N.C. 400th Anniversary Celebration

The North Carolina 400th Anniversary Committee is now in the very heart of their summer activities on Famelton Henderson. Dr. John Neville, chairman of the 400th Anniversary Committee, orchestrates much of the celebration. He relates the days, events and tomorrow's festivities. Princess Ann arrived this afternoon. She is now at Moorhead House here in Chapel Hill, where there's a dinner in her honor being given by Governor Mrs. Hunt. So she's here in Chapel Hill at this very moment. In the morning, she will fly from Raleigh Durham Airport to Manioh, where she will participate in the events. We've already had a number of dignitaries from England arrived. The Lord Mayer and Lady Mayer S. of Plymouth are in North Carolina. They are already down at Ronock Island.

The chairman of the Devon County Council and his wife are here and they are actually in Chapel Hill right now. The British Ambassador is here. A number of other Englishmen have already gone to Manioh. Lord and Lady Clinton, who unhaves Barton, the birthplace of Sir Walter Raleigh, are down there. Jeffrey and Angela Gilbert, the descendents of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's half brother, are already on Ronock Island and some of the Plymouth City Councillors are there. Well, we certainly have enough people. There must be a lot going on. Just what is it? Well, there's a great deal going on. In the morning when Princess Anne arrives in Manioh, she will be met by a delegation of people who are already there. The governor will have arrived in Manioh earlier than she. And so he will be at the airport to greet her as will be the Mayor of Manioh and a number of other local officials.

She will then go to the waterfront where she will unveil a plaque, a companion to the plaque that the governor unveiled in Plymouth last April. Then after that ceremony, we will, a group of dignitaries will process across the bridge to the historic site of Elizabeth II, where 10 o'clock the ceremonies will begin in which we actually officially begin the 400th anniversary. The governor hunt will take part. Her Royal Highness the Princess Anne will bring the greetings of Her Majesty the Queen and the British government. The postmaster general will be there to commission a commemorative stamp in Secretary Hodgkins of the Department of Cultural Resources. We'll dedicate the ship and the visitor center. There will be both national anthems will be played and sung. And I think it will be an exciting day.

The people down in Manioh said that the flags are up and the banners are flying and that the town looks lovely. It is all ready for the people and we just hope for a beautiful day and a lot of nice events. After the ceremonies, the princes and her party and a number of people will go to the Elizabethan gardens where they will be a garden party in her honor. And then after the garden party, the princes will leave to fly to Atlanta, Georgia and from Atlanta she will then return to England. Now there has been a lot of interest around the Elizabeth too itself and whether or not I will be able to get in and out of all the places it needs to get in and out of. How will that finally result? Okay. The dredging will be done. It will be done this fall. We will not be able to do it before the 13th of July because we got into the season that you don't dredge for fear of harming shellfish and things like that. And so for environmental reasons, the dredging will be done this fall. At that time, Elizabeth too will be able to sail to most ports in North Carolina.

And we look forward to her visiting a number of ports. She won't be able to get up Chapel Hill and won't be able to float in lake Jordan I guess but she couldn't get up that river but she will sail in the coastal areas. What exactly happens to it? Will there be continual tours of the ship or what happens after that? The ship, there's a visitor center built at the ship where people will come and see the history both of the area and of the 400th anniversary that were celebrating and something describing the ship and had was used 400 years ago. And then people will go aboard the ship. It will not take people for cruises however. But when it does sail from port to port, people will then be able to visit it when it's in port. For example, if it were to go to Elizabeth City, then people that could come aboard in Elizabeth City if it went to Newburn or Beaufort or Wilmington or Bath or places like this, then people could come aboard it. Now it has a crew of the friends of Elizabeth too make up the crew for the ship Elizabeth too and they'll be the ones who will actually sail it.

This business of having royalty around it is rather peculiar to most of us. How does one procure a royal personage with such an event? Well, one has to have the support of the governor and that helps a great deal for him to actually issue the invitation. We worked very closely with the British Embassy and with the people at Buckingham Palace. They were quite interested from the beginning in having a member of the royal family to attend all events and to come to North Carolina. We weren't sure at the beginning which member it would be. And it worked out that it is the Queen's only daughter, the Princess Anne, and we're delighted that she is in North Carolina at this point. And as far as we know, it is the first visit by a member of the royal family to North Carolina.

There's always this matter of etiquette which the English are very strong on. How does one bond up for the correct way to behave in the presence of our Highness? Well, they tell us that we ask and they tell us that it was quite simple that one of on first meeting the Princess says her royal Highness. After that one says ma'am and most of us being southerners are used to that. In references to other members of the royal family, one would say for example if you were talking about the Queen, one would say reference to her majesty the Queen and not your mother, you know, in the more familiar terms to her. The main question people ask is does one curtsy and bow. This is a question we always ask. We would tell that if you feel comfortable curtsy and bowing, it is appropriate. But if you are not comfortable, it is also appropriate not to do whatever makes you the most comfortable. And so since most of us are not used to bowing and curtsy, a doubt if many people have done so or will do so tonight.

Also, members of the royal family do not give interviews and they do not give autographs. And so this is something I think that many Americans are not used to, we used to our celebrities doing that. But members of the royal family are different type of celebrities, something that we don't have in this country. Because this whole 400 celebration has had a number of components. The British American festival was not very long ago and this is certainly the highlight. Are there other things planned to carry on? How long does the party last? Well, the commemoration, and I say commemoration because it's not all party. There is some party to that and I think that's great fun. But the commemoration will last until the 18th of August, 1987, which was Virginia Day's birthday. A number of things are in planning. We still have a publications program. UNC Press has a book on the American Drawings of America 1585 on the John White Drawings, which will be coming out this month.

They already have a book by David Stick, which is out on Ronock Island, and another number of other publications. The British Library has an exhibit which is up now in the British Library in London in March. It's coming to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh and then in June will be at the New York Public Library. We're doing archaeology at the present time, trying to learn more about the Indians, more about the city of Raleigh. And then our county committees are planning a number of things here in Chapel Hill in October. We will be doing festival 400, which our Orange County Committee for the 400th anniversary has planned. And I think this will be an exciting part of it. The English-speaking union is having its national meeting in the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill area in October. And then we will be meeting later this summer to start planning what we want to do next summer as part of the celebration.

So it is a continuing thing and all the plans have not been made because we have several years to go, but there will be a number of things coming up in the next few years. Well, this is certainly getting a lot of attention in North Carolina and I would imagine in certain parts of England. How big is the attention? How far are inquiries coming from it? Is there a lot of media attention or is it just more common people who want to take part in this? It is a combination of both. Today, my office has gotten calls from BBC and CBS and I think ABC and NBC all of them. They have been articles in the Los Angeles Times, of course in some of the English newspapers. And it is amazing from how we get clippings from newspapers and small towns in the Midwest and the far west. But in every newspaper in this country, I mean not this country, but the state has carried them in a lot in the surrounding states. But we are getting good coverage throughout the country.

Southern Living has done a big article on us. Good housekeeping done an article. The Saturday evening post did an article. US News and World Report has done an article. Country magazine has done an article. So we have found a lot of publicity from the national press in addition to the local press. So it really has been an exciting thing from that aspect. The thing that always comes up is how much is all this costing and where is the money coming from? I knew that was going to be your next question. It always is. We have the American Quadrice Intennial Corporation has raised within the state one and a half million dollars, which we raised primarily from the corporate citizens of North Carolina. And they have very generously participated by making these donations. The state has built the business center and prepared that part of it. But the ship was built entirely with private funds.

And the activities going on on Aronok Island are being paid for by our private funds rather than by state funds. So the private money has been going for that. The state money has been going for things like the visitor center and some improvement to roads and things on that order. So as day of counting is contributed, they have done some of the buses to help transport people around in the area, which is I think is the most appropriate way for them to participate. So it has been a combination of private funds, state funds and local funds. While the benefits be, what will be the final payoff from all this? Well, I think there will be several. One will be educational. I think people are much more aware of North Carolina history and the significance of these colonies in the history of our country. I think we're having a benefit in tourism from what I understand the out of banks by themselves have an increase in tourism this year. And we hope that it will be an increase throughout the state because anytime we publicize one part of the state, we publicize the entire state of North Carolina.

As I said earlier, these people from England who are here, they're going to tour all of North Carolina. I'm taking them on a tour of North Carolina next week. I'll go back and I think tell people about some of the other things in North Carolina. In fact, they're going to have lunch in Hillsborough on Monday. And then, whereas it's used, I believe it used to be Hillsborough and then on to Winston-Salem, then up to Grandfather Mountain, and then to Ash for where they will visit, build more, and then they will go back to England from there. So I think in many ways, the educational, I think there'll be economic benefits from the tourism, and then something about just pride in letting people know that the first English colony was in North Carolina. It wasn't at Jamestown in Virginia, and it wasn't at Plymouth and Massachusetts. It was on Rotto, and here in North Carolina. Are we any closer to this? Anyone here got an insight information on whatever did happen to that colony anyway?

No, we have a book done by the Division of Archives and History for us by a man named David Beer's Quinn, who has some ideas of what may have happened to them. David Stig has some theories about what may have happened to him. In fact, he discusses most of the theories, and so maybe I'll let you buy these books to find out what the answers are. We don't know. Many theories, historians love to argue about it, but I kind of like having one of the first mysteries of American history right here in North Carolina, and maybe with our archaeology and our research, we'll find out more about these colonies. Well, it's quite a long track, I would imagine. At this point, no one has already driven up to the media. It won't be practical to do so. At this point, are there any spaces housing there? Are they filling up or should people just plan to tune in on their TVs and watch? Well, people tell me several days ago that there were still a few rooms. They were taking only reservations for people who wanted to be there for the whole weekend, but there would be a few rooms for people who arrived and then started looking for a room.

I don't think I would leave Chapel Hill tonight and start looking for a room in Manio tomorrow morning. I will be flying down tomorrow and I have a room, so I'm glad I don't have to drive and then I do have a room because it would be a rather long way to begin looking for a room. I would suggest listening to you on your radio or watching on television and then later in the summer or in the early fall going down and visiting the ship and looking at the sights where you might get a better view of things without the crowd. There will be plenty of reports on tomorrow's activities for those of us who can't be there. That gathering of festive people, bright flags and British royalty is a far cry from what the original settlers found. Professor William Powell is an authority on North Carolina history and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He takes us back.

In 1584, Philip Amitus and Arthur Barlow reached the coast of what's now in North Carolina. They had been sent by Walter Raleigh who had a charter from Queen Elizabeth I to find a place for a settlement. The reason for this settlement probably was to establish a base from which a Spanish shipping could be attacked to demonstrate England's claim to this part of the New World. Well, Amitus and Barlow were young men probably in their very early twitties who had worked with Raleigh before and whom Raleigh trusted and whose expenses Raleigh paid to come and simply select a place for English people to live in the New World. Raleigh twitties sounds rather young for that kind of responsibility. Was that a common practice? Well, it probably was. People didn't live as long in those days and you had to get on with the business of living. Do what you were going to do early and if you live long enough, enjoy it, but otherwise have it behind you. How big was the economy? How many people were involved in this?

This first group that came in 1584 was very small, two ships, I believe, explorers, some scientists, people who could report back to Raleigh because this really was a reconnaissance expedition rather than a colony. It was not until the next year 1585 that the first colony came. Now, when the colonists actually did arrive where people auditioned, would you have to have certain talents to be allowed to come? That's a very good question and I expect the answer is yes. The first colony in 1584, 1585 was a military expedition. Ralph Lane was a military officer who had been serving in Ireland and he was recalled and placed in charge of the colony. He was organized along military lines, people knew what their responsibilities were, what their rank was, what they were supposed to do, whom they were supposed to obey, and I can imagine that people were examined at least superficially to determine whether or not they had qualifications that were needed. A number of years ago, I tried to identify some of these colonists and I'm pretty well convinced in my own mind that there were specialists with them. People, for example, who would recognize Go, perhaps who could flux Go and people who could make baskets, people who would recognize different kinds of woods, perhaps people with an ability to learn languages quickly, who could speak with the Indians.

Yes, I think that specialists were chosen. What would lead somebody to leave all the comforts of home for life like this? You have to remember that they really weren't comforts of home. They lived a pretty frugal existence in many cases, particularly I suppose those who were in the army might have been in escape, but they were looking for adventure, an opportunity to lead a new life. Maybe they were trying to get away from a nagging wife who knows, you can't tell why people left. This first colony, the lane colony in 1585 was composed entirely of men, so they may have anticipated that their wives would come later, that they would simply lay the groundworks for a future colony. The possibility that they might acquire land and the hope existed that they would find gold. Maybe they could sneak a little in their pocket on the side and get away with something.

Now, most references to the new world refer to Virginia, and the landing was, in fact, what is now Manteo North Carolina. Just how was this area defined to those people and how big are we talking here? John White and Thomas Harriet surveyed the area, made maps, and the region they covered was from Florida all the way north of the Chesapeake Bay, the whole coast. When Amitus and Barlow got back in 1584, they described the country in very glowing terms. Queen Elizabeth was pleased, and she chose to name the country Virginia in her own honor. She was the Virgin Queen, and the region was named in her honor, of course. It's caused a lot of confusion, because the later state of Virginia was formed in the same area that Amitus and Barlow and Harriet and White had explored. So it had a reason to be called Virginia in those days, but we don't like them to take credit for Ronald Kyle, and that's in what's now North Carolina, and you have to be very careful how you say that.

In the time that they were here, what were they able to accomplish? The Amitus and Barlow colony was here for over a month, they explored as widely as they could, they collected samples of the products of the New World. Plants don't know that they took any animals, they may well have. John White made watercolor drawings, they took back with them to Indians, Madeo, and one cheese. Thomas Harriet began learning to speak the Algonquin language that these Indians spoke, and conversed with them and gathered a great deal of information. And from that information, he published a little book called The Newfoundland of Virginia, in which he related things that he had found. And then a few years later, a book called America was published in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1590, describing further these things. And the 1590 book was illustrated with engravings from the John White watercolor drawings.

They learned a great deal about the life of the Native American, the products that would grow here, things that wouldn't grow. They thought that since North Carolina was in the same latitude with the Mediterranean, that tropical fruits and nuts, and things of that sort that they had been importing from the Middle East would also grow here. And they discovered that that was not the case. They mentioned the Algonquin Indians, whatever happened to them. Eventually, they fell victim to White men's greed, to White men's diseases. They had no natural immunity to measles and mumps and whooping cough and that sort of thing. And they were wiped out within about a century or a little over, simply disappeared. Most part, not all, of course, that some survived, but the vast majority of them unfortunately died. Or were killed in battle with other Indians, egg-downed by the whites. What had that society been based on when they primarily agricultural or what was their activity?

Agriculture and fishing, they had several stable villages. One of these villages, Chowanoac, has recently been discovered and excavated by archaeologists, and there's evidence that they had lived there for over a thousand years. So the Indians in North Carolina seemed to have been rather stable. They had these small towns protected by Palisade. Crops were planted in the vicinity and men went off hunting and fishing to provide for the families. Now, in the very early settlement, what was the relationship to the colony, the early settlers? Between the Indians and there wasn't initially always this war and hostility to stand on the movies? No, the Indians were very friendly at first, quite willing to share anything they had that could be shared. Information particularly, they were very generous in teaching the whites how to make canoes, for example. They dug out canoes, which crops were useful, what plants were poisonous, how to hunt deer.

Facts they needed to survive, to make their way in the wilderness, which was completely unfamiliar to the English who had arrived. You mentioned that these villages or ruins of villages had been found of the Indians, but of course everyone was still looking for the lost colony. One of the latest theories and activity in locating it. Nothing new has been discovered that I'm aware of. Archaeologists, of course, are excavating the fight around Fort Raleigh on Runok Island. Archaeologists are notoriously reluctant to reveal what they find. They want to be absolutely certain before they publish anything. But I understand that last summer they found evidence of a drip line where a fairly large house or perhaps a barracks was built and water dripped off the roof of the house. Signs of posts that might have been a corner post and a construction were found. But that, of course, was the site of the northern of Runok Island, which we've known for a long time.

I think what you're asking is what became of the lost colony and the answer is we don't know yet. But we have hopes that some archaeological discovery might be made that will reveal an answer to that question. The 400th anniversary committee is sponsoring a series of pamphlets on various aspects of 16th century America, the Runok colonies and that sort of thing. And one of the pamphlets that's been published recently was written by David B. Quinn. And it deals with the various theories of what became of the lost colony. And Quinn has the outstanding authority on the Runok voyages, has discovered many new contemporary records of the colonists. And this gave him an opportunity to put all of this together to sort of sit back and think about what might have happened. And his conclusion is that the lost colony packed up and went up to the Chesapeake Bay area, which is where Sir Walter Raleigh had told him to go in 1587 in the first place. But Simon Fernandez, the pilot, refused to take them and they were obliged to stay at Runok Island.

Quinn has reinterpreted documents that had been known for some time, kept in John Smith and others in Virginia, talked to Powhatan and other Indians in that area, and picked up tempting little clues that some of the Runok colonies survived until a very short time before the Jamestown colony survived in 1677. But at that time that they were slaughtered by enemy Indians who had invaded the Jamestown area. The rumor further said that a few of the English colonists had survived and were being held captive by enemy Indians somewhat to the west of the Runok Island area, and were obliged to work in the copper mines that the Indians had there. Well, the Runok colonies apparently found no copper, but we now know from later exploration that indeed there were copper mines in the vicinity of what's now Virgilina, a little community on the North Carolina, Virginia line.

So there may have been some truth to the fact that these whites were being held by the Indians to work their copper mines. I suspect that some of the Runok colonies were experienced miners because some came from the Cornwall area and Cornwall is a region where ten has been mined almost since time immemorial, and they must have been experienced miners and the Indians may have discovered that and used them for that purpose. When the colonists initially settled, what were they expecting? I mean, no one now could have foreseen what has happened from this small exhibition that they sent out. Well, what were their hopes and expectations? The charter gave them all the rights that Englishmen had in England, so they felt secure in the liberties that they had as Englishmen. They weren't concerned about that. I don't think they were coming looking for any kind of religious or political freedom, but probably economic advantages. The lost colonists were to be given land grants. They expected the land to be productive, and in time they would engage in trade.

Since the colony was to go to the Chesapeake area, there would have been no difficulty in trading. They may have known something about fish in that area, wildlife, all sorts of opportunities to improve their life. Resources in the woods would have made it possible for them to build houses, to clear land, and grow vegetables and grains of various kinds. So I guess economic advantage is what they were looking for. Launching the Elizabeth II is but the beginning of the 400th anniversary commemoration. Activities will go on in 1987, up to Virginia Day's birthday, so you'll have other chances to participate. Searching for a better life may have been the motive for those early settlers on our coast, is the motive that leads thousands to the United States today. I'm Famelton Henderson for WUNC.