by James Horn
By the spring of 1584 Ralegh’s preparations were in their final hectic stages. Two ships were being readied in the Thames, provisions loaded, and the crews assembled. He had prepared meticulously for the voyage, recruiting experts in navigation and men with practical experience of seamanship so as to avoid the misfortunes that had befallen his half-brother. In mid-March Ralegh obtained the queen’s official support for the voyage and by royal letters patent was given the same rights as those enjoyed by Gilbert to discover and possess unknown lands in America. A few weeks later, as his ships left the Thames to head for Plymouth, where they would take on a last round of supplies, Ralegh may well have wondered whether his dream of founding an English empire in America was at last becoming a reality.35
2
ROANOKE
In praise of those who have discovered new parts of the world
The Portuguese subdued the tracts of China
And the stout Spaniard the fields of Mexico:
Florida once yielded to the noble French:
VIRGINIA now to thy scepter, Elizabeth!
—MARTIN BASANIER
THE TWO SHIPS that would carry Ralegh’s first expedition to the New World were ready to leave Plymouth by the end of April 1584. The names of the ships are unknown, but the larger of the two (the admiral) may have been the Dorothy, a 50-ton ship owned by Ralegh. She probably carried about forty-five soldiers and sailors as well as stores and armaments. The smaller ship, a pinnace of about 30 to 40 tons, likely carried thirty men and would be used for exploring rivers and shallow waters. The inclusion of soldiers in the expedition suggests that Ralegh was prepared to meet with force any hostile Indians his men encountered. In addition, he may have anticipated opportunities to plunder Spanish shipping in the West Indies, which would help defray the cost of the voyage. Colonization and privateering were closely connected in his mind.1
Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe commanded the expedition. Amadas, captain of the larger ship, was a young man from a prominent Plymouth family of gentlemen-merchants who had entered Ralegh’s service a few months before the voyage. Little is known of his background, but he had likely served in the army and may have had some experience at sea. Short in stature, he was sometimes referred to as “little Amadas” and was quick to lose his temper. Arthur Barlowe, who commanded the pinnace, had been in Ralegh’s service longer and may have been an officer in the company commanded by Ralegh in Ireland. Again, little is known about him other than that he had possibly made a voyage to the eastern Mediterranean and was highly literate. The journal he kept of the voyage reveals him to be a sensitive and keen observer of the land and peoples the English discovered. He may have been a steadying influence on the aggressive and headstrong Amadas.
Simon Fernandes, who sailed with Amadas as master pilot, was a rough-hewn character with a checkered past. Variously known as Simon Fernando, Ferdinando, or Fernandes, he was born on Terceira in the Azores and trained in Portugal as a pilot. He served the Portuguese and Spanish before moving to England sometime after 1572, following which he took up plundering ships in the English Channel. After being sent to London in the spring of 1577 to answer charges of piracy, he came to the attention of Sir Francis Walsingham. The queen’s minister had no time for pirates but considered that Fernandes’s knowledge of Spanish American waters might prove useful, and he arranged his reprieve. Possibly on Walsingham’s recommendation, Fernandes entered Gilbert’s service later in 1577 and sailed with Ralegh on the Falcon the next year. Ralegh had been impressed by the Portuguese mariner and believed Fernandes would be important to the success of his plans to establish a colony in America. But Fernandes was first and foremost a pirate, not an explorer.2
Ralegh’s instructions for the expedition have not survived, but it is likely that he ordered his two commanders to find a convenient route to the mid-Atlantic coast, reconnoiter the region, make contact with local Indian peoples (bringing back one or two to England if possible), and locate a suitable site for the colonists that Ralegh intended to send out the following year. He encouraged Amadas and Barlowe to trade with Indian peoples and to take careful note of the economic potential of the region. John White and Thomas Hariot were included in the expedition to get their first view of the American mainland and to report to Ralegh personally.
The voyage to the Americas was largely uneventful. The two ships left the west coast of England in fair weather on April 27, 1584, following the usual southerly route taken by privateers sailing to the West Indies, and reached the Canaries by early May. After a rapid Atlantic crossing, they arrived at Puerto Rico a month later and remained in the West Indies for nearly two weeks, taking on fresh water and provisions. Some of the men became ill during the layover, and it was with evident relief that Barlowe recorded in his journal their departure from the islands, heading for the North American mainland.
2.1 John White’s The Arrival of the English, 1585-1586 (engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1590). Port Ferdinando, where Amadas and Barlow entered through the Outer Banks into Pamlico Sound is shown to the left at the north end of the Hatarask Island. The lands of the Secotans and Weapemeocs are shown as well as the Indian settlement on Roanoke Island where Granganimeo was the local chief.
The Englishmen followed the Florida coast for a little more than a week and arrived off the Outer Banks of North Carolina in early July. The Outer Banks are a line of narrow, sandy islands extending approximately 150 miles, from near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in the north to Cape Lookout in the south. Created by prevailing winds and currents, the islands act as a barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and the shallow waters of the sounds within: Currituck, Albemarle, and Pamlico. Fernandes had to skirt the Outer Banks for over a hundred miles before he found a passage between the islands that the ships were able to navigate, albeit with some difficulty. Entering Pamlico Sound, they dropped anchor about a mile from the island of Hatarask and gave thanks to God for their safe arrival.3
Amadas and Barlowe were aware of the significance of their arrival off the American shore. They would be the first Englishmen to set foot on mainland North America in the vanguard of an English New World colony. Accompanied by a group of soldiers, they rowed to Hatarask in their long boats and gathered together on the beach, where they took possession of the land in right of “the Queen’s most excellent Majesty.” The ceremony likely involved reading out a formal declaration of sovereignty and affixing some kind of permanent marker (a lead plaque engraved with the royal coat of arms for example) to a prominent tree. No Indians were present to witness the event by which the newcomers had asserted their ownership of the land, but as far as the English were concerned, the entire region extending for hundreds of miles in every direction was now part of the realm of England.
After the ceremony, the Englishmen set out to explore Hatarask Island. Great stands of red cedars, pines, cypress, and sassafras trees covered the land in such abundance, Barlowe commented in his journal, as was not to be found anywhere else in the world. Everywhere they found the woods teeming with deer, rabbits, and wild fowl, the latter in such numbers along the waterside that when they discharged their muskets, huge flocks of herons rose into the sky with a great cry, “as if an army of men had shouted all together.” Amadas and Barlowe were delighted by their initial impressions; here was a rich, fertile land ready for exploitation.4
2.2 Indian Peoples of Ossomocomuck and Surrounding Regions. Drawn by Rebecca L. Wrenn.
The English had not seen any local peoples since arriving off the Outer Banks, but it is certain that the Indians had seen them. The two ships would not have taken the Indians entirely by surprise; they had seen such ships before. From the 1520s onward, Europeans had occasionally sailed by the Carolina coast on their way to the Chesapeake Bay or farther north, and in 1558 some (probably Spanish or French) sailors had been shipwrecked on the Outer Banks. The men had remained a few weeks on the island of Wococon before putting out to sea in a makeshift boat and had perished soon after; Indians had found the re
mains of their boat washed up on the shore.
A Spanish ship had arrived off the coast some years later. The ship had been trying to reach the Bahia de Madre de Dios (Chesapeake Bay) to return an Indian convert called Paquiquineo, known as Don Luis to the Spanish, to his homeland. For reasons that are unclear, the Spanish had failed to find the entrance to the bay and while off the coast of Maryland were driven southward in a storm to the Outer Banks. After spending a few days exploring the islands the Spanish sailed away, leaving behind a cross made of branches to mark their discovery. The Spaniards did not make contact with local peoples, but the Indians had witnessed their coming and going and later recounted the story to Barlowe.
Besides their own experiences of Europeans, it is probable that the Indians had picked up news of other white men who had entered lands to the south and north of them. Information passed by word of mouth from one group to another across hundreds of miles, and peoples of the Carolina region may well have heard stories of the Spanish in Florida, who had built forts and made war on the peoples of those lands. They may also have heard that a small group of Spaniards had tried to build a settlement on the Chesapeake Bay but had been destroyed by the Indians there (in 1571). Following the murder of the white men, several ships had entered the bay, and the whites had killed many people. The question likely on the mind of the Indians who sighted the ships of Amadas and Barlowe was whether the strangers had come to trade, fight, or settle.5
Three major peoples inhabited the coastal lands called by the Indians Ossomocomuck: the Secotans, Weapemeocs, and Chowanocs. All were Algonquian-speaking peoples descended from ancestors who had moved into the mid-Atlantic coastal region from the west and north thousands of years earlier. They were made up of loose groupings of semiautonomous peoples rather than centralized political entities controlled by powerful rulers. No single people or paramount chief dominated the entire coastal region.
The Chowanocs, ruled by an old and wise chief, Menatonon, were the most numerous and powerful. They lived in towns and villages scattered along the western bank of the Chowan River and along the lower reaches of the Merherrin and Blackwater. The capital, Chowanoc, located on a bluff overlooking the Chowan, had been inhabited for centuries and was a large settlement of perhaps 2,500 people at the time the English arrived. The Chowanocs’ influence over the region derived from the fertility of their lands and access to trade routes to the north and west that connected Ossomocomuck to the broader mid-Atlantic seaboard. Their role linking the interior to the coastal lands sometimes sparked hostilities with equally powerful peoples beyond the region, such as the Tuscaroras farther to the west and the Powhatans in Virginia.6
Lands from the eastern bank of the Chowan River to the coast were occupied by the Weapemeocs, who were led by a chief named Okisko. Most of their settlements bordered the lower reaches of the Chowan River and the northern shore of Albemarle Sound and its tributaries, but their territory extended at least as far north as the Great Dismal Swamp and possibly beyond to the area inhabited by the Chesapeakes. Okisko’s relationship with the Chowanocs is uncertain, but it is known he was subject to Menatonon.
The area from Albemarle Sound to the Pamlico River was occupied by the Secotans. The capital (of the same name) was located on the northern bank of the Pamlico River and was one of the primary residences of their chief, Wingina. Occasionally the chief stayed at the fortified town of Pomeiooc, approximately forty miles to the east, and at Dasemunkepeuc, on the mainland across the water from the island of Roanoke, where his brother, Granganimeo, was the local ruler.
To the south of the Secotans’ territory were peoples independent of and hostile to the three main groups. The Pamlicos, who occupied the peninsula south of the Pamlico River, and the Neuse and Coree of the Neuse River, were Iroquoian—of entirely different linguistic and cultural stock than the Algonquian peoples. The Pamlicos had formed an alliance against the Secotans, perhaps in league with Iroquoians who lived in the interior. Altogether, there may have been as many as 7,000 Algonquians and Iroquoians living in the coastal region in the late sixteenth century.7
Algonquian peoples had much in common. Allowing for local variations and dialects, they spoke the same language. Their towns usually consisted of between 50 and 150 people related by kinship and marriage, living in ten to twenty longhouses spread over several acres. They avoided exposed areas of the coast or sounds and favored inland locations near rivers, on sheltered necks, or along smaller estuaries and tributaries. Waterways offered abundant food and an efficient means of getting around and occasionally served as borders separating different (sometimes hostile) peoples. High ground close to the water was preferred, to avoid flooding and provide a vantage point for watching comings and goings along the river and inland approaches to the town or village.
The Indians enjoyed the bounty of the land and rivers. In fields around the towns they grew corn, pumpkins, squash, and beans, and from spring until fall an abundance of food was available through foraging, fishing, and hunting. When in season, several kinds of fruits and nuts such as mulberries, huckleberries, persimmons, acorns, and hazelnuts provided an important part of the diet. Beaten roots and wild grasses substituted for corn meal in the months before crops were ready to harvest.
Cultivating the crops was women and children’s work; hunting and fishing was men’s. Fish were taken by trapping in weirs, netting, and wading in shallow waters with spears; shellfish were gathered from convenient places along the shores and river-banks. Fish and shellfish were usually roasted or boiled in a thick stew or smoked to preserve them. Deer were the major source of meat, supplemented by bears, squirrels, waterfowl, and turkeys.8
Indian society was not characterized by great inequalities in wealth or rigid social hierarchies. Common access to the natural produce of the land, rivers, and coastal waters ensured a relatively comfortable living for the majority of people, lessening social divisions. Local chiefs, priests, and councilors drawn from the people’s elders and bravest warriors formed the pinnacle of Indian society and were distinguished from ordinary people by their more elaborate dress. But apart from chiefs, among whom the right to govern remained in the family, no elite hereditary upper class existed. High status was not a function of caste, wealth, or privilege but rather depended on the favor of the local ruler. In a political sense, the major division in Indian society was between chiefs and priests on the one hand and the rest of the people on the other, yet for the majority the most important social distinctions were determined not by civil status but by kinship, age, and gender. Indians found their place and role in society according to their family ties, how old they were, and of what sex.9
2.3 John White, Indians Fishing, 1585. White undertook a series of paintings of Indian peoples in the summer of 1585. The various methods the Indians employed to catch fish are clearly illustrated together with the variety of fish and shellfish available to them in the sounds.
Religious and spiritual beliefs were fundamental to making sense of daily experiences, serving to provide glimpses of the future and explain the mysteries of the cosmos. Indians across the region believed in a pantheon of greater and lesser gods. The Indians’ chief god was Ahone, who had existed since the beginning of time. He had created the universe, the world, and petty gods, and was the author of everything good. But he had withdrawn himself from human affairs and was beyond the peoples’ reach. Lesser gods, such as the sun, moon, and stars, had carried out his creation and governed thereafter. Some took human form and inhabited the waters; woods; skies; and everything around, visible and invisible, not separate from but very much part of the real world. They reflected the Indians’ reverence for the natural world and the forces that shaped it.
Another deity, Kiwasa, was the most influential in the Indians’ everyday lives. He was responsible for all the harm and misfortune in the world, and brought with him suffering, disease, blighted crops, bad weather, hunger, and defeat in war. Ordinary people sought to appease Kiwasa through worship and offerin
gs, whereas priests prayed daily in temples, more out of fear than love. Nevertheless, despite their efforts, the unpredictable and mischievous god remained a source of chronic insecurity in peoples’ lives.
Ritual and ceremony were vital to Indian society. Large towns had spaces set aside for public ceremonies in which the people celebrated success in war and good harvests and called upon the gods to maintain the fertility of their fields. Great fires were lit, and men and women gathered to rejoice long into the night. Prayers and rituals were performed in the temples and in public places to reduce the likelihood of disaster and maintain harmony between the natural and spiritual forces that struggled for mastery over the world.10
Ossomocomuck was an unpredictable place. Shortly before the English arrived a brief but vicious war between the Secotans and Pamlicos had left Wingina badly wounded. The most powerful people to the west, the Iroquoian Tuscaroras, pressed on the borders of the Chowanocs and Secotans. Numbering many thousands, the Tuscaroras occupied a huge region inland from the Neuse to the Roanoke River. The English referred to them as Mangoaks or Mangoags, a name adopted from the Secotan meaning treacherous or crafty. To the north in Virginia, Wahunsonacock, paramount chief of a powerful Algonquian people, the Powhatans, was forging alliances and extending his influence among peoples of the fertile James River Valley and surrounding area. Finally, despite the intercession of priests, Kiwasa flailed the land with a severe drought that withered crops and forced game into the interior. Such was the uncertain world encountered by the English in the summer of 1584.11