by James Horn
The settlement was likely made up of a storehouse, magazine, and barracks for the men; a rudimentary chapel for daily services; and small single-unit houses for Grenville and the officers. There were probably also a forge, a cooper’s workshop, a kitchen, and a garden plot where the men could experiment with local crops as well as with roots and seeds brought from the West Indies. The livestock would have been penned in enclosures near the settlement to prevent the cattle and hogs from destroying the crops. Farther off, where noxious fumes would not poison them, the colonists constructed a small building approximately ten feet square for Joachim Gans and Thomas Hariot’s laboratory for testing metals. Gans and Hariot may also have had a house nearby.36
WHILE LANE was busy overseeing the construction of the fort and settlement, Grenville dispatched Amadas and about twenty men to reconnoiter Albemarle Sound, once again in the hope of discovering signs of wealth in the interior. Fernandes may have gone as well; he had been with Amadas the year before when they learned of the mighty river “Occam,” which they believed to be the Albemarle. By European standards, Albemarle Sound is massive, some twelve miles wide at its mouth and fifty-five miles long. Earlier explorations of the Pamlico Sound region by Grenville had failed to reveal a waterway anywhere near as large, which persuaded the English that the Albemarle was likely to be the best means of moving men and supplies inland should the need arise.
The expedition may also have been punitive. Richard Butler, who was with the expedition, later recounted that the Englishmen killed about twenty Weapemeocs in a skirmish and captured some women, whom they gave “to the other savages” (the Secotans). The English had been attacked themselves the year before when they had scouted the northern bank of the Albemarle. What better way to exact revenge and at the same time demonstrate the benefits of an alliance with the English to Wingina than by destroying several Weapemeoc towns and carrying off captives?
Amadas and his party traveled about fifty miles inland and discovered the entrances to the Chowan and Moratuc (Roanoke) Rivers. Halfway along the sound they found fresh water and plenty of fish, and on the northern bank in the lands of the Weapemeocs an abundance of red grapes. But the best news by far was the strength of the current of the Roanoke River, which Butler described as strong enough to make headway nearly impossible. Ralph Lane provided a more detailed account eight months later:And whereas the River of Choanoak [Chowan] and all the other sounds, and Bays, salt and fresh, show no current in the world in calm weather, but are moved altogether with the wind: This River of Morotico [Roanoke] has so violent a current from the West and Southwest, that it made me almost of [the] opinion that with oars it would scarce be navigable.
A strong current, which Lane reckoned was comparable to that of the River Thames at London Bridge during an ebb tide, suggested that the Roanoke River rose from a place far away. If so, perhaps the river would lead the English to the mountains where precious minerals or a passage to the South Sea might be found.37
BY EARLY AUGUST 1585 Grenville considered he had sufficient good news to warrant sending a ship back to England to inform Ralegh and the court of the voyage’s success. John Arundell was given the happy task and set sail on the fifth, followed a week or so later by some of the other ships. Grenville himself departed with the Tiger on August 25. Only John Clark (with the Roebuck) remained, and he too would leave shortly.
Now in charge of the fledgling settlement, Ralph Lane must have been in good spirits as he watched the flagship slip away from the Outer Banks, doubtless relieved to be rid of his haughty commander. His men were secure behind their fortifications, and he could expect reinforcements to arrive at any moment. He sent letters brimming with enthusiasm to his patrons, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, extolling the natural bounty of Virginia and even making a virtue of the difficulties of navigation along the Outer Banks in providing protection from a Spanish attack.
Writing in an optimistic vein to his friend Richard Hakluyt the elder, Lane claimed the mainland to be “the goodliest soil under the cope of heaven” and assured him that all sorts of commodities imported from Spain, France, Italy, and “the East parts” would in time be produced or cultivated in Virginia. The region, he wrote, was themost pleasing territory of the world (for the soil [continent] is of a huge unknown greatness, and very well peopled and towned, though savagely) and the climate so wholesome, that we have not had one sick, since we touched land here. To conclude, if Virginia had but Horses and Kine in some reasonable proportion, I dare assure myself being inhabited with English, no realm in Christendom were comparable to it.38
Amadas’s expedition to the head of Albemarle Sound had promised much, and Lane was already planning to probe farther into the interior: to the north toward the city of Skicóak and the Chesapeake Bay, and west up the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers into the mountains, following the lure of riches.
“Being inhabited with English” was a phrase hardly likely to have reassured Granganimeo and Wingina had it come to their ears. But in any event, the chiefs had already begun to have doubts about English intentions by the fall of 1585. Manteo and Wanchese had returned from their voyage to England with extraordinary stories about what they had seen on the other side of the ocean: a city of stone that stretched as far as the eye could see, buildings that pressed in on all sides, rivers full of tall ships, and streets teeming with men and women, too many to count. The stink of the city (and its people) was overpowering on the crowded streets and by the river at low tide. They had stayed in a large house belonging to a powerful lord and met many important people, including one they called the queen, who was the greatest among them.
Manteo and Wanchese differed in their attitudes toward the English. Manteo reported that the two of them had been well treated and believed the English were their friends. Wanchese disagreed; he had been unable to discover why the strangers wanted to come to their lands and was suspicious of their intentions. The incident at Aquascocock, he believed, confirmed the men were dangerous and unpredictable.39
Wingina was undecided, at least for the time being. Manteo might be right that the newcomers were friendly and could become valuable allies. The English might prove useful in supplying precious trade goods and support in wars against his enemies. But if Wanchese’s opinion turned out to be nearer the mark, Wingina would have to move swiftly to kill or expel the strangers from his land.
3
“CHAUNIS TEMOATAN”
To get the pearl and gold,
And ours to hold,
Virginia,
Earth’s only paradise.
—MICHAEL DRAYTON
SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE found the riches he was looking for, but not in Virginia. Ten days out from Port Ferdinando, he spotted a sail on the horizon off the Bermudas and gave chase. She was the Santa Maria de San Vicente, a large Spanish merchantman, struggling to catch up with a convoy of thirty ships carrying sugar, hides, and other goods from Vera Cruz to Seville. As soon as she was in range the Tiger opened fire, sending shot into her rigging and holing her along the waterline. With one man dead and several injured, the captain, Alonzo Cornieles, surrendered to avoid further casualties.
Grenville had left his longboat back in Virginia with Ralph Lane, so he fashioned a makeshift boat by lashing together some old sea chests. Accompanied by thirty well-armed men, he then gingerly made his way to the Santa Maria, in a crossing that turned out to be rather more hazardous than he had anticipated. The waterlogged tub sank ever lower in the water as the Englishmen rowed frantically toward the ship, and it disappeared beneath the waves just as they clambered up the Santa Maria’s sides.
Once on board, Grenville wasted no time getting down to business. He and his men quickly relieved the Santa Maria’s passengers of their valuables, then Grenville demanded the cargo of gold, silver, and pearls worth 40,000 ducats (£12,500) be delivered to him personally. Besides sugar and hides, the Santa Maria also carried ginger, cochineal, and ivory worth another 80,000 ducats. As soon as the Spanish
ship was in order Grenville set a course for England, opting to remain on board to keep a close eye on his prize. He stopped off briefly in the Azores for fresh supplies and reached Plymouth in mid-October, where he was met by Ralegh, anxious to hear his news.1
At the house of old William Hawkins, one of Plymouth’s leading privateers, Ralegh and Grenville discussed the latter’s dashing improvisations, which had transformed the expedition from near disaster into a brilliant success. Grenville had survived storms and mishaps to reach the coast of America, carrying out an exploration of the Outer Banks, developing good relations with local peoples, establishing a garrison on Roanoke Island, and taking a rich merchantman on the way home sufficient to return investors a handsome profit.
News of the capture of the Santa Maria spread like wildfire in London. A report in November 1585 put the value of the cargo and treasure at a million ducats (more than £300,000). Henry Talbot, writing to his kinsman the Earl of Shrewsbury a couple of weeks earlier, mentioned that the prize had made Ralegh a rich man. Grenville’s bold action captivated Elizabeth’s court and seemed a good omen for England’s effort to establish colonies in America and for the coming war with Spain. All the talk, commented Talbot, was “of killing the Spaniards, both at sea and land.”2
3.1 John White, Land Crab, Pineapple, Flamingo, Flying Fish, 1585. White had been instructed by Sir Walter Ralegh to make a careful record of the flora and fauna he saw on the voyage. These paintings were likely undertaken at Mosquetal and during the Tiger’s voyage through the West Indies and Bahamas.
With the fanfare surrounding Grenville’s return, the arrival of other members of the expedition went largely unnoticed. John White, who had sailed on the Tiger, quickly made his way to London to see his family and report to Ralegh. He brought his wonderfully detailed paintings of the flora and fauna of the West Indies and the peoples of Virginia, the first images of Indians of the region and (apart from his own paintings of the Inuit made during Frobisher’s second voyage and Jacques Le Moyne’s paintings of Florida Indians) the first accurate illustrations of North American peoples seen in England. At Durham House he presented his watercolors of land crabs, herons, and ducks he had spotted near the encampment at Mosquetal in Puerto Rico; the pineapple and plantains taken from the West Indies to Roanoke Island; the iguana, frigate bird, and flamingo he had seen in the Bahamas; the many varieties of fish he had observed throughout the voyage; and most important, the startlingly naturalistic pictures of men, women, and children of the Secotan people.3
Little is known of White’s movements in London, but it is not too fanciful to imagine him spending long hours in animated conversation with his recently married daughter, Eleanor, and her husband, Ananias Dare, during which he tried to convey the strangeness of the New World—its vivid colors, different peoples, and exotic creatures. Following the reconnaissance of the year before, Arthur Barlowe had described the Outer Banks as a Garden of Eden where the people “lived after the manner of the golden age” and the “earth brings forth all things in abundance, as in the first creation, without toil of labor.” White knew better. Virginia was not a land of milk and honey. He had seen the hardships the people endured, the daily struggle to provide food for themselves in the midst of drought, and the scars of war worn proudly by their warriors. But if not paradise, Virginia was nevertheless an enchanting land, and White was captivated.4
ON ROANOKE ISLAND, as fall turned to winter, Ralph Lane’s men grew restless. They had given up hope of being joined by Bernard Drake and Amias Preston’s fleet, which they had expected soon after Grenville’s departure, and had no idea when reinforcements would eventually appear. Lane had tried to keep his men busy around the settlement and made regular visits to neighboring Secotan towns to trade for provisions, skins, and local pearls, but as the weeks dragged by the men became increasingly bored and irritable. He decided the time was right, therefore, to send an expedition north to the Chesapeake Bay. Earlier explorations had scouted regions as far south as the principal town of Secotan and west up the Albemarle to the mouth of the Chowan, but lands north of the Weapemeocs had not been investigated.
The expedition left the island in late October or early November 1585 and sailed up Currituck Sound, out through an opening in the Outer Banks to the ocean, along the coast for approximately thirty miles until they reached Cape Henry, unnamed on John White’s map, and into the Chesapeake Bay. Philip Amadas, who had stayed behind with Lane rather than return to England, was most likely the leader of the expedition and decided first to explore Lynnhaven Bay, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. They visited the town of “Chesepiooc,” but did not stay long before continuing along the southern shore of the bay to the Elizabeth River, where about fifteen miles inland they discovered Skicóak, the capital of the Chesapeakes.
3.2 Explorations of 1585-1586. Drawn by Rebecca L. Wrenn.
The town may have been a disappointment. Barlowe, in his account of the previous year, had described Skicóak as the region’s largest city, “which this people [the Secotans] affirm to be very great.” Amadas may have hoped that the capital would be comparable in size and wealth to towns the Spanish had conquered in Mexico and Peru. What they discovered was not a metropolis but rather a cluster of longhouses and few signs of wealth.
If the town was a disappointment, the Englishmen were nonetheless impressed by the country around Skicóak. The land “of the Chesepians,” they subsequently reported to Lane, “for pleasantness of seat [location], for temperature of Climate, for fertility of soil, and for the commodity of the Sea . . . [is] not to be excelled by any other whatsoever,” including (presumably) the Roanoke area. They camped outside the town for a couple of months, during which they explored the lower reaches of the James-York peninsula and possibly crossed the bay to the Eastern Shore. They then returned to Roanoke in late February or early March 1586.5
RELATIONS BETWEEN the English and Secotans had deteriorated rapidly during the three or four months that Amadas’s expedition was away. Tensions arose owing to the continuing dependence of the colonists on the Indians for food, which during the winter months was increasingly difficult to supply. Yet the most important reason for the souring of relations was the terrible toll inflicted on the Secotan population by European diseases since the beginning of the fall. Epidemics, perhaps smallpox or influenza, swept through the region and claimed many lives.
3.3 John White, detail from A map of that part of America, now called Virginia, 1585-1586 (engraving by Theodor de Bry, 1590), showing the Mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The extent of Amadas’ exploration of the lands of the Chesapeakes and neighboring peoples is indicated in this detail. The towns of Chesepiooc and Skicóak are located (on the Lynnhaven and Elizabeth Rivers), and the entrances to the James and York Rivers are suggested at the top of the map.
Thomas Hariot later reported in his account to Ralegh the deadly impact of the outbreak. As the English moved from town to town, “the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some towns about twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, and in one six score, which in truth was very many in respect of their numbers.” With no natural immunity to the diseases and no means of curing them, Indian priests could do little other than pray to their gods for relief and hope the sickness would pass.
How the strange mortality had come about and what it portended were issues hotly debated by Wingina’s people. Some Secotan elders believed the English were dead men who had returned to the world and were immortal. They prophesied that “there were more of our generation [the English] yet to come, to kill theirs and take their places.” Others believed the trail of death left by the colonists was not caused by disease but by “invisible bullets” fired by soldiers from many miles away to punish those who affronted them. Ensenore, described by Lane as one of the chief’s closest advisors, warned Wingina that the English were “the servants of God” and could not be harmed and that any who sought the colonists’ destruction would only “find their own.” The sighting of a come
t in the night skies the previous fall had coincided with the onset of the sickness brought by the English and seemed an ominous sign.6
With the deaths of Ensenore and Granganimeo in early 1586, Wingina finally made up his mind. He did not believe that the English were immortal, although he recognized the intruders’ power. He had come to understand that the English, no more than his priests, were able to end the drought or treat the diseases that afflicted his people. The colonists were just as vulnerable to food shortages as Indians, and throughout the winter and spring had been utterly dependent on his people for provisions. He eventually came to the same conclusion as Wanchese: the English were too violent and unreliable to be allies. They had brought death and disease to his people, and he must get rid of them as soon as possible.
3.4 John White, Wingina, 1585. Wingina, chief of the Secotans, played a highly significant role in the events of the first colony. White likely painted him during his visit to the town of Secotan in July 1585, when relations between the English and Indians were cordial.
Wingina took a new name, Pemisapan, in the spring, which may have meant something like “he who watches closely.” The change of name signaled the end of his efforts to help the colonists and the beginning of a strategy aimed at their destruction. Under the cover of his continuing friendship, Pemisapan planned to orchestrate a large-scale attack on the English in conjunction with other peoples of the region. The first part of the plan was to lure Lane and some of his men away from the fort by informing them of a “general assembly” of Indians to be held by Menatonon, chief of the Chowanocs, at his capital on the Chowan River. Pemisapan told Lane that Menatonon intended to forge an alliance between the Chowanocs and Mangoaks, as well as other peoples, to attack the English. The chief advised the English commander to take a strong force to Chowanoc as soon as possible and launch a preemptive attack on the Indians gathered there. Privately, Pemisapan calculated that by this means Lane and his men would become embroiled in hostilities with the Chowanocs and their allies and be cut off. The remaining English on Roanoke Island would be starved into submission or killed as they attempted to escape the fort in search of food.