Background

Raleigh's charter

A watercolor by John White of the fort in Guayanilla Bay in Puerto Rico , which is likely similar to the fort constructed on Roanoke. On March 25, 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the area of North America. This charter specified that Raleigh needed to establish a colony in North America, or lose his right to colonization.[2]:9 The Queen and Raleigh intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World. The queen's charter said that Raleigh was supposed to "discover, search, find out, and view such remote heathen and barbarous Lands, Countries, and territories ... to have, hold, occupy, and enjoy".[3] The queen's charter also said that Raleigh was supposed to establish a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain.[4]:135 The purpose of these raids was to tell Spain that England was ready for war. The original charter basically told Raleigh to establish a military base to counteract the activities of the Spaniards.[5] Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado.

First voyages to Roanoke Island

Lost Colony

In 1587, Raleigh dispatched a new group of 115 colonists to establish a colony on Chesapeake Bay. They were led by John White, an artist and friend of Raleigh who had accompanied the previous expedition to Roanoke, and was appointed governor of the 1587 colony. White and Raleigh named 12 assistants to aid in the settlement. They were ordered to stop at Roanoke to pick up the small contingent left there by Grenville the previous year, but when they arrived on July 22, 1587, they found nothing except a skeleton that may have been the remains of one of the English garrison.[8] Baptism of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. Lithograph, 1880 , the first English child born in North America. Lithograph, 1880 When they could find no one,[8] the master pilot Simon Fernandez refused to let the colonists return to the ships, insisting that they establish the new colony on Roanoke.[7]:215 His motives remain unclear, however, and new evidence offered by author Brandon Fullam indicates not only that Fernandez had good reason for his actions, but that the decision to alter the Chesapeake Bay destination had already been agreed to prior to their arrival at Roanoke.[13] White re-established relations with the Croatan and other local tribes, but those with whom Lane had fought previously refused to meet with him. Shortly thereafter, colonist George Howe was killed by a native while searching alone for crabs in Albemarle Sound.[14]:120–23 The colonists persuaded Governor White to return to England to explain the colony's desperate situation and ask for help.[14]:120–23 Left behind were about 115 colonists – the remaining men and women who had made the Atlantic crossing plus White's newly born granddaughter Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas.[12]:19 White sailed for England in late 1587, although crossing the Atlantic at that time of year was a considerable risk.[15] Plans for a relief fleet were delayed first by the captain's refusal to return during the winter, and then the attack on England of the Spanish Armada and the subsequent Anglo-Spanish War. Every able English ship joined the fight, leaving White without a means to return to Roanoke at the time.[4]:125–26 In the spring of 1588, White managed to acquire two small vessels and sailed for Roanoke; however, his attempt to return was thwarted when the captains of the ships attempted to capture several Spanish ships on the outward-bound voyage (in order to improve their profits). They themselves were captured and their cargo seized. With nothing left to deliver to the colonists, the ships returned to England.[4]:125–26 Return to the Lost Colony Further information: Watts' West Indies and Virginia expedition The discovery of the word "Croatoan" carved onto a stockade board Because of the continuing war with Spain, White was unable to mount another resupply attempt for an additional three years. He finally gained passage on a privateering expedition organised by John Watts and Walter Raleigh. They agreed to stop off at Roanoke on the way back after raiding the Spanish in the Caribbean. White landed on August 18, 1590, on his granddaughter's third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. His men could not find any trace of the 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children, nor was there any sign of a struggle or battle.[4]:130–33 The only clue was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a post of the fence around the village, and the letters C-R-O carved into a nearby tree. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled, which meant that their departure had not been hurried. Before he had left the colony, White instructed the colonists that, if anything happened to them, they should carve a Maltese cross on a tree nearby, indicating that their absence had been forced. There was no cross, and White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan Island (now known as Hatteras Island), but he was unable to conduct a search. A massive storm was forming and his men refused to go any farther; the next day, they left.[4]:130–33

Thomas Harriot

Born in 1560, Thomas Harriot entered Raleigh's employment in the early 1580s, after graduating from the University of Oxford. Harriot may have been among the men of Arthur Barlowe's 1584 expedition of the colony. He trained the members of Raleigh's first Roanoke expedition in navigational skills and eventually sailed to Roanoke with the second group of settlers, where his skills as a naturalist became particularly important along with those of painter and settlement leader John White.[16] Between their arrival in Roanoke in April 1585 and the July 1586 departure, Harriot and White both conducted detailed studies of the Roanoke area, with Harriot compiling his samples and notes into several notebooks that did not survive the colony's disappearance. Harriot also wrote descriptions of the surrounding flora and fauna of the area, which survive in his work A Brief and True Report of the New Founde Land of Virginia, written as a report on the colony's progress to the English government on the request of Raleigh. Viewed by modern historians as propaganda for the colony, this work has become vastly important to Roanoke's history due to Harriot's observations on wildlife as well as his depictions of Indian activities at the time of the colony's disappearance.[16] Harriot reports that relations between the Roanoke Indians and the English settlers were mutually calm and prosperous, contradicting other historical evidence that catalogs the bloody struggles between the Roanoke Indians and both of Raleigh's commanders, Sir Richard Grenville and his successor, Ralph Lane. Harriot recounts little to none of these accounts in his report to England and does not mention the disorderly state of the colony under either Grenville's or Lane's tenure, correctly assuming these facts would prevent Roanoke from gaining more settlers. Harriot's text did not reach England, or the English press, until 1588, by which time the fate of the "Lost Colony" was sealed in all but name.[16]

Investigations into Roanoke

Reconstructed fortifications at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site Twelve years went by before Raleigh decided to find out what happened to his colony. Led by Samuel Mace, this 1602 expedition differed from previous voyages in that Raleigh bought his own ship and guaranteed the sailors' wages so that they would not be distracted by privateering. However, Raleigh still hoped to make money from the trip, and Mace's ship landed in the Outer Banks to gather aromatic woods or plants such as sassafras that would generate a decent profit back in England. By the time they could turn their attention to the colonists, the weather had turned bad and they were forced to return without even making it to Roanoke Island. By this time, having been arrested for treason, Raleigh was unable to send any further missions.[4]:134–35 There was one final expedition in 1603 led by Bartholomew Gilbert with the intention of finding Roanoke colonists. Their intended destination was Chesapeake Bay, but bad weather forced them to land in an unspecified location near there. The landing team, including Gilbert himself, was killed by a group of Native Americans for unknown reasons on July 29. The remaining crew were forced to return to England empty-handed.[17] Meanwhile, the Spanish had different reasons for wanting to find the colony. Knowing of Raleigh's plans to use Roanoke as a base for privateering, they were hoping to destroy it. Moreover, they had been getting mostly inaccurate reports of activities there, and they imagined the colony to be far more successful than it actually was.[4]:135–37 In 1590, they found the remnants of the colony purely by accident, but assumed it was only an outlying base of the main settlement, which they believed was in the Chesapeake Bay area (John White's intended location). But just as the Anglo-Spanish War prevented White from returning in a timely manner, Spanish authorities in the New World could not muster enough support back home for such a venture.[4]:135–37

Reports of John Smith and William Strachey

Once the Jamestown settlement was established in 1607, efforts were undertaken by the English to acquire information from the Powhatan tribe about Roanoke. The first definitive information concerning the fate of the Lost Colony came from Captain John Smith, leader of the Jamestown Colony from 1608 to 1609. According to chronicler Samuel Purchas, Smith learned from Chief Powhatan that he had personally conducted the slaughter of the Roanoke colonists just prior to the arrival of the Jamestown settlers because they were living with the Chesepians, a tribe living in the eastern portion of the present-day South Hampton Roads sub-region who were related to the Pamlico tribe in Carolina and who refused to merge with the Powhatans.[18]:21–24 This shocking information was reported to England and by the spring of 1609, King James and the Royal Council were convinced that Chief Powhatan was responsible for the slaughter of the Lost Colony. The second source of Chief Powhatan's involvement was William Strachey, Secretary of the Jamestown colony in 1610–11. Strachey's The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia seemed to confirm Smith's report and provided additional information: the colonists had been living peacefully among a group of natives beyond Powhatan's domain for more than twenty years when they were massacred. Furthermore, Powhatan himself seemed to have directed the slaughter because of prophecies by his priests that he would be overthrown by people from that area,[19]:101 and he reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim.[20] The information from these two sources, John Smith and William Strachey, provides the basis for the traditional view that the Lost Colony was slaughtered by Chief Powhatan, and versions of the Powhatan-Lost Colony-slaughter scenario have persisted for more than 400 years. However, no bodies were found and no archaeological evidence has been found to support this claim.[21] Furthermore, recent re-examination of the Smith and Strachey sources advanced by author and researcher Brandon Fullam has suggested that the massacre described by Powhatan was actually of the 15 people left behind by the first Roanoke expedition, leaving the fate of the second colony still unknown.[20][22]

Hypotheses about the disappearance

Archaeological evidence

In 1993, Hurricane Emily caused numerous relics to appear, and David Phelps of East Carolina University later began digging in the area and found evidence the settlers lived with the native people.[35] In 1998, East Carolina University organized "The Croatoan Project", an archaeological investigation into the events at Roanoke. The excavation team sent to Hatteras Island uncovered what they believed to be a 10 karat (42%) gold 16th-century English signet ring, gun flints, and two copper farthings (produced sometime in the 1670s) at the site of the ancient Croatan capital, 50 miles (80 km) from the old Roanoke Colony. Genealogists were able to trace the lion crest on the signet ring to the Kendall coat of arms, and concluded that the ring most likely belonged to one Master Kendall who is recorded as having lived in the Roanoke Colony from 1585 to 1586. If this is the case, the ring represents the first material connection between the Roanoke colonists and the Native Americans on Hatteras Island.[36][37][38][39] However, archaeologist David Phelps did not have the ring tested, and Charles Ewen, who continued Phelps' work after Phelps retired, had the ring tested and found the ring was brass. Ewen announced his findings in April 2017. Mark Horton of the University of Bristol said he was not convinced that this news proved the ring did not date to the 16th century.[40] It is also believed that the reason for the extreme deficiency in archaeological evidence is due to shoreline erosion. Since all that was found was a rustic looking fort on the north shore, and this location is well-documented and backed up, it is believed that the settlement must have been nearby. The northern shore, between 1851 and 1970, lost 928 feet (283 m) because of erosion. If in the years leading up to and following the brief life of the settlement at Roanoke, shoreline erosion was following the same trend, it is likely the site of the dwellings is underwater, along with any artifacts or signs of life.[41] Archaeological investigations continue to find tantalizing clues and funding is being sought to continue recent excavations.[42]

Climate factors

In 1998, a team led by climatologist David W. Stahle, of the University of Arkansas and archaeologist Dennis B. Blanton of the College of William and Mary used tree ring cores from 800-year-old bald cypresses taken from the Roanoke Island area of North Carolina and the Jamestown area of Virginia to reconstruct precipitation and temperature chronologies. The researchers concluded that the settlers of the Lost Colony landed at Roanoke Island in the summer of the worst growing-season drought in 800 years. "This drought persisted for 3 years, from 1587 to 1589, and is the driest 3-year episode in the entire 800-year reconstruction," the team reported in the journal Science. A map shows that "the Lost Colony drought affected the entire southeastern United States but was particularly severe in the Tidewater region near Roanoke [Island]." The authors suggested that the Croatan who were shot and killed by the colonists may have been scavenging the abandoned village for food as a result of the drought.[43][44]

Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project

The Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project was founded in 2007 by a group led by Roberta Estes, who owns a private DNA-testing company, in order to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony using historical records, migration patterns, oral histories and DNA testing. The project used Y chromosome, Mitochondrial DNA and Autosomal DNA.[45] As of 2016 , they have not yet been able to positively identify any descendants of the colony.[citation needed]

See also

References