Part 2: A Case For Massacre?

With any mystery comes a host of theories that, by virtue of their very existence, will confound the search for the truth. Such is the case with the lost colonists of Roanoke. In my previous blog, I've illustrated the various aspects of the "Croatoan" transplantation theory. Here in Part II, I will explore a converse possibility: that the colonists were massacred.

Virginia Company secretary William Strachey offered a clue to the colonists' fate in 1612:

"...his Majesty [King James I] hath been acquainted that the men, women and children of the first plantation at Roanoak were by practice and commandment of Powhatan miserably slaughtered without any offense given him" (1).

Later in this discourse, Strachey cryptically referred to the Roanoke colonists, "of whose end you shall hereafter read in this decade." He did publish supposed "proof" of such an end, as I will discuss in the next blog.

In 1625, English travel writer Samuel Purchas chronicled a 1608 discourse between John Smith (founder of Jamestown colony) and the Virginia Algonquian chief Powhatan relating to the Roanoke colonists' fate. Here Purchas alleges that Powhatan informed Smith that Powhatan had at least witnessed the slaughter of the lost colonists:

"Powhatan confessed that he had been at the murder of that [Raleigh's] colony, and showed a musket barrel and a brass mortar, and certain pieces of iron which had been theirs" (2).

If these verifications of the colonists' slaughter are to be believed, why did Smith and other high-ranking English colonial figures continue searching for the colonists well into the 1620s? Strachey neglected to mention which party or parties had informed King James I of this news; we notice that he simply relayed what someone had told the king. Strangely, in his own account "A True Relation of Virginia" (3), John Smith himself fails to mention this seemingly important discussion with Powhatan.

If Powhatan truly owned this military hardware, no one who was actually present at Jamestown colony at any time corroborated this claim in their own accounts. Such a discovery by Smith would certainly have alerted his fear of allowing guns (much less a brass artillery piece) to fall into the hands of their often hostile Native American neighbors. There was no attempt by Purchas to identify these objects as English in origin. One last observation is of the "gun barrel", which seemingly describes an item in broken or otherwise deteriorated condition. The gun barrel belonged to a matchlock musket (arquebus) whose apparent absence of its wooden stock, iron banding and lock hardware suggests that perhaps the original gun had either fallen apart or was disassembled. Powhatan's people by 1608 likely did not have the iron tools needed (or a good enough reason) to pull a complete musket apart, the stock being firmly secured to the barrel with iron banding and bolts. It sounds as if the stock associated with this barrel would had have rotted from exposure to the ground and elements, a natural process which would free barrel from stock in a matter of a few years. If Powhatan truly claimed this English hardware for himself, I believe it would have been salvaged from its original place of deposition as nothing more than curiosities.

Indeed, upon John White's return to an abandoned Roanoke in 1590, he noted that his own suit of armor and military hardware, as well as his personal effects lay strewn about the settlement area. Among these he found:

"...many bars of iron, two pigs of lead, four fowlers [shotguns], iron shot...diverse [several] chests had been hidden and digged up again, and much of the goods spoiled and scattered up and down, which when I saw, I knew three of them to be my own" (4).


Here we find "pieces of iron" and shotguns comprised of "gun barrels", the latter of which must have been somewhat deteriorated after a year in the elements of the storm-ridden Outer Banks. Curiously, this scene contains two of the three items Purchas later claimed that Powhatan had procured from the colonists' massacre site: "pieces of iron" and a "gun barrel". It is important to consider that Purchas' account was published in 1625--in the wake of John Smith's accounts on Virginia history--and that Purchas even secured permission to compile information from Smith's accounts, which included John White's relation returning to the abandoned Roanoke scene. Therefore, Purchas may easily have cited White's account to fabricate material evidence for a massacre and plundering of Roanoke. Even more interesting is what John Lawson claims to have found at Roanoke on his own visit in 1701:


"...a brass-gun, a powder-horn, and one small quarter-deck gun, made of iron staves and hooped with the same metal" (5).

Brass artillery guns are a terribly expensive commodity compared to those of iron in 1585, and it is unlikely that the Roanoke colonists would have had multiple ones, if any. It would not be a stretch to surmise that Lawson's "brass-gun" of 1701 was the same fictional one that Purchas claimed in 1625 as Powhatan's prize--and that Lawson, like Purchas before him, was pirating information from an earlier author.

These two English massacre accounts assert that the colonists were assaulted and killed. If so, where did this massacre happen? And when? Both accounts fail to address either question. We do know that no human remains of English people have been found at the Roanoke site to date. Could a massacre have occurred elsewhere, at a place (or places) the colonists may have removed to? If such an event occurred elsewhere, no proof has yet come to light.

It has been suggested that perhaps Spanish raiding expedition wiped out the Roanoke colony. But a manuscript found in Spanish archives revealed that a Spanish scouting expedition sent to Roanoke in 1588 found the colony deserted.

Conclusion

Powhatan's involvement in a massacre of the Roanoke colonists appears to have been a fabrication. His own realm was far from the Roanoke site. There exists no proof yet for any such massacre at all. Native Americans typically left the bodies of their victims or enemy combatants in situ, without attempting any kind of burial or other disposal of bodies. So far no such ossuary site suggesting this has been discovered, either at Roanoke Island, Hatteras Island or the coasts or mainland of North Carolina or Virginia. The Spanish are not suspect, as evidenced by their discovery that the Roanoke colony was already abandoned by 1588 (certainly they would have boasted about wiping out an English "squatter" colony on their own colonial shores). This gives us an estimate of less than a year that the colonists stayed at Roanoke after their supply ship left.

Until such physical archaeological evidence is found, we are forced to relegate the "massacre" theory to the status of a convenient, yet incorrect explanation. Strachey only suggests the possibility of the colonists' demise by massacre, with such a mysteriously vague endnote as to be intended to create a sensation. Purchas (who had never been to America) was too far removed from the circles of English colonial politics to have made such a statement, and admittedly used passages from John Smith's work (as he compiled other explorers' accounts as well) to supplement his own writings. I believe that these accounts sought to resolve the mystery by blaming Powhatan (who was mostly hostile to the English at Jamestown from 1609 to 1619) for a massacre that may never have been perpetrated by any party.

But just as the case for massacre appears improbable, I will return next to John Smith and follow an interesting clue he stumbled upon in his travels. I will now demonstrate how a single statement can be changed and edited to scandalous effect.

--RJF.

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1.   William Strachey, History of Travaile in Virginia Britannia (1612).

2.   Purchas, Samuel. Purchas, His Pilgrimes. Vol. IV (1625).

3.   Smith, John. A True Relation of Virginia (1608).
4.   White, John in John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, vol. I (1624).
5.   Lawson, John. A New Voyage to Carolina (1709).