A Kingdom Strange

by James Horn

  15 Camden, History, 235-300; Plowden, Elizabeth, 363-365; Carolly Erickson, The First Elizabeth (New York, 1983), 360-363; Williams, Later Tudors, 92- 98, 313-315; Susan Brigden, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603 (New York, 2000), 286-290; and Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Belief in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1971), 482-483.

  16 Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (New York, 1959), 39, 80-81; and Neil Hanson, The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada (New York, 2003), 37-45.

  17 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 512-517; and Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 268-271. The dedication is from Hakluyt’s Latin translation of Peter Martyr in De Orbe Novo . . . (Paris, 1587). See Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America (New Haven, 2007), 174-178.

  18 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 517.

  19 For shipboard experiences half a century later, see David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), 148-149, 159-177. For meals, see Humber, Backgrounds and Preparations, 42.

  20 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 517-520.

  21 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 835-836.

  22 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 517-522, 813, 836-838. The armament of the Lion is an estimate derived from ordnance carried by the Tiger in 1585: six demi-culverin, ten sakers, two minions, two falcons, four fowlers, and four bases. She was rated at 160 tons compared to the Lion’s 120. Humber, Backgrounds and Preparations, 32-35, 104.

  23 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 523-524. The identity of the “gentleman” remains unknown. Was he an important investor in the voyage (or his representative), more interested in profits from piracy than the successful outcome of White’s expedition?

  24 White’s account is the only known record of what happened on July 22, and therefore much of the preceding discussion is necessarily speculative. On Fernandes, see Olivia A. Isil, “Simon Fernandez, Master Mariner and Roanoke Assistant: A New Look at an Old Villain,” in Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection, ed. Shields and Ewen, 74-75 (Raleigh, NC, 2003).

  25 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 524-525.

  5. The Broken Promise

  1 David Beers Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590, 2 vols. (London, 1955), 2: 525-526. Howe was one of the assistants.

  2 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 525-529. The dearth of corn was a result of drought and affected all the peoples of the region and those of Chesapeake Bay. David Stahle et al., “The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts,” Science 280 (1998): 564-567; and Dennis B. Blanton, “If It’s Not One Thing It’s Another: The Added Challenges of Weather and Climate for the Roanoke Colony,” in Searching for the Roanoke Colonies: An Interdisciplinary Collection, ed. E. Thomson Shields and Charles R. Ewen, 169-176 (Raleigh, NC, 2003). Manteo’s mother may have been the werowansqua (chief) of the Croatoan people.

  3 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 1: 377; 2: 529-530, 614.

  4 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 1: 279; 2: 529-532; David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), 269; and Michael Leroy Oberg, The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians (Philadelphia, 2007), 120-122. Towaye disappears from the narrative. White makes no reference to him other than noting his name alongside that of Manteo in the list of colonists.

  5 Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, 3 vols. (London, 1598-1600), 3: 285; and Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 533-535. The “testimonie” is the only direct evidence of the planters’ opinions. Because it is one of the most remarkable documents of early English America, it is presented here in its entirety. See also Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 291.

  6 This version of events is considered the most plausible scenario both in regard to existing evidence and subsequent developments (for which see below and the next chapter). For the Spanish expedition, see Irene A. Wright, ed., Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583-1594 (London, 1951), 232-233.

  7 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 535-536, 613-614.

  8 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 535-538.

  9 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 538.

  10 Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate (New Haven, 1998), 287-299; Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 554; Raleigh Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (New York, 2002), 129-130; and Robert Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh (New York, 1973), 126-128.

  11 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 538, 547-548.

  12 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 547-552, 563.

  13 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 560-564, 793-794. There are frustratingly few details about Grenville’s fleet. See Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 301. Nothing is known of Grenville’s instructions or how many colonists he may have carried.

  14 White says nothing in his account about the fifteen settlers carried on the Brave and Roe.

  15 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 566-569, 794-795. It is unclear what happened to the Roe after she separated from the Brave and why she also abandoned the voyage.

  16 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 778-780, 804-812, 825; and Paul E. Hoffman, A New Andulucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast During the Sixteenth Century (Baton Rouge, 1990), 281, 303-305. Gonzáles had been to the Bahia de Madre de Dios (Chesapeake) several times before. In 1570 he transported nine Jesuits and a Hispanicized Indian, Paquiquineo (named by the Spanish Don Luis de Velasco), who established a mission on the York River. He returned the following year and the year after, when it was discovered that all the Jesuits had been killed except for a boy novice, who was returned to the Spaniards and told them about the slaughter of the priests by Paquiquineo. Clifford M. Lewis and Albert J. Loomie, The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1953), 179-188.

  17 William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth Late Queen of England, ed. Wallace T. MacCaffrey (Chicago, 1970), 308, 318; Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, 1998), 202- 268; Neil Hanson, The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True Story of the Spanish Armada (New York, 2003),108-109, 113, 125, 168-170, 295-297; and Penryn Williams, The Later Tudors, England 1547-1603 (Oxford, 1995), 320-321.

  18 Trevelyan, Raleigh, 131-135; Lacey, Ralegh, 131; Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrims . . . , 20 vols. (Glasgow, 1906), 19: 466- 506; Hanson, Confident Hope, 238-322, 376, 385-386; Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (New York, 1959), 268-373; Kelsey, Drake, 305-339; and Camden, History, 319-328.

  19 Trevelyan, Raleigh, 135-138; Lacey, Ralegh, 104-107, 135-137; Nicholas Canny, “Raleigh’s Ireland,” in Raleigh and Quinn: The Explorer and His Boswell, ed. H. G. Jones, 94-97 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987).

  20 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 553-559, 569-576. Three syndicate members—Sanderson, Smythe, and Richard Hakluyt—had been closely involved with the Roanoke venture already, and quite likely several others were known personally to White. Walter Bayly may have been a relative of Roger Bayly, one of the leaders of the colonists; Thomas Wade was born in St. Martin’s Ludgate and married in St. Matthews, Friday Street, where several Roanoke colonists were from; and Thomas Hood, recently installed in London as lecturer in mathematics and navigation by Smythe, was surely known to Hariot as well as to White. Among the assistants, Simon Fernandes, William Fullwood, and James Platt, named in 1587, do not appear. Dimmocke was a new addition, and along with White and John Nichols was in England. Lebame houston is currently undertaking research on the 1589 group.

  21 Trevelyan, Raleigh, 137-140; Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 311-314; and Kelsey, Drake, 341-359.

  22 Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge, 1984), 236-239; Trevelyan, Raleigh, 140; Kelsey, Drake, 359; Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 579- 582, 713-715, 799. According to the governor of Puerto Rico, Diego Menéndez Valdes, the Hopewell carried cannon for the use of the colonists, which if so would furth
er support the argument that the purpose of the voyage was to fortify Virginia, not abandon it.

  23 White’s account of his return to Roanoke in 1590 can be found in Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 598-613.

  24 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 613-616.

  25 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 616-622.

  26 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 715.

  6. “Into the Main”

  1 Raleigh Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (New York, 2002), 172-182; Robert Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh (New York, 1974), 145-151, 165-173; and Alison Plowden, Elizabeth I (Sparkford, 2004), 573.

  2 John Hemming, The Search for El Dorado (London, 1978), 110-114, 120- 123, 183; Charles Nicholl, The Creature in the Map: Sir Walter Ralegh’s Quest for El Dorado (London, 1996), 26-37; Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge, 1984), 288-290; and Sir Walter Ralegh, The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596), introduced by Neil L. Whitehead (Norman, OK, 1997), 122-128.

  3 Trevelyan, Raleigh, 102-103; and Ralegh, Discoverie, 121-122. For the extraordinary career of Sarmiento de Gamboa and his attempt to found a colony in the Straits of Magellan, see Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages, A.D. 1492-1616 (Oxford, 1993), 690-708.

  4 Ralegh, Discoverie, 122-133; Trevelyan, Raleigh, 214-252; David Beers Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590, 2 vols. (London, 1955), 2: 715; Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, 2 vols. (London, 1868), 2: 109; and Hemming, Search for El Dorado, 184-191.

  5 Trevelyan, Raleigh, 348-349; David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, 5 vols. (New York, 1979), vol. 5, The Extension of Settlement in Florida, Virginia, and the Spanish Southwest, 165; David B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620 (New York, 1974), 405-430, 442-452; and Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1986), 1: 51. Two earlier expeditions to Roanoke may have been dispatched by Ralegh in 1599 and 1600, but no information about them has survived, which suggests they were very small-scale affairs. Quinn speculates that Mace may have accompanied Gilbert in 1603 and explored the Chesapeake Bay, which might explain why the London Virginia Company thought it unnecessary to send an exploratory voyage three years later in advance of the Jamestown expedition. See the remarks of the Spanish ambassador in August 1607, in Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1969), 1: 77. On the background to the establishment of Jamestown, see Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 12-72, 109-217.

  6 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 826-838; Georgia Archives, Mary L. Ross Papers, folder 44, item 16. An Anglo-French group of merchants dispatched the Castor and Pollux in 1605 to trade with Indians along the Florida coast and visit Croatoan Island to make contact with the English settlers left there by Ralegh. The ship was captured by the Spanish before reaching the Outer Banks. Quinn, New American World, 5, 108-126.

  7 Ralegh would spend nearly thirteen years in the Tower before being released in the spring of 1616 to undertake another expedition to Guiana in search of the gold mines of Manoa. The disastrous outcome of the voyage and James I’s eagerness to sacrifice him to the crown’s pro-Spanish ambitions sealed Ralegh’s fate. He was executed at Westminster on October 29, 1618. Trevelyan, Raleigh, 350-553.

  8 The creation of the Virginia Company is summarized in James Horn, A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (New York, 2005), 33- 37. See also Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (New Haven, 1964), 1: 73-75, 84; and Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 13-21, 24-34.

  9 Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 13-21, 24-34.

  10 Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 49-54; Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America (New Haven, 2007), 227- 228; and E. G. R. Taylor, ed., The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, 2 vols. (London, 1935), 2: 456-457, 494. Thomas Hariot may have been included in discussions about settling Virginia, but there is no direct evidence of his involvement until 1609.

  11 Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 51, 133-137; Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise, 227-228; Taylor, Original Writings and Correspondence, 2: 456-457, 494; Helen C. Rountree, The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture (Lincoln, NE, 1989); and Frederic W. Gleach, Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln, NE, 1997), 22-60.

  12 Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 79-93, 98-102.

  13 Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 111-119.

  14 Horn, A Land As God Made It, 42-44, 56-60.

  15 Horn, A Land As God Made It, 61-67. For Smith’s account of his capture and “discourse,” see Barbour, Complete Works, 1: 43-47; 2: 146-147. Opechancanough was in his early sixties at the time of the encounter. He is treated at length in Helen C. Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, and Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown (Charlottesville, VA, 2005). Clothed does not necessarily mean the men still wore European clothes, but was rather a way by which Indians signified European peoples: they wore or had worn European clothes.

  16 Barbour, Complete Works, 1: 53, 55. Wahunsonacock was the chief’s personal name, but the English called him “Powhatan.” Rountree discusses his titles, family, and origin in Pocahontas, Powhatan, and Opechancanough, 25-33. For European activity in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, see Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 313-336.

  17 Barbour, Complete Works, 1: 49. Smith was just a boy when John White led the last expedition, but he had read accounts of the Roanoke colonies in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation.

  18 Horn, A Land As God Made It, 100-102.

  19 Barbour, Complete Works, 1: 63, 79, 219. Also included on the Roanoke section of the map were a number of place names: “nansamund,” “chisiapiack,” “imhamoack,” “Roanock,” “Chawanoac,” “Uttamuscawone,” “panawiock,” “ocanahowan,” “morattico,” “machomonchocock,” “aumocawpunt,” “rawcotock,” and “Pakerakanick.” Barbour, Jamestown Voyages, 1: 236-240; and Lee Miller, Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony (New York, 2000), 245- 247, 258, 322. Miller speculates that Panawiock refers to “a place of strangers” who spoke a different language from the Algonquians, namely the Mangoaks. Panauuwioc, an Iroquoian town, which De Bry places on the Pamlico River, had the same meaning. The possible location of Ocanahonan on the Roanoke River is discussed below. I am grateful to Philip Evans for generously sharing his ideas about possible locations of the lost colonists. See also Clarence Walworth Alvord and Lee Bidgood, The First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region by the Virginians, 1650-1674 (Cleveland, OH, 1912), 127.

  20 Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, and Opechancanough, 118; Barbour, Complete Works, 1: 234, 238, 244, 265-266; William Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612), ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freud (London, 1953), 33-34. The title of Strachey’s work can be roughly interpreted to mean the “History of the English in Virginia.” The piedmont refers to the gently sloping plateau beyond the fall line that runs up to the Appalachians.

  21 Alden T. Vaughan, “Powhatans Abroad: Virginia Indians in England,” in Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World, ed. Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet, 51-54 (Philadelphia, 2005); and Strachey, Virginia Britania, xix-xxi.

  22 Strachey, Virginia Britania, 34, 89, 91. Conceivably, the information may have been first acquired by the company from Machumps or some other source, and Strachey later included it in his history. For Strachey’s comments on the southern and western limits of the Powhatans’ influence, see Virginia Britania, 36, 56, 106. He is emphatic that the lost colonists were killed outside Wahunsonacock’s dominions. The Powhatan chief, he writes, had ordered the slaughter “of so many of our Nation without offence given, and such as were seated far f
rom him, and in the Territory of those Weroances which did in no sort depend on him, or acknowledge him,” that is, the Chowanocs and Tuscaroras.

  23 Samuel M. Bemiss, The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London 1606-1621 (Williamsburg, VA, 1957), 42, 47-48; and Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company: The Failure of a Colonial Experiment (New York, 1932), 29-33.

  24 David B. Quinn, Explorers and Colonies: America, 1500-1625 (London, 1990), 255; Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 1: 388; and Bemiss, Three Charters, 59-61.

  25 Barbour, Complete Works, 1: 265-266; 2: 215; Horn, A Land As God Made It, 171-173. For the wreck of the Sea Venture, see Lori Glover and Daniel Blake Smith, The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America (New York, 2008), 86-170.

  26 Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 2: 858; William P. Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps, 3rd ed. (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), “Americae pars, Nunc Virginia dicta” (1590), Plate 14. Salmon Creek may have been the boundary between Weapemeoc and Chowanoc lands. Ralph Lane specifically identifies Metackwem (“Mattaquen”) as a Weapemeoc town under the jurisdiction of Okisko. See Quinn, Roanoke Voyages, 1: 258. Okisko was closely allied with the Chowanocs. Thomas C. Parramore, “The ‘Lost Colony’ Found: A Documentary Perspective,” North Carolina Historical Review 78 (2001): 67-83. Farther up the west bank of the Chowan River toward “Ohanoak,” near modern-day Colerain, or to the south at Edenton Bay, are other possibilities. A site on the mainland near Roanoke Island, such as on the Alligator River, or on the banks of the Pamlico River, cannot be ruled out, but is unlikely in view of the hostility of the Secotans and unknown disposition of the Pamlicos.

  27 The theory offered here differs significantly from the conventional interpretation that the settlers probably journeyed north to Chesapeake Bay, their original destination (see, for example Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 290). This is highly unlikely. First, if the settlers had decided to move to the bay they probably would have agreed to meet White at one of the known rendezvous points, either Skicoak or Chesepiooc (marked on his map), before he departed. On his return, he would have gone to the bay, not back to Roanoke Island. Second, at the time White left Roanoke Island he knew the settlers intended to head west into the mainland. The settlers had told White they intended to go fifty miles “further up into the main,” which indicated that they intended to head west into the interior rather than along the coast to the Chesapeake Bay. Third, to travel north in the pinnace and their boats the settlers would have to navigate Currituck Sound and sail along the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the bay. The journey would have been extremely hazardous, and the settlers would have had to repeat it several times to move everyone off Roanoke Island. Currituck Sound had been described earlier by Ralph Lane as very shallow and dangerous owing to “flats and shoals” in the channel. By contrast, sailing up Albemarle Sound would have been much easier, was a direct route inland, and would allow the settlers to keep in contact with the small group on the island. Finally, the route to the Chowan River had already been navigated and described by Lane in 1586.