A Kingdom Strange

by James Horn

  6.3 Detail from John Smith’s sketch map of 1608 (Zuñiga map). Drawn by Rebecca L. Wrenn.

  But that was not all. Smith’s map also showed the locations of survivors of the lost colony. The information was provided on the lower left-hand side of the map in three groupings: (1) on the southern bank of the James River at Warraskoyack, near the Pagan River, “here paspahegh and 2 of our men landed to go to panawiock”; (2) near the Roanoke River, “here the king of paspahegh reported our men to be and went to see”; and (3) at “Pakerakanick,” “here remain the 4 men clothed that came from roonock to okanahowan.” Smith’s notations suggested that some of the lost colonists were at Ocanahonan and that four of the settlers who had moved from Roanoke Island to Ocanahonan later ended up at Pakerakanick. In addition, it is possible that some of White’s settlers remained at Panawicke (“Panawiock”), but they were not found by the expedition that Smith had sent to make contact with them.

  Although Smith’s map provided the Virginia Company with extremely valuable information about the lost colonists it was difficult to interpret. The southern (Roanoke) portion is in fact best viewed from the perspective of Wowinchopunck’s search party as it traveled down the Blackwater River to the lands of the Chowanocs. Of most interest to the Englishmen were the areas between the Chowan and “morattico” (Roanoke) Rivers and the region to the south adjoining the next major river, the Tar. “Ocanahowan,” which Smith placed on a tributary of the Chowan River, was without doubt the Ocanahonan described by Opechancanough and Wahunsonacock and was situated beyond the Chowan on the Roanoke River. Panawicke was south and west of Cashie Creek, the historic border between the Chowanocs and Tuscaroras. And finally Pakerakanick, a Tuscarora town, may have been located on the south bank of the Tar River.19

  Smith’s sketch map illustrated a possible route to the South Sea and located the lost colonists at Ocanahonan, Panawicke, and Pakerakanick. Smith made no attempt to explain how the lost colonists came to be living in those particular Indian towns, and it is unlikely that he knew. But in any case, how the settlers got there was of far less interest to the English than the possibility of making contact with them. If they could find them, the Virginia Company might be able to bring the two groups of colonists together, creating settlements well to the south of the James River as well as along it. At the very least, company leaders may have reasoned, the Jamestown colonists might be able to exploit the Roanoke settlers’ knowledge of the country to their own advantage.

  THE COMPANY’S first priority was to find out more about the interior beyond the falls of the James River. When Captain Newport returned to Jamestown in mid-October 1608, he led a large expedition about forty or fifty miles into the Virginia piedmont to look for mines and a passage to the Pacific. He and his men discovered a fertile and well-watered country. They were the first Englishmen to glimpse the Blue Ridge Mountains, but they did not discover gold or a river passage, only a small quantity of silver.

  John Smith, however, remained eager to continue the search for the lost colonists. A few weeks after Newport left for England in early December, Smith entered into discussions with Tackonekintaco, chief of the Warraskoyacks. He arranged for one of his men, Michael Sicklemore, accompanied by two guides, to journey to “Chowanoke,” either the lands of the Chowanocs or the Indians’ capital. There are few details of the expedition, only Sicklemore’s pessimistic assessment, reported by Smith in the new year, that the small search party returned with “little hope and less certainty of them [that] were left by Sir Walter Rawley.” Smith may have wondered whether Sicklemore’s information was more reliable than that of the earlier search party and whether White’s settlers were beyond the reach of the English.20

  Critical new information about the lost colonists did come to light in early 1609—not in Virginia but in London. The source, once again, was an Indian. Along with a cargo of clapboard, wainscot, pitch, tar, and soap ashes produced by the colonists, Newport had taken back to London two Powhatans, Namontack and Machumps. They had been ordered to accompany the English by Wahunsonacock, who wanted to learn more about the colonists’ own country. Namontack was one of the chief’s advisors and had already been to England once before, in 1608. Little is known about Machumps other than that his sister, Winganuske, was one of the great chief’s favorite wives.

  What Namontack and Machumps did during their four months in London is unclear. One of them, probably Namontack, visited Thomas Hariot at his residence at Syon House near London, where the Englishman and Powhatan quite likely conversed in Algonquian. Machumps’s movements are unknown, but whatever else he did while in the city, it is certain he told the English an astonishing story about what had happened to the lost colonists.21

  Machumps’s account was recorded by William Strachey, a young, footloose gentleman who had arrived in London a few years earlier. He had enrolled at Gray’s Inn and became a member of fashionable literary circles as well as a supporter of the Blackfriars Theater, where he rubbed shoulders with leading playwrights of the day such as Ben Jonson, John Marston, and Will Shakespeare. Following a year abroad, he had returned to London in the summer of 1608. In need of money, he decided to try his luck in Virginia, having no better prospects at home. He planned to travel with the large-scale expedition the Virginia Company was preparing for departure in the spring of 1609. Possibly thinking already of writing an official account of the colony, and hearing about the arrival of the Indians in London, he may have wondered whether they could provide him with a description of the Powhatans and their country. Evidently Machumps agreed and provided a great deal of information about his people and, tangentially, about neighboring lands.

  During one of his many long conversations with Strachey, Machumps recounted the extraordinary tale of the lost colonists. Strachey, who began working on his history of the colony in 1609, recorded the Indian’s story. In the fruitful region south of the James River, Machumps told him, at Ocanahonan and Pakerakanick “the People have houses built with stone walls, and one story above another, so taught them by those English who escaped the slaughter at Roanoak.” He explained that in the same region where the English survivors now lived there was a place called “Ritanoe.” The chief, Eyanoco, held seven of the English there—four men, two boys, and a young maid—who had fled up the Chowan River. There were mines at Ritanoe, Machumps told Strachey, and the English were “preserved” by the chief to beat his copper, perhaps meaning that they worked the copper into ornaments.

  Machumps likely told Strachey who was responsible for the killing of the English. It was probably he who informed the Englishman that the lost colonists had lived peaceably for “20 and odd” years with the Indians, until they were suddenly attacked without provocation by Wahunsonacock’s warriors. The attack occurred about the same time that Newport’s fleet arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in the spring of 1607.

  “Slaughter at Roanoak” is how Machumps described what had happened, or possibly how Strachey interpreted it. By “Roanoke” Strachey referred to “South Virginia,” the region from Roanoke Island inland into the piedmont, inhabited by the Chowanocs and Tuscaroras. Some colonists had escaped the slaughter and were to be found in the Tuscarora towns of Panawicke, Ocanahonan, and Pakerakanick. Others had fled up the Chowan River, where they were protected by a powerful chief, Eyanoco, at Ritanoe. The majority of White’s settlers had been killed in the attack, but some survived.

  Why Machumps told Strachey about the attack is unknown. Possibly he was boasting about Wahunsonacock’s influence over peoples of the Roanoke region, or perhaps the information came out indirectly in questioning about rumors, commonplace among peoples south of the James River, telling of strangers who lived in the interior. Yet whatever persuaded the Indian to tell the story, Strachey and those Virginia Company leaders informed of Machumps’s testimony found it convincing. The Indian’s account accorded remarkably with the information sent to the company the previous summer by John Smith. Like Smith, Machumps located the lost colonists south of th
e James, and he mentioned specifically their locations at Panawicke, Ocanahonan, and Pakerakanick. The slaughter explained why the two expeditions dispatched by Smith from Jamestown had been unable to make contact with the settlers.22

  Machumps had provided the vital missing information that explained what had happened to the colonists. Captain Smith had discovered the whereabouts of English people in the interior of North Carolina but had been unable to explain how they had come to be there. Now Machumps had related the devastating news of their fate.

  DESPITE THE SHOCKING revelations, company leaders were still eager to locate one or more of the lost colonists, because their local knowledge, they believed, might yet be of significant benefit. Machumps’s report, together with that of Smith, were of a significant influence on company leaders’ thinking as they shaped a new vision of the colony.

  The company had already begun plans the previous summer for a thorough overhaul of Virginia. Company leaders such as Sir Thomas Smythe acknowledged that initial explorations of the Chesapeake Bay and the James River had indicated the promise of the region, but the colonists had so far failed to produce any return on the small fortune already invested in the venture. By January 1609, following discussions with Newport and others who had recently returned from Virginia, it was obvious to Sir Thomas that the colony had to be put on a completely different footing.

  A series of wide-ranging reforms were put forward by Smythe and other leaders to restructure the company as well as the colony. They strengthened the power of the principal authority in the colony, the governor, to ensure that discipline and order were enforced among the colonists. Sir Thomas West, 12th Baron De La Warr, a high-ranking nobleman and soldier, was appointed the colony’s first lord governor and captain general, supported by Sir Thomas Gates, a veteran of the wars in the Netherlands, as lieutenant governor. Company leaders also broadened financial support for the colony and reformed the company’s organization to place more power in the hands of the governing council.

  A new charter, granted to the company by King James in May, incorporated the reforms and greatly expanded the colony’s territory. From north to south, the colony now stretched from the Roanoke region to the head of the Chesapeake Bay, and from east to west, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The latter provision expressed the company’s confidence in eventually discovering a river passage through the mountains to the South Sea.23

  Virginia was first and foremost a commercial venture, and the colony had to be made profitable. Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Hariot were fully involved in discussions about the colony. Both most likely had a hand in drafting the confidential instructions delivered to Gates in May, shortly before he left Plymouth for Jamestown with a fleet of eight ships and 500 settlers. The instructions laid out four principal ways of making the colony profitable: The first was the discovery of a passage to the South Sea and gold or silver mines; the second was trade with Indians, within the region and beyond; the third was extracting tribute (tithes) from local peoples in return for liberating them from the tyranny of Wahunsonacock and his priests; and the fourth was producing all sorts of commodities in demand in England, as well as harvesting the natural wealth of the land and rivers.

  The company leaders’ most radical proposal, however, derived from the information that they had acquired from Smith and Machumps. Only a few of the lost colonists survived in the interior of North Carolina, but they might nevertheless provide a means of making alliances with Indians of the region, who were hostile to the Powhatans. With the encouragement of Hakluyt and Hariot, the company adopted an expansive view of the Virginia colony that brought together Roanoke (“South Virginia”) with the James River Valley. Earlier, the company’s efforts had been concentrated on the settlement at Jamestown. Now, in the spring of 1609, the company envisioned a colony that extended much farther to the south and would include local peoples and surviving lost colonists as well as new settlers brought with Gates’s expedition.

  The new Virginia would have two principal settlements. The colony’s chief seat was to be above the falls of the James River, away from major rivers and accessible only by small boats or from overland. Jamestown would be reduced to a small garrison because company leaders considered the site unhealthy and vulnerable to attack by Spanish warships. The company feared the Spanish were about to seek out the colony and attempt to destroy it. The second principal settlement was to be located farther south, at or near Ocanahonan. Gates was told that the area was near the rich copper mines of Ritanoe and within easy reach of Pakerakanick. There he would find four of the English alive, “left by Sir Walter Rawely,” who had escaped the slaughter by the Powhatans.24

  WHILE VIRGINIA COMPANY leaders were developing their plans for the colony, at Jamestown Captain John Smith had decided to send another search party to look for the lost colonists. The year before, Michael Sicklemore had explored the Chowan River and found little. Local peoples were few, and the country was overgrown with pines. Nevertheless, Smith believed that one last attempt to find the colonists was justified.

  In February or March 1609 Smith sent two of his most reliable men, Nathaniel Powell and Anas Todkill, beyond the Chowan River into the lands of the Mangoaks. The outcome was discouraging. “Nothing could we learn,” Smith wrote, “but [that] they were all dead.” How Powell and Todkill had picked up the news, where the two men had searched, and which Indian peoples they had met, Smith did not say.

  A very different version of Powell and Todkill’s expedition was presented in a pamphlet published hurriedly by the Virginia Company at the end of the year, in response to devastating news. On July 24, 1609, en route to Virginia, Sir Thomas Gates’s fleet had encountered a powerful hurricane that scattered the fleet in all directions. The colony’s new leadership, including Gates, as well as 150 settlers on board the flagship Sea Venture, was shipwrecked on Bermuda. Gates and the settlers spent the next ten months there before making the 600-mile crossing to Jamestown in two small boats constructed on the island. But that winter, when a report of the disappearance of the Sea Venture reached London, the company could only assume the ship and all on board had been cast away.

  In view of this major setback, company leaders reaffirmed their intention to pursue their plans for Virginia. In an effort to persuade investors to continue backing the venture, they set out in A True and Sincere Declaration a lengthy explanation that underlined their conviction that the colony would in time become profitable. Amid a range of reasons to support the venture, the company reported some recent good news. Two men (presumably Powell and Todkill) had discovered survivors of the lost colony living within fifty miles of Jamestown. They had been denied contact with the colonists by local Indians but had discovered “crosses and letters, the characters and assured testimonies of Christians,” freshly cut in trees.

  The assertion is puzzling. If company leaders were referring to the expedition of Powell and Todkill, why did their account differ so markedly from Smith’s? Perhaps the company had acquired further information that had been unavailable to Smith. Or perhaps the company had fabricated the story for their own purposes: to show they remained hopeful about potential financial benefits that might accrue from locating survivors in South Virginia. Yet the mention of crosses and letters cut in trees is specific and closely related to John White’s description from his 1587 voyage. Had survivors of the lost colony carved crosses as a distress signal and written words to direct Powell and Todkill to where they had gone (or been taken), as they had been instructed to do twenty years earlier? And if so, where were they?25

  IN THE TWO DECADES since John White had returned to Roanoke Island in 1590 to find the colonists’ settlement deserted, no direct evidence of the settlers’ whereabouts had come to light. Ralegh’s expeditions of 1602 and 1603 had failed to make contact, and none of the search parties dispatched by John Smith had found survivors. But information gathered by the English from local Indian peoples on both sides of the James River between 1607 and 1609 clearly indicated
that survivors still lived in the interior of North Carolina. Although we cannot know with any certainty what became of the lost colonists, it is possible, based on the evidence provided by numerous sources, to reconstruct what most likely happened to them.

  When White sailed for England in August 1587, the settlers had already decided that they should leave Roanoke Island and journey inland to the lands of the Chowanocs. White had left the pinnace and ships’ boats to enable the settlers to move off the island, and the settlers saw little reason for delay. They may well have preferred to move to the mouth of the Chowan River in the fall so as to be settled in their new quarters before winter. They could not be certain whether the Secotans were planning another attack or whether the Spanish might soon find them. The two Irishmen, Glavin and Carroll, had deserted at Puerto Rico during the voyage to Roanoke, who had probably told local Spanish authorities about English plans to call in at Roanoke Island on their way to the Chesapeake Bay. The fact that the Spanish knew where the settlers had gone had greatly increased the likelihood of attack.

  For the same reasons, the settlers probably decided that leaving a small group on Roanoke Island to wait for White’s return was too risky. They therefore likely opted to send them to Croatoan Island instead, where they would be safe with Manteo’s people. Knowing it would take a couple of months to make the move to their new locations, the colonists chose to strengthen the palisade at the settlement on Roanoke Island in case the Secotans attacked. White had remarked on the high palisade of great trees when he returned to the island in 1590.