Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (7 page)

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Authors: Giles Milton

BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
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It did not take the English long to realise that they had stumbled across the perfect location for Ralegh’s colony. The natives—Algonquins—were friendly and the land was fertile; all they needed now was a good strategic site for a settlement. In this they were unwittingly aided by Granganimeo, who suggested they row across Pamlico Sound to the little island of Roanoke, where he himself had a
house. Barlowe jumped at this suggestion and immediately set off to the northern end of this small wooded island, where he found “a village of nine houses, built of cedar and fortified round about with sharpe trees.” No sooner had his boat been spotted by the villagers than Granganimeo’s wife—still fully clothed—“came running out to meete us very cheerfully and friendly.” She ordered the villagers to haul the pinnace onto the sand and had the men carried to her longhouse, where a “great fire” was crackling in the hearth.
Her first task was to scrub down these stinking, sweat-stained mariners, who had not washed since leaving London. “[She] tooke off our clothes, and washed them, and dried them againe. Some of the women pulled off our stockings and washed them. Some washed our feete in warme water, and she herselfe tooke great paines to see all thinges ordered in the best manner she coulde, making great haste to dresse some meate for us to eate.”
She proved an attentive hostess. Once the men had been bathed and warmed, the food began to appear. “[She] brought us into the innere roome where she set on the boord … some wheat like furmentie [wheat boiled in milk], sodden [stewed] venison and roasted, fishe sodden, boyled, and roasted, melons rawe and sodden, rootes of divers kindes, and divers fruites.”
There was a brief moment of panic when three armed hunters appeared in the twilight, but when the villagers noticed Barlowe’s alarm they “beate the poore fellowes out of the gate againe.” Nevertheless, the incident reminded the men that they were alone in an alien land. As soon as they had finished their meal, they insisted on returning to their boat, much to the chagrin of Granganimeo’s wife.
“[She] was much grieved, and sent divers men and thirtie women to sitte all night on the bankes-side by us, and sent us into our boates fine mattes to cover us from the rayne, using very many wordes to intreate us to rest in their houses: but because we were fewe men, and if we had miscarried, the voyage had been in very greate daunger, we durst not adventure anything.”
Barlowe remained anchored off Roanoke Island for some five
weeks, exploring the area and searching for the most suitable place in which to plant a colony. He and his men surveyed “about a hundreth islands,” but none could match Roanoke. It was fertile, richly stocked with wildlife, and sheltered from the Atlantic storms by the sand dunes of the Outer Banks. Better still, it was well hidden from any Spanish captain who happened to be sailing along the coastline. The one drawback—its dense population—was not given a moment’s thought.
America’s lush shores delighted Ralegh’s men. “I think in all the world the like aboundance is not to be founde,” wrote one. Roanoke Island (middle left) was sheltered from the sea by the Outer Banks
Barlowe and Amadas still had one important matter to attend to before they could return to England. Ralegh’s last instruction before they had set sail was to bring back a native American so that he could be taught English and reveal the secrets of his land. He had not offered any advice on how the men were to coax this tribesman on board, nor did Barlowe see fit to explain how they achieved their
goal. But when the two vessels set sail for England, they had on board “two of the savages, being lustie men, whose names were Wanchese and Manteo.”
It is unlikely that the two men knew each other. Wanchese came from Roanoke while Manteo lived on Croatoan, a long sandy spit that formed part of the Outer Banks. It was not long before the two Indians found they had little in common. While Manteo saw the English as his hosts, Wanchese came to view them as captors.
The ships arrived in England in the middle of September 1584. Barlowe dashed straight to Durham House to inform Ralegh of his exciting news. The content of their discussions was secret and will never be known, but by the time Barlowe’s account was published, America was being promoted as a second Eden. “We found the people most gentle, loving and faithfull,” he wrote, “void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the golden age.” He added that “the earth bringeth foorth all things in aboundance, as in the first creation, without toile or labour.”
The myth of the noble savage was born, but it remained to be seen if Manteo and Wanchese would live up to expectations.
Harriot’s Devils
Arthur Barlowe brought Manteo and Wanchese to London, where the Indians were given chambers in Durham House. There are no surviving records of their first days in the city, nor of the reaction of curious Londoners, but they must have made an extraordinary sight as they wandered through the capital’s alleys and markets clothed in deerskin breechcloths, their hair decked with feather mantles. They were probably given the standard tour of the city’s sights—the Tower of London, the markets of Cheapside, and the rotting heads of traitors impaled on London Bridge. London did not impress all of its visitors, but its sheer size and noise must have left a deep mark on the two Indians.
The bridge was one of the most magnificent sights—its twenty arches of squared stone supporting such a hodgepodge of gabled houses that “it seemeth rather a continual street than a bridge.” It led to Southwark, where the stews, bear pits, and fighting dogs drew many curious visitors. But the most impressive vista extended along the northern bank of the Thames. The grandiose edifices that lined the Strand must have astonished Manteo and Wanchese, who had never before seen a building larger than a wood-framed shelter covered with wicker mats. Further downstream, the Tower, which was already an ancient monument in Elizabethan times, also made a
fine sight. Those fortunate enough to be granted access to its cavernous interior were left rubbing their eyes at the treasury, which housed “objects of silver gilt and also of pure gold”; regal beds “of red velvet embroidered with gold and numerous little pearls,” and gold and agate chalices “set with large pearls, emeralds, diamond and rubies.”
In the third week of October, Manteo and Wanchese accompanied Ralegh to Hampton Court, where the queen was in residence. Their visit coincided with that of a Pomeranian traveller, Lupold von Wedel, who had spent much of the year at the court and was most impressed by what he had seen. Here, in the palace’s formal gardens, the Elizabethan court made a magnificent spectacle, especially on Sundays when the queen and her retinue proceeded to church with all the pomp and ceremony they could muster.
They were led by her lifeguard, “strong and tall,” who were dressed to the nines. “They bore gilt halberts, red coats faced with black velvet [and] in front and on the back they wore the queen’s arms.” Next came the “gentlemen of rank”—her privy councillors—“two of them bearing the royal sceptre each, a third with the royal sword in a red velvet scabbard, embroidered with gold and set with precious stones and large pearls.” There were ladies of noble birth, children of lords, and the yeoman of the guard, who carried “small gilt hunting spears.” The queen’s heralds made the greatest concession to flamboyant dress. They wore bright blue mantles with extraordinary wings made of beaten gold. As the queen passed, eight trumpeters blew their brass, two drummers gave a dramatic roll, and a piper whistled a merry tune.
No one was allowed to outshine Her Majesty, the focus of all attention. Von Wedel had met her on several occasions and each time she looked more splendid than the last. She wore a long velvet mantle, “lined with ermin, white with little black dots,” and liked to travel in her ornate sedan chair borne by “two cream-coloured horses with yellow manes and tails.”
It was not easy to talk with the queen, for it was she who decided
who had something of interest to say. When gentlemen were called to her side, a strict protocol had to be observed. The chosen courtier had to squat on his knees and continue in this pose “until she orders him to rise.” Leaving the queen involved a more elaborate charade. Courtiers had to walk backwards and “bow down deeply, and when they have reached the middle of the room, they must bow down a second time.”
One courtier who was frequently called to the queen’s side, according to Von Wedel, was Ralegh. She chatted with him in “a very friendly manner, making jokes,” and liked to tease him in front of others. “She pointed with her finger in his face, saying he had some uncleanness there, which she even intended to wipe off with her handkerchief.” Ralegh was embarrassed and “took it away himself.” Von Wedel noticed that “she loved this gentleman now in preference to all others” and added that “two years ago he was scarcely able to keep a single servant, and now she had bestowed so much upon him that he is able to keep five hundred servants.”
Ralegh kept a careful eye on the Indians during his time at Hampton Court, anxious not to overawe them. There were many who wished to meet these curious individuals, but he kept a tight control over who was introduced into their company. He even made them dress in dowdy taffeta blouses, in the English fashion, to detract from the attention they received. His protective veil worked well, and explains the lack of written records about the two Indian tribesmen.
One visitor who was given access was Von Wedel, who met them after church on October 18, 1584, and excitedly recorded the event in his journal. “Their faces as well as their whole bodies were very similar to those of the white Moors at home,” he wrote. “They wear no shirts, only a piece of fur to cover the pudenda and the skins of wild animals to cover their shoulders. Here they are clad in brown taffeta.” Von Wedel thought “they had a very childish and wild appearance” and added that “nobody could understand their language.”
 
Queen Elizabeth liked to joke with Ralegh. “She loved this gentleman in preference to all others,” a court visitor noted
The attempt to decipher their native tongue was indeed proving extremely difficult. Several visitors had tried to ask them simple questions in sign language, but it proved impossible to understand their answers. The strange nuances and weird inflections of their
speech stumped even gifted linguists, and it soon became apparent that a superior intellect would be required to crack the cryptic riddle of this language.
There was never any doubt as to who this genius might be. Thomas Harriot was immediately set to work on Manteo and Wanchese, employed not only to learn their language but to compile a detailed phrasebook and dictionary. Harriot jumped at the opportunity to work on a project that had stumped everyone else. He was convinced that the language of the Indians conformed to some sort of logical system and that complete mastery of grammar and pronunciation was possible, given time. He quickly learned a few basic words and phrases, but when he came to writing them down, he found himself up against an intractable problem: the English alphabet could not accurately represent the Indians’ speech. Many of their words contained sounds that had no corresponding letters in English, and even when the letters did exist, the written word gave no clue as to how they should be pronounced. The English words
wall
and
man
both contained an
a
, yet that one letter was pronounced in different ways. Harriot knew that without giving some clue as to how Indian words should be pronounced, any phrasebook would be as good as useless.
He was not a linguist, so he turned to the experts for advice. One of these, John Hart, had spent considerable effort devising a phonetic alphabet for Welsh so that any man wishing to speak the language could do so perfectly, “when and wheresoever he may see it … though he understoode no worde thereof.” It had worked well. Hart had written down long sentences of Welsh in his alphabet—though he did not understand a word—and read them back to complete strangers, who affirmed “that I coulde speake Welsh.”
The language of the Indians, known as Algonkian, was altogether more complicated than Welsh, and Hart’s system was too simplistic for the perfectionist Harriot. The mathematician took the bold step of devising a new and highly complex alphabet that precisely represented
every Algonkian speech sound. This was no easy matter. He worked obsessively, often studying late into the autumn evenings, long after the great gates of Durham House had been bolted for the night. He wanted his alphabet to be a work of perfection. To this end, he studied the Indians’ vocal chords, noting the position of their lips and tongues, and, where necessary, created new symbols to record strange sounds. It was a laborious process, for there were literally hundreds of nuances to be recorded, but over the course of a few months his alphabet slowly took shape. Harriot left no notes as to how he carried out his research, but he probably adapted Hart’s work on the inflexions of speech and how words were formed. Hart had written at length about the “dumb and dul sounds in our speech” and categorised sounds by the manner in which they were made—“eyther by touching of the lippes togither, or of the under lippe to the upper teeth, or of the tongue to the palet.”
Harriot’s resultant alphabet had thirty-six characters in total and looked extraordinary—a hodgepodge of algebraic symbols, Greek and Roman letters, invented characters. One scholar described the letters as looking “like devills,” perhaps because some ended in forked tridents. The shape of the letters provided a clue as to how they should be pronounced. English equivalents were recorded alongside where applicable, while sounds that were unfamiliar were categorised as “barbarouse wordes” and placed in a separate column. Harriot tested his alphabet on English phrases, putting passages of the Lord’s Prayer into his new script to see whether they were readable. The alphabet was a work of unparalleled creativity—one that had required the logic of a scientist and the imagination of an artist. It successfully represented every sound of this complex language. He planned at a later date to expand his work into an English-Algonkian dictionary—and may well have done so—but the work is long since lost. Even his short vocabulary was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Only the alphabet itself now survives.
Harriot had not devoted all his time to the dry science of phonetics.
He had also invested considerable energy in learning conversational Algonkian and in teaching the Indians some basic English. It soon became apparent that Manteo was far more compliant than Wanchese, who evinced no interest in learning English and showed even less desire to stay in London.
By Christmas 1584, Harriot and Manteo were able to engage in simple conversations. Harriot managed to coax a small amount of information from the Indian and was able to inform Ralegh, directly from Manteo, about “the goodnesse of the soile and of great commodities that would arise to the realme of England, by traffique, if that the English had anie habitation and were planted to live there.” This news was deemed to be of sufficient interest to be discussed in Parliament and cited in the bill that confirmed Ralegh’s American patent.
It was not long before Harriot had attained considerable fluency in Algonkian. This enabled him to quiz Manteo about his land and people, amassing information that was to prove of the greatest importance. The two men spent whole days in each other’s company in their Durham House chambers—the scientist in his customary black gown and Manteo in his taffeta blouse. Harriot noted down everything that he learned, to be written up in greater detail later in his book about America,
A Briefe
and
True Report
. He managed to capture something of the sense of wonder and bewilderment felt by the Indians when they first came into contact with Elizabethan England. “Many things they sawe with us,” he wrote, “as mathematicall instruments, sea compasses … [and] spring clocks that seemed to goe of themselves—and many other things that we had—were so strange unto them, and so farre exceeded their capacities to comprehend the reason and meanes how they should be made and done, that they thought they were rather the workes of gods then men.”
Manteo’s revelations about his land and people quickly enabled Harriot to add a great deal of flesh to the bones of Barlowe’s discoveries.
He learned that the region around Roanoke Island was ruled by competing tribal chieftains whose power was dependent upon the number of fighting men they could field. Roanoke itself had fallen under the rule of Wingina, a devious chief whose authority extended for some distance up and down the coast. Combative and fiercely ambitious, Wingina had recently overreached himself in an attack on a neighbouring tribe and had almost been killed. He was “shott in two places through the bodye and once cleane through the thigh.” This was why Barlowe’s men “sawe him not at all.”
Manteo also revealed to Harriot something of the tactics of intertribal warfare. The most successful chieftains were wily and deceitful and thought nothing of using subterfuge to destroy their enemies. He described how one tribe had invited all the leading families of a nearby village to a feast, and “when they were altogether merrie and praying before their idoll … the captaine or lorde of the towne came suddenly upon them and slewe them every one.” Such “cruell and bloodie” violence had drastically reduced the population and “the people are marvelously wasted, and in some places the country left desolate.”

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