Papers by Michael Leroy Oberg
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from
History: Reviews of New Books, 1998
Durey uses the issue of slavery to demonstrate how the "'fragmented ideology of reform' in Britai... more Durey uses the issue of slavery to demonstrate how the "'fragmented ideology of reform' in Britain almost inevitably ensured considerable diversity in sentiments and political postures among emigrants in America" (282). Differences in the immigrants' American experiences also caused their previously unanimous opposition to slavery to break down.
There have been, of course, many accounts of the Roanoke ventures, but far too many of them rely ... more There have been, of course, many accounts of the Roanoke ventures, but far too many of them rely on assessments of what the English did or did not do for their explanatory power. If only Raleigh's men had done one thing, or avoided another, things might have turned out differently. Because the resulting story focuses on the English, historians attribute whatever successes and failures that occurred to their actions. All these explanations, as a result, overlook an important and fundamental truth: Raleigh's Roanoke ventures failed because those native people in the region that they called Ossomocomuck, and who initially had welcomed the newcomers, decided to withdraw their support and assistance. 1 In this paper I shall focus upon the native peoples who first encountered Sir Walter Raleigh's explorers in 1584, and then again in 1585, 1586 and 1587. I would like to place them at the center of the story. While English settlers would later establish Jamestown in Virginia, and the Pilgrims would settle their plantation at Plymouth in New England, the men Raleigh sent across the Atlantic visited briefly Croatoan, Hatorask, Dasemunkepeuc, Secotan, and Roanoac. The land was not enough theirs to warrant renaming. When the first reconnaissance voyage arrived off of the Carolina Outer Banks in the summer of 1584 the English newcomers came ashore and performed the requisite ceremonies of possession, but they seemed to lack a precise plan for what to do next. 2 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe and their men hung about the Hatorask Inlet, waiting for something to happen. After three days, Barlowe tells us, scouts sent from Roanoke approached the Englishmen, initiating the processes of exchange and ritual Algonquians intended to transform the newcomers from strangers into kin. Ultimately Granganimeo, the 'brother' of the Roanoke werowance Wingina, and clearly a werowance in his own right, invited the English to visit the Algonquian village on Roanoke Island, a site there is no reason to believe that they would otherwise have found. The English, in this sense, did not discover Roanoke. They came as invited guests. At Roanoke Island, the ritual process continued, with confident Algonquians greeting, welcoming and sizing up nervous newcomers. Wingina, the werowance in charge of Roanoke and at least some other villages in the vicinity, could not meet with the newcomers: he was recovering from wounds suffered in battle. He had been shot through the body twice, Barlowe tells us. He may have suffered these wounds from his enemies at the mainland village at Pomeiooc. 4 In any case, the Algonquians on Roanoke clearly saw the English as potential allies in their wars with their native neighbors. Granganimeo and his followers, Barlowe noted, 'offered us very good exchange for our hatchets and axes, and for knives, and would have given any thing for swords'. When the English fired their guns, Granganimeo's people 'would tremble thereat for very feare, and for the strangeness of the same'. The Algonquians marveled at English weaponry that demonstrated tremendous power. It was loud, dramatic, and capable of immense damage on those occasions when it found its target. If the Indians perceived the English to have value as potential friends for a people at war, the source of this belief lay in the power Granganimeo's people perceived in the objects and items that the English possessed. And by engaging in exchange with the Roanokes, even if the newcomers did not provide Granganimeo with all that he wanted, the English had transformed themselves into allies. Granganimeo put this new alliance to the test shortly before the departure of the English reconnaissance voyage. He attempted to persuade Barlowe to attack his and Wingina's enemies at the village of Pomeiooc. The Roanokes, Barlowe noted, 'promised and assured us that there will be found in it a great store of commodities'. The English did not take the bait, for Barlowe had too few men to engage in so risky a venture. 7 Still, the Roanokes had achieved something. A small group of men in strange ships arrived off their shores. They brought with them a technology suggesting great power -a concept that Harriot later learned the natives called montoac -that intrigued and interested Granganimeo and Wingina particularly within the context of their rivalries with other native communities in Ossomocomuck. But they wanted to know more. The werowances thus selected two men, Manteo and Wanchese, to accompany the Englishmen to their homeland to learn what could be known about them, and to report back what they found. By the time these two envoys returned to Roanoke Island in the summer of 1585, along with the men Sir Walter Raleigh had sent to establish an outpost on American shores, they each had arrived at very different interpretations about the meaning of the English. Manteo, impressed by the power of the English, remained steadfast in his connection to the newcomers, and saw in them a powerful ally. Wanchese, on the other hand, had concluded after his sojourn in England that these men posed a mortal threat to his people's way of life. He would promptly abandon the English and return to Wingina once the newcomers arrived on the Outer Banks in the summer of 1585. 9 Other Algonquians wavered between these two poles, as they attempted to learn about their allies. After the English arrived, the newcomers explored the Carolina Sounds. They attacked Wingina's enemies at Aquascogoc over the theft of a silver cup and, perhaps, another hostile village somewhere along the northern bank of the Albemarle Sound. 10 If the Aquascogoc attack seemed unnecessarily savage and violent, the burning of the town may as well have demonstrated to Wingina that he could find the English useful in his conflicts with his neighbors, an extremely dangerous weapon, if he could control them. He and Granganimeo met with Manteo, whose account of the English contrasted starkly with that of
Uploads
Papers by Michael Leroy Oberg