The Lost Colony of Roanoke

by Fullam, Brandon

  Thomas Parramore and his followers have taken a much more critical view of Strachey’s Historie and consequently of Quinn’s theory as well. Whereas Quinn generally attempted to accommodate Strachey’s Roanoke colony references, Parramore essentially claimed that Strachey simply had it all wrong. If the Chesapeake Indians were extinct, as Strachey claimed in the third excerpt above, “who was it, then,” Parramore asked, “that attacked Newport and his party near Lynnhaven Bay in April 1607?”15 Although Strachey wrote that it was Powhatan’s custom to re-inhabit conquered areas with loyal tribesmen, Parramore remained unconvinced. He went on to say that Ensign Thomas Willoughby, “not Powhatan,” most likely caused the extinction of the Chesapeake Indians during a raid twenty years later in 1627.16

  Parramore concluded that Strachey’s account of the extinction of the “Chessiopeians,” as well as Quinn’s Chesapeake theory, was “flawed” for other reasons as well. Such a sensational event as the eradication of an entire tribe along with the Lost Colony would certainly have been widely known and easily confirmed by the Jamestown settlers, especially if it occurred about the same time as the arrival of the English in 1607. In order to keep such a major catastrophe secret, Parramore continued, it would have required an improbable cover-up of immense proportions.17

  To further support his criticism of both Strachey and Quinn, Parramore cited the expedition by Vincente Gonzalez to the Chesapeake Bay. As mentioned previously, Gonzalez searched for the English colony in 1588 and found no trace of it, convincing evidence that the 1587 colony had not relocated there. As to the Samuel Purchas notation regarding Powhatan’s confession to John Smith, Parramore found Powhatan’s evidence, “a few pieces of iron … unimpressive” and the entire confession a probable empty boast “to overawe Jamestown settlers.”18 Parramore also pointed out, and Quinn acknowledged, that no 16th century English remains, tools, or instruments have been discovered in the present-day Norfolk area which could prove that the Lost Colony had settled there. Other than the Chesapeake extinction argument, Parramore’s criticism was well founded. From this point on, however, his arguments became increasingly unconvincing.

  The most confounding puzzle in Strachey’s Lost Colony references was his contention that the colonists were slaughtered “at Roanoak” (see excerpts 1, 4, 6, and 7). This startling phrase clearly repudiates all variations of current and past Lost Colony theories that involve a slaughter. This was indeed a mystifying detail, presumably obtained from Machumps, and Strachey made the assertion on three or four occasions in his Historie. Strachey’s claim that the slaughter of the Lost Colony occurred “at Roanoke” has defied logical explanation. Clearly no slaughter of the Lost Colony had occurred at Roanoke during its brief occupation there in 1587–88, as was evident from John White’s account of his return to Roanoke in 1590. White found no indications that any slaughter had occurred there; on the contrary, everything pointed to a well-planned and orderly departure by the colonists. There is no evidence, other than Strachey’s statements, that White’s Lost Colonists were slaughtered at Roanoke.

  Yet those problematic “at Roanoak” phrases—particularly those in excerpts 4, 6, and 7—stood as plain as day and presented a formidable hurdle to all Lost Colony theories. It was absolutely necessary for historians to confront and explain Strachey’s troublesome phrases. Parramore used John White’s 1590 account to begin his assault on the notion that the slaughter occurred at Roanoke:

  We can rule out a slaughter or slow death of the colonists on Roanoke Island. White saw no sign of any such disaster and the signal CROATOAN was not accompanied by the cross-mark that would have indicated that the colonists left in distress. It seems clear that they had moved….19

  This argument, though, was not enough. If, as the various scenarios of today’s mainstream theories continue to claim, the attack on White’s colonists occurred at some location other than Roanoke, it was vital that these troublesome “slaughter at Roanoke” phrases be completely repudiated. Both Quinn and Parramore attempted to explain the “at Roanoak” phrases by claiming that Strachey must have meant something other than what his phrases literally indicated. In explaining his own theory, Quinn at least admitted that his Chesapeake paradigm only made sense “assuming that ‘at Roanoak’ and, elsewhere, ‘of Roanoak’ meant not Roanoke Island but the settlers of the Roanoke colony.”20 By his own admission Quinn recognized that his Chesapeake theory rested entirely on the weak assumption that “at Roanoke” was not a reference to a location, but actually meant the colonists themselves.

  Parramore took it a step further. He countered both Strachey and Quinn with the supposition that “at Roanoak” did really mean a location, but not a specific one. According to Parramore, Strachey’s use of “at Roanoke” actually meant the vague area surrounding Albemarle Sound. This claim would now permit the massacre to have occurred anywhere in that huge area other than Roanoke Island or the Chesapeake: “There is also Strachey’s fragile authority for the massacre occurring ‘at Roanoke,’ the common Virginia expression for the Albemarle Sound area, which places the scene well south of Chesapeake country.”21

  Parramore attempted to support his remarkable claim with a footnote citation of an obscure and inaccurate annotation in the mid–17th century Court Records of Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, edited and republished by Alice Granbery Walter in 1978. The entire passage reads exactly as follows. (Walter’s editorial annotations are in parentheses):

  Know all men by these presents that I Thomas Ward of Lynhaven in the County of Lower Norff: Chirurgeon did by the Command of Capt: Thomas Willowghby serve in an expedition against the Indians to Yawopyn als (alias?) Rawanoake (Roanoke?) as Chirurgeon to the whole company and did divers Cures upon severall men in the sais service….22

  Parramore’s entire assertion, then, is based on the assumption that “Yawopyn” was synonymous with “Rawanoake” in this single 1645 passage, but even that is uncertain. “Alia” and “Als” were sometimes used for “alias,” but usually in 17th and 18th century wills to indicate name changes through marriage or adoption, rarely for locations. Also confusing is the probability that the event cited here was the Willoughby expedition against the Chesapeake, not the Yeopim, Indians. Parramore’s claim is also challenged by Francis Yeardley’s use of the word Roanoke several years later. Yeardley (also of Lynnhaven like the “Chirurgeon” Ward) sponsored an expedition “to rhoanoke” to acquire land, and his men went specifically to Roanoke Island, where the Indians showed them the remains of the Lane’s fort. Finally, whatever was meant by this one edited court record has no bearing on what Strachey meant by “Roanoak” nearly thirty-five years earlier.

  This vague territorial claim about “Roanoke” was also repeated by one of Parramore’s associates, author F. Roy Johnson, who collaborated with Parramore on The Lost Colony in Fact and Legend, when he wrote that “To the Englishmen at Jamestown, Roanoke was the vague vast country to the south which had been visited by Raleigh’s explorers; it extended westward from the Atlantic to near the head of Albemarle Sound.”23 Years later (2001) Parramore would challenge Quinn directly on this point:

  Quinn is among those historians who misconstrue the term ‘at Roanoak,’ where Strachey insists, the colonists were killed. But seventeenth-century Virginians used the name “Roanoak” to signify the region bordering what some early maps call the “Sea of Roanoak,” modern Albemarle and Currituck Sound. When, for example, Virginia fur trader and explorer Nathaniel Batts met Quaker founder George Fox on the lower Chowan River in 1672, Batts boasted of having formerly served as “governor of Roanoak,” the thinly settled area on the northern sounds that in 1663 became Carolina. It was this region, not Roanoke Island specifically, that that Strachey almost certainly was referring to in his remarks on the Lost Colony’s fate.24

  This was Parramore’s final attempt to challenge Quinn and put Strachey’s perplexing “at Roanoke” phrases to rest. Once again, however, there are a number of problems with Parramore’s “evidence.” This ti
me Parramore supported his interpretation of “at Roanoak” with a single reference made by George Fox about Nathaniel Batts in 1672, when “Batts boasted of having formerly served as ‘governor of Roanoak,’ the thinly settled area on the northern sounds that in 1663 became Carolina.” This is rather misleading. Parramore’s evidence is taken from George Fox’s journal wherein Fox mentions meeting a number of people, including Batts, at Hugh Smith’s house near the Macocomock River in 1672. Fox wrote,

  … the people of other professions came to see us … and many of them received us gladly. Amongst others came Nathaniel Batts, who had been governor of Roan-Oak; he went by the name of Captain Batts, and had been a rude, desperate man. He asked me about a woman in Cumberland, who, he said, he was told, had been healed by our prayers, and laying on of hands….25

  Whatever was meant by “governor of Roan-Oak” in this passage is certainly not clear, particularly since no other record of, or reference to, this title exists. It is probable, however, that Batts assumed that title in 1653 when he went to Roanoke Island under the sponsorship of Francis Yeardley and purchased large tracts of land from the chief of the Roanoke Indians there.

  What is clear is that Parramore essentially used his own unsubstantiated claim as an appositive, a noun phrase or clause that renames or provides more information about the noun preceding it: ‘Roanoak.” There is nothing in the original Fox passage that identifies “Roan-Oak” as “the thinly settled area on the northern sounds that in 1663 became Carolina.” These are entirely Parramore’s words, not Fox’s. Consequently, the credibility of Parramore’s claim about the meaning of “Roanoak” is dependent on nothing more than his own inserted claim itself, which does not appear in the Fox journal. Parramore’s argument, then, is an example of the previously mentioned logical fallacy of “repeated assertion.” In this case his evidence is simply his own repeated claim regarding the vague definition of Roanoke. Like his previous example, Parramore’s reference to the Fox-Batts encounter offers no convincing evidence for his claim. It is also worth repeating that whatever was meant by “Roan-Oak” here would seem to have little or no bearing on what Strachey meant by “Roanoak” well over a half century earlier in 1610 and 1611.

  Another of Parramore’s contemporaries, fellow North Carolina historian William S. Powell, offered a somewhat ambiguous explanation for the broad geographical interpretation of Roanoke when he wrote, “In order to distinguish between the new colony of Virginia centered in Jamestown and Raleigh’s Virginia, the name Roanoke was frequently used for the older area. John Smith’s map of 1624 called the region ‘Ould Virginia,’ while at a later time the terms South Virginia and the Southern Plantation were applied.”26

  Powell footnoted this passage citing as evidence a reference to a single Virginia Company’s notation of an exploration conducted “to the Southward to Roanocke” by Marmaduke Rayner in 1620. The complete original line containing that phrase in the records of the Virginia Company is, “Ther was also read vnto the Company a Relãcon of three seuerall Voyadges made this last Sũmer one to the Southward to Roanocke made by mr Marmaduk Rayner.”27 In the first place the account of Rayner’s voyage has been lost, as Powell acknowledged, and so no record exists to tell us precisely where he went. Powell’s interpretation, therefore, rests entirely on the assumption that Rayner either did not visit Roanoke Island on his voyage or did not sail from Jamestown towards Roanoke Island. The phrase “Southward to Roanocke” does not mean that the broad area of “Raleigh’s Virginia” was called “Roanoke,” but rather that Marmaduke Rayner explored the area from Jamestown in the direction of, or towards, or as far as Roanoke Island. A similar phrase with a similar meaning was used by the Reverend Patrick Copland in 1622 when he wrote about Jamestown council member John Pory’s exploration from Jamestown, “Maister Pory deserves good incouragement for his paineful discoveries to the southward, as far as Choanoack”28 (emphasis added). This does not mean that the entire area “to the southward” was called “Choanoack,” nor does “to the Southward to Roanocke” mean that the entire area was called “Roanocke.”

  Powell also cited page twenty-eight of Strachey’s Historie to support his claim that the term “South Virginia” was used “at a later time,” about 1624 and afterwards, but that during the early years of “the new colony of Virginia centered in Jamestown … the name Roanoke was frequently used.” Page twenty-eight of Strachey’s Historie, however, written during his tenure as Secretary in 1610–1611, reads,

  Now concerning the low land, or Virginia … yt may well enough be divided into South Virginia and North Virginia, the Chesapoack Bay and Powhatan River parting these twoo…. North Virginia lyeth on the North side of Powhatan, or the first river within the Chesapeak Bay (which we have called the King’s River) up to the Falls.29

  Strachey used the term “South Virginia” on three occasions in his Historie, each time referring to the area south of the James River as opposed to the area north of the James which he called “North Virginia.” Strachey used the name “Roanoke” many more times, but not, as Powell implied, to indicate “the older area” of “Raleigh’s Virginia.” It is clear from the text that Strachey, who was writing in 1610 and 1611 at Jamestown and was the author of the “slaughter at Roanoke” phrase, used “South Virginia”—not “Roanoke”—to indicate the area south of the James River. As will be seen later, when Strachey used the word “Roanoke,” he was specifically indicating Roanoke Island.

  As Powell acknowledged, Strachey’s contemporary John Smith did not refer to the general area visited by Raleigh’s explorers as Roanoke, but rather as “Ould Virginia,” as it is so indicated on the map in his Generall Historie. Smith used the word “Roonok” twice in his 1607–08 A True Relation and both times the word indicated no other place than Roanoke Island. The same word—“Roonok”—was used on the Zúñiga Map, which accompanied Smith’s letter to England, to specifically label Roanoke Island.

  Powell also cited William Bullock’s 1649 booklet, Virginia Impartially examined, written to encourage new settlement in Virginia and less dependency on tobacco as the primary crop. The booklet only mentions “Roanock” a few times, the first of which is “the rich and healthfull Countries of Roanock, the now plantations of Virginia and Mary-land”30 The most definitive reference to “Roanock” is the following:

  To speak first of the most Southerly Climat, viz. from the degree of 34 to 36, the Aire is extream pleasant & wholsome, as it was found by M. Ralph Laine, M. Heriot and others, who with their Company sat down upon the Island of Roanock, which is a little to the Southward of that place in Virginia, where now the English are planted….31

  In describing the “Naturall Commodities” to be found in Virginia, Bullock wrote, “In Roanock they found Silk-wormes bigger then Walnuts, and were informed by the Indians, that higher in the Countrey there were abundance, and bigger.”32 There is little here to support the assertion that “Roanoke” was the common expression for the Albemarle Sound area, and none whatsoever that this is what Strachey meant by “at Roanoke” four decades earlier.

  It is possible that the notion of “Roanoke” as a vague geographic area could have been conceived in the late 19th century by another North Carolina author, Lumbee advocate Hamilton McMillan. McMillan, mentioned previously, was a North Carolina legislator who championed the cause of the Lumbee Indians of Robeson County in their effort to gain official tribal status in the state. His 1888 publication of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony was written in support of the Lumbee claim that at least some of their tribe was descended from Croatoan Indians who integrated with White’s Lost Colonists sometime after 1587.

  According to McMillan, Lumbee tradition holds that “their ancestors came from ‘Roanoke in Virginia.’ By Virginia, they mean territory occupied by the tribe in the vicinity of Pamlico Sound.”33 Croatoan, Hamilton wrote, was the “principal seat” of the tribe, but the name also referred to their territory, which “once embraced portions, at least, of the present counties of Ca
rteret, Jones and Craven.”34 McMillan essentially claimed that the terms “Virginia,” “Croatoan,” and “Roanoke” were more or less interchangeable to the Lumbees. As he put it, “The tribe once lived in Roanoke in Virginia, as they persist in calling Eastern North Carolina. The name Roanoke is applied to the country around Pamlico Sound….”35 It is worth noting that Parramore was unquestionably familiar with McMillan’s geographic assertion, since he made specific references to it in his chapter “The Lost Colony and the Tuscaroras.”36

  McMillan’s claim that “Virginia,” “Croatoan,” and “Roanoke” are geographically equivalent is specious in itself, but the credibility of that claim is irrelevant to the central point being made here. What the Lumbees may or may not have meant by “Roanoke” in the late 19th century has no bearing whatsoever on what Strachey and his contemporaries meant by their use of the word “Roanoke” in the early 17th century. Parramore, who was clearly acquainted with McMillan’s claim that Roanoke-Croatoan-Virginia were synonymous, may have embraced the idea and used a similar interpretation to challenge the problematic “at Roanoke” phrase in Strachey’s Historie. McMillan claimed that to the Lumbees “Roanoke” referred to “the country around Pamlico Sound,” and Parramore claimed that to the Jamestown settlers “Roanoke” referred to “the Albemarle Sound area.” The similarity between the two interpretations is interesting.