400th Anniversary of Roanoke Settlement

You Historian David Beer's Quinn recently spoke at the annual Friends of the Library dinner at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His subject was the Royal Note colonies after 400 years. Dr. Quinn has been chairman of history at the University of Liverpool and has currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center. He has authored several books including The Five Volume, The New American World, The First Colonists and several others. He's also advisor to the American 400th Anniversary Committee. We're presenting portions of his speech.

I think the study of the colonies, colonists of 1587, really forces us to look at the whole question of the beginnings of a colonization. They illustrate, I think, the problems, the dangers, the mishaps, the temporary triumphs, the ultimate tragedy of these attempts. They have a dramatic interest and they have an interest which carries us on from them to Jamestown, to Plymouth, to Massachusetts, to many other areas in eastern North America. Many of the following groups were small, were weak, had their own problems, had very great difficulty in surviving. The first colony in 1585 to 6, it lasted only 10 months, that Grenfell's colonists lasted only a few weeks, and that the 1587 colony disappeared and didn't survive more than 20 years at the most.

It should make us think that these were hard beginnings, that there's no easy way in which a man from British Isles began to penetrate into this part of the world, into the whole eastern part of North America, and settled there. I think that we need to throw ourselves back into the 16th century to find reasons for these people coming out. It took a considerable impetus to get people to leave their homes.

Now, some of that incentive was financial, the first colonists were, I think, well paid to come out and stay for their 10 months here. The colonists of 1587, where people who genuinely wanted to live a peaceful life, a peaceful family life in North America, they wanted to live it close to the Indians without fraction, without hostility. Although we don't know, unfortunately, much very little at all about their economic circumstances in England, we think that the main incentive was land, that England was a small country, which was already thinking of itself as being overpopulated with only 4 million or so people in it. And that the possibility of getting, say, 500 acres of land was a tremendous incentive.

If I was asked her to pick out what was the most important thing that the colonists did, I would unhesitatingly center in on the work of Thomas Harriet and John White. In 10 months from July 1585 to June 1586, because they were given the job of making the first effective survey of any part of North America. And we have enough of their materials surviving to give us some idea, 10 red, of what they achieved. Now, think of it. If UNC was asked to provide a team that would survey the resources from Cape Henry to Cape Lookout, and the 100 miles or so behind these extremities, how many people would they assign to it? I leave the administrators and the stop table to think about this problem.

But there were these two men going around with their notebooks and sketchbooks, taking a note of every possible thing they could see. The way the Indians did this and did that, the way they looked, the way they led, the things they grew. Thomas Harriet's brief and true report, the little book he published in 1588, of which UNC does not have a copy. There are only five in a bit in the extend. And I don't think there's much chance of further copies turning up, but that does contain a most remarkable survey in brief on the resources of the coastal area. And you can read it, read between the lines, and form a picture of particularly things like Indian agriculture, which are outstanding.

So the history of the work of these two people is really a vital part of, you might say, the history of early science, ethnography, and as well as history in a political sense. Because Harriet and White were primarily interested at that stage in recording what they saw. And the men behind them who inspired them, or the men behind them who inspired them, were Sir Walter Raleigh and Richard Hecklott. Raleigh wanted to know whether North America was worth exploiting. And he forgot enough information from them to know that it was worth exploiting for people who are prepared to work in it, but not a place overflowing with gold and silver or pearls.

You can take it that, to some extent, these were disillusioning results, but not once you regret it. Richard Hentred had been the man who was the most vigorous propagandist for colonization in England before the Rhonocolonis. And it's significant that it was he who preserved almost all the material that we have about them. If it wasn't for Richard Hecklott, we would hardly think they were worth celebrating because the material we'd have on them would lack narrative and human interest. Hecklott was able in his principal navigations of the English nation in 1589 to put together the narratives of the 1584 Void, the very fine narrative by Barlow.

He had, for the 1585, 6 Colnay, a journal on the ships. He had certain medical respondents. He had a long, rather ramming, report by Ralph Lane. And he was able to put together a reasonably coherent account of that first Colnay. But he went on. He didn't get very much from 1586 and Drenville's attempt to put in a few colonists there. But he did get from John White. When John White turned from being just a painter to being an organizer of Colnays, he did get vivid, rather poignant narratives of his three Voiders. In 1587, when he brought out the Colnay that was to be the last Colnay, in 1588, when he struggled helplessly against pirates in the Atlantic and had to turn back, having received three wounds, which he recovered.

And finally, in 1590, when he arrived with a supply ship and with the assistance, rather grudging assistance of some English private tears, defined that the colonists were not on Rome of Ireland. But some of them, at any rate, were down near modern Cape Hatteras with a Indian friend, Mendel. But again, Miss Hap, tragedy, overtook him because the boat that was bringing his men, in a shore to explore Rome of Ireland, sank, and certain people were drowned, virtually half the ship, the crew of one of the ships. The water was so rough, those are northeaster, blowing in in August, that he was unable to get down the 50 miles or so down the coast to near Cape Hatteras to see if in fact some of the colonists were still there.

So, in the end, he had to leave them. Now, all this material was collected by heck, all except the last narrative appeared in 1589 and the 1591 in 1600 edition, second edition of the Principal Navigation. These documents are all reprinted in the first colonists and you'll see that they only run to 150 pages, including a reprint of Harriet's little boat. So, we haven't got much to go on. I managed to find a good many bits and pieces to add to them in my Rome of Voiders in 1955, that Bellpal has struggled to identify some of the colonists, and either he nor I feel that that task is yet anywhere nearly complete. But there's possible to do much more or not remains to be seen, but the basic materials continue to be those of heck.

The problem of the last colonists is one which North Carolinians have agonized over for very many years, and it's one which is not easy to solve. White left a hundred odd people, men, women, and children here in Rome, in 1587, and found that in 1590 that the place was empty, the houses knocked down. Everything had been cleared, except for a new policy did enclosure in which there was nothing except a certain amount of debris left behind by the colonists. They had, they did leave indications that some at Ered had gone to Crotor, and that's Montio's area down near Cape Hatteras, on the modern island of Hatteras.

But the trouble was that white didn't know. He hoped they were at Chacan de Peco down near Cape Hatteras. But he also said at the same time that in 1587 they'd been going 50 miles into the main, into the main land. Now, if we read carefully the material we have for the 1584-85-6 colony, we find that a party of colonists spent some time with the Chesapeake Indians in the area between the southern shore of Chesapeake Bay and the great dismal swamp. And frankly, it was there. I'm pretty certain that the last colonists were intending to go there when white left them.

Now, why would he think that in 1590, when he left them, deserted them, as they could think for three years, why would he still expect them to be on Ronac Island? I think he didn't tell us really enough. I think that what he really meant was that he expected to find some of the colonists on Ronac Island. Because if they were going to this place up in what's now Virginia, why should he expect them to be at Ronac Island in 1590? The only thing that makes sense to me is that he had insisted that some of them at least should wait for him in Ronac Island so that they could guide him whenever he turned up to the exact place where the main body of colonists were. Now, that implies that perhaps 2030 of the unmarried younger men stayed behind him, Ronac Island, that they built this palace, stayed it in closure, and that they were the ones who were with Mantio,

and who probably eventually never rejoined the main body, but became assimilated with the Indians, which either migrated to the mainland, or died out with that tribe in the 18th century. Because there's perfectly good evidence that the main body of last colonists, along with their Chesapeake hosts, were killed in 1606, or beginning of 1607 by Pa'otan, the Virginia Super Chief. It's such good evidence that William Streche telling us that a letter was sent to King James, the first telling him about this, discovery of this, the end of 1508,

we have the instructions which King James ordered to be sent out in 1509 to say that he was prepared not to have Pa'otan executed, but that all his priests should be killed, who had advised him to do this, and that his subcheves should be taken away from his authority. If this was not true, it was a most extraordinary collection of lies to compose. I believe it was true. I think the most possible site for the colony was somewhere up the Elizabeth River, near the edges of the dismal swamp, but I can't prove it, and nobody could prove it except an archaeologist who encountered this site. Now, there's very good evidence, however, that although people picked over Rhonok Island for several hundreds of years and found little bits and pieces that colonists had left behind, there is very good negative evidence that the last colonists did not live for any length of time on Rhonok Island.

It would have left far more debris behind them than has been found. One of the great feats of historical archaeology in the United States after World War II was to recreate the fort perimeter of 1585. Jesse Harrington, who is still with us, known to many as Pinky Harrington, because he once had light red hair. He did a remarkable job of separating the earth, the disturbed earth and the ditch, a little ridge showing where the fort had been, but he excavated the ditch, so he got down to clean soil, and then threw it up into the form in which many of you, all of you probably have seen in Rhonok Island today.

And that has provided a focus for people to envisage where the colony was in 1585, what a small affair it was. The building, the command post in the middle of that, could not have been longer than 36 feet. It could not have been much wider than about 24 feet. And that had to contain a guard room and a storehouse and a jail, and all sorts of offices connected with the colony. And then Harrington did also find some very interesting but limited number of artifacts which are on show in the museum there, many of you have seen them.

A sickle, an axe which I think the North Carolina collection has, and a Spanish olive jar, and very interestingly, a piece of a crucible for melting metal, some pieces of copper, and they are associated with the mineral man, the metallurgist who is with them, who was German Jew from Prague, Joachim Gantz, who is an easily identifiable figure, because he got into trouble for using Jewish rights in Bristol a few years later. However, the very few articles survived to be excavated in 1947-48, comparatively.

Now, what Harrington did not find was where the people lived, and he made a lot of number of attempts to do this. Clearly, the living quarters were near the fort, but where? And I have a map of the trial ditches, and they really are pretty comprehensive, but it's very easy to miss slight indications in the ground that are left by post holes, which are there for only a few years. These were very light dwellings, built of a post stuck in the ground, and roofed lightly with cane or straw or sage, and they wouldn't leave much trace behind them anyhow. Just a year ago, the Park Service got round to having a fairly high-part conference on Rorokal, about what could they do for the 400th anniversary.

And pretty well, everyone who was at that conference said, well, look, you ought to find out where these dwelling houses were. Between 1964 and 1982, tremendous advances have been made in developing sensing material, sensing instruments, and magnetometers, and so on. And they can now find traces of very minute disturbances below ground without actually digging, or get indications of where to work. Only about 10 days ago, I got from the superintendent at Fort Raleigh, a preliminary report on the work that was done in November of last year. And the covering letter assured me that I had to be very careful, because there wasn't anything yet that the press could get hold of, the media could get hold of, that the results were inconclusive, but encouraging.

But you see, this is the sort of thing, which is gradually, I think, bringing us a little nearer to the conference. But it's a very slow business. Between 1954, my Rono Poiders went to press. In 1979, when the collection that Alison and I did, New American World, came out, there were only two documents. We found in the meantime that had any information of any value about the Rono call. One was a report from Spain, from a chap who was questioned in Spain, who had been on some of the voyages, and who gave a rather garbled account of some of them, but his account contained one or two little nuggets of new information. And the other was a report of a conversation of a man who had spoken to Ralph Lane shortly after he returned from Rono Kyland, and he told him that that colony came to an end, and Drake took them away, largely because there was a threat of a Spanish invasion.

We now know also that the Spaniards did find Rono Kyland in 1588. They found a little slipway somewhere near a pleasant bomb point. They found well-stuff in the ground, with barrels inside them to keep them open. They found a lot of debris. But they didn't see anybody. So perhaps any lost colonists that were hanging about, kept very much undercover, perhaps they'd already gone down to live with Mantio after the main body, as I think, had gone north. This raises the question of whether they really did wait three years for white, whether they didn't go down fairly quickly down to the outer banks, and just come up occasionally to camp out inside their palisated enclosure in the off chance that white would turn up after all.

But by 1590, I would have thought they'd have pretty well given up hope. On the other hand, I think that we can still have differing views about this and other matters. I think that the material is just sufficient to set our emanations to work, to keep us on our alert, on the alert, for new interpretations. One has to be very careful about new interpretations of old material, but it's not impossible that some blinding light, or perhaps a little light, anyhow, will appear if you work it to these problems long enough. I had very convincing theory that a hurricane destroyed the lost colonists within a very short time of there being left by white, and it was all very convincing.

We have no evidence that there was a hurricane during these years, and if there was a hurricane, why did the palisated survive? And there was no fallen trees, anything like that, to alarm white when he came in 1590. Well, now you can see I'm starting to ramble on, but I think that I've given you just samples of the kind of things which historians, archaeologists, and so on are. I've been looking at, I've been thinking about, and I do hope that during those years, 1984 to 1987, that new ideas about the colonists, possibly new evidence about them, I'm not sure there isn't some evidence to be found in Spain yet. And a new awareness of the kind of things, or of which is important, namely the white Harriet survey, particularly.

I hope that these things will emerge, and will be spread amongst the wider circle, and will help to give solidity to our understanding and our knowledge of the lost colonists. And after the colonists in general, thank you. Historian David Beer's Quinn, speaking on the Roanoke colonies after 400 years, at a dinner of the Friends of the Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Famelton Henderson for WUUNC.