Roanoke Colonies Research Newsletter
Volume 8, Numbers 1 & 2 (November 2002/ May 2003)

More New Works on Roanoke Colonization Realted Subjects

In addition to Giles Milton’s Big Chief Elizabeth, Lee Miller’s Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, and Thomas C. Parramore’s “The ‘Lost Colony’ Found: A Documentary Perspective,” all mentioned elsewhere in this issue, several other new sources of note with direct ties to Roanoke colonization have recently appeared.

Phil Jones has published Ralegh’s Pirate Colony in America: The Lost Settlement of Roanoke 1584-1590 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, and Charleston: Tempus, 2001). Jones builds his story of England’s 1580s attempts to colonize the New World using economic motivations for the ventures as the centerpiece of his work. For example, Jones describes the colonists as people looking for economic improvement of their lives, highlighting their desire for the promised five hundred acres of land despite having to head into a risky and (to them) unknown world. Jones has written a short but very full history that provides a good overview of the Roanoke colonization attempts.

A very different approach to the 1580s Roanoke colonization efforts is found in Marjorie Hudson’s Searching for Virginia Dare: A Fool’s Errand (Wilmington, NC: Coastal Carolina P, 2002). Hudson’s book is her narrative of trying to find out what she could about Virginia Dare and the “Lost Colony.” Her book tells about the 1580s ventures and about what she discovered concerning the ways that the “Lost Colony” has been treated in American, especially North Carolina, culture over the past 400 and more years. Just as importantly, as a wonderful piece of creative nonfiction, Hudson tells what she found out about herself as she researched her book.

The National Park Service has published (both in paper and online) its Fort Raleigh National Historic Site Historic Resource Study¸ written by Christine Trebellas and William Chapman (Atlanta: Southeast Regional Office, National Park Service, 1999). The report discusses the various historical resources that exist at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in Manteo, North Carolina, both those with Roanoke colonization connections and those without. The report gives background on the archaeology that has been done on the site as well as the history of the Waterside Theatre, where Paul Green’s The Lost Colony is produced each summer, and other ways the Roanoke colonists have been memorialized on the site. The study is available online at <http://www.nps.gov/fora/hrs/hrs.htm>.

Another good online resource is The Carolina Algonkians, a web site put together by John McGowan and available at <http://homepages.rootsweb.com/ ~jmack/algonqin/algonqin.htm>. McGowan has made available as many sources as possible about the Carolina Algonquians, from Frank Specks’ 1916 article, “Remnants of the Machapunga Indians of North Carolina,” to Michael L. Oberg’s 2000 article “Between ‘Savage Man’ and ‘Most Faithful Englishman’: Manteo and the Early Anglo-Indian Exchange, 1584-1590." Also included are links to primary sources, materials on archaeological sites, historical maps of eastern North Carolina, and a selection of Roanoke colonization related sites. McGowan has assembled one of the most complete resources available anywhere—in print or online—of materials about the Carolina Algonquians.

Alden T. Vaughn’s William and Mary Quarterly article “Sir Walter Ralegh’s Indian Interpreters, 1584-1618” (59.2 [April 2002]: 341-76) discusses Raleigh’s recognition of the importance of communication between native peoples and the European colonists in both his Roanoke ventures of the 1580s and his later ventures in South America. Vaughn gives particular emphasis to the Native Americans brought to England.

Finally, the Family Research Society of Northeastern North Carolina has published the late Mary Wood Long’s 1968 manuscript The Five Lost Colonies of Dare. Long discusses the 1587 colony as well as the Roanoke Indians. Her third “lost colony” is the settlement of Beechland between the Alligator River and the Croatan Sound; one tradition about Beechland is that it was originally settled by the 1587 colonists. The two other “lost colonies” are the Civil War era Freedman’s Colony on Roanoke Island and the early twentieth-century mainland logging community of Buffalo City.

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