Watching entitled equity pirate Mitt Romney pretend to care about victims of Hurricane Sandy, after tall ship HMS Bounty sank in the Atlantic, I was reminded just how far back our roots go, here in North America, of white men flouting legal authority and common sense for the sake of unadulterated greed, with disastrous results for their country. It was because of rapacious delay by a ship's crew and a rip-roaring windstorm on our eastern seaboard that England lost (to follow-up, at least) an entire colony of men, women, and children.
One of my hobbies (surprisingly for a person who hated history in high school) is genealogy in historical context. I love reading handwriting from the 1600's and 1700's. Recently because of my husband's roots in early 1600's Virginia, I delved into the history of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. From what I gleaned, it wouldn't have been lost if England and Spain weren't killing each other over gold and timber, and if English privateers weren't out there primarily to enrich themselves at others' expense.
Below the orange squiggly, for anyone who's interested, is the footnote-free summary I put together, from 1584 through Walter Raleigh's beheading in 1618, to a sighting of white Tuscarora near what is now Tarboro NC in 1696.
For millenia, people who called themselves Nansimum ("fishing spot") lived along both sides of the Nansemond River. For millenia, people who called themselves Chowanoc ("southerners") lived along both sides of the Chowan River.
1584 Elizabeth I (1533-1603), self-styled "Virgin Queen" of England, directed Sir Walter Raleigh to name England's newest colony Virginia after her royal self.
1585 Encouraged by the results of a preliminary expedition, Raleigh sent more than 100 men in five ships to establish an outpost at the north end of Roanoke Island, selected partly because no natives lived there. Before they reached the island, they torched the mainland village of Aquascogoc in revenge for the alleged theft of a silver cup.
• Roanoke Island sits at the entrance to Albemarle Sound, a vast estuary originating 55 miles inland at the conjoined mouths of the Chowan and Roanoke rivers, and separated from the Atlantic by a long, narrow north-south peninsula. (Raleigh himself never visited it.) The waterway between Roanoke Island and the mainland is now called Croatan Sound, after the Croatan Indians who used to occupy the area; it connects Albemarle Sound with Pamlico Sound, which is fed by the Neuse and Tar rivers and separated from the ocean by several long, narrow islands, notably Hatteras (Pamlico and Hatteras being alternate names for the Croatan Indians, an Algonquin subgroup). The northern barrier peninsula and southern barrier islands, Albemarle and Pamlico sounds, Roanoke Island, Croatan Sound, and the adjacent mainland now comprise Dare County, North Carolina, named for Virginia Dare, "the first Christian borne in Virginia" in the words of an Englishman who knew her parents.
1586 After sacking several Spanish installations in Florida and the West Indies, Sir Francis Drake breezed up to Roanoke Island and offered to rescue the men stationed there, whose expected relief fleet was several months overdue. They accepted, and Drake sailed them home to England with samples of corn, tobacco, and potatoes.
1587 Queen Elizabeth ordered the beheading of her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, enraging Catholics throughout Europe. Spain was on the verge of invading England when Drake, commanding four royal galleons and twenty lesser ships, attacked Cadiz harbor and destroyed 33 Spanish warships while capturing four laden supply ships, then proceeded up the Iberian coast, seizing or destroying every vessel in the water.
While Spain regrouped, Raleigh oversaw the departure of England's first colonists bound for permanent residence in Virginia: ninety men, seventeen women, and ten children, led by his artist friend John White (this being White’s fourth trip to the area: he had drawn the famous “Virginea Pars” map in 1585). The “planters” were accompanied by two Croatan Indians, Manteo and Towaye, who had traveled to England in 1584 with the first expedition and personally informed Raleigh about local politics and topography.
White and his entourage sailed out of Plymouth on May 8th in three ships, unaware that they were embarking at the onset of the worst drought to hit coastal Virginia in 800 years. On July 22nd their lead ship anchored at the inlet north of Hatteras Island (a 70-mile spider arm whose jutting elbow, Cape Hatteras, has been aptly called “the graveyard of the Atlantic”) and launched a boat for Roanoke Island.
Under Raleigh's orders, White was to pick up the fifteen men currently on Roanoke and take them up to Chesapeake Bay, where with their help he was to establish a "cittie" called Raleigh with himself as governor. But the men White hoped to collect had disappeared. The fort had been razed, though all the houses were "standing unhurt, saving that the nether rooms of them, and also of the forte, were overgrownen with Melons of divers sortes, and Deere within them feeding on those Melons."
Before this discovery, fleet master Simon Ferdinando, a shady mariner of limited competence who had ditched their floundering third ship in the Bay of Portugal (unsuccessfully, he would soon learn), had ordered his crew not to let any passengers reboard. Nobody was going to Chesapeake, he said. Summer was nearly over (and he wasn’t going home without some Spanish loot). He would take White back to England with two men of his choosing, but everyone else had to remain on Roanoke.
Lacking the reinforcements he needed for Chesapeake, and faced with Ferdinando’s intransigence, White ordered all men of the colony to begin rehabilitating houses and building more cottages.
On July 28th colonist George Howe was wading in a reedy area two miles down the beach, unarmed except for a small forked stick with which he was catching crabs, when Indians concealed in the reeds "gave him sixteen wounds with their arrows, and after they had slaine him with their wooden swords, they beat his head in pieces, and fled over the water to the maine." Howe’s murder prompted White to gather twenty men and paddle 50 miles to Croatoan Island (now Hatteras) to renew his friendship with the Croatan Indians. He was aided by “our savage Manteo,” a native of the island, whose birth family still lived there.
The Croatan seemed hostile at first, but with Manteo's help they soon realized who White was and "threwe away their bowes and arrowes, and some of them came unto us, embracing and entertaining us friendly, desiring us not to gather or spill any of their corne, for that they had but little." With that, these native people welcomed the English into their town, where White and his men remained through the next morning, feasting and finding out what had happened to the missing detachment:
Thirty Roanoke Indians from villages S, A, and D on the mainland shore — Village A having been sacked and burned the previous year over a silver cup — had attacked eleven whites at the English settlement, killing two and wounding others. The nine whites who got away, plus four who were off gathering oysters during the skirmish, had escaped by boat to a little islet near Hatteras, but nobody knew where they went from there. It was men from Village D (doubtless still bent on avenging the murders of A’s wives and children over a trivial thing like a cup) who had killed George Howe.
White asked his Croatan hosts to broker a peace agreement between his colony and the Roanokes of villages S, A, and D. They told him they would do their best: within seven days they would escort leaders of those villages to White, or else they would bring the leaders’ answers.
White and crew returned to Roanoke Island and waited a full week, but heard nothing from any Indians. On August 9th he and his men tried to “acquite their evill doing towards us" by conducting a pre-dawn assault on Village D, but failed comically and perilously, through ignorance of native ways. On August 18th his daughter Eleanor gave birth to a healthy girl, Virginia Dare, who was christened six days later.
Meanwhile the unloaded ships were being re-caulked in preparation for departure. None of the colonists, least of all Governor White, wanted to return to England with the ships. White's objections centered on the criticism he anticipated for prematurely abandoning his recruits, and on his concern that because the colonists "intended to remove 50 miles further up into the maine presently, he being then absent, his stuff and goods might be both spoilt, & most of them pilfered away in the cariage, so that at his returne he should be either forced to provide himselfe of all such things againe, or else at his comming again to Virginia find himself utterly unfurnished, whereof already he had found some proofe, being but once from them but three dayes."
Not until August 25th, when all the colonists including Eleanor had petitioned him to return home for help, and guaranteed him, in writing, the safety or replacement value of his goods, did White finally agree to go. Off he sailed on the 27th, leaving various light boats with the colonists, sufficient for them to row themselves and their provisions 50 miles inland without making two trips. (Being discovered and massacred by the Spanish was a major worry at their present location.)
1590 John White had planned to return the following summer, but the Spanish Armada’s invasion of English waters halted non-military travel. Two more years would pass before Britain’s defense could spare a ship. White left England on March 20th, 1590, yet didn’t reach his destination for five months — twice as long as usual — because everyone else on board wanted to plunder the Spanish at Morocco, the Virgin Islands, Santo Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, and Florida, “regarding very smally the good of their countreymen in Virginia,” in contempt of Raleigh’s orders.
When White finally arrived on August 18th, coincidentally the third birthday of his granddaughter Virginia Dare, he found his settlement abandoned. Reassuringly there were no signs of haste or violence, no Maltese cross (the agreed-upon distress signal) carved into any tree. The colonists had carved their destination — CROATOAN — into a post, as he had ordered them to do if they moved. They had taken the time to bury his chests of goods. (Indians had dug them up and scattered the contents, however, and all his books and instruments were ruined.)
To White, the colonists had gone to friendly Croatoan Island with Manteo, for reasons unclear. Far from lost, they were excruciatingly close. But a fierce storm the day before had capsized one of his ship’s boats, drowning seven good men, and now a raging wind blew him off course for Hatteras and nearly ran him aground. Forced to abandon hope of seeing his family, he managed to persuade two captains to overwinter in Trinidad "with hope to make 2 rich voyages of one, and at our returne to visit our countreyman at Virginia." But repeatedly the wind refused to cooperate, and he found himself back in England on October 24th.
1591 Queen Elizabeth imprisoned Sir Walter Raleigh (rumored to be her lover) in the Tower of London, upon discovering that he and one of her ladies-in-waiting had secretly married without her permission.
1593 John White wrote a letter to Richard Hakluyt, major backer of Virginia Colony, defending Raleigh and himself for failing to revive the colony in 1590: “…Which evils and unfortunate events (as wel to their own losse as to the hinderance of the planters in Virginia) had not chanced if the order set down by Sir Walter Ralegh had been observed, or if my dayly and continuall petitions for the performance of the same might have taken any place. Thus may you plainly perceive the successe of my fifth & last voiage to Virginia… Yet seeing it is not my first voyage I remain contented… Thus committing the relief of my discomfortable company the planters in Virginia, to the merciful help of the Almighty, whom I most humbly beseech to helpe and comfort them, according to his most holy will and there good desire, I take my leave: from my house at Newtowne in Kylmore.”
Raleigh and his adoring wife were released from the Tower. They retreated to his Devon estate.
1602 Raleigh finally sent an expedition, in his own ship, to track down the lost colony, and also to gather Virginian cedar, sassafras, and other aromatics for the English market. They reached the Outer Banks but spent so much time harvesting profit for Raleigh, they had to return to England in stormy weather without investigating the colonists’ fate (lending credence to White’s version of his 1590 trip).
1603 Forty-five years into her reign, the childless Virgin Queen died, leaving James I (1566-1625), son of Mary, Queen of Scots, to succeed her. This irony ended the Elizabethan era, though some of Shakespeare's best plays were yet to be written. Raleigh, no friend of James, allegedly took part in a plot to overthrow the King, for which he spent the next thirteen years locked away in the Tower.
1604 King James signed a treaty with Spain, on terms favorable to Spain, reducing the risks of sea travel for both empires.
1607 Jamestown ("James Fort"), named in honor of the new monarch, was established near Chesapeake Bay with explicit orders to find White's missing colonists. The Virginia Company of London supplied German and Polish laborers to help Jamestown’s effete entrepreneurs and butlers build a permanent settlement. Due to harsh conditions, some of them attributable to misjudgment or to the persistent refusal of English gentlemen to sully themselves planting seeds, 239 of the original 300 Jamestown colonists died within three years. Relics of this period include a 1607 map by colonist Francis Nelson, showing three locations where people from the Roanoke colony had reportedly been seen. The label near the map's south edge reads, "HERE REMAINETH 4 MEN CLOTHED THAT CAME FROM ROONOCK TO OKANAHONAN."
All three locations — Panawicke, Okanahonan, and Pakerakanick — are south of the Chowan River. They correspond as follows:
• Panawicke = an area in present-day Bertie southwest of the Cashie, historically the boundary stream between the Chowan (Chowanoc, Chowanoke) and Tuscarora Indians
• Okanahonan, Ochanahoen = an area in present-day Bertie on the north side of the Roanoke
• Pakerakanick, Peccarecanick = an area on the south bank of what is probably the Tar, which would put it in present-day Edgecombe.
1612 William Strachey of Jamestown, having interviewed in 1609 an Indian whose sister was a favorite wife of the Powhatan overlord Wahunsonacock, wrote a report to the Virginia Company of London:
“Men women, and Children of the first plantation at Roanoak (who 20 & odd yeeres had peacable lyved and intermixed with those Savadges, and were out of his Territory), by practize and Commandement of Powhatan were miserably slaughtered without any offence given him.” He went on to say that “at Peccarecanick and Ochanahoen the People have howses built with stone walls, and one story above another, so taught them by those English who escaped the slaughter at Roanoak.” Also, an Eno chief in the same region “preserved 7 of the English alive, fower men, twoo Boyes, and one young Maid, (who escaped and fled up the river of Chaonoke) to beat his Copper, of which he hath certayn Mynes.” The Company forwarded this report to King James.
1616 King James released Sir Walter Raleigh to return to Venezuela and find El Dorado. During this expedition an officer under Raleigh initiated a foolish attack on the Spanish, in which Raleigh’s son Walter was killed.
1618 Raleigh was beheaded in the yard at Westminster Palace.
1620 As Virginia’s growing European population spread, natives fell victim to smallpox, plague, typhus, influenza, and measles, all previously unknown in the New World. Exposed to smallpox for the first time, non-immune native villages lost 40-100% of their inhabitants to the disease. Explorers returned to Jamestown from points south with reports of beautiful, empty country there for the taking.
1622 The Powhatan Confederacy attacked along the James River in an attempt to eradicate Jamestown, slaying a third of ~1100 colonists.
1624 King James revoked the charter of the Virginia Company of London and made Virginia a royal colony, with royal incentives to travel to Virginia and “seat” the land.
1634 King Charles I (1600-1649) ordered the division of Virginia into eight shires. Elizabeth River Shire encompassed Hampton Roads.
• 1637 New Norfolk County, formed from Elizabeth River Shire, was divided into Upper Norfolk and Lower Norfolk.
• 1643 Upper Norfolk was divided into East, West, and South Parishes, South being the largest.
• 1646 Upper Norfolk County was renamed Nansimum County, later Nansemond. South Parish (farther from Jamestown) became Upper Parish.
• 1653 Carolina Colony was created and named in honor of King Charles II (1630-1685). (Charles = Carol.)
• 1668 Western Albemarle became Chowan Precinct.
1696 Huguenots saw blond, blue-eyed Tuscaroras at the Tar River.