** This sketch is from a picture published in a Treatise on Navigation in 1595.
Hostilities with the Indiana.—Colonists Return to England.—Another Expedition.—"City of Raleigh."—Virginia Dare.
country and seeking gold. They ascended no further than the present village of Williams-town, when a flight of arrows from the wooded shore revealed the enmity of the natives. Lane hastened back to Roanoke, and summoned Wingina, the most powerful of the chiefs, to an audience. The sachem and his followers appeared. Their secret plans for the destruction of the English were suspected, indeed, quite certainly known, and the white men were on the alert. With apparent friendliness Wingina appeared at the council. At a given signal the English fell upon the chief and his handful of warriors, and put them to death. The calumet was now buried forever; the hatchet was brightened and made sharp by intensest hatred. The English felt the danger of their situation, and were desponding, when the fleet of Sir Francis Drake anchored outside of Roanoke Inlet. He came from the West Indies to visit the domain of Raleigh, and generously offered to furnish the colony with means to pursue their discoveries; but fear gained the mastery of their avaricious de a June 19, 1586 sires, and the colonists sailed with Drake for England. (a) A few days after their departure a ship arrived, laden with stores for the colony; and, within a fortnight, Grenville also arrived with three well-furnished ships. The commander sought in vain for the colony, and, leaving fifteen men on the Island of Roanoke to maintain English dominion, he returned to England with the sad intelligence for Raleigh. *
Raleigh, undismayed by misfortunes, fitted out another expedition. He changed his policy, and sent a colony of men, women, and children to establish an agricultural state. John White was appointed their governor. They sailed on the 26th of April, 1587, and arrived on the coast of North Carolina in July. When they reached Roanoke, they found no vestige of the fifteen men left by Grenville, except a few scattered bones. The Indians had slain them all. Wild deers were in the untenanted habitations, and rank grass covered their gardens, They proceeded to lay the foundation of "the city of Raleigh," pursuant to the instructions of the proprietor, but it was an idle show. ** White endeavored to make treaties of amity with the natives, but failed, though aided by the friendly Manteo, who accompanied Amidas and Barlow to England. *** The neighboring tribes exhibited implacable hatred and jealousy. Winter approached, and the vessel which brought them was prepared for departure for England. White was urged strongly to go with it, and use his endeavors to send them immediate relief, for they had neither planted nor reaped, and to England alone they looked for supply. He was unwilling to appear as a deserter of his colony, and refused. He had another tie. His daughter, Eleanor Dare, had given birth to a child, the first offspring of English parents in the New World. Little Virginia Dare twined the tendrils of affection close around the heart of her grand-parent, and he lingered. **** He at length consented to go, leaving his daughter and child as pledges that he would return. Very long the poor colonists waited for relief. Three years passed away before White returned, and then he found the settlement a desolation. There was evidence upon the bark of a tree that the people had departed for Croatan, (v) the residence of Manteo; but
* It is believed that these returning colonists first carried the tobacco plant to England, as prepared by the natives for smoking. Raleigh first used it privately. It is related that when his servant entered his room with a tankard of ale, and for the first time saw the smoke issuing from his master's mouth and nostrils, he cast the liquor in his face. Terribly frightened, he alarmed the household with the intelligence that Sir Walter was on fire.
** The Island of Roanoke is now uninhabited, except by a few wreckers and pilots. Slight traces of Lane's fort may be seen near the north end.
*** By command of Raleigh, Manteo was baptized, and invested by White with the rank of feudal Baron, as the Lord of Roanoke. It was the first creation of an American peer of the realm.
**** It is a coincidence worth noticing, that White was the name of the progenitors of the first two children born of English parents in America. One on the Island of Roanoke, in August, 1587; the other in the May Flower, in Plymouth harbor, more than thirty-three years afterward.
* (v) It was agreed, on the departure of White, that if the colony should go to Croatan, they would signify the fact by inscribing the letters C R O upon the bark of a tree. This inscription, and also the full name of Croatan, was found. White has been censured for heartlessness in not prosecuting his search with more perseverance, particularly as his own relatives were among the settlers. The colony was composed of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and two children. What was their fate is left to conjecture. Lawson, in his Travels among the Indians, with a Description of North Carolina, published in 1700, hazards the opinion that the colonists intermarried with the Hatteras Indians, and cites the physical character of that tribe in support of his hypothesis. Such, too, was the tradition of the Indians at a late day.
Loss of a Colony.—Other Expeditions.—London and Plymouth Companies.—Death of Raleigh.—Newport.