John Smith has not chosen to tell us anything of his life during the
interim--perhaps not more than a year and a half--between his
return from Morocco and his setting sail for Virginia. Nor do his
contemporaries throw any light upon this period of his life.
One would like to know whether he went down to Willoughby and had a
reckoning with his guardians; whether he found any relations or friends
of his boyhood; whether any portion of his estate remained of that
“competent means” which he says he inherited, but which does not seem
to have been available in his career. From the time when he set out for
France in his fifteenth year, with the exception of a short sojourn in
Willoughby seven or eight years after, he lived by his wits and by the
strong hand. His purse was now and then replenished by a lucky windfall,
which enabled him to extend his travels and seek more adventures.
This is the impression that his own story makes upon the reader in a
narrative that is characterized by the boastfulness and exaggeration
of the times, and not fuller of the marvelous than most others of that
period.
The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. We
should be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town. Did
he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himself at the
Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine thread of
his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to them? If he
dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite likely to hear
some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour were full of chaff,
not always of the choicest, about the attractions of the Virgin-land,
whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England; where the prisoners
were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans were made of it; and
where--an unheard-of thing--you might become an alderman without having
been a scavenger.
Was Smith an indulger in that new medicine for all ills, tobacco? Alas!
we know nothing of his habits or his company. He was a man of piety
according to his lights, and it is probable that he may have had the
then rising prejudice against theatres. After his return from Virginia
he and his exploits were the subject of many a stage play and spectacle,
but whether his vanity was more flattered by this mark of notoriety than
his piety was offended we do not know. There is certainly no sort of
evidence that he engaged in the common dissipation of the town, nor gave
himself up to those pleasures which a man rescued from the hardships of
captivity in Tartaria might be expected to seek. Mr. Stith says that
it was the testimony of his fellow soldiers and adventurers that “they
never knew a soldier, before him, so free from those military vices of
wine, tobacco, debts, dice, and oathes.”
But of one thing we may be certain: he was seeking adventure according
to his nature, and eager for any heroic employment; and it goes without
saying that he entered into the great excitement of the day--adventure
in America. Elizabeth was dead. James had just come to the throne, and
Raleigh, to whom Elizabeth had granted an extensive patent of Virginia,
was in the Tower. The attempts to make any permanent lodgment in the
countries of Virginia had failed. But at the date of Smith's advent
Captain Bartholomew Gosnold had returned from a voyage undertaken in
1602 under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, and announced that
he had discovered a direct passage westward to the new continent, all
the former voyagers having gone by the way of the West Indies. The
effect of this announcement in London, accompanied as it was with
Gosnold's report of the fruitfulness of the coast of New England which
he explored, was something like that made upon New York by the discovery
of gold in California in 1849. The route by the West Indies, with its
incidents of disease and delay, was now replaced by the direct course
opened by Gosnold, and the London Exchange, which has always been quick
to scent any profit in trade, shared the excitement of the distinguished
soldiers and sailors who were ready to embrace any chance of adventure
that offered.
It is said that Captain Gosnold spent several years in vain, after
his return, in soliciting his friends and acquaintances to join him
in settling this fertile land he had explored; and that at length he
prevailed upon Captain John Smith, Mr. Edward Maria Wingfield, the Rev.
Mr. Robert Hunt, and others, to join him. This is the first appearance
of the name of Captain John Smith in connection with Virginia. Probably
his life in London had been as idle as unprofitable, and his purse
needed replenishing. Here was a way open to the most honorable,
exciting, and profitable employment. That its mere profit would have
attracted him we do not believe; but its danger, uncertainty, and chance
of distinction would irresistibly appeal to him. The distinct object of
the projectors was to establish a colony in Virginia. This proved too
great an undertaking for private persons. After many vain projects the
scheme was commended to several of the nobility, gentry, and merchants,
who came into it heartily, and the memorable expedition of 1606 was
organized.
The patent under which this colonization was undertaken was obtained
from King James by the solicitation of Richard Hakluyt and others.
Smith's name does not appear in it, nor does that of Gosnold nor of
Captain Newport. Richard Hakluyt, then clerk prebendary of Westminster,
had from the first taken great interest in the project. He was chaplain
of the English colony in Paris when Sir Francis Drake was fitting out
his expedition to America, and was eager to further it. By his diligent
study he became the best English geographer of his time; he was the
historiographer of the East India Company, and the best informed man in
England concerning the races, climates, and productions of all parts of
the globe. It was at Hakluyt's suggestion that two vessels were sent out
from Plymouth in 1603 to verify Gosnold's report of his new short route.
A further verification of the feasibility of this route was made
by Captain George Weymouth, who was sent out in 1605 by the Earl of
Southampton.
The letters-patent of King James, dated April 10, 1606, licensed the
planting of two colonies in the territories of America commonly called
Virginia. The corporators named in the first colony were Sir Thos.
Gates, Sir George Somers, knights, and Richard Hakluyt and Edward Maria
Wingfield, adventurers, of the city of London. They were permitted
to settle anywhere in territory between the 34th and 41st degrees of
latitude.
The corporators named in the second colony were Thomas Hankam, Raleigh
Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham, representing Bristol,
Exeter, and Plymouth, and the west counties, who were authorized to make
a settlement anywhere between the 38th and 48th degrees of latitude.
The--letters commended and generously accepted this noble work of
colonization, “which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter
tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian
religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance
of all true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the
infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility and to
a settled and quiet government.” The conversion of the Indians was as
prominent an object in all these early adventures, English or Spanish,
as the relief of the Christians has been in all the Russian campaigns
against the Turks in our day.
Before following the fortunes of this Virginia colony of 1606, to
which John Smith was attached, it is necessary to glance briefly at the
previous attempt to make settlements in this portion of America.
Although the English had a claim upon America, based upon the discovery
of Newfoundland and of the coast of the continent from the 38th to the
68th north parallel by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, they took no further
advantage of it than to send out a few fishing vessels, until Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, a noted and skillful seaman, took out letters-patent
for discovery, bearing date the 11th of January, 1578. Gilbert was the
half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and thirteen years his senior. The
brothers were associated in the enterprise of 1579, which had for its
main object the possession of Newfoundland. It is commonly said, and
in this the biographical dictionaries follow one another, that Raleigh
accompanied his brother on this voyage of 1579 and went with him to
Newfoundland. The fact is that Gilbert did not reach Newfoundland on
that voyage, and it is open to doubt if Raleigh started with him. In
April, 1579, when Gilbert took active steps under the charter of 1578,
diplomatic difficulties arose, growing out of Elizabeth's policy with
the Spaniards, and when Gilbert's ships were ready to sail he
was stopped by an order from the council. Little is known of this
unsuccessful attempt of Gilbert's. He did, after many delays, put to
sea, and one of his contemporaries, John Hooker, the antiquarian, says
that Raleigh was one of the assured friends that accompanied him. But
he was shortly after driven back, probably from an encounter with the
Spaniards, and returned with the loss of a tall ship.
Raleigh had no sooner made good his footing at the court of Elizabeth
than he joined Sir Humphrey in a new adventure. But the Queen
peremptorily retained Raleigh at court, to prevent his incurring the
risks of any “dangerous sea-fights.” To prevent Gilbert from embarking
on this new voyage seems to have been the device of the council rather
than the Queen, for she assured Gilbert of her good wishes, and desired
him, on his departure, to give his picture to Raleigh for her, and she
contributed to the large sums raised to meet expenses “an anchor guarded
by a lady,” which the sailor was to wear at his breast. Raleigh risked L
2,000 in the venture, and equipped a ship which bore his name, but which
had ill luck. An infectious fever broke out among the crew, and the
“Ark Raleigh” returned to Plymouth. Sir Humphrey wrote to his brother
admiral, Sir George Peckham, indignantly of this desertion, the reason
for which he did not know, and then proceeded on his voyage with
his four remaining ships. This was on the 11th of January, 1583. The
expedition was so far successful that Gilbert took formal possession
of Newfoundland for the Queen. But a fatality attended his further
explorations: the gallant admiral went down at sea in a storm off our
coast, with his crew, heroic and full of Christian faith to the last,
uttering, it is reported, this courageous consolation to his comrades at
the last moment: “Be of good heart, my friends. We are as near to heaven
by sea as by land.”
In September, 1583, a surviving ship brought news of the disaster to
Falmouth. Raleigh was not discouraged. Within six months of this loss he
had on foot another enterprise. His brother's patent had expired. On
the 25th of March, 1584, he obtained from Elizabeth a new charter with
larger powers, incorporating himself, Adrian Gilbert, brother of
Sir Humphrey, and John Davys, under the title of “The College of the
Fellowship for the Discovery of the Northwest Passage.” But Raleigh's
object was colonization. Within a few days after his charter was issued
he despatched two captains, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, who in July
of that year took possession of the island of Roanoke.
The name of Sir Walter Raleigh is intimately associated with Carolina
and Virginia, and it is the popular impression that he personally
assisted in the discovery of the one and the settlement of the other.
But there is no more foundation for the belief that he ever visited the
territory of Virginia, of which he was styled governor, than that he
accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland. An allusion by William
Strachey, in his “Historie of Travaile into Virginia,” hastily read, may
have misled some writers. He speaks of an expedition southward, “to some
parts of Chawonock and the Mangoangs, to search them there left by Sir
Walter Raleigh.” But his further sketch of the various prior expeditions
shows that he meant to speak of settlers left by Sir Ralph Lane and
other agents of Raleigh in colonization. Sir Walter Raleigh never saw
any portion of the coast of the United States.
In 1592 he planned an attack upon the Spanish possessions of Panama, but
his plans were frustrated. His only personal expedition to the New World
was that to Guana in 1595.
The expedition of Captain Amadas and Captain Barlow is described by
Captain Smith in his compilation called the “General Historie,” and by
Mr. Strachey. They set sail April 27, 1584, from the Thames. On the 2d
of July they fell with the coast of Florida in shoal water, “where
they felt a most delicate sweet smell,” but saw no land. Presently land
appeared, which they took to be the continent, and coasted along to the
northward a hundred and thirty miles before finding a harbor. Entering
the first opening, they landed on what proved to be the Island of
Roanoke. The landing-place was sandy and low, but so productive of
grapes or vines overrunning everything, that the very surge of the sea
sometimes overflowed them. The tallest and reddest cedars in the world
grew there, with pines, cypresses, and other trees, and in the woods
plenty of deer, conies, and fowls in incredible abundance.
After a few days the natives came off in boats to visit them, proper
people and civil in their behavior, bringing with them the King's
brother, Granganameo (Quangimino, says Strachey). The name of the King
was Winginia, and of the country Wingandacoa. The name of this
King might have suggested that of Virginia as the title of the new
possession, but for the superior claim of the Virgin Queen. Granganameo
was a friendly savage who liked to trade. The first thing he took a
fancy was a pewter dish, and he made a hole through it and hung it about
his neck for a breastplate. The liberal Christians sold it to him for
the low price of twenty deer-skins, worth twenty crowns, and they
also let him have a copper kettle for fifty skins. They drove a lively
traffic with the savages for much of such “truck,” and the chief came
on board and ate and drank merrily with the strangers. His wife and
children, short of stature but well-formed and bashful, also paid them
a visit. She wore a long coat of leather, with a piece of leather about
her loins, around her forehead a band of white coral, and from her
ears bracelets of pearls of the bigness of great peas hung down to her
middle. The other women wore pendants of copper, as did the children,
five or six in an ear. The boats of these savages were hollowed trunks
of trees. Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indians
exhibited towards their visitors. They kept them supplied with game and
fruits, and when a party made an expedition inland to the residence of
Granganameo, his wife (her husband being absent) came running to the
river to welcome them; took them to her house and set them before
a great fire; took off their clothes and washed them; removed the
stockings of some and washed their feet in warm water; set plenty of
victual, venison and fish and fruits, before them, and took pains to
see all things well ordered for their comfort. “More love they could
not express to entertain us.” It is noted that these savages drank wine
while the grape lasted. The visitors returned all this kindness with
suspicion.
They insisted upon retiring to their boats at night instead of lodging
in the house, and the good woman, much grieved at their jealousy, sent
down to them their half-cooked supper, pots and all, and mats to cover
them from the rain in the night, and caused several of her men and
thirty women to sit all night on the shore over against them. “A more
kind, loving people cannot be,” say the voyagers.
In September the expedition returned to England, taking specimens of the
wealth of the country, and some of the pearls as big as peas, and
two natives, Wanchese and Manteo. The “lord proprietary” obtained the
Queen's permission to name the new lands “Virginia,” in her honor, and
he had a new seal of his arms cut, with the legend, Propria insignia
Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et Gubernatoris Virginia.
The enticing reports brought back of the fertility of this land, and the
amiability of its pearl-decked inhabitants, determined Raleigh at once
to establish a colony there, in the hope of the ultimate salvation
of the “poor seduced infidell” who wore the pearls. A fleet of seven
vessels, with one hundred householders, and many things necessary to
begin a new state, departed from Plymouth in April, 1585. Sir Richard
Grenville had command of the expedition, and Mr. Ralph Lane was made
governor of the colony, with Philip Amadas for his deputy. Among
the distinguished men who accompanied them were Thomas Hariot,
the mathematician, and Thomas Cavendish, the naval discoverer. The
expedition encountered as many fatalities as those that befell Sir
Humphrey Gilbert; and Sir Richard was destined also to an early
and memorable death. But the new colony suffered more from its own
imprudence and want of harmony than from natural causes.
In August, Grenville left Ralph Lane in charge of the colony and
returned to England, capturing a Spanish ship on the way. The colonists
pushed discoveries in various directions, but soon found themselves
involved in quarrels with the Indians, whose conduct was less friendly
than formerly, a change partly due to the greed of the whites. In June,
when Lane was in fear of a conspiracy which he had discovered against
the life of the colony, and it was short of supplies, Sir Francis Drake
appeared off Roanoke, returning homeward with his fleet from the sacking
of St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St. Augustine. Lane, without waiting for
succor from England, persuaded Drake to take him and all the colony back
home. Meantime Raleigh, knowing that the colony would probably need aid,
was preparing a fleet of three well appointed ships to accompany Sir
Richard Grenville, and an “advice ship,” plentifully freighted, to send
in advance to give intelligence of his coming. Great was Grenville's
chagrin, when he reached Hatorask, to find that the advice boat had
arrived, and finding no colony, had departed again for England. However,
he established fifteen men (“fifty,” says the “General Historie”) on the
island, provisioned for two years, and then returned home.
[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, under
command of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a Spanish
Plate-fleet. Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanish
convoy of 53 ships of war. Left behind his comrades, in embarking from
an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terrible fight
for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his men nearly
all slain. He died uttering aloud these words: “Here dies Sir Richard
Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my
life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen,
religion, and honor.”]
Mr. Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much better furnished
than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conducted to the River
James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it. If the governor
had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held on till the arrival of
Grenville.
Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,
but he nevertheless gained immortality. For he is credited with first
bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds called tobacco,
which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in its capacity to drive
“rheums” out of the body, but as a soother, when burned in the bowl of a
pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, of the melancholy spirit.
The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it has
been shared by three persons--Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lane
home; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn in
America; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of the
ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.
But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe. It was already
known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt had begun to make
its way in the Orient. In the early part of the century the Spaniards
had discovered its virtues. It is stated by John Neander, in his “Tobaco
Logia,” published in Leyden in 1626, that Tobaco took its name from
a province in Yucatan, conquered by Fernando Cortez in 1519. The name
Nicotiana he derives from D. Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council
of Francis II., who first introduced the plant into France. At the date
of this volume (1626) tobacco was in general use all over Europe and
in the East. Pictures are given of the Persian water pipes, and
descriptions of the mode of preparing it for use. There are reports and
traditions of a very ancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as
well as in India, but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be
tobacco, and to be referred to as such by many writers, and described as
“intoxicating,” was really India hemp, or some plant very different from
the tobacco of the New World. At any rate there is evidence that in the
Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhat a novelty, and
the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habit only of the low.
The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of old Mahomet Ali, possessed an
ancient Turkish MS which related an occurrence at Smyrna about the year
1610, namely, the punishment of some sailors for the use of tobacco,
which showed that it was a novelty and accounted a low vice at that
time. The testimony of the trustworthy George Sandys, an English
traveler into Turkey, Egypt, and Syria in 1610 (afterwards, 1621,
treasurer of the colony in Virginia), is to the same effect as given in
his “Relation,” published in London in 1621. In his minute description
of the people and manners of Constantinople, after speaking of opium,
which makes the Turks “giddy-headed” and “turbulent dreamers,” he says:
“But perhaps for the self-same cause they delight in Tobacco: which they
take through reedes that have joyned with them great heads of wood to
containe it, I doubt not but lately taught them as brought them by the
English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa [Murad
III.?] not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust through the nose of
a Turke, and to be led in derision through the Citie), no question but
it would prove a principal commodity. Nevertheless they will take it in
corners; and are so ignorant therein, that that which in England is not
saleable, doth passe here among them for most excellent.”
Mr. Stith (“History of Virginia,” 1746) gives Raleigh credit for the
introduction of the pipe into good society, but he cautiously says, “We
are not informed whether the queen made use of it herself: but it is
certain she gave great countenance to it as a vegetable of singular
strength and power, which might therefore prove of benefit to mankind,
and advantage to the nation.” Mr. Thomas Hariot, in his observations on
the colony at Roanoke, says that the natives esteemed their tobacco, of
which plenty was found, their “chief physicke.”
It should be noted, as against the claim of Lane, that Stowe in his
“Annales” (1615) says: “Tobacco was first brought and made known in
England by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used by
Englishmen in many years after, though at this time commonly used by
most men and many women.” In a side-note to the edition of 1631 we read:
“Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that brought tobacco in use, when all
men wondered what it meant.” It was first commended for its medicinal
virtues. Harrison's “Chronologie,” under date of 1573, says: “In these
daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbe called 'Tabaco' by
an instrument formed like a little ladell, whereby it passeth from the
mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlie taken-up and used in England,
against Rewmes and some other diseases ingendred in the longes and
inward partes, and not without effect.” But Barnaby Rich, in “The
Honestie of this Age,” 1614, disagrees with Harrison about its benefit:
“They say it is good for a cold, for a pose, for rewmes, for aches, for
dropsies, and for all manner of diseases proceeding of moyst humours;
but I cannot see but that those that do take it fastest are as much (or
more) subject to all these infirmities (yea, and to the poxe itself)
as those that have nothing at all to do with it.” He learns that 7,000
shops in London live by the trade of tobacco-selling, and calculates
that there is paid for it L 399,375 a year, “all spent in smoake.” Every
base groom must have his pipe with his pot of ale; it “is vendible
in every taverne, inne, and ale-house; and as for apothecaries shops,
grosers shops, chandlers shops, they are (almost) never without company
that, from morning till night, are still taking of tobacco.” Numbers of
houses and shops had no other trade to live by. The wrath of King James
was probably never cooled against tobacco, but the expression of it was
somewhat tempered when he perceived what a source of revenue it became.
The savages of North America gave early evidence of the possession of
imaginative minds, of rare power of invention, and of an amiable desire
to make satisfactory replies to the inquiries of their visitors. They
generally told their questioners what they wanted to know, if they could
ascertain what sort of information would please them. If they had known
the taste of the sixteenth century for the marvelous they could not have
responded more fitly to suit it. They filled Mr. Lane and Mr. Hariot
full of tales of a wonderful copper mine on the River Maratock
(Roanoke), where the metal was dipped out of the stream in great bowls.
The colonists had great hopes of this river, which Mr. Hariot thought
flowed out of the Gulf of Mexico, or very near the South Sea. The
Indians also conveyed to the mind of this sagacious observer the notion
that they had a very respectably developed religion; that they believed
in one chief god who existed from all eternity, and who made many gods
of less degree; that for mankind a woman was first created, who by
one of the gods brought forth children; that they believed in the
immortality of the soul, and that for good works a soul will be conveyed
to bliss in the tabernacles of the gods, and for bad deeds to pokogusso,
a great pit in the furthest part of the world, where the sun sets,
and where they burn continually. The Indians knew this because two men
lately dead had revived and come back to tell them of the other world.
These stories, and many others of like kind, the Indians told of
themselves, and they further pleased Mr. Hariot by kissing his Bible and
rubbing it all over their bodies, notwithstanding he told them there was
no virtue in the material book itself, only in its doctrines. We must
do Mr. Hariot the justice to say, however, that he had some little
suspicion of the “subtiltie” of the weroances (chiefs) and the priests.
Raleigh was not easily discouraged; he was determined to plant his
colony, and to send relief to the handful of men that Grenville had left
on Roanoke Island. In May, 1587, he sent out three ships and a hundred
and fifty householders, under command of Mr. John White, who was
appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as a Council,
who were incorporated under the name of “The Governor and Assistants
of the City of Ralegh in Virginia,” with instructions to change their
settlement to Chesapeake Bay. The expedition found there no one of the
colony (whether it was fifty or fifteen the writers disagree), nothing
but the bones of one man where the plantation had been; the houses were
unhurt, but overgrown with weeds, and the fort was defaced. Captain
Stafford, with twenty men, went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists.
He heard that the fifty had been set upon by three hundred Indians, and,
after a sharp skirmish and the loss of one man, had taken boats and gone
to a small island near Hatorask, and afterwards had departed no one knew
whither.
Mr. White sent a band to take revenge upon the Indians who were
suspected of their murder through treachery, which was guided by Mateo,
the friendly Indian, who had returned with the expedition from England.
By a mistake they attacked a friendly tribe. In August of this year
Mateo was Christianized, and baptized under the title of Lord of Roanoke
and Dassomonpeake, as a reward for his fidelity. The same month Elinor,
the daughter of the Govemor, the wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a
daughter, the first white child born in this part of the continent, who
was named Virginia.
Before long a dispute arose between the Governor and his Council as to
the proper person to return to England for supplies. White himself was
finally prevailed upon to go, and he departed, leaving about a hundred
settlers on one of the islands of Hatorask to form a plantation.
The Spanish invasion and the Armada distracted the attention of Europe
about this time, and the hope of plunder from Spanish vessels was more
attractive than the colonization of America. It was not until 1590
that Raleigh was able to despatch vessels to the relief of the Hatorask
colony, and then it was too late. White did, indeed, start out from
Biddeford in April, 1588, with two vessels, but the temptation to chase
prizes was too strong for him, and he went on a cruise of his own, and
left the colony to its destruction.
In March, 1589-90, Mr. White was again sent out, with three ships, from
Plymouth, and reached the coast in August. Sailing by Croatan they went
to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place they had left the
colony in 1587. Going ashore next day, they found no man, nor sign that
any had been there lately. Preparing to go to Roanoke next day, a boat
was upset and Captain Spicer and six of the crew were drowned. This
accident so discouraged the sailors that they could hardly be persuaded
to enter on the search for the colony. At last two boats, with nineteen
men, set out for Hatorask, and landed at that part of Roanoke where the
colony had been left. When White left the colony three years before, the
men had talked of going fifty miles into the mainland, and had agreed to
leave some sign of their departure. The searchers found not a man of
the colony; their houses were taken down, and a strong palisade had been
built. All about were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up
again and scattered, and on a post was carved the name “CROATAN.” This
signal, which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope
that he should find his comrades at Croatan. But one mischance or
another happening, his provisions being short, the expedition decided to
run down to the West Indies and “refresh” (chiefly with a little Spanish
plunder), and return in the spring and seek their countrymen; but
instead they sailed for England and never went to Croatan. The men of
the abandoned colonies were never again heard of. Years after, in 1602,
Raleigh bought a bark and sent it, under the charge of Samuel Mace, a
mariner who had been twice to Virginia, to go in search of the survivors
of White's colony. Mace spent a month lounging about the Hatorask coast
and trading with the natives, but did not land on Croatan, or at any
place where the lost colony might be expected to be found; but having
taken on board some sassafras, which at that time brought a good price
in England, and some other barks which were supposed to be valuable, he
basely shirked the errand on which he was hired to go, and took himself
and his spicy woods home.
The “Lost Colony” of White is one of the romances of the New World.
Governor White no doubt had the feelings of a parent, but he did not
allow them to interfere with his more public duties to go in search of
Spanish prizes. If the lost colony had gone to Croatan, it was probable
that Ananias Dare and his wife, the Governor's daughter, and the little
Virginia Dare, were with them. But White, as we have seen, had such
confidence in Providence that he left his dear relatives to its care,
and made no attempt to visit Croatan.
Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for the
lost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolous
allegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate of these
deserted colonists. One of the unsupported conjectures is that the
colonists amalgamated with the tribe of Hatteras Indians, and Indian
tradition and the physical characteristics of the tribe are said to
confirm this idea. But the sporadic birth of children with white
skins (albinos) among black or copper-colored races that have had no
intercourse with white people, and the occurrence of light hair and blue
eyes among the native races of America and of New Guinea, are facts so
well attested that no theory of amalgamation can be sustained by such
rare physical manifestations. According to Captain John Smith, who wrote
of Captain Newport's explorations in 1608, there were no tidings of
the waifs, for, says Smith, Newport returned “without a lump of gold, a
certainty of the South Sea, or one of the lost company sent out by Sir
Walter Raleigh.”
In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith seem; to have
inquired about this lost colony of King Paspahegh, for he says, “what he
knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of certaine
men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan, cloathcd like me.”
[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584, saw children with
chestnut-colored hair.]
We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the “Historie of Travaile
into Virginia Britannia,” published from the manuscript by the Hakluyt
Society in 1849, in which it is intimated that seven of these deserted
colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is a first-rate authority
for what he saw. He arrived in Virginia in 1610 and remained there two
years, as secretary of the colony, and was a man of importance. His
“Historie” was probably written between 1612 and 1616. In the first
portion of it, which is descriptive of the territory of Virginia, is
this important passage: “At Peccarecamek and Ochanahoen, by the relation
of Machumps, the people have houses built with stone walls, and one
story above another, so taught them by those English who escaped the
slaughter of Roanoke. At what time this our colony, under the conduct
of Captain Newport, landed within the Chesapeake Bay, where the
people breed up tame turkies about their houses, and take apes in the
mountains, and where, at Ritanoe, the Weroance Eyanaco, preserved
seven of the English alive--four men, two boys, and one young maid (who
escaped [that is from Roanoke] and fled up the river of Chanoke), to
beat his copper, of which he hath certain mines at the said Ritanoe, as
also at Pamawauk are said to be store of salt stones.”
This, it will be observed, is on the testimony of Machumps. This
pleasing story is not mentioned in Captain Newport's “Discoveries” (May,
1607). Machumps, who was the brother of Winganuske, one of the many
wives of Powhatan, had been in England. He was evidently a lively
Indian. Strachey had heard him repeat the “Indian grace,” a sort of
incantation before meat, at the table of Sir Thomas Dale. If he did
not differ from his red brothers he had a powerful imagination, and was
ready to please the whites with any sort of a marvelous tale. Newport
himself does not appear to have seen any of the “apes taken in the
mountains.” If this story is to be accepted as true we have to think of
Virginia Dare as growing up to be a woman of twenty years, perhaps as
other white maidens have been, Indianized and the wife of a native.
But the story rests only upon a romancing Indian. It is possible that
Strachey knew more of the matter than he relates, for in his history he
speaks again of those betrayed people, “of whose end you shall hereafter
read in this decade.” But the possessed information is lost, for it is
not found in the remainder of this “decade” of his writing, which is
imperfect. Another reference in Strachey is more obscure than the first.
He is speaking of the merciful intention of King James towards the
Virginia savages, and that he does not intend to root out the natives
as the Spaniards did in Hispaniola, but by degrees to change their
barbarous nature, and inform them of the true God and the way to
Salvation, and that his Majesty will even spare Powhatan himself. But,
he says, it is the intention to make “the common people likewise to
understand, how that his Majesty has been acquainted that the men,
women, and children of the first plantation of Roanoke were by practice
of Powhatan (he himself persuaded thereunto by his priests) miserably
slaughtered, without any offense given him either by the first planted
(who twenty and odd years had peaceably lived intermixed with those
savages, and were out of his territory) or by those who are now come to
inhabit some parts of his distant lands,” etc.
Strachey of course means the second plantation and not the first, which,
according to the weight of authority, consisted of only fifteen men and
no women.
In George Percy's Discourse concerning Captain Newport's exploration
of the River James in 1607 (printed in Purchas's “Pilgrims”) is this
sentence: “At Port Cotage, in our voyage up the river, we saw a savage
boy, about the age of ten years, which had a head of hair of a perfect
yellow, and reasonably white skin, which is a miracle amongst all
savages.” Mr. Neill, in his “History of the Virginia Company,” says that
this boy “was no doubt the offspring of the colonists left at Roanoke by
White, of whom four men, two boys, and one young maid had been preserved
from slaughter by an Indian Chief.” Under the circumstances, “no doubt”
is a very strong expression for a historian to use.
This belief in the sometime survival of the Roanoke colonists, and their
amalgamation with the Indians, lingered long in colonial gossip. Lawson,
in his History, published in London in 1718, mentions a tradition among
the Hatteras Indians, “that several of their ancestors were white people
and could talk from a book; the truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes
being among these Indians and no others.”
But the myth of Virginia Dare stands no chance beside that of
Pocahontas.