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Posted on 01/24/2007 7:47:11 AM PST by Pharmboy
The Roanoke Voyages ended dismally with the entire colony disappearing, never seen again after 1587.
But a lesser-known yearlong expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585 may have provided valuable lessons for the colonists who came to Jamestown 22 years later, three researchers said recently in a paper presented at the annual conference of the Society of Historical Archaeology in Williamsburg, Va.
"They don't really learn a lot from the Lost Colony, except to be careful," Phil Evans, president of the First Colony Foundation, said in a telephone interview. "Hope you get lucky - and be better prepared."
But the 108 men who came to Roanoke Island in 1585 learned that American Indians in the area cherished copper, Evans wrote along with Nick Luccketti, principal archaeologist for the James River Institute for Archaeology in Williamsburg, and Eric Klingelhofer, archaeology professor at Mercer University in Georgia.
Thomas Harriot, a scientist on the 1585 voyage who documented the yearlong expedition, recommended that subsequent English voyagers bring copper sheets cut into squares and rounds rather than English copper objects, Evans said.
When settlers arrived in 1607 along the Virginia coast to establish what would become Jamestown, the American Indian chief Powhatan had just lost his copper supplier, and he was more tolerant of the English with their boatloads of copper than he may have been otherwise, Evans said.
Archaeologists have discovered sheets of copper during digs at Jamestown, the paper said.
Illustrator John White, who was later governor of the Lost Colony, was also among the crew on the 1585 expedition. He is credited with painting numerous maps, illustrations of the coast, its flora and fauna and the Indians and their habitats.
The maps, made with Harriot's help, gave the Jamestown settlers an accurate view of the New World and are still respected today for their precision, Luccketti said in a phone interview.
"It's remarkable," he said.
Documents from the Roanoke Voyages documents were gathered into a series of three books written between 1598 and 1600 by Richard Hakluyt. Hakluyt was later a member of Jamestown's Virginia Company.
Happy 400th, Jamestown.
}:-)4
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I'm reminded of the story of the desire of the Indians to have the brass from the shoe laces of the early Spanish explorers.
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A friend of mine is a Lumbee indian (largest tribe east of the Mississippi river). For them, it's no mystery about where the "lost colony" went -- they were adopted into this tribe. (but who thinks of asking the folks who were actually here for the answers to historical questions?)
Fascinating. I bet it's true.
They were pushed west and ended up in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia where they are presently known as Melungeons.
Origin of name obscure. Portaguese for "shipmate," turkish for "cursed soul." Sir Francis Drake liberated 500 levantine galley slaves working under the Spanish lash along the coast of South America, and brought 100 of them to England, along with the first batch of Roanoke Island discouraged colonists.
There were Portaguese settlements in the Carolinas in the mid 1500s, with trading routes that extended far inland.
When the Scotch-Irish folks migrated down "the big valley" from the North, in the highlands of Tennessee they encountered darker-skinned, Catholic folks who'd gotten there first. SO they decided to call the earlier arrivals "Free Persons of Color," with reduced standing under the law.
You omitted the healthy dose of Lumbee blood line that is mixed in.
Let's not forget the Turks. Portraits of the great educator Sequoia show him wearing the uniform of a Turkish sailor, complete with turban. A number of place names ascribed to native american words have similar meanings in Turkish. Kan tok -- full of blood. Kentuck -- bloody place.
IOW, there appears to have been a great deal of traffic crossing the Atlantic before 1607. c.f. the Piri Reis maps.
The native american peoples seem to have peacefully adopted a number of other outsiders.
Well, thanks for clearing that up.
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