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Literature Review
Angie White
The majority of literature written about the Native American relations with
the Roanoke Colonies is all fairly recent and all focuses on two main men, Ralph
Lane and Thomas Hariot, to explain the relations. Rather than scholarly opinion
changing based on the time period in which they were writing, opinion changes
based on the different perspective used to analyze the evidence. The literature takes
different angles on how it views the importance of the relations and differs in the
way that it approaches the subject. There are books that approach the Native
relations by talking about how these relations caused issues and problems within
the colonies and led to their failure. There are also books that prefer to discuss the
interactions with the Natives and their culture rather than using the Natives to
explain the colonies’ failure. Furthermore, there is literature that goes beyond just
the Roanoke colony and comparatively discusses other early American colonies
along the East Coast and their relations with Native Americans.
There is a good amount of literature that discusses the Native American
relations with the colonists in a way that implies that they led to their downfall.1
Many of these books have to do with the 1587 Roanoke colony, the one that
disappeared. At the beginning of David N. Durant’s Raleigh’s Lost Colony (1981), he
speaks about how the voyage got started and Queen Elizabeth’s non-compliance for
quite awhile. When he begins to talk about the voyage, he spends very little time
1
Oberg, Michael Leroy. “Indians and Englishmen at the First Roanoke Colony: A Note on
Pemisapan’s Conspiracy, 1585-86.” American Indian Culture & Research Journal 1994 18(2): 75-89
This is one of the journal articles that talks solely about how the Native American population caused
trouble for the colonists.
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talking about when the settlers met the Natives and how their cultures reacted
towards each other. Instead, after only a few pages, he jumps straight into “Wingina
took his ‘war name’ of Pemisapan and it was no longer safe for Lane to trust him.”2
After this statement, Durant continues to talk about all of the bad things that could
the Native Americans did to destroy the colony. He bases much of his writings off
Ralph Lane and John White rather than Thomas Hariot, because Hariot wrote more
about the culture and interactions of the colonists and Natives than about war and
conflict. Karen Ordahl Kupperman in her book Roanoke, The Abandoned Colony
(2007) uses the same method when explaining the downfall of the colonies. By
saying, “If the colonists sought revenge for every slight, then the Indians could
destroy all of their crops and trade” and other statements like it, she uses the Indian
relations as a tool to explain why nothing ever worked out for the colonists. 3 She
also relies on the primary sources of Lane and Sir Grenville, but does compare their
experiences with those of Thomas Hariot.
There is also literature written using both Hariot and Lane that talks about
Native American relations as something that occurred as a result of the colonists
landing in the New World and meeting a new group of people, rather than using the
relations as a tool to explain the failure. Lee Miller, in his book Roanoke (2000),
explains actual encounters between the colonists and the Natives. He talks about the
2
David N. Durant, Raleigh’s Lost Colony (New York: Antheneum, 1981), 76
Pemisapan means “He Supervises” in the Algonquian language, which was appropriate because Wingina
was the chief of the local tribes and led them into war.
3
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2007), 47
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Croatoan Natives using statements such as “The fact that they can be welcomed into
this community, after all has passed, is an astounding attribute to the generosity of
Croatoan.”4 Furthermore, there is David B. Quinn, whose literatures includes two
volumes of The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590 (1955) and Set fair for Roanoke:
voyages and colonies, 1584-1600 (1985). Within these books, Quinn relies
completely on a compilation of letters and other documents at the time of which he
offers and assessment at the beginning. In his assessment, he does not attempt to
explain accuse the Natives as causing the failure of the colonies, but rather explains
what the documents are talking about and ties them together in the time period.5
They are very helpful books because they offer an analysis as well as the actual
document.
There is also literature that approaches the Native American relations with
the Roanoke colonists by comparing them with other colonies along the East Coast,
especially Jamestown. For example, Ivor Noel Hume’s The Virginia adventure:
Roanoke to James Towne: an archaeological and historical odyssey (1995) sounds like
an interesting work of historical fiction, but really it is a good book for comparing how
the different colonies reacted to their neighboring Native American tribes. It discusses
similarities and differences between the tribes as well. In addition, Gary B. Nash’s “The
Image of the Indian in the Southern Colonial Mind” in The William and Mary Quarterly
4
Lee Miller, Roanoke (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000), p. 129
By “They”, Miller is referring to Governor John White and his second voyage to the Chesapeake, after
Ralph Lane had already had much conflict with the Croatoan Natives
5
David B Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590, 2 v (London: Hakluyt Society, 1955), 3
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talks about how many different groups of people in different areas of the South felt about
their Native American neighbors.6
While all the literature on the Roanoke Colonies and their Native American
counterparts approaches the subject from different angles, they all use the same
primary sources and essentially come from the perspective of men like Thomas
Hariot and Ralph Lane. Some of the literature treats the Native Americans as just a
tool used to destroy the colonies, while other literature simply describes what the
relations were like and the different cultures. In the end, all of this literature is
useful and ties together to research the different ways that the two completely
different worlds interacted with one another.
6
Gary B. Nash, “The Image of the Indian in the Southern Colonial Mind,” The William and Mary Quarterly
29 (Apr., 1972): 198-230.
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Works Cited
Durant, David N. Raleigh’s Lost Colony. New York: Antheneum, 1981.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony. Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2007.
Miller, Lee. Roanoke. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000.
Nash, Gary B. “The Image of the Indian in the Southern Colonial Mind.” The William
and Mary Quarterly. Third Series, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 1972)
Noel Hume, Ivor. The Virginia adventure: Roanoke to James Towne: an archaeological
and historical odyssey. New York : Knopf, 1994.
Oberg, Michael Leroy. “Indians and Englishmen at the First Roanoke Colony: A Note on
Pemisapan’s Conspiracy, 1585-86.” American Indian Culture & Research
Journal 1994 18(2)
Quinn, David B. Set fair for Roanoke: voyages and colonies, 1584-1600. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Quinn, David B. The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society,
1955.
Smith, John. Writings: with other narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the first
English settlement of America. New York: Library of America: Penguin Putnam,
2007.
Vaughan, Alden T. “Sir Walter Raleigh’s Indian Interpreters, 1584-1618.” William &
Mary Quarterly 2002 59(2)