Roanoke

by Lee Miller

  John White is absent from this picture. He and his tragedy belong to the past.

  21 JAMESTOWN

  For what we sometimes were, we are no more;

  Fortune hath changed our shape, and Destiny

  Defaced the very form we had before.

  Sir Walter Raleigh1

  A Sighting!

  Raleigh’s Virginia title is up for grabs. Chief Justice Popham — the very man who condemned Raleigh to death — forms a company of gentlemen and merchants to exploit his claim. Supporting him is Raleigh’s old friend turned enemy, Sir Robert Cecil, and Attorney-General Sir Edward Coke.2 January 1606. The London Company charter is granted.

  Curiously, among the King’s petitioners are divers of his Majesty’s loving subjects who, during Elizabeth’s reign and at their own great charge and expense, planted and inhabited Virginia.3 Who are they? Investors, or relatives of Lost Colonists? None is mentioned by name.

  April 1607. Captain Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, and 105 colonists sail into the Chesapeake Bay. A reconnaissance locates the southernmost tributary, renamed the King’s River. Forty miles from its mouth, in the country of the Paspahegh, a nation of the Powhatan Empire, the English construct a settlement dubbed “Jacobopolis.” Colonist George Percy writes home calling the place James-Fort, a name more akin to the English town of Chelms-ford. A vast improvement. Easier on the tongue. It is also known as James Town, remarks Dudley Carle-ton, but the town me thinks hath no graceful name. The Paspahegh, Percy added, murmured at our planting there.4

  While the fort is being built, Newport commands a boat farther inland, crossing into the territory of the Arrohattoc, another Powhatan member nation. At a bend in the river called Poor Cottage, they stop short, wholly startled, for we saw a savage boy, about the age of ten years, reports an incredulous George Percy, which had a head of hair of a perfect yellow and a reasonable white skin, which is a miracle amongst all the savages. A miracle? Or a Lost Colonist? The English stand amazed. Yet why were no questions asked? The event was astonishing enough to be recorded — surely they must have found out more! Five miles away, Newport’s men are entertained at the Arrohattoc capital, presented with mulberries and cakes and guides for their journey. They converse; the King is generous and friendly. There is every opportunity to question the boy. Instead, they let him slip away.

  Far away in London, in his cell within the Tower, Raleigh keeps abreast of the discoveries. The sighting is chilling news. Hope of renewed contact with the Lost Colonists may have prompted him to urge more aggressive action. Someone certainly did. Newport, who had returned to England, is again dispatched to Virginia — with specific instructions to search for White’s company.

  Hard Times

  Newport reaches Jamestown on January 2, 1608. But as his supply ships edge into their moorings, the fort is alarmingly quiet. The stench of rotting corpses permeates the air.

  The sight that greets Newport is appalling. Of an original 105 colonists deposited at Jamestown just eight months before, only thirty-eight are alive. They had, the planters cried, grown very bare and scanty of victuals. Unwilling to hunt or fish even to support themselves, they starved to death. Compounding the problem, illness seeped through the settlement, explained Percy, caused by drinking river water that at low tide was full of slime and filth. The result was the bloody flux — diarrhea so violent that stools were laced with blood. The colonists’ pitiful murmurings and outcries were chilling, some howling, some screaming long into the night. Some died three or four in a night; in the morning, their bodies trailed out of their cabins like dogs to be buried.6 In addition to this were mutinies, bitter factioning, and relations with the nearby Paspahegh that ran from bad to worse.

  The Search

  The search for the Lost Colonists would have ended before it ever began had not fate intervened. Coincidentally, on the very morning of Newport’s arrival in Virginia, Captain John Smith returned to Jamestown after a month spent in the interior — with information about White’s colony. The story is nothing if not exciting. Seized by hunters while traveling upriver, Smith was brought before Opechancanough, King of the Pamunkey and brother of Wahunsonacock, ruler of the thirty-nation Powhatan Empire. He claimed they got along well, Opechancanough taking great delight in learning about English ships and tales of the sea. In return, what he knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certain men clothed at a place called Ocanahonan, clothed like me?

  The news electrifies Jamestown. John White’s colonists are still alive! Twenty-three years after the English last saw them. Days later, Smith met the Emperor Wahunsonacock at his capital of Werowocomoco. The people at Ocamahowan he also confirmed, and the southerly countries also, as the rest… he described a country called Anone, where they have abundance of brass and houses walled as ours}

  Inquiries are swiftly made. The Paspahegh king, Wowinchopunk, adds yet another dimension to Jamestown’s mounting arsenal of information. The Lost Colonists are well known. The King agreed to conduct two of our men to a place called Panawicke, beyond Roonoke, where he reported many men to be apparelled. Did he really volunteer to guide them? For when a pinnace carries the party downriver to Warraskoyack, the point of departure, Wowinchopunk refuses to enter the interior. What can the English know of the Mandoag? Instead, playing the villain and deluding us for rewards, he returned within three or four days after, without going further.9 The English attribute it to malice. Yet over the course of the next several months, the Powhatan show a uniform reluctance to enter the interior. Could it be that Wowinchopunk was afraid?

  Spain. September 10, 1608. Philip III receives intelligence from London spy Pedro de Zúñiga. Contained in the packet is a folded piece of paper, the tracing of a map sent home by John Smith.10 It was obtained, Zúñiga reported, from an Englishman — probably Captain Francis Nelson — lately returned from Jamestown. The map indicates known English settlements in North America: the one at Jamestown; and two farther south, occupied by White’s colony.

  One More Try

  September’s end, 1608. Months pass. Newport returns to Virginia with a second supply, including additional colonists, food, weapons … and firmer instructions. How, or why, Smith complains, Captain Newport obtained such a private commission as not to return without a lump of gold, a certainty of the south sea, or one of the lost company of Sir Walter Ram ley, I know not.11 But such the commission is.

  Snatching up a pen, Smith promptly fires off a letter, scratching away in his own defense. To the Treasurer and Council of Virginia, Sirs: / received your letter, wherein you write that our minds are so set upon faction … that we feed you but with ifs and ands and hopes, and some few proofs; as if we would keep the mystery of the business to ourselves. …12 Jamestown, it is feared, is deliberately concealing information.

  Not surprisingly, Newport pursues the mines first. They are located west of the Powhatan, in high country above the cataracts that bridle all the rivers draining into the coast, among an enemy nation known as the Monocan; or perhaps south, in the territory of the Mandoag. A five-piece barge intended for the discovery is vastly unsuitable: to be born by the soldiers over the falls, Smith complains, Newport had 120 of the best men he could choose. If he had burnt her to ashes, one might have carried her in a bag; but as she is, five hundred cannot, to a navigable place above the falls. And for him at that time to find in the South Sea, a mine of gold; or any of them sent by Sir Walter Raleigh: at our consultation I told them was as likely as the rest.u

  Newport returns empty-handed and sails for England, leaving Smith to carry out the search. But during this great discovery of thirty miles, Smith grumbles, (which might as well have been done by one man, and much more, for the value of a pound of copper at a seasonable time), they had the pinnace and all the boats with them, but one that remained with me to serve the fort.u

  Company officials’ strange conceits of finding wealth or colonists are enjoined to a threat: they kindly writ to me, charges Smith, i
f we failed the next return, they would leave us there as banished men… Had my designs been to have persuaded men to a mine of gold… or some new invention to pass to the South Sea, or some strange plot to invade some strange Monastery … what multitudes of both people and money would contend to be first employed?15 Monastery? A seclusion of religious people, he means. An odd statement, surely. Is Smith calling John White’s colony Separatists?

  Smith knew plenty of them called Brownists, later complaining that many went to Virginia, pretending only Religion their governour, when in fact it was their pride and singularity and contempt of authority; because they could not be equals, they would have no superiors: in this fool’s Paradise … they have paid soundly in trying their own follies, who undertaking in small handfuls to make many plantations, and to be several Lords and Kings of themselves, most vanished to nothing16

  December 29, 1608. Smith and thirty-eight men set out from Jamestown for Powhatan’s capital of Werowocomoco. That night, they bivouac in the territory of the Werraskoyack. As frost stiffens the grass in a sheath of white, Smith meets with Werraskoyack leader Tackonekin-taco.17 To test their friendship, he requests guides for a probe south into the Chowanoc country. Ice snaps from cold logs laid on the fire, spewing cinders into the trees. The answer comes back hollowly: Smith will have his way. Michael Sicklemore, a very honest, valiant, and painful soldier, is provided with two Werraskoyack men and directions how to search for the lost company of Sir Walter Raw ley, and silk grass.18

  Sicklemore is gone for three months. We know nothing of his journey other than that he carried presents to the Chowanoc leader. Not a shred of evidence beyond this has surfaced thus far. Not a single accounting of the Chowanoc, their current condition, towns visited, or discussions made. The reason is simple: the information was suppressed. The London Company was protecting its investment. Expedition members were legally bound to conceal all discoveries, and they did. Smith, as acting President, swore an oath of office to keep secret all matter committed and revealed unto me. until such time that publication shall be made. Nothing was printed without consent of the King’s Council.19 As we shall see, it was never in their interests to disclose the whereabouts of White’s colony. The meager information we have is deliberately vague.

  All Dead

  March 1609. A single notice appears in John Smith’s memoirs. Master Sicklemore well returned from Chawonock, but found little hope and less certainty of them were left by Sir Walter Rawley. The river he saw was not great, the people few, the country most overgrown with pines. … But by the river the ground was good, and exceeding fertile.1® It reads like an epitaph. Indeed, further interest in the region was stilled for many years to come. But what did Sicklemore really discover? There is every indication that the news gleaned from the Chowanoc was not encouraging. This does not mean, however, that Michael Sicklemore found nothing.

  With the Chowanoc reconnaissance ended, Smith had only to investigate the Mandoag. Another Powhatan nation was called upon to prove its fidelity — and bravery: the Quiyoughquohanock. So that Nathaniell Powell and Anas Todkill were also, by the Quiyoughquohanocks, conducted to the Mangoages to search them there.21 Southward they went, says Smith, to some parts of Chawonock and the Mango ags to search them left by Sir Walter Raleigh; for those parts to the Town of Chisapeack hath formerly been discovered by Master Heriots and Sir Raph Layne.21

  It is spring. Redbud blossoms bleed ruddy into dogwood bursting forth in such fury that the woods appear cloaked in snow. Dogwood winter. As the petals sift on to the forest floor, Smith breathes the cold official pronouncement. Sicklemore, Todkill, and Powell searched for the Lost Colonists. But nothing could we learn but they were all dead.23

  22 WAR ON THE POWHATAN

  It is the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake or destitute a plantation once in forwardness; for, besides the dishonor, it is the guiltiness of blood of many commiserable persons.

  Sir Francis Bacon1

  The Great Deception

  It was a lie, pure and simple. White’s colonists were not dead. Smith knew it. The London Company knew it. Raleigh knew it. So did the Virginia Council at Jamestown. Yet the legal fiction was created — and would stick for nearly four hundred years.

  Were such a thing true, Jamestown officials would need to explain why an inordinate amount of time was spent with the London Company in an effort to locate the dead. Were it true, the May 23, 1609, summons of Thomas Hariot to quiz him about the experiences of Raleigh’s personnel in Virginia hardly seems necessary. In response to their questions, Hariot submitted an alphabet that he had contrived for the American language, like Devil’s writing — to be used by Jamestown investigators probing south toward Roanoke.2

  Instructions were immediately issued to Jamestown’s new interim Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, to search for the Lost Colonists in the part of the land inclined to the south … and if you find them not, yet search into this country; it is more probable than towards the north?

  July 1609. From London, Zúñiga informs Philip III that Raleigh, whom they consider here a very great personage, conveyed certain information to the Council. / have a paper which Walter Raleigh wrote, Zúñiga says, who is a prisoner in the Tower… it ought to be translated because it is the original which he had and when it is finished we shall compare it with the chart which they have caused to be made, and by it, the way which they will take will be under stood? To which map will Zúñiga compare it? To the one he already has indicating survivors of White’s colony?

  There is much to this story that we do not know, but what we can be sure of is this: the Virginia Council in London was notified by Smith that the Lost Colonists were alive. Their instructions to Gates prove this. The Powhatan supplied specific information regarding the colony’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, Smith’s searches were only halfhearted and made against his will, though understandably so in light of Jamestown’s condition. No proof that the colonists were dead was ever obtained. In fact, investigations into the Mandoag country, as we shall see, definitely indicated they were not. Despite the gag order concealing reports, we have glimpsed behind closed doors enough to warrant a closer inspection.

  Yet something was looming on the horizon. An undercurrent of unrest, thrusting attention away from White’s colony. That something was war.

  The Starving Time

  Jamestown has no food. Supply ships come, but they also bring more colonists. Too many planters are unwilling to fend for themselves, despite their own looming mortality. They reach crisis level, then sink even lower. The winter of 1609 is Jamestown’s starving time. The allowance, remembers Robert Johnson, … was only eight ounces of meal and half a pint of peas for a day … mouldy, rotten, full of cobwebs and maggots … which forced many to flee for relief to the savage enemy. Savage enemy, he calls them. Yet the Powhatan, who never asked for such a visitation, are the colony’s only source of food. Unless what they ate most unnaturally be counted: the flesh and excrements of man, the corpse of an Indian, digged by some out of his grave three days after burial. They wholly devoured him.5Jamestown sinks into an appalling morass; were it not for their human form, England would never recognize these sons who looked like anatomies crying out, We are starved! We are starved! Two years later, nothing is changed: so lamentable was our scarcity that we were constrained to eat dogs, cats, rats, snakes, toadstools, horse hides and what not, one man out of the misery that he endured, killing his wife powdered her up to eat her, for which he was burned.6 Robert Johnson speaks glibly of savages; what presents a more savage picture than Jamestown?

  War on the Powhatan

  May 23, 1609. Sir Thomas Gates is dispatched to Jamestown with authority to impose martial law, if need be, to reestablish order. His instructions make it clear that relations with the Powhatan are deteriorating. For Wahunsonacock and his Weroances, it is clear even to reason beside our experience, Gates is informed, that he loved not our neighbourhood and therefore you may no way trust him, but if you find it not best to
make him your prisoner, yet you must make him your tributary.1 Loved not our neighborhood? Since when? In 1607 Gabriel Archer had declared that our best entertainment was friendly welcome} What changed were Jamestown’s demands.

  They will never feed you, Gates is told, but for fear. You are to seize into your custody half their corn and harvest and their weroances and all other their known successors at once. Their children are to be taken and reeducated so that their people will easily obey you. Priests are to be imprisoned so that they no longer poison and infect them their minds with religion, and we pronounce it not cruelty nor breach of charity to deal more sharply with them and to proceed even to death with these murderers of souls.9 The Virginia Council are adept manipulators. Brainwash the children, remove the religious leaders. Control a people.

  1609. Zúñiga writes to King Philip about Wahunsonacock. / understand that as soon as they are well fortified, he said, they will kill that King and the savages, so as to obtain possession of everything. 1610. War is declared.10

  The Peace Movement

  News of atrocities against the Powhatan filters home. The Paspahegh were attacked. Jamestown soldiers prodded Wowinchopunk’s children into boats, rowed them into the bay, and disposed of them by throwing them overboard and shooting out their brains in the water. Governor De la Warr had their mother arrested as a prisoner of war, then ordered her stabbed. Reports multiply. A Nansemond village was incinerated, temples looted, the royal corpses dragged out onto the sand and robbed of their pearl and copper adornments.11 This is more than war; it is barbarity.