Roanoke
Page 30
The translation of this map is difficult. The words are very likely skewed. What foreign sounds, for example, did Smith actually hear and try to record? Did Zúñiga copy the letters correctly? The handwriting is small and hard to read. Have we ourselves accurately deciphered each letter? Is an a really an a and not an e? What about the letters n, my away and u, which often look the same? And, finally, what connection is there between this map and the Mandoag or the copper mines?
1890. The first person to attempt to decipher the Zúñiga map is Alexander Brown.20 He identifies the rivers D, C, and A as the Neuse, Tar, and Roanoke, speculating — from the wording on River D — that Ocanahowan is located on the Neuse. He places River B in present-day Sampson County, and reads the text as: Here the King of Paspahege reported our men to be and wants to go.
1908. Historian Samuel A’Court Ashe includes a rough sketch of Brown’s tracing of Zúñiga’s map in his study of North Carolina.21 In doing so, he transcribes the foreign words on Rivers D and A as Pakrak-wick, Ocanahonan, and Chawwan. Pages later, he spells them differently — demonstrating how orthographic errors can result from the hand of a single copyist. Ashe locates Ochanahonan on the Nottoway River, Pan-awicke between the Chowan and the Roanoke, and Peccarecarnek on the Tar.
1969. Philip Barbour reproduces Zúñiga’s map from a photograph of the original.22 He interprets the words on River D as Pakerakanick and Oconohowan. For B, the location of Panawiock, he reads: Here the king of paspahegh reported our men to be and went to sefej. He places Pekerakan-ick on the Neuse River, Panawiock between the Roanoke and Pamlico Rivers, and Ocanahowan on the south side of the Roanoke.
1985. David Beers Quinn reprints Barbour’s reproduction and identifies the following: River D — Pakeranik, roonock, and ihanowan — on either the Neuse or the Pamlico.23 River C — morottico. River B — Panawick. here the king of paspageh reported one man to be. Quinn equates this with the Secotan town of Pomeioc on Wysocking Bay. River A — Chawanoac and Ocanahowan — on Albemarle Sound. He places Ocanahowan on the Roanoke River.
A summary of the confusion is as follows: Pakerakanick (D): on the Neuse or Tar or Pamlico; Mor attic 0 (C): the Pamlico, Tar, or Roanoke; Panawiock (B): between the Roanoke and the Chowan, or on Wysocking Bay at the site of Pomeioc; Ocanahowan (A): on the Neuse or Roanoke or Albemarle Sound or Nottoway River. So much for the experts. The problem, however, does not at all lie with them. It lies with Smith. There is something wrong with the map.
Let us begin with River C, labeled Morattico. This is certainly the Roanoke, for early maps equate the two names. Moratoc, we remember, was the abandoned town Lane visited on the Roanoke River. If C is the Roanoke, then D is very likely the next river to the south, the Tar. Zúñiga’s map depicts this river branching to the right. The Tar also has this feature: Fishing Creek north of the modern town of Tarboro.24
If we are correct that C is the Roanoke, then B, a small waterway, might well be Cashie Creek. However, it is precisely here that we encounter a problem. This portion of the map is incorrectly oriented. The section covering Virginia, comprising the Chesapeake Bay drainage area, was drawn according to the standard orientation used by European map-makers, north/south. Rivers B, C, and D were similarly aligned. However, River A is twisted in the wrong direction by ninety degrees. River A, the Chowan, is oriented east/west.
It is this peculiarity of the Zúñiga map that has confused previous investigators, who mistook the Chowan for the Chowan and Roanoke combined, which meant that the locations of Lost Colony survivors were never clearly identified. Once corrected, and compared to the map John White made, the four prongs of the Chowan River are clearly distinguishable: Bennett’s Creek, Wiccacon River, the Meherrin, and the Nottoway — the split with the Blackwater River farther north is not portrayed. According to the Zúñiga map, Ocanahowan appears to be located on, or south of, a branch of the Chowan.25
Such a positioning mistake also occurred on John White’s map of North America.26 He composed it by fusing together three separate charts. The northernmost, oriented north/south, depicted the Outer Banks and was drawn from onsite surveys by Raleigh’s men. The southern portion was copied from LeMoyne’s map of Florida. It also was oriented north/south. The middle section, however, was taken from Ayllon’s Spanish map of 1520. It was inserted incorrectly. It is oriented east/west.
The Zúñiga map supplies us with the missing coordinates for our search. We now know that we are looking for the Lost Colonists in an area bounded by Randolph County to the west, the Chowan River to the east, the Tar River to the south, and the Meherrin River — a branch of the Chowan — to the north. But if the Mandoag were here, so was something else whose impact on the Lost Colony would be devastating.
The Great Trading Path
If we return to the Carolina Slate Belt and observe it more closely, we begin to see an interesting pattern. Like a game of connect-the-dots, the copper deposits form a northeast arc within the same overall pattern of the belt.27 Curiously, Interstate 85 — a modern highway — follows this configuration most of its way, shadowing the Southern Railway, whose lines were constructed in the same general arc many years before. But why? What prompted modern railroad and highway engineers to follow this route? For it is evident that these transportation lines were not built at random, but follow a very definite course.
What this course was is revealed in the reports of the earliest Europeans to enter the interior in the wake of Edward Bland: John Lederer (1670), James Needham and Gabriel Arthur (1673), John Lawson (1701), and William Byrd (1728). What they described is astonishing. There was a great highway, they said, stretching more than five hundred miles into the interior, known as the Great Trading Path. Beginning in Granville County, North Carolina, it ran in a southwesterly course, crossing the Tar, Flat, Little, Eno, Haw, Alamance, and Deep Rivers. At the Yadkin, it passed over luxurious banks of grass and prodigiously large trees, and here the traders rested. Six miles farther on, it crossed Crane Creek, so named for the rendezvous of great armies of cranes.2^ After that, it reached the Catawba and there, at a distance of 250 miles from the Roanoke River, the trail was half complete. Snaking to the east and west were secondary arteries, linking the Appalachian Mountains to the Carolina coastal plain. The Great Trading Path itself ended at present-day Augusta, Georgia.
But this highway was also called by another name, after the nation who controlled its northern terminus: the Occaneechi. Bland was the first Englishman to have heard of these people and of their fortified town on an island in the middle of the Roanoke River. Four miles long, covered with timber and peach trees, the island lay at the confluence of the Staunton and the Dan, providing the only easy access across the Roanoke. Flanking it on the east and west were swift, churning rapids. The Occaneechi, Lederer said, zrt fixed here in great security, being naturally fortified with fastnesses of mountains and water on every side.19
South of this, the Occaneechi Trading Path disappeared into the Car-raway Mountains — a land of swift currents and very high mountains?® This was Randolph County, the copper- and gold-producing region of Chaunis Temoatan. The Occaneechi territory, at the northern edge of the Carolina Slate Belt, also contained deposits of copper. There are so many appearances of copper in these parts, Byrd marveled, that the English inhabitants seem to be all mine-mad?1
In the colonial period, both Virginia and North Carolina will seize on the potential of the Great Trading Path. Fur traders will coax one-hundred-horse caravans along the highway, exchanging hides for guns, powder, hatchets, kettles, red and blue duffels, rum, and brass rings. But the trade does not start here, at this late date.32 The route existed long before. Nor do colonial traders create Occaneechi Island, with its famous trade mart, a warehouse for the brisk exchange of copper, salt, shells, and mica. The Occaneechi are middlemen, and foreign visitors flock to the town. When Lederer arrives there, he finds four ambassadors of an original delegation of fifty, whose bodies were painted in various colours with figures of animals. They
have come from the northwest, all but four dying en route from famine and hard weather, after a two-month’s travel by land and water in quest of this island of Akenatzy.33 Occaneechi, an Algon-quian term, similar to the Cree word Woconichi — the place Where People Gather.34
They have a sort of general language, reported an amazed Robert Beverly, which is understood by the chief men of many nations as Latin is in most parts of Europe…. The general language here used is said to be that of the Occaneechees, though they have been but a small nation, ever since those parts were known to the English. Occaneechi is also used by priests in ceremonies throughout Virginia, as the Catholics of all nations do their mass in Latin?5 Years later the remnant of this language, recorded at the military camp of Fort Christanna, is found to contain fragments of Siouan, Algonquian, and Iroquoian words, suggesting a language used in business transactions. Occaneechi, a trade jargon spoken for five hundred miles.36
Border Patrol
Strategically located on their island fortress, the powerful but numerically small Occaneechi control access to the Great Trading Path. As such, they determine who shall and shall not enter. John Lederer is forced to obtain permission from the neighboring Saponi even to pass into Occaneechi territory. At Sapon, a village of the Nahyssans … situated upon a branch of Shaw an, the people examined me strictly whence I came, whither I went, and what my business was. Satisfying them, I got my passport, having given my word to return to them within six months. The Saponi, in contrast to the Powhatan, were people of a high stature, warlike and rich. A subtribe of the Monocan, they were friends of the Occaneechi. Significantly, Lederer observed a great store of pearl in their temple, which they had won, amongst other spoils, from a coastal people.37 Which people did they mean?
If Lederer thought the Saponi kept the trail well guarded, he was wholly unprepared for the severity of the Occaneechi. A Rickohockan ambassador and five attendants, their faces daubed with gold pigment, in which mineral these parts do much abound, arrive — and are murdered in the night. Every nation gives his particular ensign or arms, said Lederer. The Occaneechi’s is a serpent. A serpent, he added, expresses wrath.38
When James Needham and Gabriel Arthur neared the Occaneechi, their eight Powhatan guides turned back, showing great unwillingness to enter the country. The expedition was aborted. Although they tried again with eight new guides, all but one Appomattoc man turned around at Occaneechi Island, and no more durst to go along with them beyond. Needham himself approached the island, but was stopped there by ye Occhenchees from going any farther. He finally persuaded them to let him pass, only to be killed later by his Occaneechi guide. Gabriel Arthur, who had crossed the barrier with permission the year before in the company of fifty-one Tomahitan traders, was ambushed in the dead of night by the Occaneechi upon his return. The Occhenee began to work their plot and made an alarm, calling all to arms. The Tomahitan flee, leaving their trade goods scattered. Hidden behind trees, the moon shining bright, Arthur escapes and runs for it all night. Occaneechi Island is strongly fortified by nature, he said, and that makes them so insolent, for they are but a handful of people, besides what vagabonds repair to them, it being a receptacle for rogues?9
Hunting Apes in the Mountains
It is a known fact that North Carolina does not have, nor ever has had, monkeys. This being the case, we might suppose that William Strachey had that rare sense of humor that finds levity in the most obtuse subjects, for we see him relaying a rather strange tale from a Powhatan informant named Machumps, involving primates and the Lost Colonists. At Peccarecamek and Ochanahoen, said Machumps, 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. … the people breed up tame turkeys about their houses, and take Apes into the mountains.
A helpful synopsis reads: Houses of stone, tame turkeys, and monkeys, supposed at Peccartcanick.41
Historians, not surprisingly, have dismissed Strachey’s statement out of hand. In so doing, they have discarded a very important clue. Nor is it the only word amiss in Strachey’s narrative. We read elsewhere that Powhatan gardens are planted with fruits and apoke. Apoke, from Powhatan uhpooc, means “tobacco.”42 Strachey recorded the word in Algonquian, not English. There is no reason to assume that he did not do the same with Apes.
At Peccarecamicke, Sir Thomas Gates was told, you shall find four of the English alive, left by Sir Walter Raleigh…. They live under the protection of a wir o ans called Gepanocon. And were worth much labour. At Pecca-recanick, added Strachey, they have English-style houses and hunt apes in the mountains. The Cree would understand this as apisk, the Pequot as apess, and the Wicocomoco as tapisco.43 The word is Algonquian: it is a noun and denotes “metal.” Strachey was telling us that in Gepanocon’s town, Lost Colonists were used for the gathering of ore.
This interpretation is supported by the names of the surrounding people themselves. 1898: Linguist William Tooker translates the Powhatan names for nations within the enemy Monocan Confederacy. The Monocan capital, Strachey said, was Rassawek, unto whom the Mowhemenchuges, the Massinnacacks, the Monohassanughs, and other nations pay tribute.^
Rassauwek, from wassau “it is bright, it glistens,” conjoined to wek, “house or home.” Monocan, from Mona-acF añough, Mona, “to dig” + ack, “land or earth” + añough, “nation or people.” Meaning: “People Who Dig the Earth.” Freely translated: “Miners.” Smith’s Monanacah Rahowacah [Mona-ack-anough-wassau-wekJ, therefore, meant the home of the people who dig the earth for something bright. Massinnacack, “The Stone Place.” Monahassanughs, “People Who Dig the Rock,” synonymous with a nation called Tutelo.45 Their last known king was Kolstá-hagu, meaning “Dwelling in Stone.”46
Closing in on the Mandoag
Our investigation, then, has come to this: we believe that the majority of the Lost Colonists relocated to the Chowan River, where they, along with their much-weakened Chowanoc hosts, were attacked and defeated by the Mandoag. We know that the Mandoag were powerful and greatly feared, that they controlled access to the copper-producing region of Chaunis Temoatan, and that these mines were located in a mountainous, river-laced region twenty days’ journey — or approximately 250 miles — away from the Mandoag country. We have identified a place within the Carolina Slate Belt, modern Randolph County, that physically fits this description, both in terms of ore content and in the Deep River and Carraway Mountains that characterize it. We know that the vast highway, known as the Great Trading Path, ran through this location approximately ninety miles south of Occaneechi Island, a vital trading center and distribution terminus for products moving up from the south. We know that the Occaneechi rigorously monitored entry onto the Trading Path, and thus controlled northern (as well as eastern and western) access to the mines. We also know that the Occaneechi were small in number and that other nations, allied to them, performed similar policing functions. We know that the Mandoag were mercenaries and that they hired themselves out for copper. The Occaneechi likely welcomed such assistance. The question remains, who are the Mandoag? And where are the Lost Colonists?
Which Nation?
The North Carolina Piedmont is a highly complex region, made all the more difficult because it is imperfectly known. From John White’s map, as well as Lane’s description, the Mandoag bordered the Chowanoc/ Secotan frontier, a hilly country penetrated by the Roanoke River. We now know their characteristics and the coordinates of their sphere of influence. By a process of elimination, we should be able to identify them.
Recent historians have favored the theory that the Mandoag are Tus-carora.47 Yet this assumption rests upon faulty evidence. The Secotan-Chowanoc-Weapemeoe were Algonquian, therefore their enemies probably were not; on this, everyone agrees. Mandoag is a name commonly applied by Algonquians to enemy nations. Before 1870 the only other known linguistic group in North Carolina was Iroquoian; therefore the Mandoag were proclaimed to be an Iroquoian-speaking people. This classification held
despite later evidence that revealed that most of the nations of the Piedmont spoke Siouan, a very different language. Nevertheless, since the Tuscarora were Iroquoian — so went the theory — they must be Mandoag. Three other pieces of evidence were also offered to support this claim: (1) Population: the Mandoag were powerful and strong. In sheer numbers, the Tuscarora were supreme. (2) Pakerakanick was located on the Tar, so were the Tuscarora. (3) Eland’s mysterious Englishmen were in a Tuscarora town.
The Tuscarora theory can be rejected on the following grounds: (1) It does not necessarily follow that numerical strength equals power. The Occaneechi were reputedly the most powerful nation for a distance of five hundred miles because of their strategic position and copper monopoly. Furthermore, a small nation does not at all preclude the possibility of confederacies and alliances, which could render them very strong indeed. (2) Pakerakanick was located on the Tar River, but not necessarily within Tuscarora territory. Other nations lived west of the Tuscarora, and Pakerakanick could have belonged to them. (3) The fact that two of the Lost Colonists were among the Tuscarora means nothing more than that the Tuscarora may have obtained them through trade, intermarriage, or adoption from another nation. Their presence does not prove that the Tuscarora are Mandoag. (4) The Tuscarora were Iroquoian and may indeed have been antagonistic to the Secotan. This does not guarantee, however, that they were the Mandoag. They may merely have been the nation to the west that Barlowe reported to be at war with the Secotan. Or maybe not. In 1654 Francis Yeardley’s traders visited Roanoke Island and were taken by its great Commander on a friendly visit to the neighboring Tuscarora.48 In 1711, in response to colonial abuses, the Secotan and Tuscarora formed a powerful alliance and jointly declared war on North Carolina.49 In point of fact, the only direct evidence we have indicates that they were friends! (5) The Tuscarora were located west-southwest of the Secotan. We would expect the Mandoag, by all accounts, to be farther north.