A lesson learned from A KINGDOM STRANGE: THE BRIEF AND TRAGIC HISTORY OF THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE, by James Horn

 Be careful who you rely on.

One of the great things about my summer break is it gives me the time and opportunity to expand my reading into areas that I normally would not have time to get into. As my summer break began, my school librarian asked me to peruse through a stack of older books that they were planning to donate, and I stumbled on a 2010 work on one of American History’s most famous legends. People who watch the channel that calls itself “History,” will know all the legends that surround the fate of the Lost Colony of Roanoke—from Indian slaughters, to tsunamis, to alien abduction and all that nonsense. That made James Horn’s A Kingdom Strange a fascinating read about the history surrounding the English settlement of Roanoke, the reasons why the colony failed, and the speculation about its ultimate fate. Ultimately, the Roanoke story is less one of paranormal catastrophes, and more one of the dangers of leaving important and complicated tasks in the hands of incompetent or unscrupulous people.

Horn spends a lot of the book talking about the political maneuvering that happened in Europe in the decades leading up to Roanoke, which may disappoint people who merely want an in-depth study of Roanoke itself (perhaps an unsurprising approach given how little evidence there is about the fate of the colony itself). England’s dreams of conquering the “New World” originated with the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, and her rivalry with the Catholic monarchs of Europe. Elizabeth became convinced that using the Americas as a base of which to plunder and the trade network of the Spanish Empire, and to convert the native peoples of the Americas to the “true religion,” was the key to England becoming a true global power. She was encouraged in these ambitions by the English nobleman Walter Raleigh, who was interested in plundering enough wealth in the name of England to curry favor with the Queen (with some measure of flirtation between the two likely factoring in). It was under these circumstances that the English in the 1580’s attempted to establish a colony in the region that is known today as North Carolina.

English colonization in this era was driven by pure desperation on the part of ordinary people, who faced such difficult and uncertain lives in the cities of England that the concept of dropping everything they had and trying to start over in an unknown land seemed a better proposition than remaining where they were. These were the people who signed up for Raleigh’s expeditions, and they were doing so on flimsy grounds—in the event that the attempted colony struggled, the last priority of the people supporting it was the actual health and well-being of the colonists. The Roanoke colony’s governor John White immediately discovered this fact when he first landed with the colonists, as the ship captains who transported the colonists to Roanoke were more worried about taking off to plunder Spanish ships than they were in ensuring the actual survival of the colony. The Roanoke Colony’s struggles were further exacerbated by its conflicts with the region’s indigenous peoples; the colonists legitimately wanted to be friendly with the native Secotans, but also constantly begged them for food and supplies, and made efforts to convert them to Christianity. Eventually, some of the Secotans came to see the colony as a massive threat to their way of life, a fact only exacerbated when the colonists accidentally slaughtered a friendly Indian village assuming they were hostile (a mistake that sadly the white colonists would make repeatedly in the ensuing centuries).

Eventually, the Roanoke colonists feared so much for their continued existence that they ordered Governor White to hitch a ride on a passing English ship to return home and beg for more supplies and reinforcements, a devastating choice for White as he was forced to leave relatives behind, including his granddaughter (the first known English baby born in America). White made it back to England and begged Elizabeth and Raleigh to save the colony, only to find them deeply distracted by the coming battle with the Spanish Armada. Even when that threat passed years later, Raleigh had decided that there were no great profits to be made from Roanoke, and saving the colony was his last priority. Eventually, White managed to convince English pirates to transport him back to the colony with some supplies after three years of absence (he had assured them he would be back within one).

And thus began the legend and mystery of the Lost Colony, as White returned to find Roanoke completely deserted, with no evidence of Indian attack or other disaster. He did find markings that suggested the colonists had gone to a neighboring island searching for better land, but the pirates that White had hitched a ride with refused to take him any farther, and he was forced to return to England knowing that he had little hope of ever seeing anyone in the colony again. With Raleigh and Elizabeth’s lack of interest in the colony’s fate, it would be decades before anyone launched any serious effort to find the missing colonists, with no definitive proof of their fate ever recovered. This has led to centuries of speculation about their fate. More outlandish theories aside, most historians today believe that the surviving colonists likely submitted and assimilated into the local Indian nations—Europeans in the region told stories for decades after of occasionally encountering Indians who looked a little too English. It ended up being a story of paths never taken, as the subsequent English colonies eventually focused on expelling the Indian nations from the region rather than seriously making efforts to live in peace and learn from them.

The ultimate lesson of Roanoke’s failure is one of making sure you rely on people who truly have your best interests at heart. The Roanoke colonists were truly brave and daring people, who tried to leave behind a brutal world in order to build a better one, but they relied on people who had selfish and greedy reasons for supporting the colony, and who were not willing to go out of their way to rescue them during their struggles. In the end, they likely had to rely on the goodwill of the local Indian nations if they did survive the disintegration of the colony, who proved much more reliable and forgiving than the supposed English betters who had sent them away to the edge of the world.