by Lee Miller
Unrest
For the Secotan, life has become a day-to-day existence. The severity of the drought is incalculable, their corn crop destroyed. The damaged yield accounts for Hariot’s ability to note such variety of roots and nuts gathered by them in lieu of cornmeal. Okeepenauk, wild potatoes, consumed for want of bread. Greenbrier root is chopped, pounded, and strained: its juice maketh bread. As do arrow-arum and golden club, chestnuts, chinquapin, and acorns. Consumed also for want of bread.51
The soldiers, on the other hand, fail to sustain themselves. As salaried combatants, they expect a commissary as their due. When it is not forthcoming, they press the Secotan to sell stores in exchange for copper. Even this fare is highly distasteful, nor of that choice as otherwise might have been to our better satisfaction and contentment. Indeed, there are some in the company who, Hariot complains, were of a nice bringing up, only in cities or towns, or such as never (as I may say) had seen the world before. Because there were not to be found any English cities, nor such fair houses, nor at their own wish any of their old accustomed dainty food, nor any soft beds of down or feathers, the country was to them miserable, & their reports thereof according.52
With the exception of Hariot’s surveying team, few of Lane’s men stray away from the fort or are out of the island where we were seated, or not far, or at the leastwise in few places else. The men grow bored and restless. To ease their hunger, or for sport, they kill and eat the dogs that wander into the compound from the Roanoke village; seizing them as they came to our hands. Worsening relations. The men who came merely for the promise of riches are rapidly disillusioned that gold and silver was not so soon found.53 The only products of worth discovered thus far are pitch, tar, rosin, and turpentine. Marketable commodities: all four essential ingredients for London undertakers. As embalming solution.54
Tension mounts. Thomas Harvey, the Cape Merchant, bitterly reviles Manteo and Wanchese for misrepresenting the trade potential, causing him to lose his fortune — most of his goods spent for food — leaving him with nothing but the pleasure of being in a foreign country in very miserable case. Supplies are wearing thin. Some want also we had of clothes.55
The soldiers begin to commit acts of misdemeanour and ill dealing and are worthily punished. One is hanged. What his crime was is unknown. The expedition’s martial instructions outline ten infractions subject to punishment. Three invoke the death penalty: the violation of any woman; the drawing of a weapon upon an officer; abandoning a post or sleeping on duty.56 The soldier hanged by Lane might have done any one of the three. If, however, he abused a woman, the woman he abused was Secotan.
Pearls, Copper … and Gold
As winter progresses, too much attention is directed at the people of the country. The women draped in jewelry, the chief ladies wrapped in pearls 5 or 6 fold about their necks, bearing one arm in the same, as in a sling.57 Amadas, Lane’s second-in-command, learned during the previous year’s exploring expedition of a pearl fishery located on a river somewhere to the northwest, in which there is found great store.59. The description places this squarely at the upper end of the sound in Weapemeoc territory. This is why Amadas was sent there the moment Lane touched down upon Roanoke. For pearls. He never found them, not having yet discovered those places59
Lane’s appetite was whetted, but the Secotan possess something far more important: copper. Or could it be gold? Granganimeo himself had upon his head, wrote Barlowe, a broad plate of gold, or copper, for being unpolished we knew not what metal it should be, neither would he by any means suffer us to take it off his head, but feeling it, it would bow very easily.60 In trade, copper carrieth the price of all, especially if it is red.61
The Secotan glitter with copper necklaces, pendants, bracelets, and rings. Copper sparkles in their hair. Granganimeo wears a radiant plate of copper suspended from a chain, a sign of high status. Young dandies — his children and other noblemen — loop copper bands through their ears. At Secota, girls of good parentage are resplendent in delicate necklaces of little beads of copper, while their mothers are adorned with ghost necklaces of bluish tattooing, the color of oxidized pennies. Copper chains are even draped around religious statuary inside temples, which metal they esteem more than gold or silver61
The truth is, Lane and his troops are tolerated because they have copper. Yet they are blundering into a world they little understand. Nor have they any notion of the consequences that will result from their seeking this wealth, or that the delicate balance between trade and war in this region hinges on it. It would be better had they let it alone. The ferocity of their involvement will drag many others to their deaths. Ultimately, Lane’s obsession with copper will destroy the Lost Colonists.
12 CHAUNIS TEMOATAN AND A MURDER (1586)
If you voyage well in this your journey,
They will be the King of Spain s atomy
To bring you to silver & Indian gold
which will keep you in age from hunger & cold.
Thomas Hariot1
To Win Renown
Certain factors are converging. It is winter and food is scarce on Roanoke Island. Lane is told that game is more plentiful on the mainland. The soldiers are bored and dissatisfied, and increasingly difficult to control. The pearl fishery has yet to be found. Somewhere in the interior copper deposits exist and, very likely, silver and gold. To this is added one further fact: Lane’s command has produced no great distinguishing discoveries.
The stories from Spain are too familiar. Cortés marched into Mexico and discovered Tenochtitlan, a city of staggering wealth and magnificence. Gold, silver, and precious gems; plazas pulsating with life; broad avenues, universities, and gardens. Pizarro found an empire in Peru, while the gold mines Columbus claimed in the West Indies catapulted Spain, overnight, from a third-rate country into the most powerful nation in Europe. Their terror is great amongst us in England, remarked Lane, but their reputation doth altogether grow from the mines of his treasure.2
Amadas returned from the Weapemeoc country in September reporting fertile and pleasant provinces in the main… specially towards the west. In this vague direction both pearls and copper were said to abound. / mean with the favour of the Almighty, Lane announced, to visit that province and some part of the winter to pass there, being 140 miles within the main? A party was dispatched, but where they went or who made up the group is unknown. Hariot, certainly, for he said of these travels that in the time of winter, our lodging was in the open air upon the ground.^
The Reconnaissance
Wherever it went, the winter expedition returned to Roanoke at the end of February, to find Lane chafing at the bit. Hariot reported the land farther into the main to be richer, higher ground than the sandy scrub of Roanoke Island. The soil appears to be fatter; the trees greater and to grow thinner; the ground more firm and deeper mould…. more plenty of their fruits; more abundance of beasts; the more inhabited with people, and of greater policy & larger dominions, with greater towns and houses}
All very encouraging, but what Lane wants to hear is far more specific. Hariot discloses it at last: a hundred and fifty miles into the main, in two towns, we found with the inhabitants diverse small plates of copper that had been made, as we understood, by the inhabitants that dwell farther into the country, where as they say are mountains and rivers that yield also white grains of metal, which is to be deemed silver…. The aforesaid copper we also found by trial to hold silver.6 Joachim Ganz confirms it. It is of exceedingly high grade.
But who are these copper manufacturers who dwell farther into the country? White’s map depicts a hilly land to the west, along the Roanoke River, identified by the name of Mangoak. Mangoak, Lane explains, is another kind of savages dwelling more to the westward of the said river. They are a people whose name and multitude besides their valour is terrible to all the rest of the provinces.1 These Mandoag will be intimately associated with the Lost Colonists, and we will have every reason to wish to know more about them.
Fr
iends No More
February’s end, 1586. Roanoke Island resumes its prewinter configuration. Lane’s soldiers are reunited at the fort. It would have been better had they stayed away. As dogwood petals shower down, whitening the edge of fields as yet unsown, a second — and far more deadly — epidemic sweeps the island. As though there has not been enough suffering. Both Wingina and Granganimeo are infected. Wingina recovers, but Granganimeo is not so lucky; by March he is dead. The impact upon Wingina is profound: upon the death of his brother, he discards his own name.8 From this point forward, he will be known as Pemisapan.
The situation on Roanoke, dormant all winter, becomes critical. Relations are severed with the English and consultations held.9 There were, Lane claims, all matters proposed against us, which both the king, and all the rest of them after Grangemoe ‘s death were very willing to have preferred. Only Ensinore, Pemisapan’s father, opposed himself counseling that the English were dangerous and not to be provoked.10
Meanwhile, Lane’s rations run out, forcing a complete dependence on the sale of food by the alienated Secotan. A recipe for paranoia. Lane immediately suspects treachery, ranting about the likelihood of poisonings and such like, which would have assuredly brought us to ruin in the month of March. For it is in this month, he claims, that Pemisapan plans to abandon his town on Roanoke and move inland, to have run away from us. Without them, the fort will be destitute — Pemisapan intending to have left his ground in the Island unsowed, which if he had done, there had been no possibility in common reason (but by the immediate hand of God), that we could have been preserved from starving out of hand. For at that time we had no wares for fish, neither could our men skill of the making of them, neither had we one grain of corn for seed to put into the ground. What military commander would have allowed himself to reach this state?
For Gold
Supply ships from England are expected daily and still Lane has little to show for his command. Obsessed by the illusion of gold, he determines to lead a company farther into the country. Strangely, he demands guides from Pemisapan and is thereby compelled to divulge the purpose of the mission, against his inclination. / having been enforced to make him privy to the same, to be served by him of a guide to the Mangoacks.n
At this point the story radically diverges from the truth. Lane’s official version of events is that he is a victim of Pemisapan, who deceived him by claiming that two neighboring nations, the Chowanoc and Man-doag, were plotting against the English. Therefore, Lane insists that he did not send his troops north to search for gold, but to attack these allegedly threatening nations. Pemisapan, he complains, did never rest to solicit continually my going upon them.
Lane’s boats accordingly push northwest along the mainland, past the Weapemeoc villages, and enter the Chowan River. The water, lapping steel-gray against the distant, imposing line of timber. The men cross the border and are now within the territory and jurisdiction of the Chowanoc. A most powerful nation, Lane reports, led by Menatonon, the greatest Province and seignorie lying upon that river, and the very town itself is able to put 7oo fighting men into the field.
Presently the men draw abreast of a town which we called the blind town, but the savages called it Ohanoak. It hath a very goodly corn field and is subject to Choanoke. After this the river diminishes, contracting sharply until it groweth to be as narrow as the Thames between Westminster and Lambeth. Trees loom large on either shore.
Rounding a bend, the soldiers arrive at the Chowanoc capital. What it looked like or where it was located is not divulged: it must have been substantial. The Chowanoc with their large, vigorous towns held their own along the Mandoag frontier. In a clearing, a meeting of Chowanoc and allied Weapemeoc is in progress as the soldiers step onto the wet sandy beach. The drone of the Chowanoc council masks their approach. These are not people on guard, preparing war. Lane’s men take them completely by surprise.
The troops attack. The suddenness of which did so dismay them, as it made us have the better hand at them. The compound erupts into chaos. People screaming. People fleeing. If there fall out any wars between us & them, Hariot commented, what their fight is likely to be … it may be easily imagined; by the experience we have had in some places.
Menatonon, a man impotent in his limbs, but otherwise for a savage, a very grave and wise man, is seized and tightly bound. As darkness falls, a guard is posted around the town, and in the wavering firelight Lane interrogates his prisoner. In the harsh exchange that follows, Menatonon confessed that Pemisapan forewarned him of Lane’s expedition. This confederacy against us, of the Choanists and Mangoaks, Lane relays in a rage, was altogether and wholly procured by Pemisapan himself… who sent them continual word that our purpose was fully bent to destroy them: on the other side, he told me that they had the like meaning towards us. The entire business, he says, was orchestrated by Pemisapan.
The Truth
Lane is lying, and it is here that it becomes apparent. If his argument with the Chowanoc were due solely to the machinations of Pemisapan, then reparations would be made immediately. We would expect profuse apologies to Menatonon and an urgent attempt to rectify the situation, if for no other reason than for the injured parties to join forces and defeat the Secotan. Simple and deft politics … it never happens. Instead, Menatonon remains captive for the two days that the soldiers occupy the town. Lane viciously states that the Chaonists. … durst not for the most part of them abide us, and that those that did abide us were killed.
We know that Pemisapan was closely allied to both the Weapemeoc and Chowanoc. The English clearly understood this. Why, then, would Pemisapan have urged Lane’s soldiers to attack? Did he? His only possible motive could be the hope that the English would be defeated. A risky move! Chowanoc were killed. Had Pemisapan plotted Lane’s demise, all he needed to do was call in his Chowanoc and Weapemeoc allies for a surprise attack. It is far more credible, certain even, that the story is Lane’s invention to justify action. And that after Lane demanded guides, having been enforced to make him privy to the same, Pemisapan sent a desperate warning to the Chowanoc to beware of his arrival.
Close quarters with soldiers have taken their toll. Pemisapan himself plans to relocate from Roanoke to the mainland town of Dasamonquepeuc. Angered at the loss of his food supply, Lane prepares to commandeer what he wants by force, outlining a series of defensive works in the interior: / would have raised my said sconce upon some cornfield, he declared, that my company might have lived upon it. Pemisapan warns the Chowanoc.
Chaunis Temoatan
In the flickering firelight, Menatonon is cross-examined about his own country and the disposition of his own men, but also of his neighbours round about him as well far as near, and of the commodities that each country yield-eth. Lane will know their strength and what their countries provide. The relentless questioning reveals something else. Lane discovers the source of copper.
The copper mines are located deep within the interior, where not only Menatonon, but also the savages of Morotico themselves do report strange things. Access is controlled by the Mandoag. It is a thing most notorious to all the country, that there is a province to the which the said Mangoaks have recourse and traffic up that River of Moratico, which hath a marvellous and most strange mineral.
Menatonon’s information is consistent with Hariot’s winter report. To reach the copper mines, Lane will have to pass up the Roanoke River, into hilly country guarded by the Mandoag. This mine is so notorious amongst them, as not only to the savages dwelling up the said river, and also to the savages of Choanoke, and all them to the westward, but also to all them of the main: the country’s name is of fame, and is called Chaunis Temoatan.
Lane systematically probes all the savages that dwelt towards those parts about the mine, and especially of Menatonon himself They are brought before him, one by one, Manteo interpreting. The surrounding woods a profuse blush of redbud, a raging fire. Color bursting with anger. The mineral they say is wassador, which is copper, L
ane explains with fervor, but they call by the name of wassador every metal whatsoever: they say it is the colour of our copper, but our copper is better than theirs: and the reason is for that it is redder and harder, whereas that of Chaunis Temoatan is very soft, and pale. Like gold.
Menatonon promised me guides of his own men who should pass over with me, even to the said country of Chaunis Temoatan (for overland from Choanok to the Mango aks is but one day’s journey from sun rising to sun setting). These things, I say, made me very desirous by all means possible to recover the Mangoaks, to get some of their copper for an assay.
For Praise
Menatonon has outlived his usefulness. The following morning, the troops depart abruptly. Menatonon, Lane says, presents him with a rope of pearl, though they were black, and naught, yet many of them were very great. Odd, to be this critical of a gift. Menatonon was a prisoner and Lane his captor; the pearls were, in fact, the price set on Menatonon’s head. I having dismissed Menatonon, Lane declared, upon a ransom agreed for.
As Menatonon quickly hobbles past the line of soldiers, free of his fetters, Lane barks a command. In one rapid movement there is a startled cry, a struggle, and someone is hustled aboard the pinnace. He is a boy named Skiko. He is Chowanoc. And he is Menatonon’s son. Anguished shouts explode from the shocked and horrified village. All resistance useless for, as Lane has said, all who did so were killed.