HIS 2213 Learning Unit Five Lecture

1. Learning Unit 5 Lecture
“What Happened to the Lost Colonists
of Roanoke?”

2. Part One:
Background to English
Settlement in the New World
2

3. England, and
others, were
jealous of Spain’s
New World Empire.
Catholic Spain
used its wealth to
make war on
Protestant
England. England
wanted to harass
Spain in the New
World and seize
their gold. The
English also
believed they
could rule over the
Indians with more
justice and less
cruelty than the
Spanish had
shown (but they
would not live up
to this ideal).

4. Piracy was one way
European rivals could
harass and damage
Spain’s position in the
New World. Actual
pirates really did
dress in a
flamboyant manner
--like in the movies--
and pirate ships were
arguably the most
multicultural,
democratic places
on Earth.

5. Sir Francis Drake
English Privateer
Privateers were “official”
pirates who carried
licenses (letters of
marque) from European
states to practice
piracy.

6. The background to the Spanish conquest of the New World is
the Reformation, when Protestants all over Europe--particularly
newly wealthy merchants & manufacturers--broke away from
the Catholic Church.
John Calvin
Our fates are
predetermined.
Humans are
too corrupt to
play a role in
their own
salvation.
Earthly
Martin Luther power should
Faith, not works, is what be in the
gets you into Heaven. Salvation hands of the
is God’s gift to the faithful. Elect.

7. But in
England,
the
Protestant
Reformation
was less
about
religion and
more about
the private
life and loves
of King Henry
VIII.
King Henry VIII

8. Anne
Boleyn
Mother of
Elizabeth I
Henry wants to divorce Catherine, his first
(Spanish) wife to marry his love-of-the-
Catherine of Aragon moment, Anne Boleyn. When the Pope in
Mother of “Bloody” Mary Rome refuses to annul Henry’s marriage,
Henry breaks with the Catholic Church and
forms the Church of England (Anglicans).

9. Henry VIII has three children sit on England’s throne. The country violently
lurches back and forth between Protestantism and Catholicism until the 45-year
reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) brings stability but not religious tolerance.
Edward VI “Bloody” Elizabeth I
(Dies young) Mary Tudor (Protestant)
(Catholic)

10. Part Two:
The ‘Lost Colony’ at Roanoke
Island
10

11. The ‘Lost Colony’ at Roanoke Island
• Sir Walter Raleigh, mass murderer in
Ireland & the Queen’s favorite
• Colonization of Ireland was model for
colonization of “Virginia,” which included
the Outer Banks of North Carolina
• Amadas/Barlowe expedition (1584);
Grenville/Lane group (1585-86); John Raleigh
White’s group (1587)
• Re-supply delayed by Spanish Armada
(1588); White finally returned 1590
• “Croatoan”; Lost colonists probably
massacred elsewhere and/or ‘went
native’ by assimilation, but no one knows
for certain what fate befell them.
Elizabeth I

12. 1607
1587

13. The
English
called
everything
from the
Carolinas
to Maine,
“Virginia”;
Roanoke
Island
was/is
actually
off the
coast of
present-
day
North
Carolina

14. The Amadas/Barlowe Voyage, “Earliest Documented
Encounter of Native Americans &
Englishmen” (1584)
“[The next day, an English delegation was received
by Granganimeo (brother of the King), who
according to Barlowe] ...came along to the place [on
the shore] over against the ships, followed with forty
men. When he came to the place, his servants
spread a long mat upon the ground, on which he sat
down, and at the other end of the mat, four others of
his company did the like: the rest of his men stood
round about him, somewhat afar off: when we came
to the shore to him with our weapons, he never
moved from his place, nor any of the other four, nor
never mistrusted any harm to be offered from us, but
sitting still, he beckoned us to come and sit by him,
which we performed: and being set, he makes all
signs of joy, and welcome, striking on his head, and
his breast, and afterwards on ours, to show we were
all one, smiling, and making show the best he could,
of all love, and familiarity.”

15. Roanoke Island

16. Artist (and future
Roanoke governor)
John White
accompanied the
Grenville/Lane
Expedition (1585-86),
and his illustrations
give us the best
information about
Native American life
at the time of English
contact. They convey
a message that (apart
from fewer clothes)
the inhabitants of the
New World were not all
that different from the
English.

17. Typical English Village

18. John White’s depictions of Native Americans living in what is today N. Carolina.

19. Various
Indian
methods
of fishing.
Werowance

20. Grenville/Lane Expedition (1585-86)
“…Some of our company towards the
end of the year, showed themselves too
fierce in slaying some of the people
[Indians] in some towns upon causes
that on our part might easily enough
have been forgiven…. [Consequently,
there was an] alteration of …opinions
[among the Indians toward the English
that] it was on their part justly
deserved.”—Thomas Harriot,
expedition scientist

21. White’s Expedition (1587)
“... A secret token agreed upon between them
[the Roanoke colonists] and me at my last
departure from them; which was, that in any
ways they should not fail to write or carve on
the trees or posts of the doors the name of
the place where they should be seated; ...I
willed them, that if they should happen to be
distressed in any of those places, that then
they should carve over the letters or name a
cross + in this form; but we found no such
sign of distress.”

22. John White’s return to Roanoke Island was delayed by the unsuccessful
attack of the Spanish Armada on England. When he came back in 1590, he
found a clue to the colonists’ whereabouts but no distress signal.

23. Part Three:
Theories of What Happened
to the Lost Colonists
23

24. Drought? Bad Timing?
Dry weather would have made it difficult for the
Roanoke colonists to survive. According to a 1998
report published in The Washington Post, “Rainfall
data gleaned from ancient bald cypress trees
shows that the region's worst three-year drought in
800 years peaked in 1587, the year the 120 men,
women, and children of the Roanoke Colony were
last seen by Europeans.” In fact, a cycle of drought
and famine continued for years in the region,
increasing violent competition between later
English arrivals & Native Americans for resources.
Twenty years later, severe regional drought will
also have a decisive (and negative) impact on
Anglo-Indian relations at Jamestown.

25. Reproduction of Capt.
John Smith’s (of
Jamestown fame) map
with his notes about the
location of possible
Roanoke survivors.
Smith may have had a
good idea what
happened to the Lost
Colonists, but either of
the likely
outcomes--massacre
and/or assimilation--
would not have been
good news to encourage
future colonists. Smith
officially reports that
Chief Powhatan of the
Chesapeake area
ordered the deaths of
the ‘Lost Colonists.’

26. YET RUMORS OF THE COLONISTS’ SURVIVAL
PERSIST
GEORGE PERCY, JAMESTOWN COLONIST, 1609
“[I saw an Indian with] a head of hair of a perfect yellow and a reasonable
white skin, which is a miracle amongst all Savages.”
WILLIAM STRACHEY, 1612
“[Indians told me of] houses built with stone walls, and one story above
another, so taught… by the English.”
JOHN LAWSON, NEW VOYAGE TO CAROLINA, 1709
“Hatteras Indians, who either then lived on Roanoke Island, or much
frequented it. These tell us, that several of their Ancestors were White People,
and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is confirmed by gray
eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians, and no others.”
BOWEN, “AMERICA DISCOVERED,” 1740
“In 1669, Rev. Morgan Jones and others in his company were taken captive
by the Tuscarora [Indians]. But they were saved, by Jones account, when,
after crying out in his Welsh tongue when he learned that he was to die at
their hands, a visiting Doeg Indian replied to him in the same tongue.”

27. We often think of Colonial
America as an encounter
between “Red, White, and
Black” (Native Americans,
Europeans, & Africans),
but these racial categories
were not fixed and stable.
Many individuals crossed
ethnic lines, and others
were born of mixed unions.
The Roanoke Colonists
may have been the first of
many who would be
assimilated by another
ethnic group.

28. A DNA project is
currently
underway
collecting
samples from
English
descendants of
the Roanoke
Heather Locklear Colonists and
is a descendant also from
of Lumbee members of the
Lumbee tribe who
ancestors. share surnames
with the Lost
Colonists. The
researchers are
looking for a
match that will
link these two
populations on
either side of the
Atlantic through
the Lost Colonists.