[mc4wp_form id=”123″]
Listen on: iTunes Subscribe on Android Stitcher and more
Finding “Croatoan” at the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
The story of Roanoke gives us a unique glimpse into English colonization failures. Colonization wasn’t easy. Life on ships was hard. North America was little-understood. Communication was impossible, and it took a huge amount of money. The Spanish were ready to wipe out any settlement that did make it.
Everyone in colonial ventures was acting for their own self-interest in the lawlessness of the West. Ships captains were primarily interested in plunder. Colonial leaders didn’t have the money to sustain colonies for long until they became self sufficient. Of course, the politics of the time were pretty brutal, too.
Roanoke is a perfect illustration of all these forces. It failed twice, even though its story was much less brutal than the story of the first successful colonies. It’s also a fascinating glimpse into the time of the Sinking of the Spanish Armada.
Lest you think I’ve forgotten the mystery aspect of the Lost Colony, I’ve also selected what I think are the three most compelling pieces of evidence of what happened to the settlers.
Transcript
The story of Roanoke gets a lot of credit for being one of America’s great mysteries, but that’s only one facet of the story. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the world of Elizabethan exploration, the early New World failures of the English, and the society that would eventually produce a successful colony at Jamestown. It highlights the difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, and it’s a story that would reverberate through early Virginia history.
Introduction
At the time the Roanoke Colony was founded, the Spanish were the undisputed owners of the New World. They claimed everything, and no one had been able to successfully contest the issue. A thousand person Huguenot Colony on the modern Georgia-South Carolina border was slaughtered when discovered by the Spanish in 1565. It was a clear signal. We own the New World, and we will not accept competition.
Just a couple years before the massacre at Fort Caroline, Englishmen began to sail around Africa and the West Indies. They smuggled slaves, and raided Spanish ships. Elizabeth encouraged these raids, because they fit her strategy of cheaply weakening her rivals, and avoiding open confrontation. In fact, a privateer in the Caribbean could do an estimated four times as much damage as a mercenary in the low countries. It was a win-win situation for the queen and her privateers.
Through the 1560s and 1570s, people like Hawkins and Drake got rich weakening the Spanish threat. With help from runaway slaves and French settlers, they started planning more and bolder plundering activities. They were starting to become interested in colonization, too.
In 1577, Elizabeth gave Humphrey Gilbert a grant for a new colony. One thing that’s interesting to note is that he specifically tried to reach out to Catholics as potential colonists, by offering them a place to practice their religion without being penalized for not attending the established Church.
The colony, of course, was a failure. After trying to claim land that was already part of an international community, making it essentially the only land in North America that didn’t fit his patent, Gilbert went into debt, and died at sea on the way home.
He passed the torch to his brother, though. Raleigh took his position in Elizabeth’s court, and as the leader of England’s colonization efforts. She soon gave him a patent, though she didn’t want her handsome favorite endangering himself abroad.
Raleigh’s goal was to set up a base from which to plunder the Spanish. He wanted to be close enough to be effective, and far enough away to be safe. He heard stories of possible mines in the Appalachians, so he selected a place close to the Chesapeake Bay.
Now, the story of Roanoke occurs in three phases. First, there was an exploratory mission to the island. Second, there was a military garrison. Third was the famed lost colony. Each phase was different, run by different people, and contributed to the story as a whole.
First, the exploratory mission. Because Raleigh wasn’t allowed to go to the area himself, he needed information to help him make better decisions. He sent an exploratory expedition commanded by Philip Amadas, son of a merchant family from Plymouth, and Arthur Barlowe, a gentleman soldier, along with a Portuguese pirate named Simon Fernandes.
When they arrived at Roanoke, most of the locals weren’t particularly surprised to see them. They had seen ships passing by, and news could go hundreds of miles across Native tribes. They would have heard stories from tribes in Florida, and they probably would have heard the story of the Spanish missionaries who tried to convert the Powhatans about a hundred miles north of them. In fact, it was on this trip that Englishmen first heard the name Wahunsenaca. The Chowanocs occasionally clashed with his Powhatan tribe, and this was the era in which he was consolidating his control of Tsenocomoco. The local Secotan and Pamlico tribes had also just gotten through a bloody war with the Powhatan.
When Amadas and Barlowe’s crew reached Roanoke, the local people were welcoming and both sides were interested in trading. The English wanted animal skins, and the Indians wanted metal goods. Relations were good, and they learned about the area, and its inhabitants. Things were peaceful. Things were positive. They learned that the Chowanocs were the most powerful people in the region, and that there were also Secotans and Weapemeocs. All of those were Algonquian speaking peoples, which gave the later Jamestown settlers an edge learning the language, which was also spoken by the Powhatan.
A few weeks in, though, a lot of the explorers were killed when exploring inland. The survivors were forced to hurry back to Roanoke, and they weren’t sure what had happened. Most likely, it had nothing to do with the English, and they were just caught in the crossfire in a battle between the Secotan and Weapemeocs, but the event inserted a level of fear and distrust in the settlers.
But, they’d done their job, and they were ready to go home. They arranged for a diplomatic exchange, where the English left two men on Roanoke, one with the Croatoans and one with the Secotan, and took two people selected by the tribes’ leaders back to England. One was Manteo, son of the Croatoan werowance, or leader, and one was Wanchese, a high ranking member of the Secotan tribe.
They returned to England, excited about the New World prospects, and Raleigh was eager to set up a settlement in Roanoke. In fact, the prospect of a settlement was getting more and more enticing because by this time, England was in an undeclared war at sea with the Spanish. When the Portuguese king died, Spain got control of Portugal and consolidated an even more powerful empire. Elizabeth stepped up privateer activity, and it was war. There were profits to be had in the Caribbean, so Raleigh’s privateering harbor would be great for Elizabeth, Drake, and himself.
He set to work building the settlement. He funded it himself, and organized it himself. Manteo and Wanchese helped raise awareness of the voyage, and gave Raleigh information. He got support from Walsingham, Drake, Grenville and the House of Commons, but the House of Lords was much more reluctant to get behind the mission. Regardless, Elizabeth was also on board, and it wasn’t too long before 600 soldiers, sailors and artisans set out aboard seven ships.
This was, of course, the second voyage. The ships were scattered, and one sunk, after a week at sea, but they managed to capture a couple Spanish ship and regather in Puerto Rico, where they rebuilt another ship. The leader of this voyage was Ralph Lane, a man whose origins aren’t well known. He had served in the House of Commons, though, and he may have been related to Catherine Parr. He was a military officer, and a member of Raleigh’s inner circle, who had fought in Ireland and would ultimately die there. Also on board were Amadas, Grenville, Wanchese and Manteo. John White was also on board to help document the land and colony. He’d been on the exploratory mission, and had returned.
When he arrived, the English again received a warm and generous welcome from the local peoples. One group did steal a metal cup, though, and in response Grenville burned the town and nearby fields. He didn’t kill anyone, but he wanted to make a statement. It was a massive overreaction, and this type of behavior would come to characterize this group of colonists.
Grenville soon left, expecting Drake to bring a fleet with a second wave of supplies and settlers. He didn’t know that Elizabeth had diverted Drake’s fleet to Newfoundland to harass Spanish shipping. He took a letter from Ralph Lane confirming all the optimistic accounts from Amadas and Barlowe’s voyage, calling North America “the goodliest soil under the cope of Heaven.” He concluded his enthusiastic letter by saying that, if Virginia had but Horses and Kine in some reasonable proportion, I dare assure myself being inhabited with English, that no realm in Christendome were comparable to it.”
The settlers started setting up camp, building a small flexible enclosure with artillery bastions to protect the colony from Spanish attack. Relations with the natives were so peaceful that they didn’t need to defend themselves from them.
And, when they returned to America, the English who had lived with the Indians returned to the settlement, and Manteo and Wanchese returned to their tribes. They both brought stories about the extraordinary things they’d seen, both good and bad. The stone city full of people, with rivers full of tall ships was cool. The stench was overpowering. They had stayed in a large house belonging to a powerful lord, and met many important people, including one who they called the Queen, who was the greatest among them.
They interpreted the English differently, though. Manteo was enthusiastic, saying they’d been treated well, and that the English behaved like friends. He was also smitten with English culture. Wanchese was more concerned that he hadn’t been able to discover why the English wanted to come to their lands. He had tried to find out, with no luck, and that left him suspicious of their intentions. Grenville’s burning of a village over a small metal cup had confirmed his concerns that the English were dangerous and unpredictable.
Amadas went inland to look for times of wealth. It was, of course, his men who had been killed in the past, and Amadas saw the chance for retribution. He killed 20 Weapemeocs and kidnapped their women to give to other “savages.” In addition to revenge, he hoped this would demonstrate the benefits of an English-Secotan alliance to the tribe’s leader, Wingina. It was, like I said, the Weapemeocs and Secotan who were currently in a war.
And, the incident had a double effect. On the one hand, Wingina could definitely see the potential benefits of an English settlement. If they were allied, with their technology and numbers, it would mean a great advantage in the local tribal wars that took place. It also meant access to new and exotic goods and technologies.
On the other hand, the very thing that made the English attractive allies also made them dangerous. They’d already proven themselves unpredictable, and if they really did have the kinds of numbers Wanchese talked about, he’d have to work fast to eliminate them before they overwhelmed him. Wanchese didn’t trust the English, and while Wingina had been among the most welcoming people when the English arrived, Wingina understood that that lack of trust was well founded.
Worse, the English were starting to behave, well, worse. When Drake’s fleet didn’t arrive, the soldiers got bored and irritable. They started trading more and more with the Indians for food and provisions, and started to explore the island. They went north to the town of Chesapeok, the biggest Secotan city, but were disappointed when they didn’t find a gold-filled paradise like the Mexican and Peruvian towns the Spanish had found. It was just a cluster of longhouses.
Worse, English diseases were starting to kill people. Wingina knew it was related to the English, but he didn’t know if it was intentional or not. Food wasn’t exactly plentiful on Roanoke, and with winter approaching, the English dependence on them for food put added pressure on the local population. This pushed Wingina to a firm conclusion that the English were too violent and unreliable to be allies. He changed his name to Pemisapan, meaning “one who watches closely.” It was a signal that he was going to attempt to destroy the colonists.
To avoid open conflict, he first tried to pit the English against the Chowanocs. This only got Lane and the Chowanoc chief talking, though, which taught him more than ever about the area. He learned of pearls, a trading place where people could get copper, and about the extended territory. As a precaution, Lane took the chief’s son, Skiko, hostage as he left. This was actually pretty acceptable practice to the Indians, especially because he treated Skiko well. He was just trying to ensure there was no attack, and Skiko actually became an even closer ally to the English than his father.
Manteo joined them and they started exploring the Roanoke River, but noticed a distinct coldness in the tribes of the region when they asked to trade for food. When they kept going, Pemisapan launched an outright attack, but no one was injured.
The lack of food was a problem, though, and the English didn’t know how to grow food, even if they had wanted to. With supplies running low, Lane divided his men into small bands and sent them to go live off the land at Croatoan and the mainland.
When Pemisapan planned another attack, Skiko managed to warn the English, who fought back and managed to kill Pemisapan and his warriors. Though they had survived again, this battle marked a dangerous turning point for the English.
When the English had arrived at Roanoke, the tribes had their own patterns of alliances, and their own enemies. All the English had to do was integrate into that. Suddenly, the alliance structure on the island changed. Tribes now took sides for and against the English. Instead of being at the periphery, the English were at the center of what could easily end up being a tribal war.
Lane saw that the colony was in grave danger, and decided to relocate to the Southern shore of the Chesapeake as soon as possible. A week later, Drake arrived from the West Indies, on another difficult voyage. They hadn’t been able to plunder anything of value, and disease had killed lots of his men. He brought enough provisions for 100 men.
As they were relocating, rough weather forced them to throw most of their provisions overboard, though. Lane decided that enough was enough, and ordered the colony to return to England. A week later, Grenville arrived with enough supplies for the whole colony.
Raleigh was furious. He had wasted a huge amount of money on two now-wasted missions, and now Grenville was on Roanoke unsure of what to do. Needing to maintain a constant presence on the island to maintain the terms of the patent, Grenville decided to leave a garrison of 15 soldiers. Lane had been optimistic the year before. This was a sudden, drastic and devastating change of course.
Lane talked about the natural resources, and Raleigh didn’t care. That wouldn’t help recoup his costs. He needed either minerals or a privateering base. But, he was willing to try again.
Lane was fired, but Raleigh did ask him for feedback on what he needed to change in the future, and Lane had two big suggestions. First, the location. It wasn’t good, and things were getting too hostile. Second, the people. The soldiers had been quick to kill the locals, quick to complain about the lack of comfortable lodging and good food, and quick to get discouraged when they didn’t find riches. They didn’t care about the fate of the colony. They just wanted to get rich and go home. On this advice, Raleigh decided the next colony would be populated by civilians.
There weren’t many people left to lead the venture. Most people Raleigh knew were busy with their own ventures. Lane was out. The only person Raleigh really knew and trusted who was available was John White. On the one hand, this was a good choice. White had been on both previous expeditions, and he was a middle class artisan, which was exactly the type of people Raleigh wanted to send.
On the other hand, White was just a middle class artisan. He hadn’t led something like this in the past. He wasn’t an explorer by trade or by nature. He was just some guy. But White agreed to go, and even helped with recruitment. Many of the people came from his congregation, and even his daughter and son-in-law decided to join. Most of the colonists were in their twenties, or at most mid thirties, and many of the women were in their teens. There were only 117 colonists this time, though.
A year after Lane had returned, Raleigh sent his new group of colonists out. Fernandes was, once again, the captain, and oddly, the ships were once again scattered by weather after a week at sea. They went to Puerto Rico to reconnoiter and gather supplies, but this time, their time in the Caribbean was another disaster. They didn’t manage to meet up with one of the lost ships, didn’t manage to get supplies, a number of people ate poisoned fruits, and two Irish settlers ran away to tell the Spanish exactly where the colony was going to be located. Virginia could easily become another Fort Caroline.
The odd repetition of the ships being scattered en route to the Caribbean, and the series of disasters that should have been preventable by an experienced captain like Fernandes has caused some people to question whether the voyage was being sabotaged. Even White alluded to that, but on the other hand, Raleigh had sent a very inexperienced group of people to set up a colony, at a time that England itself was new to the idea.
They intended to settle on the mainland of the Chesapeake, but they had to stop on the way to pick up Grenville’s men. The settlers and sailors had fought a lot over the course of the journey, and Fernandes was eager to go privateering. When the settlers weren’t immediately ready to leave Roanoke, Fernandes announced that he was leaving, and that he wouldn’t take them up to the Chesapeake Bay.
In his journal, White blamed Fernandes for derailing the mission, but he doesn’t indicate that he fought back. In reality, White was probably fine with Fernandes leaving them on Roanoke, because by this time everyone was tired of being at sea. They weren’t seafaring people, and life aboard Elizabethan era ships was incredibly unpleasant. Fernandes left them a pinnace that they could use to move later, and they still had to find Grenville’s men, and hopefully rendezvous with the ship they’d lost just off the coast of England. Two people, including White’s daughter, were pregnant, too, and just about to give birth. Staying on Roanoke probably seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.
They didn’t find Grenville’s men. All they found was the bleached bones of someone who had been killed by Indians, and the old settlement’s houses, overgrown and with deer in them. Soon, the lagging ship, commanded by Captain Spicer, arrived, and both women had had babies.
The only bad thing that happened was the killing of one colonist by Secotan warriors while he was fishing for crabs, but they managed to meet up with Manteo and the Croatoans who were still friendly. The Croatoans told White that it was the Secotans behind the murder, and that the Secotan had also killed Grenville’s men. Wanchese had been part of the group that killed them, and while some had escaped, they hadn’t been heard of since.
White’s men knew that Lane’s men had been violence, and that likely provoked the Secotan violence, and hoped that if they reached out they would restore relations that had once been friendly. When there was no response to their olive branch, they tried to conduct a raid to avenge the death of their settler, but accidentally attacked the Croatoans. Fortunately, the Croatoans forgave the error.
Preparing to return to England after privateering, Fernandes stopped by the colony around the time that Spicer was planning to leave. Things weren’t exactly stable on the island, and having failed to get any type of food or salt in the Caribbean, the colonists needed Raleigh to send a supply ship. They planned to send one person to convince Raleigh to send one, again at great personal expense, and they unanimously voted for White to be that person.
White was understandably reluctant. He didn’t want to be seen as following in Lane’s footsteps and abandoning the colony. He didn’t want to leave his family. He worried that his stuff would be ruined when he returned, which was a pretty big deal considering that he wasn’t rich and those supplies were important for survival.
The vote was unanimous, and White knew they had a point. He was the one who knew Raleigh, so he was the one who was most likely to be able to convince him to spend the money. The remaining settlers planned to move, though, so they agreed on a system to help White find them when they returned. The majority of colonists would move to a new location, but a small garrison would remain on Roanoke Island. If that garrison was forced to leave, they would carve their intended location into a tree at the settlement, and if it was an attack that forced them to leave, they’d carve a cross over the name.
So, White was going back across the Atlantic, leaving his family and friends behind. Now, timing and inability to communicate had led to Lane’s desertion. Timing and inability to communicate were about to cause more problems for Raleigh’s colony.
When White returned to London, after a long hard journey, England was preparing for a Spanish invasion. Elizabeth’s Privy Council had ordered all English shipping to be stopped, and prohibited any English ship from leaving port without permission. Raleigh, Grenville and Ralph Lane were all on Elizabeth’s Council of War, and the Roanoke Colony was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
After encouragement from White, Fernandes and others in London, Raleigh did start to organize a relief expedition. He hoped a pinnace would be there by the next summer, to be followed by a relief ship. At the last minute, Elizabeth cancelled everything. The Spanish Armada was invincible, and England needed every ship it could get, and every experienced captain it could muster. Raleigh could convince her of most things. He couldn’t convince her to jeopardize the future of England for 117 people.
Elizabeth did allow Raleigh to send two small ships to Roanoke, but the captain was more interested in plunder than rescuing the colonists. He tried to plunder a bigger, stronger, faster French ship, and after his boat was predictably sunk, White found himself back in London, with no hope of returning to Roanoke.
18 months later, the Armada was sunk. After a year and a half of waiting, the battle was quick. English ships used broadside cannons to sink Spanish ships before they could use their strength, speed or size to overwhelm them.
Soon afterward, Elizabeth gave Raleigh 42,000 acres of land in Ireland, and he started building a series of communities there. He lost interest in Roanoke, and it was only when White offered to pay part of the cost of the voyage himself, and offered to organize it himself, that Raleigh agreed to send a ship. So, Raleigh agreed to pay 100 pounds for a vessel, and to raise some money for supplies. He wouldn’t bring the colonists home, though.
There were no ships willing to take White to Roanoke, though. England was going on the offensive, and that meant the possibility of extremely valuable plunder. The shipping ban hadn’t been fully lifted, anyway. Eventually, a year and a half later, meaning three years after White left, he convinced a group of privateers bound for the West Indies to take him to Roanoke. The group included Captain Spicer. It also included a young Christopher Newport, who will be very important to the Jamestown story. Taking White to Roanoke would allow them greater freedom to privateer in the Caribbean, so they agreed. At the last minute, they broke their agreement and refused to take any supplies or additional settlers, but White was desperate, so he agreed to go, alone.
Three years later, White was finally returning to Roanoke, but the weather was terrible. One storm forced the fleet to stay at sea for an extra week, during which time White saw a pillar of smoke he hoped was a signal from the colonists. Spicer drowned in another storm after the group’s first day on the island.
After finding no sign of human life on the island, White and some of the mariners found the old settlement. It was dismantled, but there was no sign of an attack. In fact, the palisade was still intact. The pinnace and cannon left with the settlers was gone, and everything was overgrown with grass and weeds. Most famously, the word Croatoan was carved into one tree, and Cro was carved into another. There were no crosses over either carving.
The logical next step was to go to Croatoan Island. The Croatoans were friendly. The agreed-upon signal said they’d gone to Croatoan. The pinnace was gone. Every indication was that the colonists had gone there, but the weather prevented White from finding them.
As they were trying to make their way up the coast to Croatoan, they lost three anchors and almost sank. They were forced to go to Trinidad, a favorite pirate haunt, for repairs. It had taken White three years to get back to Roanoke, and he most likely could never return to America. He moved to Raleigh’s Ireland plantation, and died a few years later.
It’s not that the colonists disappeared without a trace. It’s that with Elizabethan resources, White couldn’t reach the place he would find the colonists, or at least news of their whereabouts. Raleigh still held an exclusive patent to colonize North America, and he wasn’t interested in pouring more money into a twice-failed colony. He had his Irish plantation, he was married, he was more interested in the gold of Guiana, and he only ever sent another ship to Roanoke to maintain the terms of his patent. That was 10 years later, and with White dead neither was particularly interested in searching for the colonists.
After Elizabeth died, James revoked Raleigh’s patent. He also forbade plunder. This opened the door for the colonization of Virginia once again, and people almost immediately began planning new colonies. Jamestown, of course, was the first successful colony, and the Jamestown colonists actually found some interesting clues as to the fate of the colonists. This was 20 years later.
First, when John Smith talked to Powhatan leaders, both Opiechancanough and Wahunsenaca mentioned people who were clothed like the English, and where people lived in houses built like the English’s. He even set out with a Powhatan guide to find the settlers, but that guide cut the voyage short right before Smith expected to find the settlers, leaving Smith angry that he was cheated. Perhaps more interesting, when one of Wahunsenaca’s brothers, named Machumps, went to London, he actually gave future colonist William Strachey an account of what happened to the Lost Colonists.
Machumps said that the colonists had lived for 20 years with the Indians, becoming productive members of Indian society and working copper into ornaments for them. Just a little before the first ships reached Jamestown, Wahunsenaca’s warriors had killed them all. They were at war with the Chowanoc anyway, and they didn’t want the English to ally with the Chowanoc instead of them. A handful had survived by fleeing to surrounding towns, but the colonists were dead.
Was it true? Who knows. It was a very detailed and precise account, though, and a pretty logical one. We know the groups were at war, and we know that Wahunsenaca wanted to benefit from an alliance with the English. We also know that the Chowanoc were friendly to the English, and the only tribe in the region big enough to really accommodate the bulk of the settlers. We also know that if the settlers were to survive, they would have had to integrate into Indian society. If they had survived, that was a logical progression of their story, and why would Machumps make up stories of their survival?
Another interesting account emerged about a hundred years later when a man named John Lawson moved to North Carolina. There, he met descendents of the Croatoan tribe, who claimed to be descended from white people. They had the grey eyes to substantiate their claim, and said that from time to time, the ship that had brought Raleigh’s men to Roanoke often appeared under sail. They did mention Raleigh by name. They also referenced the Book the English brought that they had embraced, likely the Bible, and Manteo had actually converted to Christianity – the first protestant Native American.
Finally, twenty years ago, excavators working on Hattaras Island, which was once Croatoan Island, found a bronze-based brass ring emblazoned with a prancing lion. When they first found it, they thought it was gold, and wondered if it had been brought by a Roanoke settler. When they discovered it was brass, they began to wonder if it was a cheap trade item from later, but it would be fascinating if it was actually manufactured by the Colonists.
Ultimately, we’ll never know what happened to the colonists, but we have a couple of really good guesses. More relevant to our story, seeing what caused the Roanoke Colony to fail, twice, is a fascinating illustration of the troubles faced by early colonists. It’s an illustration of the ideal of Elizabethan exploration. In the early years of James’ reign, there were a couple failed colonization attempts, both following the Roanoke model. The story also introduces some of the characters we’ll meet in the next few episodes, people like Wahunsenaca, Newport and Strachey.
We’ve been building a foundation the last few episodes, but next episode, the real American history will officially begin at Jamestown.
Learn more:
My favorite book on Roanoke is:
A Kingdom Strange by James Horn
Links to articles from the show: