Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (12 page)

Today, the earth ramparts of a fort are visible at the north-eastern end of Roanoke Island, where John White's map clearly (and we suspect accurately) shows the English settlement. The existing twentieth-century recreation of an earlier emplacement is a successor to the now vanished efforts to build a version of Fort Raleigh for tourists to the newly accessible island in the 1930s. While it seems too small for the settlers' purpose, it is an evocative place.
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Almost immediately after this a supply ship sent by Ralegh reached Roanoke and finding it deserted sailed back to England. Then, about two weeks later, Grenville himself arrived with more ships, also found the colony deserted and departed, leaving fifteen men to hold the fort. Presumably he intended that they should stay there to maintain Ralegh's title; but it was a futile move, which in effect condemned them to death. Ironically, had Drake not arrived, as dens ex rnachirra, the colony would probably have survived, at any rate for a time.

However, the Roanoke enterprise did leave an important legacy in Thomas Harriot's A Briefe and The Report of the New Found Land of Virginia and the accompanying paintings of John White. Although many of their notes and sketches were lost during the scramble to get aboard ship in the final retreat, they still had enough material to leave us an invaluable account of 'Virginia' in words and images, based on their joint exploration of the region. Indeed they were evidently planning a more ambitious publication, combining a detailed survey with maps and engravings.
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 This was never completed, but Harriot did write his Briefe Report in the first place to win support for White's venture in May 1587. It was printed in the following year, with its author described as 'Thomas Harriot; servant to the above-named Sir Walter, a member of the Colony, and there imployed in discovering'. Two years later A Brief and True Report was given much wider exposure in the production by Theodor de Bry, a Frankfurt publisher, of his multi-lingual work, America, with engravings of some of White's paintings.
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Harriot's Brief Report was specifically written to counter criticisms of the enterprise by some of the would-be colonists. It was backed by a prefatory letter from Lane, in which he answered those settlers who criticized his government of the colony and affirmed Harriot's status as 'an Actor in the Colony...a man no lesse for his honesty then learning commendable.'
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 Harriot himself stresses his direct observation of the land and its people, having been 'specially imploied' in dealing with the natural inhabitants, thanks presumably to his understanding of Algonquian. He divides the treatise into three parts: first, the 'merchantable commodities' of the land; second, commodities 'knowne to yeelde for victuall and sustenance of mans life'; and third, 'the nature and manners of the people'. There is nothing very remarkable about the first two. The 'tradeable' products of the land are not impressive and did not prove so. Tobacco was to come later, although Harriot does mention it in passing. Of the crops, he gives prominence to maize and corn, claiming that the sowing of an acre of this would yield 200 bushels, compared with forty at most in England. Here he was wildly optimistic.

The main interest of the Report lies in its third section on 'the nature and manners of the people'. Essentially, says Harriot, the Indians are not to be feared: 'they shall have cause both to feare and love us, that shall inhabite with them'. Their only weapons are bows, arrows and wooden truncheons; they have only bark shields to defend themselves; their towns are small - of thirty houses at most - and defended only with walls of bark. A ruler known as a Wiroarts, or chief lord, usually rules over only a few towns. The greatest of them rules over only eighteen towns and can assemble no more than seven or eight hundred men. The language of every 'government' is different from every other. Set battles are rare: they fight mostly by surprise attacks or ambushes. In any war between 'us and them' we have the advantages of discipline, weaponry, and experience. 'In respect of us they are a people poore, and for want of skill and judgement in the knowledge of our things, doe esteeme our trifles before thinges of greater value: Yet considering their lack of our means 'they seeme very ingenious' and in what things they can do, they show 'excellencie of wit'.

Harriot's insights into native religious beliefs and practices are especially relevant to us because both he and Ralegh were at times accused of atheism.
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 The natives, writes Harriot, already have some religious beliefs and although these are erroneous, they could be brought to an understanding of true religion. They believe there is one chief God who created all the others and then made women, who produced children. They think gods have human shapes of which they make images; and they also believe in the immortality of the soul, holding that after death the soul is either carried to the habitation of the gods or 'to a great pitte or hole...to burne continuallie'. They show great respect to their priests for fear of such punishment. Harriot says that he learned all these things through conversations with their priests, who came through this to doubt some of their own beliefs. In a particularly apt comment he writes that the natives saw many European instruments and devices that they could not comprehend: sea compasses, perspective glasses whereby was shewed mane strange sightes', burning glasses, guns, books, writing and reading, 'spring clocks that seeme to goe of themselves' and so on. They believed these 'were rather the works of gods then of men, or at the leastwise they had bin given and taught us of the gods'. In every town he came to Harriot proclaimed the truth of the Bible and the doctrine of salvation through Christ. Wingina, the Wiroans with whom they lived, often accompanied them to pray and sing psalms. Once, when their corn withered as the result of a drought, they asked us 'to pray to our God of England' to preserve the crop. In one town, after unspecified offences had been committed against the colonists, the people began to die very fast, presumably of measles or smallpox. They believed that because such effects followed their own 'wicked practises', the colonists had the power to kill without weapons. Harriot seems to conclude from this that Lane and other colonists had been unnecessarily fierce in killing some of the natives for reasons that would have been better ignored.

In conclusion Harriot commended Virginia as a desirable place for a colony. His explorations suggested to him that the mainland was even more fertile than the coastal regions and that the climate generally was temperate. Only four of their company had died of sickness and those had been sickly when they arrived. Furthermore Sir Walter Ralegh had been liberal in his granting of lands. Provided that those who settled were provided with enough food for a year and cultivated diligently, they would survive and prosper.

The drawings and paintings of Harriot's collaborator, John White, are a vivid counterpart to the former's prose.
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 Very little is known of White's early life. There were several men of that name living in England during the 1580s and it is not always clear which of these was the painter. The first definite appearance of our man comes in a list of members of the Company of Painters and Stainers in 1580, and he was last heard of in Ireland in the 1590s. He may well have travelled with Frobisher to the north in 1577, for some drawings of Inuit people survive, and he probably sailed with Amadas and Barlowe to Virginia in 1584. He was certainly with Harriot in the colonizing expedition of 1585-6, when his main work was done, and he returned to Virginia, as we will see, in 1587. His pictures of Indian men, women and children represent living people rather than types. They are shown in their peaceful and well-ordered villages, dancing and fishing, with corn growing in the fields. Attractive sketches of fish, turtles, birds and plants accompany the portraits. Probably these are the best pictures of North American life before the days of photography. No doubt they were intended to attract settlers to this innocent land, but they rise above mere marketing.

The sketches themselves were little known until the twentieth century, but they were circulated widely through the engravings of Theodor de Bry. Having spent the years 1587-8 in England, when he presumably saw White's pictures, de Bry launched a massive publishing enterprise, America, in 1590, with its first volume on Virginia, and a further thirteen following on Central and South America, Africa, and the East Indies. The Virginia volume was published in Latin, German, English and French, later volumes in Latin and German only. His prints are far from being mere copies of White's sketches, emphasizing more strongly the peaceful nature of the Indians and the fruitful products of the soil.

After the return to England of Lane and the first settlers, White took the lead in organizing a successor colony. Ralegh was still to be its overlord but seems now to have played a less active role. The new colony was to be different from the first. Rather than providing a base for privateers and naval enterprises against the Spanish, it was to be primarily a colony of settlement and trade, perhaps with privateering as a secondary objective. While the first colony's settlers had been entirely male, this one included seventeen women and nine children against eighty-six men. On 7 January 1587 a formal grant of arms was made, under the authority of Sir Walter Ralegh, to the governor and twelve assistants of the 'City of Ralegh', the name of the proposed corporation. The actual indenture formalizing Ralegh's grant has not survived, but it evidently included the allocation of 500 acres for each settler, provided they went in person. John White was nominated governor with nine assistants, and Ralegh ordered that the settlement was to be made in Chesapeake Bay, a more suitable harbour than Roanoke Island.
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White had some contact with Sir George Carey, Captain of the Isle of Wight and Vice-Admiral of Hampshire, who received authorization in January to send out three ships, under the command of William Irish, to take reprisals. Whatever was planned between them is, however, obscure.
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 On 8 May White weighed anchor and left Plymouth with three ships, the Lion of 120 tons, an unnamed flyboat and a pinnace. White was captain of the Lion and Simon Fernandez master. On the forty-second day out from England they reached Dominica and then sailed through the Caribbean until they reached Hatorask on 22 July. Throughout this part of the voyage relations between White and Fernandez became increasingly fraught,White constantly blaming the latter for giving out false information. From Hatorask White intended to sail in the pinnace to Roanoke and make contact with the fifteen men left behind by Grenville. He proposed then to return to the other ships and with them sail on to Chesapeake, where he would build a new settlement. However, as soon as they were in the pinnace, Fernandez called out to the sailors that they should leave the settlers on Roanoke and not proceed to Chesapeake, since it would soon be too late in the year for privateering. Something does not ring true here, since the ships did not actually leave for another month. Fernandez may have had other reasons for refusing to go on to Chesapeake, but unhappily we only have White's side of the story. He, perhaps rather feebly, gave in to this demarche: 'it booted not the Governour to contend with them', he writes. 'Why not?' one may reply. Once arrived on Roanoke Island they searched for Grenville's men, but found only the bones of one. The earthwork around Lane's fort had been rased, but the houses still stood, although deer were in them eating the 'melons' growing indoors.

Two days later the flyboat arrived, having been left behind in the 'Bay of Portingall' with some of the settlers by the machinations of Fernandez, according to White. In spite of the killing of George Howe, one of the assistants,White and Manteo managed to establish good relations with the Indians of Croatoan. White assured them that the settlers had come 'onely to renew the olde love, that was between us, and them, at the first, and to live with them as brethren, and friends'.
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 The Indians told him that Grenville's men had been attacked by a different group of Indians (from Secoton) and had fled, no one knew where.

On 13 August Manteo, described by White as 'our Savage', was christened on Roanoke on the order of Ralegh 'and called Lord therof...in reward of his faithfull service'. Five days later White's daughter Elinor, wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a daughter, who was named Virginia in recognition of the fact that she was the first Christian born there.
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 By this time the Lion and the flyboat were being got ready for the return voyage to England, the settlers preparing letters and tokens to send back. It had already been agreed that two of the assistants should go back to report; but none wished to return. Accordingly, the whole company asked White to return to England and see that their needs were supplied. White at first demurred, claiming that his honour would be impugned if he were to desert the people whom he had persuaded to go with him to Virginia; but in the end he gave way, provided that the assistants sent with him a testimonial that he was going at their request. On 27 August Governor White came on board the flyboat and sailed for England in company with the Lion. Before they left, an unhappy accident occurred: twelve of the men in the flyboat were thrown from the capstan and seriously injured.

When they reached the Azores the Lion left them for a privateering venture, but the flyboat struggled on with only five men fit for service. Eventually, after a storm that lasted six days and with only stinking water to drink, they reached Smerwick in the west of Ireland. White got a passage home in a ship called the Monkey and landed near St Michael's Mount on 5 November. Finally, he reached Southampton on the eighth, meeting Fernandez in the Lion, who had secured no prizes, while losing many of his sailors.

On 20 November 1587 White reported to Ralegh on the state of the colony. Ralegh responded by ordering a pinnace to be sent out with all the provisions they needed and with a letter promising that 'a good supply' of shipping and men would be with them by the following summer.
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 Disastrously for the colony, news of Spanish preparations for the Armada reached England in the early part of 1588 and all shipping was prevented from going to sea. Grenville had some ships ready for a voyage to the West Indies and Ralegh wrote to him passing on the Privy Council's orders for the stay of all shipping, but adding a postcript telling him that he may let certain ships 'steal away'. Although a later order from the Council in April expressly forbade this, White, by now desperate, managed to get leave for two pinnaces, the Brave and the Roe, to be dispatched from Bideford with supplies for the settlement. Again, the lure of privateering intervened: this time the English ships turned out to be victims rather than hunters. After chasing some ships but getting little from them, they came in sight of a tall ship which at first they mistook for an English vessel. White gives a lively but rather confused narrative of events, in which twenty-three men were injured, their master and their mate 'deadly wounded' and unable to leave their beds. White himself suffered three wounds, two in the head and one in the buttocks. He concludes philosophically that as God was 'justly punishing our former thee verie of our evil desposed mariners', they were obliged to give up their voyage and return to England, where the other pinnace joined them.