Posted on 10/25/2006 9:13:12 PM PDT by FLOutdoorsman
MANTEO - At an archaeological dig at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, Phil Evans stepped into a meticulously measured pit and started shoveling dirt.
The Durham lawyer is no scientist. But he couldn't miss this. After 30 years of searching, he still wants to pinpoint where the English failed to establish their first permanent colony in North America.
Nearly every North Carolinian knows that a band of English settlers vanished from Roanoke Island about 1589, creating the legendary Lost Colony. No one knows where they went. An outdoor production replays the mystery year after year.
But the full story is more complex. Two colonies were launched on the northern edge of Roanoke Island in the 1500s, on what is now called called Fort Raleigh in Manteo. Despite failing to sustain a settlement, they were England's earliest land grab in North America.
It is a drama that has riveted Evans for years, first as a park ranger and later as a private citizen. The many unknowns haunt him. Exactly where did the English build cottages on Roanoke? Where did they erect a fort? Was there more than one fort?
To help find answers, Evans now leads the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, which raises money to search for colonial remains.
"It's a great story," Evans said. "But it's hard to take people around and convince them this is the site of the first colony when there is no archaeological evidence for it. "
Archaeologists, including a team that uncovered remnants of the first permanent English colony in Jamestown, donate their time. The National Park Service helps, too. But it couldn't get done without Evans, whose foundation raises thousands of dollars each year to pay for lodging, food and some labor, researchers say.
"I doubt there would be a First Colony Foundation if Phil wasn't around," said Nick Luccketti, senior archaeologist for the Jamestown digs in the 1990s. "His enthusiasm is so great it's infectious.''
On first glance, the chatty, gray-haired guy in the frayed khakis looks nothing like a mover or shaker. At this month's two-week dig, he was a self-proclaimed assistant, tackling grunt work when he could duck out of his law practice.
But Evans, 53, has been hooked on the details of America's past since growing up in Lowe's Grove, a country crossroads outside Durham. He was the type to prefer trips to Civil War battlegrounds or historic Williamsburg over ballpark outings.
After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1975 with a history degree, he worked as a ranger at Fort Raleigh. He soaked up everything others had learned about the place, showing a keen memory for details.
"I'd mention to Phil that I was trying to remember a fact I'd read, and he'd say it's in that book, third shelf from the bottom, on page 210," said Linda Pearce, a fellow ranger with Evans at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.
On the right track
Evans helped uncover the most recent archaeological evidence that proves the official park site is in the right neighborhood. In early 1982, he found a barrel and hollow log -- likely remains of English colonial wells -- in the shallows of Roanoke Sound. Carbon dating pegged them to the 1500s.
In the 1990s, Evans persuaded Ivor Noel Hume, then the chief archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg, to dig at Fort Raleigh. Evans intrigued the in-demand scholar with tantalizing evidence: Remains uncovered at Fort Raleigh in the 1960s by another archaeologist resembled a piece of a fort Noel Hume had found in Virginia.
What Noel Hume discovered, however, wasn't the long-sought fort. His team instead exhumed ruins of a 1585 workshop set up by scientist Thomas Hariot and metallurgist Joachim Gans. The pair were among the first group of 108 men that Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched to North America to create a colony here. Out of food, that group returned to England in 1586, well before the Lost Colony settlers ever left their motherland.
Discovery of the workshop was a conquest as well as a setback. Remains of the structure lie both inside and out of earthen walls that many had considered the site of the colonial fort. Since a fort was unlikely to have cut through a building, the workshop's discovery challenged that belief.
And Noel Hume's team turned up no other evidence of a settlement -- human bones, glass bottles, pottery, remains of buildings.
"What we thought had to be certain cannot be certain," Evans said.
Still, the story of Fort Raleigh is of growing interest to U.S. and British historians -- something Evans hopes will sustain support for his foundation. Many now view English settlements there, particularly the earliest one, as a key to the success of Jamestown, established to the north in 1607.
Observations published by Hariot probably helped English entrepreneurs raise money for trips to North America's mid-Atlantic regions. He saw great promise in the minerals, lumber and herbs they found on Roanoke Island.
"If they hadn't been encouraging, Britain probably wouldn't have come to this part of America for years," Noel Hume said.
On top of that, lessons learned about local Indians on Roanoke better equipped Jamestown settlers to get along with native peoples. For instance, archaeologists in Jamestown have found sheets of copper and pieces of the metal cut into many decorative shapes.
In a book Hariot published after returning to England, he noted how local Indians liked to adorn themselves with copper. Trading copper with Powhatan, a powerful chief, might have protected the Virginia settlers from attacks, said Luccketti, a Jamestown researcher working in Manteo this month.
An eroding site
Finding more of the Roanoke settlements might clarify those connections. The trouble is, nature is not on the side of research. Land at Fort Raleigh has disappeared, eroded by Roanoke Sound.
"It's a race against time," said Eric Klingelhofer, director of historical archaeology at Mercer College and another veteran of Jamestown digs.
That is why archaeologists funded by the foundation last year focused on underwater studies off shore, digging 7 feet into the sand and scouring it with metal detectors. This month, they found shards of what looks like 16th-century pottery by the beach, but not a whole lot more.
Evans gets excited whenever they find anything. He has no need to learn where the lost, second wave of colonists went; that might wreck the allure of Fort Raleigh. But he is burning to know exactly where all those English souls passed their days.
"Where is the settlement?" he asked. "Where is the original fort?"
I'm always fascinated by that. One of the great things about North America (most of it that is) is that it was settled by the English, with their strong civil and increasingly democratic traditions.
If one looks at the sh*thole countries of Mexico on south, or even the French parts of Canada or Louisiana, one sees how different history could have been.
I've always had a bit of a pet peeve with "The Lost Colony" though. Most of us were taught that it was the first European colony in the New World, but it was established in 1587. The French had established a fort and colony on the St. Johns River in 1564 followed by the Spanish establishing St. Augustine in 1565. By the time the first "English" settlers were mysteriously disappearing, St. Augustine was a thriving town; 42 years before Jamestown and 55 years before the pilgrims landed.
Local folks have a pretty good idea of where they went. The colony was more or less abandoned and survivors went native. Many of the local Indians have had surnames from the colony's roster and there were individuals among them that looked like Englishmen according to Jamestownians. Dare is a big name among the local Indian derivatives.
This may be too recent in history for a GGG ping, but I'm pinging you anyway.
I never heard "first European Colony" and I lived in southeast Virginia and went to school and history classes there. I always heard that it was the first English permanent settlement. The same history books had Spaniards in Georgia already.
It wasn't the first English permanent settlement...it mysteriously disappeared. The first title goes to Jamestown.
No, most of us were taught that it was the first English colony in the New World and that is correct along with Virginia Dare being the first English baby born in North America.
At the same time, were you taught about the French and Spanish in Florida and their timeline relationship to the failed Lost Colony?
It was the first attempt at a permanent settlement. The previous settlements of people "wintering over" were just for exploration -- they never meant to stay permanently. Roanoke was meant to be permanent even though it failed.
Yes. But I grew up in North Carolina, so maybe they attempted to get that part of the history right more than other states might have.
Can you jog my memory?
What was that word that they found carved in the tree?
Spent four years in Elizabeth City myself...lovely place. It was there that our oldest son was told in school that Roanoke was the first attempt to form a colony; there were no qualifications in the school book about nationality. This was a few years back so I'm sure things have changed.
Croatoa or something like that.
Isn't there some sort of DNA confirmation amongst the natives?
Thanks, it's late. I'll let SunkenCiv decide.
Croatoan.
Indian tribe.
I read once that it was proposed to do that but I got distracted after that and don't know. I suppose I should do some internet searching now.
Just to be plain, my wife bought it!
I believe there was a tribe or band whose name (unwritten, of course) was believed to sound like what that spelling represented ca 1600.
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