet.

  The Santa Maria weighs in at three hundred tons, laden with sugar and ginger. Grenville declares the cargo’s worth at 40,000-50,000 ducats. His enemies from the Tiger, however, inform Walsingham that the haul is vastly greater. A Portuguese merchant claims the manifest totals 120,000 ducats, including gold, silver, and pearls. In an anonymous account sent to the Queen, the profits are racked up to more than a million.39 Who did this? Grenville shrugs off the discrepancy as a reporting error, yet it, too, will figure in the disappearance of White’s colony.

  Details of Raleigh’s meeting with Grenville are not recorded. Neither Lane’s behavior, nor his libel, appears to have been made public. We do know that Grenville detailed for his cousin the stringent hygiene policy implemented aboard the Tiger. Lane heard about it; seven years later, he was still accusing Grenville of taking credit for health and safety measures that, he claimed, were his.40

  It is apparent that Raleigh did not credit Lane’s slander. Indeed, all indications are that he was happy with his cousin Grenville’s performance. Lane’s request to have Grenville removed from office went unheeded, and Raleigh again selected him to command the returning squadron.

  Grenville, for his part, pens a polite, professional letter to Walsingham, denying the charge of embezzlement. / have, God be thanked, performed the action whereunto I was directed as fully as the time… and all possibilities would permit me. I have possessed and peopled the same to her Majesty’s use, and planted it with such cattle & beasts as are fit and necessary. … The commodities that are found there, are such as my cousin Raleigh hath advertized you of41

  Results of the Voyage

  Grenville is true to his word. The Tiger’s hold is stuffed with a great amass of good things — samples of American products to confirm his report — to avoid all suspicion of fraud.42 The most exciting product is oyssan, which is as common there as grass is here. From it the Secotan spin cloth. It is thought to be silk. If true, the import of silks from Persia, Turkey, Spain, and Italy would end; the trade would transfer to England. In London, experiments are made. A woman is hired to spin a sample into thread which is, indeed, determined to be silk. A piece of silk grosgrain is woven from it and found to be excellent good43

  The discoveries create a sensation at Court. The articles are eagerly passed around, examined by scientists, and snatched up into the hands of curiosity collectors. Walter Cope’s famous London home is crammed full of amazing treasures: an Egyptian mumified child; Chinese porcelain; a flying rhinoceros; bells from Henry VIIFs fool; holy relics from a Spanish ship; a horn found growing out of an English woman’s head; a Mexican Madonna made of feathers; and fireflies from Virginia (which, Cope explains, are used in lieu of lights since the country is in perpetual darkness for nearly a month). Suspended from the ceiling, the entire length of the room, is an Indian canoe with paddles.44

  Lord Treasurer Burghley’s celebrated garden in the Strand has also benefited. Something of a national arboretum, it includes many rare and exotic plants from the Americas. An instant craze for foreign herbals and apothecary drugs from Virginia, Arabia, and the Mediterranean seizes the country: It is a world also to see how many strange herbs, plants and annual fruits are daily brought unto us from the Indies, Americas … and all parts of the world… for delectation sake unto the eye and their odoriferous savours unto the nose they are to be cherished and God to be glorified45

  England’s foreign expeditions are becoming world renowned. Tourists, who once flocked to the palace of Hampton Court to marvel at the Queen’s royal throne studded with very large diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, now gaze upon Cornelius Ketel’s portraits of the Nugumiut man, woman, and child. At Windsor Palace sightseers are enthralled by a unicorn horn — a narwhal tusk — irreverently referred to as that horn of Windsor46

  Ha, ha, ha, ha! This world doth pass

  Most merrily I’ll be sworn;

  For many an honest Indian ass

  Goes for a unicorn.47

  Cold War

  Hand in hand with the excitement of discovery goes the mounting political crisis with Spain. Drake is let loose in the West Indies with twenty-one battleships, and Raleigh makes immediate arrangements to reinforce Lane’s troops. A promotional campaign is launched, the products brought home by Grenville used to pique investor interest. Inducements prepared by Hakluyt’s cousin of the same name, the elder Richard Hakluyt — a lawyer — are likely used too, although his muddled argument can hardly have been effective:

  The ends of the voyage are these: i. To plant Christian religion. 2. To traffic. 3. To conquer. Or, to do all three. To plant Christian religion without conquest, will be hard. Traffic easily followeth conquest: conquest is not easy. Traffic without conquest seemeth possible, and not uneasy. What is to be done, is the question.

  If the people be content to live naked… then traffic is not. So then in vain seemeth our voyage, unless this nature may be altered, as by conquest and other good means…. Admit that they have desire to your commodities, and as yet have neither gold, silver, copper, iron, nor sufficient quantity to maintain the yearly
trade: What is then to be done?*8

  Not helpful. A moot question anyway. December 10, 1585. Walsingham receives intelligence of a massive naval buildup in Iberian ports.49 The invincible Armada is preparing. The goal: to invade England. In a single stroke, Lane’s outpost on Roanoke is rendered obsolete. This is Armageddon. No fort half a world away is going to make a difference.

  Revitalization

  On Roanoke Island it is winter. The days are short and the nights cold and cheerless. Inside the fort the soldiers are idle. Contact with the Secotan is minimal. Having sustained crippling drought and disease, the village of Roanoke almost certainly withdraws inside itself, preoccupied with survival. Silence reigns over the island. A lull after the previous tumultuous months.

  And then a shred of hope. In a Secotan town sixty miles from Roanoke, Hariot is told, a young man died and was buried, but came back to life. For although his body had lain dead in the grave, yet his soul was alive and had travelled far in a long broad way, on both sides whereof grew most delicate and pleasant trees, bearing more rare and excellent fruits, than ever he had seen before or was able to express. The path to Heaven. Yet the route was long and hazardous, beset with trials determined by the conduct of his life. At last the man reached an indescribably beautiful town of most brave and fair houses peopled by family and friends, ancestors who had gone before.50 A place of comfort. No sorrow, no pain, no hunger, no falling away from ancient teachings.

  A great revival is gripping the Secotan country, caused by calamity. The message is clear and powerful, full of promise and excitement: the Secotan must live in goodness and wisdom and courage, adhering to time-honored customs. They must not falter as they follow the path of truth and tradition that will lead to happiness in the world to come. They must remain Secotan. The tide is turning. Conversions will not now be easy. Nor will relations with Lane’s men be so open.