The Lost Colony of Roanoke

by Fullam, Brandon

  It is far more likely that John Smith informed the Council about the slaughter via a letter or report, which Christopher Newport delivered after his return to England in December or January of 1608–9. It is evident from the 1609 instructions to Governor Gates that Smith was in good standing with the king’s Virginia Council members and that they had been in contact with him previously: “To this command [regarding the defense of Jamestown and the placement of future forts] wee desire Captain Smyth may be allotted aswell for his earnest desire as the greate confidence & trust that we haue in his care & diligence.”5 It is also clear that Smith was the source of the information in the Council’s instructions alleged to be about the Lost Colony. Both Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick from Smith’s 1607–08 A True Relation letter and the Zúñiga Map are mentioned in the 1609 instructions as “Oconahoen” and “Peccarecamicke.” The Council’s instructions also contained the 1607–08 reference from the Zúñiga Map about the “4 men clothed [at Pakrakanick] that came from Roonock to Ocanahawan.” In the 1609 instructions the line read, “Peccarecamicke where you shall finde foure of the english aliue, left by Sir Walter Rawley which escaped from the slaughter of Powhaton….” This is the first known record mentioning the slaughter of the Lost Colonists by Chief Powhatan and, like the other references in the instructions, it must also have come from Smith. The other bit of news included in the instructions was that the slaughter occurred “vpon the first arrivall of our Colonie,” i.e., about or just prior to May of 1607.6

  Smith had a number of conversations with Powhatan on a variety of topics, including “peace and warre.” It is probable that Smith learned about the alleged slaughter from Powhatan during one of these talks. Interestingly, Smith made no mention whatsoever of the Powhatan–Lost Colony slaughter story in his own published works, but there was probably a practical reason for that. The Virginia Company, which blatantly promoted the wonders and benefits of their Jamestown venture, closely monitored and edited what was published. News of an English slaughter by Chief Powhatan would hardly attract potential settlers and investors. Smith, however, did inform his friend and chronicler, Samuel Purchas, about the conversation he had with Chief Powhatan. This Powhatan-Smith conversation was noted years later by Purchas, who had been recording the personal narratives of sailors returning to England and added their accounts to a collection of manuscripts left to him by Richard Hakluyt, who had died in 1616. Purchas published Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes in 1625, and it contained the following marginal notation regarding the fate of White’s 1587 colony: “Powhatan confessed that hee had bin at the murther of that Colonie and shewed to Cap. Smith a Musket barrell and a brasse Morter, and certaine peeces of Iron which had bin theirs.”7

  In the spring of 1609 Smith’s dreadful news about the slaughter prompted the Council to take action. The situation was complicated, however, by the fact that just months earlier the Council had recognized that Powhatan’s cooperation was necessary for the success of the colony, and had instructed Newport to conduct an elaborate coronation of Powhatan in order to ensure the chief’s allegiance and assistance. The council now decided “if you finde it not best to make him [Powhatan] your prisoner yet you must make him your tributary…” and as for Powhatan’s priests, who had persuaded him to carry out the slaughter, “we pronounce it not crueltie nor breache of Charity to deale more sharpely with them and to proceed even to death with these murtherers….”8

  As it turned out, the instructions for dealing with Powhatan and his priests did not reach Jamestown in a timely manner. Governor Thomas Gates was aboard the aforementioned Sea Venture, the flagship of the “third supply” for Jamestown, when a hurricane struck. As already discussed, the Sea Venture was separated from the rest of the fleet and driven onto a reef off Bermuda in July 1609. The Council’s instructions would have been carried with Gates aboard the Sea Venture. By the time the instructions finally reached Jamestown ten months later, in May of 1610, the colony was on the verge of collapse and the retribution against Chief Powhatan was never carried out.

  Of course once the Council officially acknowledged the reported slaughter of the 1587 colony, the original Lost Colony narrative had to be altered. It will be recalled that in early January of 1608 Smith had returned to Jamestown after his captivity by Opechancanough and Wahunsunacock with the news about “men cloathed” at Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick, who Smith incorrectly assumed were Raleigh’s Lost Colonists. That information, coupled with the Zúñiga Map, provided the earliest narrative concerning the whereabouts of the colonists: The “men cloathed,” presumed to be the 1587 colonists, went “from Roonock to Ocanahawan” and then farther south to Pakrakanick where there “remayneth 4 men clothed.”

  This initial chronology is interesting in light of the fact that the Council had not yet received the news that the Lost Colony had been slaughtered by Powhatan. If the “men clothed” were part of the 1587 Roanoke colony and had traveled from Roanoke to Ocanahonan, quite far from Powhatan’s domain, and then continued from Ocanahonan to Pakrakanick even farther to the south of Ocanahonan, there was no place in that sequence for them to have been part of a slaughter conducted by Powhatan far to the north. Consequently, the narrative—already fatally flawed since the “men cloathed” at Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick were Spaniards, not Lost Colonists—had to be changed. The new but equally flawed narrative naturally assumed that the slaughter of the Lost Colonists must have occurred between the departure from Roanoke and the arrival at Ocanahonan, and the “cloathed men” must have been survivors of the slaughter.

  Versions of that same chronology have evolved and continue to be promoted today, resulting in the previously mentioned claims placing the location of Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick—as well as survivors of the slaughter—at the upper Pamlico, Tar, Neuse, Roanoke, Chowan, or Nottoway Rivers. Virtually all serious mainstream theories about the Lost Colony are grounded in this Powhatan–Lost Colony slaughter scenario, which can be traced back to an erroneous interpretation provided by Smith regarding information he obtained from Chief Powhatan about a slaughter. Powhatan’s slaughter of the 1587 colony has remained a cornerstone of Lost Colony theory, and it represents the second flawed institutionalized assumption outlined in the Preface. Like the Fernandez-as-villain error, the Powhatan–Lost Colony slaughter myth has obstructed the search for the Lost Colony for four centuries.

  The entire version of the Powhatan–Lost Colony slaughter account must be viewed with a great deal of skepticism. In the first place, we do not even have Smith’s own words regarding what he may have heard from Powhatan. We are left only with an assumption made by Smith and the fragmentary Samuel Purchas version of what Smith told him about a conversation he supposedly had with the chief. From a historical-source standpoint this cannot be considered reliable.

  As is true of all the Jamestown references and claims about the Lost Colony, it is important to recognize that they are secondary—or in the case of Purchas even tertiary—English interpretations derived exclusively from Powhatan Indians who related recent and past memories from their oral tradition. The 17th century journals and accounts of Smith, Strachey, and the Jamestown principals—while primary Jamestown sources—cannot be considered primary Lost Colony sources and should not be treated as such. The only undisputed primary source “records” from the Lost Colony after August of 1587 are the two messages the colonists themselves carved into the tree and entrance post at Roanoke.

  The tendency, though, has been to rely on these early 17th century Jamestown interpretations as unimpeachable primary Lost Colony documents, rather than as the less reliable secondary and tertiary sources they actually are. This is an important distinction, of course. Any historical research which equates primary with secondary and even tertiary sources runs the risk of perpetuating someone’s subjective, and often inaccurate, interpretation of events. As already seen, such was the case with both Smith and then Strachey when they misidentified Powhatan’s “men cloathed” at Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick as
Lost Colonists.

  In that instance, as previously discussed, it was reasonable to believe that the Powhatan oral tradition did indeed contain stories of clothed men and two-story dwellings at distant places called Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick, and those stories can now be verified by the historical account of the Pardo expedition. It was impossible to believe, however, that the Powhatans could have identified the clothed men as English or that they had been specifically part of the 1587 colony. Those conclusion were merely unfounded assumptions made by John Smith and later compounded by William Strachey.

  This is not to say that the Lost Colony references in the Jamestown accounts are completely irrelevant. On the contrary, aside from the carvings left at Roanoke—and barring new archaeological findings—they are the only versions we have of the actual Powhatan oral tradition allegedly connected to the Lost Colony. Yet versions they are, English interpretations of the fragments of essentially accurate information related by the native Powhatans. Smith’s vulnerability to interpretive error has already been demonstrated, and once again he misinterpreted the information he received from Powhatan, and made the same erroneous assumption he had made previously: The clothed men at Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick must be Raleigh’s Lost Colonists, he inaccurately concluded, and likewise the victims of Powhatan’s slaughter—who may have had “certaine peeces of Iron”—must be the Lost Colonists as well.

  The question of sources has been stressed here because it represents—even more so than the Ocanahonan/Pakrakanick misinterpretation—the most obvious problem with the Powhatan–Lost Colony slaughter story. In the case of the Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick references, we at least have Smith’s own account of what Opechancanough and Wahunsunacock told him and the context of those conversations. Additionally, that information was corroborated by the notations on the Zúñiga Map, to which Smith was a contributor. Yet that information was completely misinterpreted and in reality had nothing at all to do with the 1587 colonists. In the case of the Powhatan–Lost Colony slaughter, we do not even have a single word from Smith about what Powhatan supposedly related to him concerning the slaughter. All we know of that conversation, or “confession” as Purchase put it, is the brief notation he recorded some seventeen years after the conversation took place. Characterizing whatever was said as a “confession” also seems quite overstated. It is difficult to believe that Chief Powhatan, who was well aware of the dangers posed by the English and their superior weaponry, would knowingly incur their wrath and retribution by admitting to having massacred an entire colony of their countrymen.

  Although Powhatan’s assumed slaughter of the 1587 colonists was dreadful news to the English, it must also be seen in its proper context and from Powhatan’s viewpoint. As Strachey would note later, the supposed slaughter of the Lost Colonists coincided with just one of the many massacres Powhatan had conducted over the prior decade, during which he successfully expanded his chiefdom by conquest whenever necessary. He massacred the Payankatank tribe in 1608, the Chesapeake tribe in 1607, and undoubtedly a number of others before the arrival of the Jamestown settlers. He would have had no qualms about discussing such slaughters with Smith, and in fact he may well have boasted about them. If, as will be explained later, a handful of white people had also been killed during one of these intertribal massacres, it would have been little more than a curiosity to Powhatan.

  Chief Powhatan’s “Musket barrell and a brasse Morter, and certaine peeces of Iron,” provide no proof of a slaughter in themselves and certainly not of an entire English colony. They could have come to him in a variety of ways. More importantly, they provide no evidence whatsoever that these items had once belonged specifically to White’s 1587 colony. How could Smith—or Powhatan for that matter—have determined that these few metal items “had bin theirs,” as Purchas reported? Certainly if Smith had more credible proof—details of the slaughter or any evidence at all concerning the original owners of these items or the identities or location of those apparently slain by Powhatan—he would have provided it to Purchas. If the slaughter of the Lost Colony occurred about the time the Jamestown colonists first arrived—“vpon the first arrival of our Colonie,” as the Council’s instructions noted—then surely more convincing evidence would have been available.

  Once again, just as it is impossible to believe that Powhatan could have identified the clothed men at Ocanahonan and Pakrakanick as 1587 Lost Colonists, it is equally impossible to believe that he could have told Smith that he was responsible specifically for the extermination of the 1587 colony. Smith, hearing about a slaughter and seeing the few metal objects displayed, jumped once more to a hasty conclusion, this time that Powhatan’s victims must have been White’s Lost Colonists. Smith subsequently relayed this startling news via Christopher Newport to the Virginia Council, and the myth of the Powhatan slaughter of the Lost Colony was born. Ironically—and this will be seen in a later chapter—Powhatan was likely involved with a slaughter of sorts, and there may well have been a few Englishmen among the victims, but they were not members of the 1587 Lost Colony.

  Smith’s overall reliability as a narrator is also a factor to be considered, as demonstrated by the differences between the accounts of his captivity in A True Relation, written in 1608, as opposed to that of The Generall Historie, written in 1624. In the former, Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, is mentioned only in passing, but in the latter she is the central figure in a harrowing ordeal from which Smith only barely escaped due to her intervention. (The debate over the Pocahontas question has been thoroughly explored by Philip Barbour in his Complete Works of Captain John Smith.9)

  It is also possible that Smith misunderstood a common native Algonquian cultural ritual that he may have undergone in December of 1608. Seth Mallios wrote in his The Deadly Politics of Giving, “While Smith often exaggerated in his texts … what is known is that the details of his Powhatan abduction, tour, and rescue parallel adoption rituals practiced in a variety of Algonquian cultures.”10 In either case—misunderstood or embellished—this episode questions Smith’s reliability as an accurate narrator of Powhatan/Algonquian motivations and events.

  He may also have misunderstood the cultural implications of native Indian hospitality which required pleasant and compliant responses to an adopted outsider such as himself. This was the same cultural phenomenon that confounded the Jesuits in Newfoundland as they attempted to convert the Algonquian Mi’kmaqs, who viewed conversion as “a superficial courtesy rather than an eternal commitment.”11 The same tradition was misunderstood by Lewis and Clarke 200 years later when they questioned the Mandans, whose answers were designed to please them rather than provide factual information.12 Perhaps like the Mandans and the Mi’kmaqs, Powhatan was observing ritual obligations requiring him to reply to his virtual son’s questions in the same manner, cordially but not accurately, allowing Smith to believe whatever he wanted to hear about the fate of the Lost Colony.

  Smith had a natural inclination towards exaggeration. In his Generall Historie’s version of the Roanoke voyages, for example, he mentioned several times that Grenville left “50” men to maintain possession of Roanoke after Drake had evacuated Lane and the 1585–86 military colony. Hakluyt had recorded the number as fifteen. Likewise, Smith wrote that the number of Indians attacking this contingent was 300, but in Hakluyt’s account it had been thirty. This embellishment is all the more remarkable since Smith’s account of the Roanoke years was copied, sometimes verbatim, directly from Hakluyt.

  Smith was certainly a talented and effective leader, without whom the Jamestown colony probably would not have survived. His absence from Jamestown after his injury from a gunpowder mishap demonstrates how important he was. Following his departure to England in October 1609, Jamestown nearly collapsed, and when the shipwrecked Sea Venture company finally arrived in May of 1610, only sixty starving colonists were left alive out of perhaps 500 or more, though the numbers vary. Smith did, however, have the tendency to exaggerate and portray himself as the
protagonist in the Jamestown drama, as demonstrated by the aforementioned version of the Pocahontas episode. In fact if his 1608 A True Relation account is at all accurate—and it was written shortly after the fact—Smith seems to have been feasted and treated quite well by his captors, and was apparently befriended by Powhatan, who claimed that he would forever regard him as his own son if Smith reciprocated his friendship. Given his tendency towards embellishment, it is likely that Smith instinctively exaggerated Powhatan’s reference to a slaughter, convincing himself that he had discovered the long-sought answer to the Lost Colony’s fate, and at the same time fulfilled the Council’s directive to acquire information about “the lost company of Sir Walter Rawley.”