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North Carolina History for Students Fall 2007 Volume 47, Number 1

On the cover: Part of a map that John Speed published and sold in London in 1676. The map, largely based on John Ogilby's 1672 map, describes the New World's Carolina and Florida. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Explorers Are You: Simon Fernandez: Navigator, Office of Archives and History. At right: This iron 1 Tar Heel Junior Privateer-and Villain? breastplate was made ca. 1580s in England, or 19 Historians, Pigs, and by Dr. E. Thomson Shields Jr. perhaps Scotland. Early European explorers to the New World would have worn protective Sir Walter Raleigh armor that included such a piece. Image courtesy by Dr. Joseph C. Porter The Lost Colony: Interpreting of the North Carolina Museum of History. 20 History through Drama Time Line by Christine Dumoulin State of North Carolina of Exploration Michael F. Easley, Governor 3 Beverly E. Perdue, Lieutenant Governor

Earliest American N Department of Cultural Resources Explorers: Adventure Lisbeth C. Evans, Secretary 6 Staci T. Meyer, Chief Deputy Secretary and Survival by John W. Kincbeloe III Office of Archives and Plistory THJH Essay Contest Winner: Jeffrey J. Crow, Deputy Secretary Marks on the Land 23 A Boy’s Journal Division of State Flistory Museums by Levi Lamprecht North Carolina Museum of History 9 We Can See: Routes of Kenneth B. Howard, Director Carolina’s Earliest Heyward H. McKinney Jr., Chief Operations Officer Explorers The Art of John White William J. McCrea, Associate Director by Suzanne Mewborn by Tom Magnus on 24 Education Section B. J. Davis, Section Chief Escape through the Great Finding a Lost Spanish Michelle L. Carr, Curator of Internal Programs Dismal Swamp Charlotte Sullivan, Curator of Fort (North Carolina’s 12 27 by Dr. Noeleen Mcllvenna Outreach Programs Real First Colony) by Dr. David G. Moore Tar Heel Junior Historian Association What Do Explorers Do When Suzanne Mewbom, Program Coordinator They Are Not Exploring? John Courtney Armstrong, Subscription Coordinator A Long and Difficult 30 Lawson’s Everyday Life Journey across the Atlantic Tar Heel Junior Historian by Bea Latham 15 by the Education Department Doris McLean Bates, Editor in Chief Lisa Coston Hall, Editor/Designer Staff, Roanoke Island Festival Suzanne Mewbom and Charlotte Sullivan, John Lawson’s North Carolina Park Conceptual Editors 32 by Dr. Vincent Beilis Tar Heel Junior Historian Fact and Fiction: Looking Association Advisory Board for the Lost Colonists A Different Kind of Annette Ayers, Mary Bonnett, Fay Gore, Vince 17 Exploration: William Bartram Greene, Lisa Coston Hall, Jim Hartsell, Jackson by Dr. Charles R. Ewen and 36 and Science in the 1700s Marshall, Suzanne Mewborn, Leslie Rivers, Dr. E. Thomson Shields Jr. Charlotte Sullivan by Dr. James T. Costa and Dr. L. Scott Philyaw ~Do you need to contact* THJH editor? Send an e-mail to [email protected].

THE PURPOSE of Tar Heel Junior Historian magazine (ISSN 0496-8913) is to present the history of North Carolina to the students of this state through a well- balanced selection of scholarly articles, photographs, and illustrations. It is published two times per year for the Tar Heel Junior Historian Association by the North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, North Carolina 27699-4650. Copies are provided free to association advisers. Members receive other benefits, as well. Individual and library subscriptions may be purchased at the rate of $8.00 per year. © 2007, North Carolina Museum of History. PHOTOGRAPHS: North Carolina Museum of History photography is by Eric N. Blevins and D. Kent Thompson. EDITORIAL POLICY: Tar Heel Junior Historian solicits manuscripts horn expert scholars for each issue. Articles are selected for publication by the editor in consultation with the conceptual editor and other experts. The editor reserves the right to make changes in articles accepted for publication but will consult the author should substantive questions arise. Published articles do not necessarily rep¬ resent the views of the North Carolina Museum of History, the Department of Cultural Resources, or any other state agency. The text of this journal is available on magnetic recording tape from the State Library, Services to the Blind and Physically Handicapped Branch. For information, call 1-888-388-2460. NINE THOUSAND copies of this public document were printed at an approximate cost of $5,765.00, or $0.64 a copy.

NORTH CAROLINA OCRARTMCNT Or PRINTEDD with!V CULTURAL RESOURCES o SOY iINK|nk! introduction Explorers Are You: T Pigs, and Sir Walter Raleigh NOV 3 0 RTATE LIBRARY Or by Dr. Joseph C. Porter* k.Adth HARQLINA

ar Heel Junior Historians are explorers. You explore when¬ ever you visit people and places. You explore the past at the North Carolina Museum of History. You explore when you take a trip. A journey to your grandparents' home can turn into an expedition to the mys¬ terious realm of adults. To explore means that you travel or study in search of new knowledge. A long time ago, in the 1400s, the Portuguese and the Spanish explored the dangerous Atlantic Ocean and the land that lay beyond it. Such exploration would be like going on a NASA mission to outer space today. (Above) This painting, created in 1893, depicts explorer Christopher Columbus bid¬ ding farewell to the queen of Spain as he prepares to leave in search of a passage to Like all explorers, those early men were India in 1492. Image from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. adventuresome and courageous, and they (Below, right) In the early 1900s a man digging in his garden in the Wanchese area, on Roanoke Island, found this 1583 English sixpence. The coin bears the likeness of journeyed into the unknown. Many died of Queen Elizabeth I. Several residents in that area have found Algonquian Indian arti¬ facts over the years. Perhaps a member of the Roanoke voyages traded this coin to an disease, starvation, wounds, and accidents. American Indian. Image courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. They had no computer or Global Positioning System (GPS) to help find the way. Explorers Columbus was trying to sail to India, but had to excel at geometry in order to use the the New World was in the way. So he reached sun and the stars as guides. The men may islands in the Caribbean Ocean. At first, have laughed at people today who think math Columbus thought that he was near India, so is useless, because their very lives depended he called the people Los Indios, or the Indians. upon being good students. These travelers In the New World, Europeans took food and explored because Europeans wanted to find a other things from the Indians, and sometimes way to sail to India and other lands to the they made them into slaves. The Indians east. India had many precious things like began to fight back, and some of them battled spices, silks, and perfumes that the Europeans back for four hundred years. wanted to sell at home. Over the next decades, the Spaniards In 1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sent expeditions (called entradas) into of Spain sent Italian Christopher Columbus the present-day United States to look west to explore the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus for gold, silver, and other precious set sail in three small ships named Nina, Pinta, items. In 1540 a conquistador named and Santa Maria. He had a crew of 87 men. Hernando de Soto and his men spent After a risky trip, Columbus discovered the nearly four weeks in what we know as Western Hemisphere and claimed the New North Carolina. De Soto had brought World for Spain. Europeans called it the New horses and pigs with him. Some ran away, World because it was new to them. North creating wild herds of pigs and horses in the Carolina is in the New World. South. When de Soto cooked pigs for lunch.

*Dr. Joseph C. Porter is the chief curator at the North Carolina Museum of History. THJH, Fall 2007 1 was he the first to enjoy barbecue in of the explorers who came North Carolina? The Spanish horses to Roanoke. In 1585 he were some of the finest in the world. painted detailed pictures of Today when you see a horse, it may be the first Tar Heels—the a descendant of those wonderful Indians—as well as their animals. homes, villages, and crops. Another Spaniard, Captain Juan He painted pictures of Pardo, built a fort in North Carolina in plants and animals. Today the 1560s. Pardo's men (like de Soto's you can look at White's had earlier) began fighting the paintings and get an idea of American Indians. The Spaniards took how North Carolina looked women and food, infuriating the so long ago. tribes. After Indians got rid of Captain White returned to Pardo's men, Spaniards did not come Roanoke in 1587 with set¬ to North Carolina anymore to explore tlers, as their governor. or try to settle. In 1565 they had, how¬ An oil painting of Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) by These colonists soon were Albert Holden (1870-1920). The Lost Colony lost ever, created a colony in Florida—Saint Raleigh a lot of money Image courtesy of the North starving, and Governor Augustine. You can still visit the old Carolina Museum of History. White returned to England Spanish fort there. A colony was the for supplies. While he was name for European settlements in the New World. gone, the colony disappeared. People still try to In a colony, people live in a new territory but solve this mystery, but they can't. If you study his¬ remain under the laws and rules of their home tory and science, perhaps you can discover what country. happened to the Lost Colony. If you do, you might In 1558 Queen Elizabeth I became the monarch become as famous as Sir Walter Raleigh. of England. She was a brilliant and determined ruler who wanted England to become as powerful as Spain. Her advisers, including Sir Walter Raleigh, told her that having colonies would make England great and wealthy. Raleigh is a very important man in the history of exploration, in the history of England, and in the history of North Carolina. The state capital is named after him. He convinced Queen Elizabeth to authorize the cre¬ ation of an English colony in the New World. Raleigh called this place “Virginia" in honor of the queen, who had no boyfriends or husbands. THE PREFACE. unfit and hew unworthy a chic* / hjye mile of* Raleigh was an adventurer, poet, soldier, and fir- undertake a rKe of tbk mixture; mint ewif ret Hi exceeding weake, hath /nffttientlyufolved met. intellectual. He devoted his entire life to studying, 'tern begotten r#rn Ttithmy firftdavne of day,+be fli] of cc-mmon Knot’ledge toortn itftlfeto* and late in his life, he wrote a history of the world. yta, fs f and hr fore any t vinj ret iVed, either frrm 1 ime:Inurbtjft *et have doubted that tie darkml Raleigh never came to North covertdover both It and Sfce, /owjj before the pe t\uinin* Oil*. ^—+,iUlJJjne proceeded tith fly /Hr/h ry of Jin-Ar jed pme feur/auicl my Vt/^nrf America, but he might be icnrJ bind of Great Bmume. / • • r 'abihtjjbe better part of W*/r times are ran out ht other Z called the “father of North ether (as l could) t be j nted and tattered frame of out Bnyl fthe uniWrftll: in *hom,UJ tlerebeent no oderdtfrR (l-E Carolina" and the "father of than tl't time of the djyjt'bere enonth. the Jay of i temptfl neat he Very evening ere l began. Buttbofe utmifh^anJ fonlc-pierci English North America." If • are ever akin? while uncurrd • with the defire to fatufie thofe f I have rryedby the fire of jidverftty, (he former enforcing t you become a space explorer, {Above) The cover and preface of the 1634 edition of Sir Walter Raleigh's perhaps you can become the History of the World, first published twenty years earlier. Images courtesy "father" or "mother" of a of the North Carolina Museum of History. (At left) This postage stamp was issued in 1937 in observation of the 350th anniversary of the birth of the planet or a moon. Lost Colony's Virginia Dare, the first English child bom in the New Because of Raleigh, groups World. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and History. of English explorers jour¬ neyed to the New World beginning in 1584, land¬ ing at Roanoke Island. Artist John White was one

2 TH]H, Fall 2007 mmtc.

WirwaUaJiantilut on'xalteri' J rtalnqh, fupitjtns on/mitSlin tLimo Zfm mo lxxxv ttrniVrn J Smnii • .nojfrrt fjfpn, Bilabrl-u Voyages of exploration have i xxvu WWuitit Xtro HtfCorta ptailmni often included cartographers, QLilrro Jijnyto rfr,aiiih' jl A ff.ftiam'indijjtnarum >5 or mapmakers. Cartography is *. TV knmhu: •

the science of representing a Loiatuc geographical location in a ■Ptinaiiuat visual or graphic form. Sometimes this involves adding ’Srcota Masccn political boundaries or other Cotan. nongeographic divisions. People have been making maps in some form for thou¬ sands of years. By the 1300s, making charts—or maps for sea navigation—became even more important. Written descriptions, and then charts CroatoanS'

and maps, replaced the tradi¬ ‘HatordfC tion of pilots passing along

instructions and directions by S3ia,tf3W •SEPTENTR10 talking. On voyages in the MOOs and

1500s, paid mapmakers often Ifucarum- traveled with surveyors to draw and paint by hand maps of the new lands discovered. Their maps seem like artwork Theodor de Bry based this map of the New World of "Virginia" on a John White drawing from the 1585 Roanoke expedi¬ today, and they are full of infor- tion. Published in 1590, de Bry's engraving is the first printed map devoted to the region of present-day North Carolina. mation.These old maps often The map advertises the beauty and vastness of the New World to potential colonists or patrons of exploration. This ver¬ include decorative features sion adds information to White's, including more place-names. Image courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. such as cartouches (fancy north, south, east, and west. (Modern frames around titles) or the years, aerial photography.satellite pho¬ tography, computers, and Global coats of arms of patrons or maps often use a single arrow pointed Positioning5ystems (GP5) have changed landowners.Sea monsters, dol¬ north to show directional orientation.) phins, and flying fish are com- As science and math progressed, the way people make and use maps. mapmakers developed new techniques Try comparing historical maps to mod¬ mon.f he maps may use a ern maps of the same region. What differ¬ compass rose or wind rose to for depicting a curved surface on a flat ences can you spot? How do you explain show the cardinal directions: surface. Engraving and printing advances also changed maps.In more recent them? c/ime jCine ofJ&cjjforaticn

5 early as UO.OOO BC: People 1520: Pedro de Quexoia leads a Spanish site. At any rate, the group of migrate in waves from pres¬ expedition from Santo Domingo that is male and female colonists as ent-day Asia across a land believed to have passed through North well as slaves is believed to bridge that no longer exists. Carolina's present-day Cape Fear region. have sailed as far north as the They follow river systems as Spain — more unified than many neighboring Chesapeake Bay before settling. Within three months, after a hurri¬ they move into North and countries — will jump into the driver's seat of This steel burgonet, South America. These are the ancestors of the the exploration bandwagon. cane, starvation, and the deaths of or helmet, was American Indians who later greeted more than 400 of 600 colonists, the made between 1550 European explorers. I52U .‘Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian sail¬ discouraged group flees back to and the early 1600s ing for France, records the first definite Santo Domingo. in Spain; it is the Late 900s and early l000s:The Vikings, exploration along what we know as the type that Spanish 600: Hernando de Soto, of explorers of North who had previously reached Iceland and North Carolina coast, as far north as Carolina probably Greenland from Scandinavia, are believed to Hatteras. Scholars dispute whether he landed Spain — leading the first lengthy would have worn. have reached North America. near present-day Wilmington or nearer to exploration of the Southeast by a Image courtesy of the Bogue Banks. European —stops in what is now North Carolina W92: Christopher Columbus, an Italian hired western North Carolina. By this Museum of History. to explore for Spain, reaches what we know July 1526 : Lucas Vasquez de Aylldn leads a time, the Spanish have conquered as the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola. He group in setting up a Spanish colony along the Incas and the Aztec. They expect similar thinks he is near India. The European race is "Rio Jordan," thought by some to be the results in North America. Searching for gold on to explore and colonize the New World. Cape Fear River. Others think it is the Santee and often traveling along Native trade and About fifteen years later, the term America, River in present-day South Carolina, or that communication paths, de Soto's group makes based on the name of explorer Amerigo the colony was located in present-day many enemies among the American Indians. Vespucci, first appears on a map. Georgia. (Archaeologists have not found the It also introduces smallpox and other

THJH, Fall 2007 3 TTime Xbte ^ ^WHO: A native of Spanish settlement efforts in the region and Germany and leader of European diseases. (Many Indians live in opening the door for the English. y the Moravian faith, well-organized societies in densely populat¬ Information left by the Pardo and de Soto opangenberg (I70M-I792) led a sur¬ ed areas, so strange illnesses spread fast.) expeditions offers some of the only written veying party that headed south from The expedition becomes one in a long line records of American Indian society before Pennsylvania in 1752 to choose a large of Spanish disasters —such a disgrace that de European contact changed it forever. rpiece of land to be bought from Earl Soto reportedly lies down and dies near the r Granville. Mississippi River in 1542. Some of his men 1582: Englishman Richard Hakluyt publish¬ 'WHEN:5pangenberg’s group traveled down the kill their horses for the nails in their shoes, so es a collection of writings about the New [Great Wagon Road, arriving in present-day they can build rafts to return to the Gulf of World, boosting interest in and support for f Forsyth County in November 1753. Mexico. Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's exploration. The growth of printing plays JwHAT;The Moravian groupselected a 100,000- exploration party, which had moved from a major role in the explosion of explo¬ Iacre tract of land they called Wachovia (“peace- Mexico up through present-day Arizona and ration (and expansion of knowledge) dur¬ Iful valley”), where important com¬ headed east, may have been within two hun¬ ing this time. People can read about and munities, including Bethabara and dred miles; if the two Spanish groups had see drawings of faraway lands. [Salem, would soon grow up. met up, history might have been different! March 158U; England's Queen Elizabeth I pO?;5pangenberg, also called August 1566; Looking for the Chesapeake grants Sir Walter Raleigh the exclusive ^Brother Joseph, and the Bay, Spaniards led by Pedro de Coronas land rights to and rewards of a New World L Moravians left extensive written on the coast of present-day Currituck colony. (Raleigh's half brother. Sir L records full of information and County. After exploring for a few days, they Humphrey Gilbert, lost this patent when he kopinions.5pangenberg wrote return to the West Indies. (In 1565 Spain had died on a voyage back from present-day , about rich lands and exotic established Saint Augustine in present-day Canada.) Raleigh finds investors and sup¬ k animals such as wolves, _ II! Florida, the first permanent European settle¬ plies a two-ship expedition commanded by k panthers, and buffalo.He August' ment in America.) Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who are described fearsome Joseph''^Kngenbe. Natives and lazy Image^Mrlesy of the to check things out and find good places for (even criminal) StQj^Trchives, Nortl 1566-1567: Juan Pardo leads an expedition a colony. Francis colonists! vlina Office of from Santa Elena —a Spanish settlement at The expedition enters Pamlico Sound Drake Archives and Histori, what is now Parris Island, South Carolina — through "Wococon" (present-day Ocracoke) happens by in through present-day western North Carolina. Inlet in July. At Roanoke Island the explorers June, most colonists gladly return with him Pardo's mission is to set up outposts (against meet American Indians, including Chief to England. Drake leaves behind an explor¬ England and France), find supplies, convert Wingina, and decide the site is excellent for ing party and possibly a few Africans and American Indians to Catholicism and make settlement. They return to England with two South American Indians captured from his them friends of the Spanish, and build a road Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, who learn archenemy, the Spanish. Grenville soon to Spain's silver mines in Mexico. (The English and are used to create publicity for arrives with a supply ship. Finding no one, Spanish, to their misfortune, believed that to the colony called Virginia. he leaves behind fifteen men to hold the area be a short trip across what we know as the for England. Appalachian range.) Relations are a little 1585; The first English settlement in America friendlier at first. Many chiefs travel to meet is founded at Roanoke Island. Ralph Lane is 1587: Raleigh sends White off in April and trade with Pardo. By spring 1568, governor. Local Indians, some of as governor of a new group of settlers. though, the Indians have wiped out the whom welcome the colonists at This group, which includes women and Spaniards' six forts, effectively ending first, begin to see the English as a children, is supposed to found "the nuisance who eat Indians' food Cittie of Ralegh" in the Chesapeake Bay and take other things. Although area. But, pointing to the lateness of the the colony is a military opera- WHO:He was a German year and weather concerns, pilot Simon explorer, born ca. 16U0, mostly dis tion—led by Raleigh's Fernandez instead leaves the colonists m65ed during his lifetime. cousin Sir Richard at Roanoke Island in July. The group Grenville (who hopes WHEN:Lederer arrived in Virginia in 1669. Governor finds bones of men left behind in 1586. to build a fort and Sir Francis Drake. William Berkeley, of that colony, hired him to search White asks Manteo to help improve a base for captur¬ Image from the for the Pacific Ocean, believed to be a short distance relationships with the Roanoke and ing Spanish Library of Congress, west. Lederer made three trips into the backcountry, includ Croatoan Indians. Most Natives decide ships and Prints and ing parts of present-day North Carolina.He reached the Photographs Division. to let the English fend for themselves. Piedmont (likely near modem Vance County) in May 1670 with 21 i gold) — the In late August —soon after his grand¬ militiamen and an Americanlndian guide. Worried about getting I colony of daughter Virginia Dare becomes the first lost, the group pursued a straight compass course, ignoring well- | roughly 100 men also English child bom in the New World —White known trading paths and running into many natural obstacles. After 1 includes artist John goes home for supplies. With England and twelve days of struggle, the militiamen turned back. White and scientist Spain at war, he cannot return as planned. ; and mathematician 50?; Lederer and his guide continued exploring for a couple of 1 Thomas Harriot. 1590: White finally gets back to Roanoke months without major problems.showingthat one could survive ■ These two create an Island in August to find the colony deserted, without a large armed party.The men who deserted Lederer P important visual and with little evidence of what happened other spread bad stories and made fun of him, and some people at the written record of the time said that the published account of his trip was made up. than cryptic messages carved into two trees. area's people and natu¬ Although Lederer made errors in his map that later mapmak- Severe weather prevents him from looking ral resources. ers repeated and details of his trip remain disputed, sever¬ long for the group. He never comes back. al scholars have seriously studied his observations of The vanishing settlement becomes known as people and places in recent years.Some call him 1586: Lane takes an expedi- the Lost Colony. the first European explorer of the Piedmont. tion into the interior to look for precious metals. He adds to 1608: Captain John Smith — the leader of —from the Research Branch, Office of worsening relations with the Jamestown, Virginia, founded in 1607 and Archives andHistory Indians when he has Chief Wingina the first permanent English settlement in the killed for plotting against the English. Americas —sends expeditions to the Roanoke Things quickly go bad. When explorer Sir 4 TH/H, Fall 2007 WHO: A tough woodsman, "hunter,Indian trader, fisherman, andsol- area seeking information about the Lost describes dier born in I73U and raised near Reading, V / Pennsylvania, Boone moved to North Carolina’s western Colony, without success. animal and plant Piedmont (near present-day Mocksville) in 1750. life, and groups of 1622: An expedition from Jamestown, led by American WHEN:He left in 1769 for a territory he called Kante-ke—Kentucky. Indians that John Pory, explores the Chowan River region. WHAT:Boone explored the rugged Appalachian Mountain region and was Lawson has among the men who blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland 1650: From the northern colonies, white set¬ visited. Since Gap (now a national park in Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky) in tlers begin trickling onto and exploring Spanish 1775.This became the main route to the new West.The 05. American Indian lands along Carolina's explorers Congress in 18IU gave him land in Missouri as thanks for his explo¬ coastal sounds and rivers. first arrived, ration of the area from western North Carolina to that state. many tribes 50?: Boone became a legendary figure and the model for 1651: Edward Bland travels from Virginia to have moved, merged, or numerous tall tales, movies, and television shows about pioneers explore Carolina. He publishes a description and frontiersmen.Stories often place a coonskin cap on his disappeared. entitled The Discovery of New Brittaine. head, but historians say that he never wore one! Boone pre- ferred a brimmed hat made from beaver. One story says 1653: Virginia legislator Francis Yeardly hires . uscarora gear creek jn North Carolina got its name the year trader Nathaniel Batts to explore the Indians capture that Boone killed ninety-nine bears along its banks. Dani^Boone. Albemarle Sound region for settlement. Lawson, New Bern Other tales have him swinging through forests on Irt]^/e Rom the 'rary of (Within a few years, Batts will be considered founder Baron Christoph vines—and doing other things that he Congress, Prints the area's first permanent white resident. A von Graffenried, and two probably never did. African slaves. Lawson is killed and Photographs deed on file in Virginia shows him buying Division. land from Indians in 1660.) Later in the year, after he argues with the chief. Cor Tom. explain the Virginia Assembly grants lands along the The Indians release the others. The Tuscarora a recently signed Roanoke and Chowan rivers to Roger Green, War soon begins when a group of Indians — peace treaty and assure them that colonists who had previously explored the area. angry about the seizure of their lands, will honor it. The next spring, he goes with enslavement of their people, and trading several Cherokee leaders to London, practices of whites —attacks white settle¬ England, and he tries to remain a peaceful 1661: King Kilcocanen of the Yeopim Indians ments near New Bern and Bath. The Indians go-between until his death in 1765. His pub¬ grants land to George Durant in the earliest kill about a third of Carolina's colonists. lished memoirs provide vivid descriptions grant on record in the Carolina colony. Hundreds of Tuscarora will be killed in a and observations about the Cherokee, as well 1713 siege. Two years later, a treaty sets up a as a map of their villages. 1663: King Charles II of England grants a tribal reservation, but most remaining Unfortunately, charter for land to eight Lords Proprietors of Tuscarora migrate north. This defeat of the Timberlake's Carolina. Their region stretches from the Indians opens up the colony's interior for friendly relation¬ Albemarle Sound to present-day Florida and white exploration and settlement. ship with the tribe west to the Pacific Ocean. The Proprietors differs from that divide it into three counties: Albemarle, 1722: Naturalist Mark Catesby begins a four- of many whites. Clarendon, and Craven. By this time, settlers year exploration of the Carolinas, Georgia, The Cherokee are moving steadily into present-day North Florida, and the Bahamas. make one more Carolina from the north, which is easier than effort to protect coming from the treacherous coast. 1728: William Byrd and others begin to sur¬ their lands, rising vey the North Carolina-Virginia boundary. up in 1776. A 1665 : Sir John Yeamans leads a small colony series of treaties from Barbados to the Cape Fear River, set¬ Henry Timberlake mapped Cherokee chips away at the tling Charles Town in Clarendon (now 1761: After years of conflict during the French communities in the 1760s. Image cour¬ tribe's land. The tesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Brunswick) County. It is abandoned within a and Indian War, colonial lieutenant Henry government Office of Archives and History. couple of years, and the area will not really Timberlake visits eventually forces have permanent settlers until about 1725. (In Cherokee most Cherokee to move to Indian Territory, 1670 a different Charles Towne, present-day ., _ ,, ,, Indians WHO: He was a 05. to present-day Oklahoma. Charleston, South Carolina, is built.) Army corporal who had enlisted in Kentucky in 1799. 1775: Naturalist, artist, and scientist William !672:George Fox, founder °t the Society X WHEN:In I80U Meriwether Lewis and Bartram begins travels through the western of Friends (Quakers), and missionary £ wj,Uam Clark set out from 5t. Louis, Missouri, half of North Carolina. He collects and William Edmundson travel through ^ fo explore the charted West. Warfington was describes native plants and spends time with the Albemarle, still a rough wild- ^ among several soldiers who signed up to go on American Indians. In 1791 Bartram publishes erness, converting people. ^ the first leg of a j ourney that in late 1805 reached Travels through North and South Carolina, Quakers become the colony's the Pacific Ocean. Georgia, East and West Florida. first major religious group. ,. _ , . , .... WHAT: After a tough winter in the Mandan villages in what is now North Dakota, Warfington in April 1805 led I90U; Horace Kephart moves to western 1701; Explorers and settlers begin at least 10 other men back to 5t. Louis—a six-week, 1,600- North Carolina and writes about the envi¬ pushing west and south out of the mile trip. Warfington was in charge of safely transporting ronment, culture, and people during count¬ Albemarle with regularity. Soon, the expedition journals; the first draft of Clark’s map of less wanderings. He pushes for the creation Chowan, Pasquotank, and the West; animal, mineral, and plant specimens; and of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Perquimans parishes are organ¬ some U5 American Indians who had agreed to meet where a peak bears his name. ized. In 1705 Bath becomes the with President Thomas Jefferson. colony's first incorporated town. 50?:Warfington, born in Louisburg, is the only known 1972: Charles Duke, a Charlotte native, com¬ North Carolinian associated with the Lewis and mands the lunar module for NASA's Apollo 1709: John Lawson —who began a Clark“Corps of Discovery”trip.Lewis included 16 voyage. Duke is one of twelve people who thousand-mile journey through him on a roster of men—most of whom had have walked on the moon's surface. Several Carolina in late 1700 —publishes the made the entire trip—recommended for astronauts on later space shuttle missions widely read A New Voyage to Carolina. back pay and 320-acre land grants. have grown up in North Carolina. Can you (In 1712 North Carolina and South Carolina think of other modern types of exploration? become separate colonies.) The book —from the Research Branch, Office of Archives and THJH, Fall 2007 History Earliest American Explorers: Adventure and Survival by John W. Kincheloe III*

uropean explorers came to the North America. Today we call those people "New World" of North American Indians. America in the 1500s. Before Archaeologists tell us that American that time, the continent was an Indians may have been on the North unknown place to them. These American continent for fifty thousand vean adventurers saw it as an They were the first entirely new land, with animals and plants to Americans, and they What is an archaeologist? discover. They also met new people in this were great explorers, An archaeologist is sort of exciting New World—people with fascinating too. They didn't come like a detective who investi¬ gates what people did in the lifeways that the Europeans had never seen to this continent all at past. Be or she looks for and languages they had never heard. This once. It is thought elves to learn about past New World for Europeans was actual!}/ a very that these ancient cultures, carefully studying things that humans have left old world for the various people they met in adventurers arrived at behind. Archaeologists also different times, over want to find out how people several thousands of long ago used their environ¬ ments. What an archaeolo¬ years. They journeyed gist does can help tell the from Asia on foot or story of a town, village, or by boat. Their explo¬ campsite, even if the peo¬ rations took them ple who lived there long ago left no written records. through icy land¬ scapes and along the coastlines. Eventually these earliest American explorers spread out over the entire continent. Over time, their lives changed as they adapted to different environments. American Indians were creative. They found ways to live in deserts, in forests, along the oceans, and on the grassy prairies. Native peoples were great hunters and productive farmers. They built towns and traded over large dis¬ tances with other tribes. These were the peo¬ ple the European explorers met when their ships landed in America. As the English, French, and Spanish explor¬ ers came to North America, they brought tremendous changes to American Indian tribes. Europeans carried a hidden enemy to the Indians: new diseases. Native peoples of America had no immunity to the diseases that European explorers and colonists brought Early American Indians in what we know as North Carolina were excellent farmers. Indians were growing such crops as com, pumpkins, and sunflowers with them. Diseases such as smallpox, when Europeans arrived. The first English colonists had never seen such crops before they traveled to the New World. Compare this Theodor de Bry engrav¬ influenza, measles, and even chicken pox ing to John White's original sketch of the same American Indian village on proved deadly to American Indians. page 25. Image from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

THJH, Fall 2007 'John W. Kincheloe III is the media specialist at Meredith College in Raleigh, where he 6 also teaches the American Indian History and Cultures Honors Colloquium. Access iuwiv.meredith.edu/nativeam to learn more. Europeans were used to these diseases, but and arrows Indian people had no resistance to them. for European Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct firearms, contact with colonists. Other times, they were powder, and transmitted as Indians traded with one an¬ lead shot. other. The result of this contact with European Trade items germs was horrible. Sometimes whole villages like metal perished in a short time. pots often As early as 1585, English explorer Thomas were cut up Harriot observed how European visits to the and remade small villages of coastal North Carolina into new Indians killed the Natives. He wrote: tools or weapons. The Within a few days after our departure desire to get from every such [Indian] town, the European people began to die very fast, and many goods in short space; in some towns about changed twenty, in some forty, in some sixty, & ancient trad¬ in one six score [6 x 20 = 120], which in ing patterns. truth was very many in respect of The tradition their numbers. . . . The disease was also of simple so strange that they neither knew what hunting for it was nor how to cure it. food began to become less The introduction of European diseases to important American Indians was an accident that no one than getting expected. Neither the colonists nor the animal hides Indians had a good understanding of why to trade. Soon this affected the Native people so badly. American The great impact of disease on the Native Indians population of America is an important part of depended on John White in 1585 painted this image, of A wife of an Indian werowance or chief of Pomeiooc, and her daughter. It gives us a glimpse of the new the story of European exploration. Experts European trade goods that began to affect the Indians. The girl is holding a European doll and showing her mother a necklace of European glass believe that as much as 90 percent of the items for beads. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum. American Indian population may have died daily needs. from illnesses introduced to America by Colonial traders also brought rum, and this Europeans. This means that only one in ten drink caused many problems for some tribes. Natives survived this hidden enemy. Their New trade goods brought from across the descendants are the 2.5 million Indians who Atlantic Ocean changed American Indian live in the United States today. lives forever. New trade goods represented another big A third big change connected to this new change that European explorers and colonists trade was slavery. Europeans needed workers brought to American Indians. Soon after to help build houses and clear fields. They meeting their European visitors, Indians soon realized that they could offer trade became very interested in things that the goods like tools and weapons to certain colonists could provide. In a short time, the American Indian tribes that would bring them Indians began using these new materials and other Indians captured in tribal wars. These products in their everyday lives. Native captured Indians were bought and sold as hunters were eager to trade prepared deer slaves. You might think that Africans brought hides and other pelts for lengths of colored to America were the only enslaved people. It cloth. Metal tools such as axes, hoes, and is surprising to learn that before 1700 in the knives became valuable new resources. Soon Carolinas, one-fourth of all enslaved people American Indian men put aside their hows were American Indian men, women, and

THJH, Fall 2007 7 children. Before 1700 the port city of Charleston shipped out many Native slaves to work in the Caribbean or to be sold in north¬ ern cities like Boston. Slavery led to warfare among tribes and to much hardship. Many tribes had to move to escape the slave trade, which destroyed some tribes completely. In time, the practice of enslaving Native peoples ended. However, it had greatly affected American Indians of the South and the Southwest. Many big changes happened to the first Americans soon after Europeans met them. But Indian people survived diseases, huge shifts in their cultures, and even the destruc¬ tive slave trade. North Carolina recognizes eight proud and enduring tribes today: the Eastern Band of Cherokee, Lumbee, Haliwa-Saponi, Sappony, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Waccamaw- : descendants of the European colonists, Siouan, Meherrin, and Coharie. More than | but their strong presence honors their distant 110,000 American Indians live in the state. • ancestors—those earliest of American They are now greatly outnumbered by the : explorers.

A New and Accurate Map of the Province of North and South Carolina, Georgia, etc., created in 1747, includes the location of many American Indian tribes at that time. The arrival of Europeans had led to the disappearance, merger, and movement of countless tribes. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and History.

8 TH)H, Fall 2007 1 Marks on the Land We Can See Routes of Carolina’s Earliest Explorers by Tom Magnuson*

n 1673 Gabriel Arthur—a young indentured servant from the neighborhood of modern Petersburg, Virginia—went to live in the Appalachian Mountains with Indians, proba¬ bly those we call "Cherokee." In the year that Gabriel, likely still a teenager, lived with these people west of Asheville, he went raiding with them. He traveled north to raid the Shawnee on the Ohio River, and he traveled south to raid Spanish mission Indians in Florida. His travels, all done in one raiding season, were made on foot. Look at a map, and try to imagine walking from the Asheville area to the Ohio River and then down to northern Florida. Explorers come in many forms with many motives for exploration. Some are just curi¬ Traces of old roadbeds and trading paths can teach us about the early ous, and some explorers and settlers of North Carolina, from the American Indians to the Europeans. This roadbed is on a hillcrest near Trading Ford on the just adventur¬ uRaiding” w05 a seasonal Yadkin River. Image courtesy of the Trading Path Association. activity among hunter-gath¬ ous. Some, like erers andsubsbtence farm¬ young Gabriel, nected neighboring villages, broadly scattered ers. With little to do between are ordered nations, and effectively the entire continent. planting and harvesting, one went raiding or, maybe, trad¬ into the We know this from the trade goods found in ing. Raiding involved traveling wilderness by archaeological sites. For example, archaeolo¬ to a remote enemy town and their owners. gists have found obsidian "points" in Ohio, causing the enemy an inj ury. Raids were, in this way, Some are des¬ and the nearest obsidian (volcanic glass) is casual little wars. The perate to found in Idaho. And, of course, the basic Iroquois people traditionally escape one foods grown by Indians in the area of North and maybe habitually warred thing or an¬ Carolina developed in modern Latin America with the 5iouan people. Each raided the other, it seems, other. far, far to the south. every s ummer season. European sol¬ Some of these ancient pathways later diers, traders gained English names and a good deal of and raiders, debtors, escaped indentured ser¬ fame. What came to be called the Great vants, and escaped slaves all used Indian Wagon Road was once the Warriors Path, a trade routes to find their way into the well-known trail used by Iroquoian and unknown parts of America and make those Siouan raiders traveling between upstate New parts known. The first of these explorers trav¬ York (the Iroquois homeland) and Sioux lands eled on American Indian trading paths. centered on the Catawba villages near mod¬ Long before Europeans showed up, ern Charlotte. There also was the Occaneechi American Indians maintained extensive net¬ Path, a name given to a number of different works of trading paths. These footpaths con¬ routes leading to and from Occaneechi Island

*Tom Magnuson earned his master's degree in history from San Jose State University. He founded the non- THJH, Fall 2007 profit, Hillsborough-based Trading Path Association (access www.tradingpath.org) in 1999 and serves as its chief executive officer. The association's mission is to preserve, study, and promote the remnants of the his¬ toric trading path that once connected the Chesapeake country with towns in the Carolinas and Georgia. themselves to walk heel-to-toe in single file, leaving the small¬ est possible marks on the ground. Apparently, the first rule of survival in prehistoric times was not to be seen. Shortly after arriving in America, Europeans wanted to start trading with Indians in the backcountry. They hired Indian porters to carry their trade goods. Men, women, boys, and girls all served as porters, because the Indians around the South did not have draft animals like horses or Edward Moseley's 1733 map of the Carolinas points out an Indian trad¬ ing path. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Office of mules. As soon as you were Archives and History. able to tote a load, you became (modern Clarksville, Virginia). And the road a worker for the tribe. Indians now noted with historic markers all over had used porters to carry trade North Carolina, now known as the Trading goods for many centuries, and a porter's typi¬ Path, existed early on. It appeared on maps as cal load was up to eighty pounds. It was the early as 1733. way trade was done. Most of these named trails, though, didn't Economies of scale— But, soon after exactly follow the original footpaths. That is People carry tens of Europeans estab¬ because wagons move differently than horses, pounds, horses carry lished trade with hundreds of pounds, tribes in the back- and horses move differently than people. and wagons carry country, because of People are really quite agile when compared thousands of pounds. to horses and wagons. Horses have bad With each increase in economies of scale, carrying capacity, it brakes, and when they go downhill, they packhorses replaced costs less per pound porters. Resentment often lose footing. So horse paths frequently to move cargo. This is about being put out differ from human paths around steep slopes. what is meant by Of course, wagons have even more difficulty economies of scale. of work by horses, with slopes. Even in Roman times, road and resistance to builders knew that a slope that would carry changing a tradition as old as portering, at wagons could have no more than a 5 percent least in part, contributed to the 1676 outbreak grade (five feet of descent for every one hun¬ of violence known to history as Bacon's dred feet of forward movement) to keep wag¬ Rebellion. After Bacon's Rebellion, almost all ons from “running away." cargo moved on horseback, until wagons What few physical facts we know about the replaced packhorses in the 1720s and 1730s. old Indian trade and war routes that The collision between the porters and pack- European explorers of the New World regu¬ horse men was repeated when wagoners larly used, we know from traces still visible replaced packhorse men as the knights of the today. We know, for example, that the trails road. But that is a different story—the story of followed the “military crest" of the ridge. settlement, not exploration. That is, they ran alongside, but not on, the By 1730, settlement had come to the back- ridge tops. That way, as a person moved country. The arrival of wagons tells us that along a trail, only those on one side of the the age of exploration and frontier mostly had ridge could see him or her. And from measur¬ passed into memory. We can share in the ing remnants of their old trails—some of them memory of those years before settlement by hundreds of years old—we know that finding, preserving, and studying the old American Indians did, in fact, discipline trade routes. Old roads, trails, and paths help

10 THJH, Fall 2007 Relative Size of Various Tracks on the Ground

Moccasins and unshod horse hooves compacted trails so that such trails and paths did not erode easily. European boots, iron shod draft animals and wagon wheels broke up the earth and sped erosion, so much so that a "V" shaped notch is all that remains of a badly eroded foot or wagon path.

Moccasin Path approx V wide

European Footpath: 3' wide

The Carolina Trail—on the border between Crooked Creek in Stokes County and the South Mayo River in Patrick County Virginia—offers an

example of an old roadbed. A ten-foot-wide colonial road was the equiv¬ fcMracrat3E»BSC=^raG=raCTB=BS3(=SGEaE=1E«1-=.saES3B=,B=3II=«3,3=aSS,,EB1J alent of Interstate 85—just wide enough for two wagons to pass, if the drivers were careful. Old roads are heirlooms built by our ancestors. English law required citizens to build and maintain roads without pay, so militiamen (men between ages sixteen and sixty) built colonial roads under threat of fine or imprisonment. Since they weren't getting paid, they built only what they had to build—just wide enough, and no more, using the shortest route between important places. Image courtesy of the Trading Path Association.

us imagine times gone by. Take a look at the old roadbed shown above. Spend a moment imagining what you would have seen, heard, and smelled standing by this road two hun¬ dred years ago when it was still in use. Traders exploring for new markets and new products in the remote backcountry found and traveled along the footpaths of the {Top) Old roads and paths vary in size based on their use. {Above) This old packhorse trail—east of Historic Stagville State Historic Site, on the people who had come before—the Indians, Flat River—is about five feet wide. Images courtesy of the Trading Path Association. escaped slaves and escaped indentured ser¬ vants, the curious, the desperate, the invisible American Indian hosts. He and the others like first people of the frontier. him, the first European travelers and explor¬ Young Gabriel Arthur saw no wagon roads ers, saw only footpaths. when he ran through the country with his

r Before the invention of internal combus¬ the Mountains.In those days of muscle tion engines, when muscles powered power, it was too dangerous to travel at transportation, cargo moved on land at night. At the end of the day, travelers speeds that varied with the obstacles camped.5o, in the Piedmont, along along the way.In the Piedmont, man and many of the oldest roads, towns are one beast alike moved at about two and a day’s travel (fifteen to twenty miles) half miles per hour, or fifteen to twenty apart.These early towns also are miles per day. Movement was slower located at or near good water sources, among the swamps and deep channels or at a point where they could serve on the Coastal Plain, and slower yet in travelers in other ways.

THJH, Fall 2007 11 Finding a Lost Spanish Fort (North Carolina’s Heal First Colony) by Dr. David G. Moore*

ew North Carolinians know wealthy. However, over five decades, a series the story of the first European of failed attempts at exploration and coloniza¬ settlement in North Carolina. tion discovered no gold or silver. And settle¬ Most people are surprised that ment of North America would turn out to be it wasn't the Lost Colony of more difficult than imagined. Roanoke Island but a small For example, in 1521 Juan Ponce de Leon Spanish fort located in present-day Burke was the first to try and settle a colony in County near Morganton. North America. Soon after landing on the Captain Juan Pardo built Fort San Juan in southwest coast of Florida, his expedition was 1567 at the Native town of Joara. American routed by Indians. De Leon and his 200 Indians burned the fort the next year, and its colonists retreated to Cuba. Five years later, location was forgotten for more than four Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon made another hundred years. Archaeologists working at attempt, with 600 colonists, to establish the what is called the Berry site—the site is first European settlement in North America, named for the property owners—in Burke probably somewhere along the coasts of County believe that they have rediscovered South Carolina or Georgia. This site, called Joara and found remains of buildings that San Miguel de Gualdape, has never been may have been part of the fort. The fascinat¬ located. It was abandoned within a few ing story of Fort San Juan reveals the chal¬ months, after the colonists were unable to get lenges to early European efforts at colonizing food and began to starve. Ayllon was among what is now the United States. It also shows the many that died. Only 150 of those the tragic effects that these attempts had on colonists survived to return to the Spanish American Indians. colony on Santo Domingo. In the fifty years after Columbus's arrival Hernando de Soto's expedition of 1539 to in the so-called Indies, many Spanish expedi¬ 1543 was the most ambitious of the efforts— tions pushed along the Atlantic and Gulf and the greatest failure. De Soto and an army coasts and into the interior of what is now the of more than 600 men (with more than two southeastern United States. Spain hoped to hundred horses) spent four years traveling discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean, as through much of the Southeast, from Florida well as to exploit the land and its resources. to the southern Appalachians in North The Spanish viewed the American Indians as Carolina and west beyond the Mississippi new subjects to be used and hoped they River. However, the men found no gold or sil¬ would lead them to gold and silver. Spanish ver. They fought a lot with American Indians. conquests of Native societies in Mexico and De Soto died on the banks of the Mississippi, South America had made the royal court very and at the end of the four years, what was left of his army (just over 300 men) retreated down the Mississippi in a makeshift flotilla. Other attempts at settlement failed too. It was not until 1565 that Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded Saint Augustine on Florida's Atlantic coast. Menendez planned to colonize all of the territory that the Spanish called La Spanish explorers in the New World would have carried plainer ver¬ sions of guns like this one, which was made in Spain between about Florida, the land we know as North America. 1630 and 1680. This gun—of the Miquelet type developed in Spain in the He knew that the French had built a fort near¬ mid-1500s—likely was custom made for a nobleman to use in hunting. Image courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. by at the mouth of the Saint Johns River, in

TH/H, Fall 2007 *Dr. David C. Moore is a professor of anthropology at Warren Wilson College near Asheville. present-day Florida. The Spanish believed that this French presence threatened their plans, so Menendez attacked and defeated the French there at Fort Caroline. He then sent men north to establish his capital city, Santa Elena, in Port Royal Sound on what is now the South Carolina coast. Archaeologists working at Santa Elena—on the site of present-day Parris Island—have identified the remains of two forts associated with the town. The first was called Fort San Salvador. Some Spanish soldiers, unhappy with conditions there, mutinied, stole a ship, and returned to Cuba. Less than 40 soldiers remained at Santa Elena, short of food and arms, when Captain Juan Pardo arrived on July 18,1566, with 250 men. Pardo and his soldiers built the second fort at Santa Elena, Fort San Felipe. This map shows the location of American Indian towns that Juan Pardo visited, as well as the forts built by the Spaniards. Many of the Indians' towns probably were named Governor Menendez himself arrived at for chiefs. Image courtesy of Dr. David G. Moore. Santa Elena in August, and the town formally became the capital of Spain's colony. seemed to receive Pardo and his men peace¬ Menendez ordered Captain Pardo to take 125 fully, for the most part. soldiers and build a road to Mexico. At this Traveling up the Catawba River valley, time, although the Spanish had thoroughly Pardo reached the town of Joara in early mapped the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, they did January 1567. This seems to have been the not understand just how far it was overland largest and possibly most powerful of the from the Atlantic Ocean to Mexico. Based on Native towns in North Carolina's western the reports of the de Soto and Francisco Piedmont. Joara also may have controlled Vasquez de Coronado expeditions, they mis¬ important trading paths from the Piedmont takenly thought that the eastern Appalachians into the mountains. Here, Pardo built his first and the western Rockies were parts of the fort. Fort San Juan, named after himself and same mountain chain! because the Spanish arrived there on the Day Several documents record Pardo's two of San Juan. (He renamed the Indian town, expeditions. (The first lasted from December Cuenca, after his hometown in Spain.) Thus, 1, 1566, to March 7,1567, and the second, Pardo established the first European settle¬ from September 1, 1567, to March 2, 1568.) ment in North Carolina. (We have no evi¬ These include a short letter written by Pardo dence that earlier expeditions into the interior himself and a longer account written by the built any intentional settlement. They only expedition's scribe, Juan de la Bandera. These used American and other sources tell us that Pardo followed Indian settle¬ Indian trails north from Santa Elena into ments and scav¬ North Carolina. Stopping at a succession of enged from them American Indian towns, he briefly traded for short times.) with the chiefs—and told them they were Seeing the now subjects of the king of Spain. The docu¬ snow-covered ments usually list what types of items the Blue Ridge Spanish gave to the Indians: iron axes, chisels, Mountains to the wedges, or knives, glass beads and orna¬ west, Pardo ments, and cloth. It is unlikely that the decided to go Indians understood Pardo's mission, or their back to Santa new status with the Spanish crown. But they Elena. He An archaeologist holds a Spanish nail, ca. 1500s, excavated at the Berry site. Image courtesy of Dr. David G. Moore.

THJH, Fall 2007 13 planned to return and make his way west (toward American Indian hosts. What is clear so far is that Mexico, he thought) in the spring. He left 30 men the arrival of the Spanish armies in the Catawba stationed at Fort San Juan and stopped at several River valley changed the Indian cultures forever. It Indian towns on his way to Santa Elena. The is thought that many of the Natives living in this Spanish documents tell us that over the next few region died from European diseases such as small¬ months, some men left at Joara traveled into the pox between 1568 and 1700. What had been a Mountains to search for “crystals" and gold. heavily populated valley was mostly abandoned, Under a Lieutenant Moyano, 20 men traveled all until new immigrants from the northern colonies the way into southwest Virginia and northeast began moving into the area in the late 1700s. Tennessee. Making threats against the Indians there proved foolhardy. Moyano and his group were surrounded and held hostage until they were saved by Pardo's return in the spring. Pardo then decided that the original plan to establish a road to the west was too hazardous and retreated to Fort San Juan. Again, we learn interest¬ ing tidbits about the American Indians from the Spanish documents. According to Bandera's account, Pardo met with more than twenty-four chiefs (probably representing as many towns) at Joara, and Joara Mico was the most powerful. The chiefs' names also reflect different Indian lan¬ guages. Based on phonology, or word sounds, the chiefs named Tocae, Atuqui, and Guanbuca were probably Cherokee speakers, for example. Guenpuret and Qunaha may have been Catawban. Pardo went back to Santa Elena in March 1568. He left a total of 120 men stationed in five small 1 Archaeologists excavate the floor of one of the burned buildings at the forts (one in east Tennessee, two more in North Berry site. Image courtesy of Warren Wilson College. I1 Carolina, and two in South Carolina). Pardo never |% returned to his settlements. Spanish sources indi¬ 3tx,cavatinq jcara an (flfcrt anrfuan cate that American Indians destroyed the forts in I In 1986 David G. Moore—an archaeology graduate stu¬ May 1568. A single survivor, Juan de Badejoz, I dent from the University of North Carolina at Chapel described Indians luring the Spaniards from Fort 1 Bill—began excavations at the Berry site in Burke i County.Be found a large Americanlndian town cov¬ San Juan and killing all except himself. He hid in 1 ering about twelve acres, which included the rem¬ the woods and spent thirty days walking to Santa I nants of an earthen mound. 1 Elena, hiding by daylight and moving in darkness. I Since I9CH Moore (now a professor of anthropology History tells us no more about Joara and Fort I at Warren Wilson College) and his colleagues, Dr. Robin Beck (University of Oklahoma) and Dr. Christopher San Juan. However, we know that the failure of the 1I i Rodning (Tulane University), have conducted a series forts struck yet another blow to Spanish attempts kX of digs that indicate that the site is probably the loca¬ to settle the greater Southeast. They made no fur¬ tion of Fort San Juan.The remains of five burned build¬ 1 ings are thought to be houses in which Spanish soldiers ther efforts to move into the interior. And facing I lived. poor resources and hostile Indians, the Spanish I The archaeologists have found hundreds of thou¬ even took apart Santa Elena and moved their capi¬ I sands of American Indian artifacts and more than two tal to Saint Augustine in 1587. I hundred Spanish artifacts, including broken pottery, nails, lead shot, and glass beads. None of Pardo's forts had ever been located I I Unfortunately.Spanish documents tell us nothing until recently. Now archaeologists from Warren I about the appearance of Fort San Juan or about the Wilson College near Asheville, the University of I Native town of Joara. Archaeologists will continue to Oklahoma, and Tulane University are studying the work at the Berry site for years, to learn more about 1 this forgotten fort and the Native people whose lives Berry site for clues to the fate of Fort San Juan. were forever changed by the arrival of invaders from These researchers hope to find out more about 1I Europe. how the Spanish soldiers interacted with their 1

14 TH/H, Fall 2007 & Hong anb ©tffuult Journep across tfje Atlantic by the Education Department Staff, Roanoke Island Festival Park*

n April 1585 an expedition of men left England. They sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of what we know as the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Seven ships sailed together in a fleet. The ships were different sizes; the mid¬ dle size was about the length of a school bus. The travelers included sailors, who worked on the ships, and soldiers and tradesmen going to North America to explore and find items of value. The ships took about ninety- two days to reach Roanoke Island. They trav¬ eled at about five to ten knots, roughly six to twelve miles per hour. During the voyage, storms off the coast of North Africa separated the ships. Each had to make its way alone to the Caribbean, where sailors traveling from Europe to North America often stopped for rest and supplies. Some of the ships reunited near Puerto Rico. The crews got fresh supplies Visitors to Roanoke Island Festival Park can view Elizabeth II, a composite replica of ships that sailed in the 1500s. The ship is named for Elizabeth, one of the seven vessels and captured two Spanish ships, which they that made the 1585 Roanoke voyage. It is a square-rigged, sixty-nine-foot-long bark later sailed back to England. with three masts that has a carrying capacity of fifty tons. Image courtesy of Roanoke Island Festival Park. The men onboard these ships lived in very cramped conditions. Soldiers and tradesmen Normally a cargo ship like the Elizabeth II— stayed "below decks." These areas remained a true-to-size model based on typical six¬ locked and sealed to prevent water from get¬ teenth-century ships, built in the 1980s for ting in and sinking the ship. Since soldiers anniversary celebrations of the Roanoke voy¬ and tradesmen were not used to being at sea, ages—traveled England's coastlines or to if they went up on the main deck, they could France and the Netherlands. Such trips get in the way of working sailors or get hurt. required about fifteen men to sail the vessel. When these ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean, they needed twice that many crew members because the vessels had to sail twenty-four hours a day. Traveling by ship to unfamiliar If your family went on vacation from Morth Carolina to California by car, it places such as North America also required would take two days of constant driving careful and precise measurements to ensure to get there.In orderto equal the jour¬ arrival at the intended destination. The cap¬ ney of the ships in 1585, your family would tain and a crewman called a navigator usually have to make that trip to the West Coast and back twenty-three times, and you did these calculations. vcould only get out of the car twice! In the 1500s the best way to identify your

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*Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo is a state historic site. Access Web site THJH, Fall 2007 www.roanokeisland.com to learn more about the park, the Elizabeth II ship that 15 is based there, and related history. Imagine again that cross-country trip in the car.If the adults were in the front seat, and they painted all the windows in the back of the car black, with a curtain between you and them, you get an idea of what life was like for passengers aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. What if your par¬ ents refused to turn on the air-condi¬ tioning? Of course, you could play cards, dice games, or board games such as backgammon, just like the passengers may have done in 1585.

The gun deck of ships like Elizabeth 11 is often where sailors slept or passengers stayed. Typically these decks had low ceilings. Image courtesy of Roanoke Island Festival Park. stand up straight there. Men in the 1500s were heading in the right direction was to averaged about five feet seven inches tall. measure the angle between the horizon and The men on the ship ate food rationed by an object in the sky, such as the North Star or the ship's steward. It was his job to make sure sun. To do this, and determine latitude, navi¬ everyone got what they needed and to ensure gators used tools such as an astrolabe or supplies did not run out during the trip. cross-staff. Then, using charts, the captain Every day, each man got a pound of meat, could direct his ship. which could be dried beef, salted pork, or Conditions on sixteenth-century ships— dried or salted fish. Jellied eel was a possibi¬ which looked nothing like modern cruise lity. The cook also added meat to dried veg¬ ships—were etables and grain, boiling the mixture in a pot. rough. Hatches, The final product, called "pottage," looked or doors, were like a thick stew. If the weather became too small, and men rough for using fire to cook, everyone ate the used ladders to meat dry with ship's biscuits. The biscuits Europeans categorized ships in the get from one 15005 by the pattern of their sails and were incredibly hard, made only with flour how much they could carry in their deck to another. and water. Since water spoils when stored in holds.They measured carrying Captains made a wooden barrel, each man received one gal¬ capacity by a ship’s ability to carry money by the one-ton (or tonne) barrels. Each barrel lon of beer to drink throughout the day. The held 252 gallons of wine as a standard amount of beer on ships was not very strong, but it kept of measure. A fifty-ton vessel like the cargo they algae from growing in the barrels and was Elizabethll held fifty barrels.Some could carry. So safer to drink than water. ships held six to eight hundred tons. A they needed the two-hundred-ton ship is four times big¬ With moldy biscuits and cramped, dark ger than a fifty-ton. but that does not cargo hold to decks, life aboard ship proved difficult. mean the ship is f our times as long or be as large as Sailors worked hard to get the ship and its ■Tall.The measurement is by volume. possible. The passengers safely from one point to another. ship's top deck, Many ships did not make it. They turned back called the to Europe or were lost. It took about six months weather deck, was outside and filled with to travel to North America and back, and the masts, rigging, and sails. In between the cargo sailors, soldiers, and tradesmen often left their hold and weather deck could be one or more families behind during these long trips. decks, depending on the size of the ship. The Roanoke colonists weren't able to stay Many ships had gun decks with cannons. permanently in North America, but they Often this was where the crew slept or pas¬ would learn a lot and bring back information sengers stayed. Because the gun deck was full that helped later English sailors and explorers of cannons and not used for other jobs, it was return and establish settlements. small—around four and one half feet from floor to ceiling. A full-grown man could not

16 TH/H, Fall 2007 Fad and Fiction: booking fop the bosk Colonists by Dr. Charles R. Ewen and Dr. E. Thomson Shields Jr.*

The Roanoke Voyages first English child or many people, the story of born in the New England's attempts to set up a World. (There colony on Roanoke Island was actually begins and ends with the 1587 another pregnant Lost Colony—more than a hun¬ woman in the dred men, women, and children colony, Margery left on the island who were never heard from Harvie, who had again. What those unfamiliar with the story a baby shortly don't realize is that there were actually three after Dare. She British colonies on Roanoke Island. They are all rarely gets men¬ "lost" as far as archaeologists are concerned. tioned because Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe explored no one ever the present-day Outer Banks of North Carolina talks about sec¬ on behalf of Sir Walter Raleigh for six weeks in ond place.) The 1584. Their accounts of what they found led fact that the Raleigh to dispatch Sir Richard Grenville the group arrived next year to further explore and begin settling during one of the region. Grenville left 108 men under the the worst command of Ralph Lane to establish a colony droughts in on Roanoke Island. These men were only too eastern North glad to be rescued by Sir Brands Drake when Carolina's his¬ he happened by, after the next spring. tory did not Meanwhile, when Grenville returned in 1586 improve its with supplies and more settlers, he found an chances for empty encampment. He left behind a token success. force of fifteen men. No one knows exactly White soon what happened to them, either. We know about headed back these voyages from written records, but we to England have found little archaeological evidence, such for supplies. f • £“” «*» A FiroiDay Cover"£ U sT Though he four hundredth anniversary of the I? Ujf' 9mp 1SSUed at the as tools and everyday tesy ofE. Thomson Shields Jr Roanoke voyages. Image cour- items—let alone tried to building locations. return several times, All of this set the nearly three years passed before he made it stage for the appear¬ back to Roanoke. Like Grenville before him, ance of the most White found a deserted encampment. famous to-be-lost After that 1590 voyage, people have been colonists. John looking for the Lost Colony since at least the White returned to Roanoke in July 1607 Jamestown (Virginia) voyages, with no 1587 as the leader of 117 settlers, including his success. Still, the lure of the mystery has pregnant daughter, Eleanor Dare, whose attracted archaeological investigations over the daughter Virginia in mid-August became the years. There has been little result.

*Dr. Charles R. Ewen (professor of anthropology) and Dr. E. Thomson Shields Jr. (associate professor of English) are THJH, Fall 2007 faculty members at East Carolina University. Together they coedited Searching for the Roanoke Colonists: An 17 Interdisciplinary Collection. Shields is the director of the Roanoke Colonies Research Office (www.ecu.edu/rcro/). Ewen also coedited X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy. Read more about Fort Raleigh at www.nps.gov/fora/. Fort Raleigh The first place in North Carolina that the English visited also was the first that archaeol¬ ogists investigated. Talcott Williams mapped the Roanoke Island site in 1887 and began dig¬ ging in 1895. The National Park Service picked up the hunt in 1947 and has continued on and off to this day, with little to show for the effort beyond the earthworks reconstructed and dubbed "Fort Raleigh." The search for archaeological evidence of the 1580s expeditions kicked into higher gear with now-retired archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume in 1994. Hume found evidence of what he interpreted as a sixteenth-century science center near the rebuilt fort. He decided that everyone had been digging for the main settle¬ ment in the wrong place. The colonists had tested metal ores near the earthworks, he thought, but must have lived at another spot. Interested professionals formed the nonprofit First Colony Foundation to pursue these and other leads, with no success so far. However, hope springs eternal. This engraving illustrated Eleanor A. P. Shackelford's 1892 book Virginia Dare: A Romance of the Sixteenth Century. In the book, most of the lost Fpoir History and Archaeology colonists are killed. Virginia, however, becomes known by the American Indian name Owaissa and eventually marries Iosco, a son of Manteo. to Story Image courtesy of E. Thomson Shields jr. The question people ask most about the Roanoke voyages is what actually happened other possible answers to the question of what to the 1587 colonists. One idea is that they happened to the Tost Colony. tried to go north to the Chesapeake Bay, where These ideas, at best, are hypotheses—edu¬ they originally meant to settle. Others have cated guesses to explain events, but guesses suggested sites that haven't been or cannot be tested. They are along the not theories—ideas that have been tested and Albemarle and shown to be highly probable—let alone facts. Pamlico sounds As hypotheses, they reveal as much about that match what we hope or believe as they do about White's state¬ what we know. For example, few people seem ment that the to assume that the colonists died from disease colonists "were or hunger or were killed by any of the region's prepared to Indian tribes. Tittle Virginia especially avoids remove from this ending in people's imaginations. Because Roanoke fifty we know so little about what happened to the miles into the colonists, their fate is ripe for storytelling. main." Countless books, an outdoor drama, a 1920s

gene's ca. 1920s painting of The Baptism of Virginia Dare Another line silent movie, and numerous television pro¬ William Imagecourtesy of the North Caroiina Museum of History. of thinking grams have taken up the tale. suggests that the One example of these stories is that of the English settlers intermingled with American white doe. In 1901 Sallie Southall Cotten wrote Indians, perhaps moving inland eventually to a book-length poem entitled The White Doe: become the Fumbee of Robeson County. Still The Fate of Virginia Dare: An Indian Legend. others suggest variations on these ideas or Cotten told a story about Virginia surviving

18 THjH, Fall 2007 into adulthood, at which time two American Indians fought because they each wanted to marry her. One man was a magician. When Virginia said she wouldn't marry him, he turned her into a deer and tricked the other man into killing her during a hunt. Cotten's story, based on a fairy tale from Europe, adds elements of the Roanoke story and makes a Because the Lost Colony is such an interesting story, many souvenirs related to it have few plot changes. Interestingly, people have been made over the years. In the 1980s, Jean S. Noah, of South Carolina, created a limited retold her story as if it were actually Indian number of the Dare bears (Ananias, Virginia, and Eleanor) for the North Carolina Museum of History Associates. The museum sold a keychain depicting Sir Walter Raleigh folklore. Today versions of the story can be in conjunction with an exhibition. Images courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. found in books and on Web sites. How and why did the English differ from the Tbe Next Questions to Ask other European colonists? What was the inter¬ All sorts of people have studied the Roanoke action like between the English and the voyages. Historians have combed documents American Indians? We have some historical for clues about who the colonists were and accounts of their conflict, and we have some what might have happened to them. Folk¬ stories people have created about those con¬ lorists and literary critics have studied the flicts, but what does the archaeological evi¬ ways people have used the Lost Colony to tell dence in the ground tell us? Was it all fighting, stories. And archaeologists have been searching or is there evidence of coexistence and trade? for traces of the colony for more than 120 years. Why did these settlement attempts quickly fail, Questions about the Roanoke voyages that when later ones such as Jamestown did not? count for researchers are not so much about Finding the missing colonists is not the end where the colonists went but about what we goal. It is the starting point for a much more can learn from them. How did the English interesting and rewarding pursuit. adapt—and fail to adapt—to North Carolina?

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THJH, Fall 2007 19 Jim dtoAt folo/iy: Interpreting History through Drama by Christine Dumoulin*

istory is full of mysteries. But perhaps none have held more interest or spawned more theo¬ ries than John White's disap¬ pearing 1587 colonists. Thousands of books, docu¬ ments, letters, essays, and reports have been written about the legendary Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. Author and playwright Paul Green's outdoor drama The Lost Colony offers one version of this North Carolina story. The drama began as a one-season performance to celebrate the birthday of Virginia Dare—the first English child born in the New World. It has turned into an annual event enjoyed by millions of people of all ages, local residents and visitors alike. Since its debut in 1937, the show has been performed night after night during the summer. The Lost Colony grew from a combination of romantic ideas, curiosity, and a strong desire to tell an important story close to CAbove) John Borden, Eleanor Dare, and baby Virginia Dare prepare to Did you know that home. In 1921 Mabel Evans Jones, leave the fort in The Lost Colony, ca. 1940s or early 1950s. Image cour¬ The L05t Colony tesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. (Background) An aerial the Dare County school superin¬ view of the Waterside Theatre, ca. 1946. Image courtesy of the Outer debuted the tendent, produced a silent film Banks Histon/ Center, North Carolina Office of Archives and History. same year that the German air¬ about the Lost Colony, distributing ship Hindenberg it to North Carolina schools. "Miss The Roanoke Island Historical crashed, and avi¬ Mabel" would create the first Association's Bradford Fearing and W. O. ator Amelia Earhart disap¬ visual icon of colonist Eleanor Saunders led the community effort to have peared?!!^^ Dare holding her baby daughter, this history mystery dramatized. They turned right, 1937. Virginia, which has become the to North Carolina native Paul Green longest-lasting symbol of the spirit (1894-1981) to write it. Green—who had won of the story. The film inspired pageants with a Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for the first of his sev¬ costumes and celebrations in the 1920s and eral Broadway plays—was a natural for the 1930s, as local residents played various roles job. On January 18, 1937, he signed a contract to help celebrate the anniversaries of with the Roanoke Colony Memorial Virginia's August 1587 birth. Outside of the Association of Manteo to deliver a pageant local community, however, most people drama entitled The Lost Colony. Green's col¬ ignored the legend of the Lost Colony. By the leagues, the Carolina Plavmakers of UNC- beginning of 1937, with the 350th anniversary Chapel Hill, helped with production and pro¬ of the birth quickly approaching, the people vided a director. Works Progress of the Outer Banks wanted more people to Administration sewing rooms in Dare County recognize the importance of this event. were used to construct the costumes.

THIH, Fall 2007 *Christine Dumoulin is an assistant curator at the Outer Banks History Center in 20 Manteo. Learn more about The Lost Colony at wmo.thelostcolony.org. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Manteo helped Skipper Bell build a home for the play, the Waterside Theatre, and filled the stage as extras. (President Franklin Roosevelt had started the WPA and CCC in April 1935 to create jobs on public projects during the Great Depression. Roosevelt him¬ self attended a show in August 1937.) The original plan called for The Lost Colony to be performed for the 1937 summer season as part of the yearlong celebrations honoring Virginia's birth. According to written con¬ tracts that survive, however, it appears that the play soon was intended to be more than a one-season event. Before the summer of 1938, letters already were pouring in requesting that the drama continue for more than a sea¬ Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Green, (right), wrote The Lost Colony. Image courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, North son, and some important people probably Carolina Office of Archives and History. wanted it to continue. Over its seventy-year history. The Lost a seamless, nonstop sequence of color, verse, Colony has gone through many changes in music, dance, drama, and pantomime. In the artistic style. It has survived such events as late 1980s Long began using colors and fab¬ war, hurricanes, and a fire that destroyed the rics that were more historically accurate. Waterside Theatre. The early staging, cos¬ Other changes over the years have included tumes, and music were simple by today's scenery upgrades and the introduction of standards but in style at the time. Audiences microphones and other technologies. The began coming from across the country with modern sound systems and equipment used different expectations and ideas. As society today were not available for decades. changed, the show had to keep up. One way As one reads The Lost Colony script or visits was through new costume designs. The origi¬ Roanoke Island to see a live performance, it is nal costumes were created from donated and important to remember that the play, as his¬ inexpensive fabrics. In the 1960s the costumes torical fiction, offers just one view of an event. became much brighter, using more popular Writers of books, dramas, and movies often colored fabrics. To shake things up, The Lost struggle to balance historical accuracy with Colony team has sometimes hired such telling a good story. One could say there are Broadway greats as production designer Joe many historical inaccuracies and assumptions Layton and, more recently, five-time Tony in Green's script. While many of the charac¬ Award-winning costume designer William ters are actual historical figures, Green did Ivey Long. Beginning in 1964, Layton created take a romantic approach, turning most of

Scenes from the filming of the 1921 movie about the Lost Colony. Images courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of JN'DtAi History.

THJH, Fall 2007 21 tost Clnlmiu

The Lost Colony has many famous alumni, including actor Andy Griffith. (Left) Griffith portrays a soldier during the final march scene, ca. 1947. Image courtesy of the Outer Banks History Center, North Carolina Office of Archives and History (Above) Griffith, as Sir Walter Raleigh, presents turf from the New World to Queen Elizabeth. He appears on the cover of the 1953 season's program as Raleigh. Images courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. them into "good guys" and "bad guys." For exam¬ Today The Lost Colony continues to be the ple, scholarly research tells us that the colony's longest-running outdoor symphonic drama in the governor, John White, did not possess 100 percent United States. What happened to the real men, virtuous character traits, as Green would have us women, and children may never be known. But believe. In the play. White seems very happy and isn't that the reason their story still keeps us inter¬ obliging to return to England to get supplies and ested today? more colonists. From historical documents, how¬ ever, we now know that the whole colony had to persuade him to return home. Green drew from what was known in 1937 ^W°/tat is a symrp/tonic drama 7 as he wrote his script, "improving" the story to the point that he knew he would have a suc¬ The symphonic drama is a thought that staging a pageant cessful play. He created a piece of theater with kind oi historical play, usu¬ themselves would share the story an exciting story, believable plot, and characters ally set on the very site with the world. depicted in the action. It includes Lost Colony author Paul that are clearly heroes or villains. In recent music, dance, pantomime, and Green had a lifelong fascination years, people working on The Lost Colony have poetic dialogue. with theatrical elements, such as tended to change the play to make the story as Historical pageantry in dance, language, music, and accurate as possible. Green spent decades Europe dates to the Middle Ages; lighting, and a desire for drama to rewriting and refining his script. If only writer the religious pageant at make a difference in American William Shakespeare had had that luxury! Oherammergau, Germany, is social life. Under the tutelage of probably the best known. Many Frederick Koch, a professor at the big, spectacular stage events University of North Carolina at became popular in the United Chapel Hill, Green was deeply States in the late 1800s and early influenced by his ideas about 1900s. Pageants were not exactly folk drama and a concern lor plays, but they showed a series ol ordinary people and their experi¬ scenes in which historical events ences. In addition to receiving the lollowed one another. 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The pageants leading up to his Broadway play In AJbraham s the 1937 production ol The Lost Bosom—remarkable for the time Colony were influenced by the in its serious depiction of the event at Oberammergau. People plight of African Americans in in eastern North Carolina had the South—Green created and grown frustrated with the lack of spread this new dramatic form. awareness about the Lost Colony. The American symphonic The residents of Roanoke Island drama was born. A scene from the 1938 season of The Lost Colony. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and History.

22 TH/H, Fall 2007 XJ^ntest ^W°hmer: A Boys Journal by Levi Lamprecht*

Early Summer 1587: Vromtse of CZalph Canes colony left before the [New ~World us. During our rebuilding, me

found melons growing in the old (Above) Levi Lamprecht. (Background) Roanoke Island, ca. ur journey here to [Toanoke dirt floors! 1930s. Images courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of History. Island in the [New 'World mas There is such a variety of absolutely terrible. Almost all of wildlife here. 1 can't imagine us had to sleep on blankets below what is in the great forest behind us! The insects deck, except the high- ranking are active, the flowers are blooming, and the sky officers, mho had the luxury of beds. The food and is blue. Waves are crashing along the shore. drink spoiled. During storms, me colonists had to stay below deck. .Tats and cockroaches mere ram¬ Cate Summer 1587: fear of the future pant. Saltwater seemed to be everywhere, not just in the great sea. but in the ship as well. 1 have not been able to write much because all of Conditions mere deplorable, and the ship reeked my chores take a lot of time. My duties include of vomit and other horrid smells. helping care for the animals and crops outdoors In spite of it all. what kept us going mas the in the exhausting heat. There is a drought now. thought of a new life, for my father, this [mas] an The few crops that we have planted are dying, opportunity to feed his hungry food is rotting, and drinking water is sparse. family. Except for the heat, it feels as though we are back 'We d settled some when father mas asked to be in England. part of a search party, fifteen men mho mere left There is talk of Governor John 'White here before us. to maintain our English claim on leaving to go back to England for more the territory, are missing, father took me with him. supplies. 1 hope he returns shortly, if he does and 1 mas present when the remains of one of the leave. Some colonists have made a terrible mis¬ men mere found, father said that the [Natives had take and attacked whom they thought were the killed him. Upon hearing this. 1 became very wor¬ hostile foanoke [Natives. They turned out to be ried about Mother, mho had stayed behind in the our interpreter Manteo s own people, the colony. 1 mas very relieved to see her again. 1 Croatoans! never told her about the dead man. or about how 1 1 lie awake at night, nervous about what could picture savages everywhere, though 1 have not happen to us. because there are more [Natives seen any. than there are English. I’m so afraid that we may Cooking out the window. 1 see small sprouts of be found in the same condition as that dead man. newly grown gardens and livestock grazing on whatever grass they can find. Smoke is rising from chimneys. 'Women are cooking dinner in new homes rebuilt from the buildings that Governor

*Levi Lamprecht won first place in the elementary division of the Tar Heel Junior THJH, Fall 2007 Historian Essay Contest 2007. He was a sixth grader in the Generations Homeschool 23 Group in Raleigh and a member of the Legacy Legends junior historian club, Jan Deckert, Rebecca Camplejohn, and Lauren Richardson, advisers. 37te 6%rt

by Suzanne Mewborn*

f you travel to a remain on the offsets, mirror new place, you images of the originals now probably will want bound into a volume. The origi¬ to pack your suit¬ nal drawings have been pre¬ case with things served and individually framed. like clothing, While Thomas Harriot wrote shoes, and shampoo. One item detailed descriptions of the that you definitely want to 1585 landscape so foreign to the include is your camera! Taking English explorers. White pictures of places and people sketched their observations. reminds you of where you have Harriot was a well-known been and whom you have met. author, mathematician, and Photographs document your astronomer. Sir Walter Raleigh trip and allow you to share your paid him to teach Raleigh and experiences with friends back his employees about naviga¬ home. Those who were part of tion, in preparation for the first the 1585 English expedition to English voyages to the New Roanoke Island had the same World. References to Harriot's idea in mind. life and talents are fairly easy to Seventy-five drawings that find in historical records, but artist John White made on that A chief lord of Roanoke, watercolor by John White largely remains a mys¬ White, ca. 1585. Image © The Trustees of the trip have survived. You may British Museum. tery. We do not know when or have seen some in your text¬ where he was born or died. books. White's drawings—each approxi¬ Because John White is a relatively common mately ten inches by five inches—give us a name, it is challenging to find information glimpse of the people living in present-day about the John White who traveled to North Carolina more than four hundred years Roanoke. Also, few documents from that time ago. These sketches are our only visual record survive. Despite our lack of knowledge about of the American Indians before European con¬ the man, we can see his talents for what the tact, and we are lucky to be able to view them English called the fine gentlemanly skill of today. In 1865 the drawings were in a ware¬ limning (another word for drawing and paint¬ house that caught fire. They did not burn but ing) in his work. did get soaked by water. For three weeks, When studying these historical images, we they lay flattened by other books piled on top must keep in mind that we are looking at of them. When someone rescued White's early American Indians through an drawings—which eventually ended up in the Englishman's eyes and mind. An interpretation care of the British Museum—they found is an explanation of the meaning behind a sheets of paper between them. "Offsets" of person's artistic or creative work. What was the original drawings had stamped onto these White's interpretation of the Indians? What loose sheets of paper. The drawings were no did he want the audience of his time to see doubt extremely bright and colorful before and learn from his drawings? And why are this blotting happened. White used watercol- his drawings important today? ors to bring his pictures to life. Sometimes he Europeans at the time viewed White's even used gold and silver highlights, particu¬ drawings as lifelike renderings of a very mys¬ larly when drawing fish. The gold and silver terious place. In addition to detailed portraits

THJH, Fall 2007 *Suzanne Mezvborn serves as the program coordinator for the Tar Heel junior Historian 24 Association at the North Carolina Museum of History. of the people living in what is now North Carolina, drawings include various plants and animals unfamiliar to Europeans. White created them with black lead or graphite dur¬ ing the expedition, and then probably filled them in with more detail and watercolor on board ship or the long voyage back to England. Modern conservators—people who care for, restore, and repair historical arti¬ facts—at the British Museum have deter¬ mined that the watercolor was applied after the paper was folded. White had folded his paper so that it would be easier to take along and use for sketching in the field. The reasons behind White's artwork relate to the wave of voyages to the New World, when what we consider the modern age of history was beginning. The Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English wanted to find water routes to Asia. Water routes would make it easier to carry luxury goods back to sell in Europe. When Columbus landed in North America in 1492, he thought he was near India. In 1497 John Cabot claimed North America for the English monarch, and in 1524 and 1534, the French claimed different areas of the continent. But when Spain soon estab¬ lished colonies in the Caribbean and began (Above) The Town ofSecotan, watercolor by John White, ca. 1585. White exploring present-day Florida, the English created many drawings of the American Indians he met in present-day really became fearful of Spanish power. The North Carolina. (Left) Plants and animals such as this grouper were among White's other subjects. Images © The Trustees of the British Museum. Spanish wanted complete control of North America and its natural resources. and welcoming inhabitants with ample food Advisers began telling England's Queen and land. Their villages were orderly, and Elizabeth I about some of the advantages of they demonstrated their intelligence by using colonizing North America: blocking the nature to survive and flourish. In White's Spanish, finding new trade routes, and having drawing The Town of Secotan, houses appear a place to send along a central lane. There are trees on one troubled soldiers side. On the other side, Indians have cleared and prisoners. One land for planting. White shows three plant¬ man arguing for ings of corn in different stages of growth: colonization was "corne newly sprong," "greene corne," and Raleigh. Once the "rype corne." Three cornfields emphasize the queen approved of productivity of land and food. White's images his plan to send a stress a natural abundance that would enable group to the New the English to survive and grow. World, Raleigh was sure to include the "skill¬ Another drawing that emphasizes the ful painter" White on the list of men who abundance of food in the New World is would go. White and Harriot gathered infor¬ Indians Fishing. White shows American mation similar to modern travel brochures. Indians in a canoe with fire between them. A White's images illustrated ways that the fire was used to attract fish, particularly at American Indians might be useful to English night. In addition to other people in the back¬ colonization. Europeans could see productive ground fishing with spears. White includes

THJH, Fall 2007 25 detailed drawings of various fish that the Indians might catch. Shellfish and a fish trap appear on the left side of the drawing, and birds are flying in the sky. White fills the page with signs of plentiful food. The Native peo¬ ple can feed themselves; maybe the English hoped that they could feed the colonists, too. White also includes observations that might Crftical , challenge English colonization and English thinking questions: : relationships with the American Indians, such What’s missing | as religious differences. For example. White from John ; draws An Ossuary Temple, a building that White’s clraw- • houses bodies of deceased Indian chiefs that ings?Why? .* have been mummified, a ritual that Christians do not perform. A squatting idol overlooks the preserved bodies, suggesting that the Indians were a pagan society that worshipped many different gods instead of Christians' sin¬ A Fire Ceremony, watercolor by John White, ca. 1585. Image © The Trustees gle God. The lack of clothing worn by the of the British Museum. Indians in the drawings shows the warm cli¬ mate at Roanoke and differences from English jewels, and rich fabrics. White's drawings of customs. Two detailed drawings of villages Indians include wood, fur, leather, shells, clay, indicate a relatively large Native population stone, beads, and copper. Some of these mate¬ needing food and land of its own. Palisades rials were used to make weapons. White was surround one village, showing the American sure to include them in his drawings as Indians' capability to make war and protect resources available in the New World. These themselves. These drawings served as a resources were important for trading with reminder to English settlers and investors of American Indians or for making money bv possible disagreements to overcome. selling them back in Europe. White's drawing Despite the differences in clothing, lan¬ of An Indian Man and Woman Eating might sug¬ guage, religion, and social organization, White gest that both groups had social lives and shows some similarities between the English organized gatherings, as also seen in A Fire and Indians. His portraits of elders and chiefs Ceremony. Indians Fishing illustrates that, like the told interested colonists about more than just English, American Indians worked in teams. each individual subject. Overall, the people in White includes a variety of snapshots in his the portraits are smiling, images: portraits, landscapes, detailed animal laughing, or talking. They studies, and maps. People such as Theodor de wear ornaments such as Bry—an engraver working in Germany—later necklaces, headbands, ear¬ published versions of White's drawings in rings, and feathers. The several languages. De Bry made changes, such Indians' ornaments—such as making the Indians' facial features, color¬ as bracelets and necklaces ing, and poses look more like typical of copper and pearls— European portraits of the time. In the same emphasized something in way that a story changes with each person common with the English. who tells it, the drawings changed, too. Clothes and jewelry could What details do you include in photo¬ identify American Indian graphs of a new place that you visit or people leaders, just as they did you meet? Would your photos convince oth¬

This German version of a Theodor de English rulers and people ers to go there? Next time you take a picture Bry engraving was published in 1600. of wealth. Think about por¬ in less than a second, remember John White De Bry's engravings adapted many of John White's original watercolors. Image traits of Queen Elizabeth. and his "snapshots" of the New World on from the Library of Congress, Prints and She is covered with pearls. Roanoke Island. Photographs Division.

26 THjH, Fall 2007 Escape through the Great Dismal Swamp by Dr. Noeleen Mcllvenna*

he English colony of Virginia, water and rotting vegetation, but worse settled since 1607, was not a awaited the traveler. Lurking in the dark habi¬ place of possibility for the poor tat, poisonous snakes—cottonmouth moc¬ by 1650. Servants suffered hor¬ casins, copperheads, and rattlers—threatened. rible treatment. When they Bobcats preyed on humans, and howling completed their terms of wolves terrified the inexperienced. The stench indenture, they discovered that all the good overpowered the senses. land lay in the hands of a few rich men. But Two Virginia gentlemen, sent to determine an area to the south, not yet settled by the boundary between Virginia and North Europeans, beckoned. Unfortunately, a huge Carolina, slogged around the area in 1711. swamp blocked the way. To make a home in Even then, sixty years after the first Carolina Carolina, those servants would have to dis¬ settlers, no clear routes marked the way. "We cover a path through the wilderness. Crosst several miring branches in which we The Great Dismal Swamp measured were all terribly bedaubed," they wrote. Three twenty-two hundred square miles. Sprawling days later, the men "were well soused in a bald cypress and tupelo gum forests grew in myery meadow by the way of which we standing water. The giant cypress trees crossed severall." They resorted to traveling stretched more than five feet in diameter and by canoe, getting out two miles from their 120 feet high. Mosquitoes loved the stagnant destination and forced to take a long detour, "there being no firm land nearer." Later, they "mist our way being wrong directed, and rid eleven mile almost to a myery swamp, almost impassible." The wan¬ derers, one now suffer¬ ing from a fever, then led their horses "three mile through a terrible myery Pocoson." Not used to such hardships, the gentlemen surren¬ dered at one stage, "there being no passage through the Dismall." Despite the difficulty, for those who wished to escape their lives in Virginia, the Dismal Swamp became more of a beacon than a barrier. Early North Carolina settlers pass through swamps and rivers. Exploring the colony's northeastern wilder¬ ness took courage. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and Histonj. Once the Lords Proprietors received

*Dr. Noeleen Mcllvenna is an assistant professor of history at Wright State University in THJH, Fall 2007 Dayton, Ohio, who earned her Ph.D. from Duke University in 2004. She is working on a book about Albemarle. Most of the first explorers and settlers in the northeastern area of present-day North Carolina came from Virginia, often through the Great Dismal Swamp. Map courtesy of Mark Moore, Research Branch, North Carolina Office of Archives and History.

their Carolina Charter in 1663 and began of settlers followed his lead. Quaker leader offering free land grants to attract settlers, George Fox, on a missionary trip in the 1670s, another group joined the servants. Quakers found a society where many Indians and had come under attack in the early 1660s. The Europeans lived close to one another and Virginia Assembly passed an Act for willingly attended his services together. There Suppressing the Quakers, and Virginia gover¬ seemed to be no communication troubles. nor William Berkeley scolded one sheriff, "I Peace reigned for the next forty years. Batts hear with sorrow that you are very remiss in guaranteed limits to English settlement under your office, in not stopping the frequent meet¬ a 1672 treaty: The regions west of the Chowan ings of this most pestilent sect of the quak- River and south of Albemarle Sound would ers." So these persecuted people also headed remain Indian country. The first generation of south through the swamp. Routes must have settlers in this area respected the land bound¬ been spread by word of mouth. No one left aries, so they never had to deal with Native any visible signs, for people did not want to hostility like the people of many other regions be followed and found by their former and colonies. planter employers or sheriffs. In small boats, these early travelers wended The first English explorer to become a set¬ their way down the creeks and streams to the tler in North Carolina, then known as peninsulas poking into Albemarle Sound. Albemarle, was a trader named Nathaniel Their explorations beyond the swamp Batts. He bought his land from the American revealed a hospitable wilderness. Rich soils Indians in 1660. Having traded with the promised a good harvest. Forests of oak, Indians since the 1650s, Batts set an example cedar, and pine sheltered deer, turkey, and of fair dealing and friendship. The next wave bear. The rivers overwhelmed the European 28 TH]H, Fall 2007 doun wild cattle, catch and tye hoggs, knock An indentured servant is a person who down beeves [slaughter cattle] with an ax"! agreed to work for another person for a set The fine lady could "perform the most man- period of time (usually four to seven years), in exchange for their passage being paid to the full Exercises as well as most men in those Mew World. At the end of the indenture, the parts." person was free to do whatever he or she An Anglican missionary in Albemarle wished (or was able to do).Sometimes inden¬ tured servants learned a skill from the person painted a picture of a community of skilled they worked for. ex-servants, the men able to be their own "carpenters Joiners Wheelwrights Coopers newcomers with their quantities of bass, Butchers Tanners Shoemakers Tallow trout, bluefish, and sturgeon. The fish, in turn, Chandlers waterman & what not." The attracted a lot of wildfowl, or birds. women were "Soap makers Starch makers The Carolina coast was a land of hurri¬ Dyes &c . . . over and above all the common canes, so settlers built impermanent homes. It occupations of both sexes." He continued, made little sense to devote resources to hous¬ "All seem to live by their own hands of their ing, with violent storms expected every few own produce." Although tobacco might be years. The people stuck wooden posts deep the only source of cash, farming provided into the ground without any foundation, cov¬ basic food, and plenty of fish and game sur¬ ered that frame with wattle and daub— rounded the settlers, too. Livestock required branches and vines packed with clay— little care, making for an "easy Way of and thatched the roof. Surrounding ing in that plentiful Country." the house, the typical 200-acre, The most eastern area, including mostly wooded farm usually the Outer Banks, sheltered some had about twenty acres of the poorest people. One vis¬ cleared for crops—corn and itor described his lodgings as wheat, plus tobacco—and a "a wretched open old house garden for beans and peas. ... it kept the Dew from us The newcomers scattered but had it rained we should some distance from each have been well souzed." other, avoiding the diseases Nonetheless, even there the that had killed many in settlers feasted on "verry Virginia. They kept large large good fatt oysters and dogs to protect livestock much fish." against wolves. Northeastern So we see that these explor¬ Carolina offered a lonely ers and first settlers in North lifestyle, but occasionally farmers Carolina had found a wonderful rowed across the rivers to help other spot where they did not have to work families with harvests and to George Fox (1624-1690) traveled extensively for Other people) a real land of • -i . through the Albemarle preaching his Quaker opportunity. They could build enjoy merrymaking. faith. Image from the Library of Congress, Prints Life in the Albemarle wilder¬ and Photographs Division. new lives on their own terms. ness freed women of the fancy manners and behavior expected of them in pSAlUD S3SD39p UD3dOin3 3JO.f3q *A|SnO(A3.ld cities. "The water being shallow we could not ■ S3pD03p M3.J D J36-ID| qonuj u33q pDq 9l3qujnu J)3qj,'AuoiOO get the boat to the shore, and the secretary's 3.14143 6uiAdnooo quiod 944 (D uoi^Dindod ui j36.idi 114s 3j3/v\ wife came in a canoe, barefooted and bare¬ AiqDqoid suDipuiaq; ;ng-Diui6J!A josu Auoioo 314 }o 431x100 legged, to get us to land," Fox wrote in 1672. U43(.SD3maou ut (.914 p3u(9iqD;?3 3ujD03q l|9|6u3 3q j/sumo; 340UJ AuDlu UfOq pDt| pUD p3A/44D SUD3doi03 340.f3q S4D3A A later visitor wrote of another female resi¬ io spuDsnoq; xot, uo/634 3<4 ui u33q pDq suDipuj udou3|ouAm that of "a very civil woman," who "shews ‘(46r>ojoqqi4-{) 3l|03uoov—uD)pu;ruDou3ujv'DU!|O4D0 nothing of ruggedness or Immodesty." But he ‘q;Dg puD ;d;ui6j!A ‘uo|13ujoi3.‘D(U!6J!A ‘umoj. >11040(4— idiuo|O0 '£ •>(OOiiOd303 puD s>|UDg puD^sqi (d30x3 ‘hd AiqDqoid'c then described how "she will carry a gunn in TH‘! ;I9‘4 •‘g3‘6.‘ga‘jTl,s:C9T:Q3‘o:r3‘q:ci‘D-| the woods and kill deer, turkeys . . . shoot ■ifff abbcf:uttulfj

THJH, Fall 2007 29 When They Are Not Exploring!

by Bea Latham*

istorical figures often become his twenty-sixth birthday, and traveled up the larger than life, much like Santee River in search of a place to begin a today's fictional superheroes. colony. Liftv-seven days later, helped by Through the years, stories of Indian guides along the way, he ended his 550- their actions—good and bad— mile journey when he set foot on the grassy get retold and sometimes exag¬ bank at the edge of Old Town and Adams gerated. It may be hard for us to think of them Creeks in present-day Beaufort County. as real people: infants, students, and parents. Lawson thought the fertile soil, high ground, When we think about explorers of long ago, and nearby water would attract settlers and we may imagine exciting treks through myste¬ give them a chance to successfully make new rious lands or action-packed voyages on the homes. Soon, ships began to arrive filled with sea. But most jobs have an unattractive side. families. The name Bath was chosen for the The explorer usually endured hunger, poverty, new settlement. Lawson—an experienced sur¬ harsh living conditions, and sickness before he veyor, or person who measures angles and became famous—if he ever became famous. distances to set the boundaries and area of English naturalist and explorer John pieces of land—laid out a town of seventy-one Lawson is no different. North Carolinians may lots, including lots for a courthouse and a be familiar with Lawson, since he explored so church. Merchants quickly bought the lots much of the state. He wrote A New Voyage to closest to the water. Being near a wharf Carolina, an important record of his journey allowed them to bring goods into the area. In that describes American Indians, their dialects March 1705 Bath became North Carolina's first and rituals, as well as the area's plant and ani¬ incorporated town. mal history. Lawson took on several important positions Lawson left what is now Charleston, South in the growing new town. He served as clerk Carolina, on December 28, 1700, the day after of court. The Lords Proprietors in 1708 appointed him surveyor general of the colony. These positions recognized not only his abili¬ ties but his social standing, too. Lawson also was an entrepreneur, involved in and taking the risk for several businesses. What better example could there be of a colo¬ nial real estate agent—a man with a town to build and lots to sell! Between September 26 and October 2, 1706, he recorded the sale of about two dozen lots in Bath. With partners Joel Martin and Christopher Gale, Lawson started a horse-drawn gristmill for grinding wheat and corn into flour and meal. The mill was one of Bath's first business¬ es, important for the survival of residents. Bread was an important staple in colonists' diets. Community access for grinding grain would meet their needs and help the colony grow. Lawson was a homeowner and family man. By December 1706 he had built himself a n of John Lawson's capture- by the but killed house at the corner of Water and Lront streets.

0iro"',fl °#ce H's'ory'

7 H/H, Fall 2007 *Bea Latham serves as historic interpreter and assistant manager at Historic Bath State Historic Site, as part of Bath's three hundredth anniversary celebration in 2005. she coauthored the updated history of the town, entitled Bath: The First Town in North Carolina. be one ear of corn, if she kept the place in good repair. At the end of seven years, if Lawson were dead, she was to keep the property during her life. On March 25, 1708, Lawson also signed over his share of the gristmill to Hannah. John Lawson built his home on a scenic spot now called Bonner Point. Image courtesy of Historic Bath State Historic Site. Lawson's only the most beautiful spot in Bath. From there he known child, Isabella, was born in April 1707. enjoyed a breathtaking view of the creek. He Later that year, he bought two cows and two most certainly watched as ships left, laden calves as a gift for her. Isabella also was sup¬ with rich naval stores, or arrived with sup¬ posed to get any offspring of the animals, plies from England. We do not have a descrip¬ possibly a way to provide her with income. tion of Lawson's house, but he wrote about About a year later, Lawson, "for the love and the nice bricks made in the Bath area. The affection I have for my beloved daughter," homestead would have included other build¬ gave her a 320-acre tract of land near Bath. ings such as a stable or smokehouse and most The shadow of death was always lurking in likely a wharf. Since Lawson was interested in the lives of these early explorers and colonists. plants, he was probably a busy home gar¬ Travel was long and dangerous, and living dener. He wrote about growing fox grapes. conditions were poor. Death was respected, He had at least one peach tree that bore fif¬ and people wrote wills—documents telling teen to twenty bushels of fruit a year. He also what should happen to boasted of a two-hundred-foot-long straw¬ their possessions after (fWg^£^^Tvras tfiat term ? berry bed. Can you imagine a superhero tend¬ they died—early and Entrepreneur: a risk-taker who has the skills ing a garden? Of course, explorers lacked spe¬ often. Lawson's will, and initiative to establish or conduct busi¬ ness, usually, but not always, for profit. cial superhero powers. They had to work for dated August 12, 1708, food, clothes, and a house to live in. includes the phrase "I give Fox grape: a wild grape, usually purple in color.In the fall, as the weather cools, the Hannah Smith, the mother of Lawson's ye remainder of my estate, grapes sweeten. Each is about about 'A only known child, was the daughter of plan¬ both Personall & reale, to inch in diameter.If left on the vine as win¬ tation owner Captain Richard Smith, one of my Daughter, Isabella, of ter approaches, the grapes dry and can be eaten as raisins.This vine plant has also the first settlers in Bath County and a repre¬ Bath Town and to the been used in garden areas to form an sentative to the 1697 Assembly. It is not clear brother & sister (which her arbor. whether Lawson was married to Hannah, but mother is w'th Child of at Horse-drawn gristmill: grain was crushed reamining unmarried was not unusual in the this present) to them between two large, flat stones to break it time period. The law stated that when a Equally." Does this mean into smaller particles, corn meal or flour. The bottom stone did not move.The top woman married, everything she owned auto¬ that Hannah was expect¬ stone turned and had a hole in the top, matically belonged to her husband. Hannah ing a child when he wrote where grain was poured. As the top stone came from a well-to-do family with a lot of his will? Maybe not. It was turned against the bottom stone, meal or flour would flow out from between them land. Not being formally married would have not unusual to allow for onto a surface, to be put in a bag or con¬ let her keep anything she might one day the possibility that there tainer. The stones were quite heavy.Rather inherit. Maybe Lawson wanted to make sure was a pregnancy not yet than using wind or water to turn the stones, a horse pulled the top one. that she could take care of herself if some¬ known at the writing of the thing happened to him. As another way to will or death of a parent. h/avalstores: production of tar, turpentine, provide for his family, he signed a lease that Making an effort to cover and pitch from the sap of a pine tree. This was an important colonial industry, since gave Hannah the house, and everything else all possible situations these products were needed in shipbuild¬ on the property, for a term of seven years. showed a strong desire to ing. The items were exported to England, Hannah's yearly payment for the lease was to provide for one's family. as well as used in the colony.

THJH, Fall 2007 John Lawson’s North Carolina by Dr. Vincent Beilis*

hen John Lawson was a teen¬ During the summers of 2003 and 2004, East Carolina University archaeologists ager in the final decade of the worked at the site of Bath's Joseph Bonner home, which was built in 1830. Legend has it that the exposed stone ruins next to the Bonner House, uncovered during a 1600s, England was becoming renovation done in about 1960, are the remains of the chimney of John Lawson's house. Lawson bought the land in 1705, and it passed through several hands the "ruler of the seas." His before the Bonner family's. Archaeologists tried to determine the size, construc¬ hometown of London was a tion, and time period of the building that the ruins were part of, with mixed results. For example, many generations of owners had disturbed the ground, world center of trade and making it impossible to find the building's comers. The effort did uncover arti¬ learning. John's great-uncle had been a vice facts that definitely date to the first half of the 1700s. The best archaeologists can say is that the mins might be part of Lawson's house. Sometimes that is as good as admiral in the English navy. His father was a it gets! Image courtesy of Dr. Charles R. Eiven. prosperous doctor with social connections among leading scientists, ships' physicians, By following his day-to-day life, one can appreci¬ and explorers, people that he often invited to ate that Lawson, no matter how much he sought the his home. John probably heard many exciting thrill of exploration, was still a man not so different stories of strange lands, peoples, and animals. from most. He worked to provide for his family. He He probably heard tales of exotic goods— loved his community and tried to make it better. Peruvian silver, Virginian tobacco, Carolina Lawson was not only a true explorer but also a suc¬ deerskins—and endless land to be had in the cessful businessman, civic leader, and family man. New World. The story of his death at the hands of the Tuscarora John's mother died when he was sixteen, Indians may be the most remembered detail about and he began attending Gresham College near Lawson, but we should not forget all of his remark¬ his home. Unlike most colleges, which able qualities and accomplishments as a person. He emphasized religious studies and the law, was important in the history of Bath and of North Gresham offered classes in mathematics and Carolina. natural science. The college also was home to England's most prestigious organization of scientists, the Royal Society. John had many *Hfere is a ^A^Core aficut jCa-Vt'son chances to attend lectures by these learned men. Perhaps he would have heard of new Personal: Born in England on would ensure that appointment. But herbal cures recently discovered in the December 27,1674 , son ol Dr. Jobn he never became a member. Americas. Jesuit's bark from Peru could reduce and Isabella Love Lawson. Died in Author oh A New Voyage to Carolina, September 1711. Carolina, published in 1709 and the symptoms of malaria. Bark from a North Education: He probably attended regarded as a classic ol early American tree called by its Indian name, sas¬ Anglican schools in Yorkshire, where American literature. safras, made a pleasant tea that calmed the his lamily owned estates, and then Death: Tuscarora Indians took stomach and stopped headaches. Gresham College near the lamily s Lawson prisoner while he was trying By the time he was a young man, John London home. While at Gresham he to find the source ol the Neuse River, Lawson was ready to set out on his own. He became familiar with the Royal in hopes ol discovering a good land Society, a group dedicated to the route to Virginia. There are different wanted to make money and may have pursuit and advancement ol scientific versions ol the cause ol death, ranging dreamed of being elected to the Royal Society. methods ol developing and verifying from Lawson having his throat slit to He probably had no idea that plants would knowledge in the natural sciences. his having been hanged or burned. become an important part of his New World Membership was granted based on (One tale says small splinters were adventures. the merit ol one s work. Lawson may stuck in him, then set afire.) Poliowing In 1700, when Lawson was twenty-five, he well have wanted to be chosen. He Lawson s death, the Tuscarora probably hoped his extensive writings launched an attack on white settle¬ boarded a ship bound for what is now on plants and animals, and the rituals ments, killing hundreds ol colonists Charleston, South Carolina, arriving there and beliefs ol American Indian tribes, and setting olf the Tuscarora War. I near the end of the year. On December 28, 32 TH]H, Fall 2007 Back in London, Lawson met James Petiver—an apothecary known for his vast collection of natural history specimens. Petiver was one of many rich English gentle¬ men who competed with one another to show off or exchange exotic things brought from far away lands by English trading vessels. These men impressed people by showing rare but¬ terflies or growing tropical plants in their gar¬ dens, just as some people today show off their yachts, fancy cars, and homes. Years before, when he had first traveled to the New World, Lawson had been among about eighty people who wrote Petiver in response to his advertisement seeking plant and animal samples. There is no evidence that Petiver—a great collector of everything from seashells to ancient coins and Greek and Roman sculpture—followed up. But when they met in person, Petiver asked Lawson to send him specimens of dried plants and ani¬ mal skins after he returned to the New World. Petiver also supplied Lawson with apothecary Fewer than half of John Lawson's plant specimens include notes, most and botanical materials. Lawson had asked of those hastily written. The note on this large, or sweet, gallberry is dated February 18,1711, and reads: "I formerly took this for a sort of for varieties of grape vines and stone fruits to previtt but am of opinion it is the gallberry both bearing a black berry take back to North Carolina, as well as infor¬ like it & found not yet ripe but it is yellowish I suppose it growing not in a wet land but on a tall dry hill at Long Shoal River where I gott it the mation on making wine and distilling spirits. branches being interwoven & massed like an artificial hedge & I believe He wanted to grow cork trees and requested a proper place for the use." Image © Natural History Museum, London. medicines to treat sick immigrants. 1700, the day after he turned twenty-six, he Lawson did return to North Carolina in the set out with several Virginia traders and their spring of 1710, leading several hundred American Indian guides. This journey of German colonists exploration through the little-known back- who were to occupy James Petiver usually provided country of Carolina took him near the sites of land on the Neuse collection materials and very modern cities like Charlotte, Hillsborough, River that he had detailed instructions to his corre¬ Raleigh, and Greenville. Lawson ended his bought and resold spondents. He gave them papers for collecting and mounting travels at the home of Richard Smith near to Baron Christoph plants; fluids and flasks for pre¬ today's Washington, North Carolina, where von Graffenried. serving small animals; and pins for he was "well received by the inhabitants, and This site would mounting butterflies.Petiver would sometimes reward his favored pleas'd with the goodness of the country." become North collectors by including a few bot¬ Lawson became a founder of Bath, the first Carolina's second tles of English ale among their town in North Carolina, and a business part¬ town. New Bern. collecting supplies! ner of Smith and his daughter, Hannah. The Although not a Smiths were active in the deerskin trade and trained botanist, Lawson fulfilled his promise land development. Lawson used his talents in to Petiver. He sent packets of dried plants to math as a land surveyor, and in that job, he him in 1710 and in 1711. The plants reached traveled widely. Attracting investors to the London some three months after being area would help him financially. So in 1708 he shipped out of Norfolk, Virginia. Lawson's returned to England for a year to publish a plants were apparently stacked among those book describing and promoting Carolina. By of other collectors and were not well cared that time, Lawson and Hannah Smith were for. There is a lot of evidence that labels were the parents of a daughter, Isabella. misplaced, and there was insect and water

*Dr. Vincent Beilis is a retired professor of biology from East Carolina University. He has read Lawson's A New TH/H, Fall 2007 Voyage to Carolina many times and continues to find new information about early plants, animals, and habitats in eastern North Carolina. In 2000 Beilis obtained high-resolution images of the plants collected in North Carolina by Lawson in 1710 and 1711. He has identified most of the specimens and is transcribing the notes written by Lawson. 22Afe Oj'Tm

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Part of the map that appeared in John Lawson's 1709 book. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North Carolina Office of Archives and History. damage. These dried plants eventually found their way to the Natural History Museum &%ctivities (seejiaje 2.yje>r answer*) Use the map above to help answer the questions. (British Museum), where they can be viewed today. You can see images of them and learn I. Can you find some of the places where Lawson collected much more about Lawson at the East Carolina plants for Mr. Petiver? I dentify each location according to tl University virtual history Web site, tetter and number grid on the map: a, the 5and Banks; b, Col. Pollock; c. Broad Creek; d. Little River; e, Ronoak; f, Hancock http:/ / digital.lib.ecu.edu/exhibits/lawson/ Creek; g, Neus River; h, Norfolk; i, Croatan. Naturalist.html. The collection consists of just over three hundred specimens, including 108 3. Which of the above names can you find species that have been identified. on a modern map of North Carolina?

The plants that Lawson collected and the 3. Can you find three colonist-occupied towns? Can you find the Indian notes he made about them, including dates towns? Why do you think there are more Indian town names than names and places, can tell us a lot of important of English towns? things about what he was doing, and where Things to think about:What areas of Carolina were occupied by Euro¬ he traveled, in the months before his death. peans, and what areas were dominated by American Indians? Why? In April 1710 two ships containing Lawson Consider the differences in spelling between colonialtimes and now and his German colonists arrived off the (Ne us vs. Ne use, Aconeche vs. Occaneechi, and so forth). What other Virginia capes at the mouth of Chesapeake differences do you see from a modern map? Take a look at a current road map of North Carolina. Let your eye fol¬ Bay. Lawson's ship made it in to port. A low the Chowan River until you cross the state line into Virginia. Had you French privateer captured the other ship and ever noticed the slight “bump” in the boundary? Otherwise, the bound¬ held it for nearly a month before releasing it. ary is a straight line from near Virginia Beach to near Damascus, Virginia. Why is there a bump? Lawson began collecting plants even as he led the exhausted colonists south toward New Things to look up on the Web; ColonelThomas Pollock.Tuscarora War, Bern. On May 10,1710, he collected a huckle¬ North Carolina and Virginia boundary, Baron Christoph von Graffenried, berry and wrote this note: "The largest huck- James Petiver, the Royal Society (England), Bath (North Carolina), and John Lawson’s book A New Voyage to Carolina ~Dr. Vincent Beilis THjH, Fall 2007 leberry . . . green berries on antest Evergreen growing the stem . . . we've gotten amongst Cedar, Holly & in Norfolk County in many other evergreens . . . Virginia." The travelers had gotten off the mouth of gotten as far as Dare Broad Creek on the North County on May 29. side." Lawson's note from that We can use Lawson's date on a plant he collected notes to trace his route as reads, "A species of Willow he navigated the shoreline gotten on the Sand Banks along the south side of the near Ranoak Island." Pamlico and Albemarle Within the week, the party Peninsula, Croatan Sound, had reached New Bern, and Albemarle Sound. He because Lawson there col¬ arrived around the end of lected a specimen that he April 1711 at the home of labeled "Chickapin in Colonel Thomas Pollock, flower, June the 4th, 1710." near the mouth of the He had collected dozens of Chowan River. Between plant specimens by the end February and April he col¬ of the month. These were lected plants at Long Shoal packaged and sent to John Lawson's plant specimens are bound into large books. River, Croatan Woods, The label at the top of this page reads: "I recon we have two England in July 1710. sorts of holly these leaves being more prickly and regular Little River, and Salmon Also in 1710 Lawson than w[hat] you have before gotten at Broad Creek mouth on Creek. Lawson was famil¬ the No. side bank." Image © Natural History Museum, London, made several trips from iar with the common New Bern to Williamsburg, Virginia. He was names of many plants, as well as the Indian helping the Royal Commission that was try¬ names of some unique to North Carolina. His ing to set the boundary between Virginia and notes include references to dogwood, sand North Carolina. Lawson made the trips in a willow, golden rod, sourwood, wax gatherer's small boat because land travel was unreliable plant, maple, cherry, gallberry, willow oak, and required going through territory con¬ hickory, and spice tree, and to Indian names trolled by the Tuscarora Indians. He arrived like chickapin, pau pau, and yaupon. late for his appointments with the commis¬ The plants Lawson gathered during this sion. He must have recognized that a safe trip were sent to England from Virginia in land route between North Carolina's more July. By August 1711, he was back in New settled Albemarle region and the new colony Bern. His explorations had not discovered a in New Bern was badly needed. faster or safer way to Virginia or Albemarle. The winter of 1711 found Lawson back in He now begged von Graffenried to make a New Bern, planning a more-detailed survey trip up the Neuse River in search of a land of the water route between the Neuse River route north. In early September the two and Albemarle Sound. He left New Bern dur¬ men—accompanied by two of the baron's ser¬ ing the last week of January. On January 29 he vants—headed up the Neuse River by canoe. collected a plant "spontaneous of Carolina The group had failed to ask the local growing on a Fork of Neus River and in other Tuscarora for permission to cross their land. places . . . had from flowers, like drops of The Indians captured them. They released the blood a few . . . sweet herb." Two days later, others but killed Lawson. he stopped at William Hancock's "on the Lawson's last letter to Petiver was written south side on Neus Rv." There, he collected in July 1711 from Virginia. It may have accom¬ specimens of American olive, which he panied the dried plants collected that spring. described as "a pritty [sic] tree growing on a Lawson writes Petiver that he has more speci¬ sandy point by the water side." On February mens in New Bern. Petiver got the letter in 8 he described a holly having leaves "more London on October 20, 1711, almost exactly a prickly" than English holly and, "this pleas¬ month after Lawson's death.

THJH, Fall 2007 A Different Kind of Exploration William Bartram and Science in the 1700s by Dr. James T. Costa and Dr. L. Scott Philyaw*

y the early eighteenth century. plants. Father and son also grew famous North Carolina's broad out¬ because of their remarkable skills in growing lines, river systems, and plants. They used different methods to repro¬ American Indian tribes had duce wild plants in their large Philadelphia been "discovered.” But the garden. Together, the two helped introduce Enlightenment brought a dif¬ more than two hundred American trees, ferent kind of exploration. Southeastern North shrubs, and flowers into Europe. America—with its lush, beautiful, and largely William Bartram was born on February 9, undescribed plant life, or flora—became the 1739, in what is now a suburb of Philadelphia. scene of plenty of plant collecting. Notable His father, John, was a successful Quaker collectors who traveled through the Carolinas farmer and self-taught horticulturist, or plant included the Frenchman Andre Michaux, grower. While in Philadelphia, he worked Scotsman John Fraser, and Englishman Mark with his close friend Benjamin Franklin to Catesby. Such explorers were part of the found the American Philosophical Society— Enlightenment era's growing the first American learned society. interest in science, as well as the Over time, John Bartram's interest effort to make sense of the world in botany and the closely related and bring order to it. Science areas of medicine and pharmacy was expanding, with new meth¬ grew. John took his young son on ods and equipment being tried. several collecting trips to New For some botanical explorers, York, New England, and Virginia the search for knowledge had during the mid-1700s. They also patriotic and economic elements. explored the Cape Fear River val¬ Newly discovered plants could ley in North Carolina, where be sold for medicines, food, or John's half brother owned a plan¬ ornamental gardens. And they tation and served in North could show that the New World Carolina's colonial legislature. was not "lesser" than Europe. Young William had a hard time This engraving is based on a Charles Two Americans, John and Willson Peale portrait of William choosing a career. He turned Bartram (1739-1823). Image from the William Bartram, added to this Library of Congress, Prints and down Franklin's offer to become wealth of new understanding Photographs Division. an apprentice printer. He rejected with their descriptions of plants an offer to study medicine. and animals. As botanists, or biologists who Instead, he decided to become a merchant study plant life, they carefully documented and opened his first store on his uncle's plan¬ which plants grew where and under what tation in 1761. However, William spent more conditions. They interviewed American time exploring the region and drawing plants Indians about the ways they used plants, than tending to business. His father encour¬ including their use in healing. William aged William's growing talent for drawing. Bartram spent years exploring much of south¬ Catesby's 1743 Natural History of Carolina—a eastern and southwestern North Carolina in book filled with drawings of plants and ani¬ search of unknown plants. mals—also influenced him. The Bartrams became well known as sup¬ An opportunity to escape business came in pliers of North American plants. They were 1765, when William's father got appointed familiar with the ecosystems in eastern North royal botanist to King George. The first America and the geographic range of native assignment was to explore England's newly

THJH, Fall 2007 "Dr. James T. Costa is executive director of the Highlands Biological Station. Dr. L. Scott Pliilyaw is the director of the Mountain Heritage Center Both are affiliated with Western Carolina University. To learn more about William Bartram and the natural history of west¬ ern North Carolina, access www.wcu.edu/hbs/Home.htm and www.wcu.edu/2389.asp. acquired colony of Florida. William happily Nikwasi), and up closed his store to go along. On the banks of to Cowee, before the Altamaha River, John and William found heading west an intriguing shrub that they would later toward the name Franklinia after their friend. Despite the Nantahalas. In successes of this trip, William decided again— these moun¬ against his father's advice—to try being a tains—then businessman. He briefly operated an indigo known as the and rice plantation in Florida, selling it at a Jore Mountains— loss. After trying to run a store in he climbed Philadelphia, he fled, owing money, in 1770. Wayah Bald, Wayah Bald in present-day Macon County was among the sites Despite his business failures, William writing excitedly that inspired William Bartram during his North Carolina travels. Bartram was becoming well respected as an of the landscape: Learn more about what Bartram saw and where he went by accessing www.bartramtrail.org. Image courtesy of Brad Sanders. artist and botanist in America and abroad. A "1 began again to wealthy London physician, John Fothergill, ascend the Jore mountains, which I at length suggested that William go on a lengthy south¬ accomplished, and rested on the most elevat¬ eastern expedition to collect and draw plants. ed peak; from whence I beheld with rapture Fothergill offered to pay him fifty pounds and astonishment, a sublimely awful scene of (about seventy-five dollars) a year in power and magnificence, a world of moun¬ exchange for seeds, drawings, and natural tains piled upon mountains." history notes about his discoveries. Bartram After his visit to western North Carolina, accepted, and soon many people would be Bartram headed west along the Great Trading seeking his advice on horticulture and natural Path to the Gulf Coast. He returned to history. Savannah in late January 1776. He explored He traveled deep into the southern coastal Georgia and Florida for much of that Appalachian Mountains and as far west as the year. Mississippi River. From 1773 through 1776, he Bartram's reputation as a botanist, traveler, collected, observed, drew, and recorded plants and keen observer has grown over time. His and animals, as well as his many and friendly record of the trip, Travels through North and interactions with American Indians. Bartram South Carolina, [and] Georgia, became an visited western North Carolina (then important vision of early America, influencing Cherokee country) in May 1775, following the many naturalists, as well as Romantic Savannah River up from the coast of Georgia thinkers of the 1800s, like Henry David to its headwaters on the boundary of North Thoreau and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. What Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. He made Bartram want to undertake his journey continued into North Carolina as far as the of the 1770s? Here is his explanation: Nantahala River of Macon and Swain coun¬ ties. In following the Savannah River, he was I am continually impelled by a restless traveling the same route that traders from spirit of curiosity in pursuit of new Charleston, South Carolina, and Augusta, productions of nature, my chief happiness Georgia, had used for decades—a route first consists in tracing and admiring the explored by the Spanish in the 1500s. In con¬ infinite power, majesty, and perfection of trast to these earlier explorers, who often the great almighty Creator, and in the were seeking riches, Bartram was seeking contemplation, that through divine aid knowledge. He thus enjoyed much better rela¬ and permission, I might be instrumental in tions with the Native peoples than many ear¬ discovering, and introducing into my lier outsiders. native country, some original productions Modern-day U.S. 441 from north Georgia of nature, which might become useful to follows the old Cherokee trading path, the society. route Bartram followed through what is now Clayton, Georgia (Stecoe to the Cherokee), modern Franklin (the Cherokee town of

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