hee hee -
Posted on 10/25/2006 9:13:12 PM PDT by FLOutdoorsman
MANTEO - At an archaeological dig at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, Phil Evans stepped into a meticulously measured pit and started shoveling dirt.
The Durham lawyer is no scientist. But he couldn't miss this. After 30 years of searching, he still wants to pinpoint where the English failed to establish their first permanent colony in North America.
Nearly every North Carolinian knows that a band of English settlers vanished from Roanoke Island about 1589, creating the legendary Lost Colony. No one knows where they went. An outdoor production replays the mystery year after year.
But the full story is more complex. Two colonies were launched on the northern edge of Roanoke Island in the 1500s, on what is now called called Fort Raleigh in Manteo. Despite failing to sustain a settlement, they were England's earliest land grab in North America.
It is a drama that has riveted Evans for years, first as a park ranger and later as a private citizen. The many unknowns haunt him. Exactly where did the English build cottages on Roanoke? Where did they erect a fort? Was there more than one fort?
To help find answers, Evans now leads the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, which raises money to search for colonial remains.
"It's a great story," Evans said. "But it's hard to take people around and convince them this is the site of the first colony when there is no archaeological evidence for it. "
Archaeologists, including a team that uncovered remnants of the first permanent English colony in Jamestown, donate their time. The National Park Service helps, too. But it couldn't get done without Evans, whose foundation raises thousands of dollars each year to pay for lodging, food and some labor, researchers say.
"I doubt there would be a First Colony Foundation if Phil wasn't around," said Nick Luccketti, senior archaeologist for the Jamestown digs in the 1990s. "His enthusiasm is so great it's infectious.''
On first glance, the chatty, gray-haired guy in the frayed khakis looks nothing like a mover or shaker. At this month's two-week dig, he was a self-proclaimed assistant, tackling grunt work when he could duck out of his law practice.
But Evans, 53, has been hooked on the details of America's past since growing up in Lowe's Grove, a country crossroads outside Durham. He was the type to prefer trips to Civil War battlegrounds or historic Williamsburg over ballpark outings.
After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1975 with a history degree, he worked as a ranger at Fort Raleigh. He soaked up everything others had learned about the place, showing a keen memory for details.
"I'd mention to Phil that I was trying to remember a fact I'd read, and he'd say it's in that book, third shelf from the bottom, on page 210," said Linda Pearce, a fellow ranger with Evans at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.
On the right track
Evans helped uncover the most recent archaeological evidence that proves the official park site is in the right neighborhood. In early 1982, he found a barrel and hollow log -- likely remains of English colonial wells -- in the shallows of Roanoke Sound. Carbon dating pegged them to the 1500s.
In the 1990s, Evans persuaded Ivor Noel Hume, then the chief archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg, to dig at Fort Raleigh. Evans intrigued the in-demand scholar with tantalizing evidence: Remains uncovered at Fort Raleigh in the 1960s by another archaeologist resembled a piece of a fort Noel Hume had found in Virginia.
What Noel Hume discovered, however, wasn't the long-sought fort. His team instead exhumed ruins of a 1585 workshop set up by scientist Thomas Hariot and metallurgist Joachim Gans. The pair were among the first group of 108 men that Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched to North America to create a colony here. Out of food, that group returned to England in 1586, well before the Lost Colony settlers ever left their motherland.
Discovery of the workshop was a conquest as well as a setback. Remains of the structure lie both inside and out of earthen walls that many had considered the site of the colonial fort. Since a fort was unlikely to have cut through a building, the workshop's discovery challenged that belief.
And Noel Hume's team turned up no other evidence of a settlement -- human bones, glass bottles, pottery, remains of buildings.
"What we thought had to be certain cannot be certain," Evans said.
Still, the story of Fort Raleigh is of growing interest to U.S. and British historians -- something Evans hopes will sustain support for his foundation. Many now view English settlements there, particularly the earliest one, as a key to the success of Jamestown, established to the north in 1607.
Observations published by Hariot probably helped English entrepreneurs raise money for trips to North America's mid-Atlantic regions. He saw great promise in the minerals, lumber and herbs they found on Roanoke Island.
"If they hadn't been encouraging, Britain probably wouldn't have come to this part of America for years," Noel Hume said.
On top of that, lessons learned about local Indians on Roanoke better equipped Jamestown settlers to get along with native peoples. For instance, archaeologists in Jamestown have found sheets of copper and pieces of the metal cut into many decorative shapes.
In a book Hariot published after returning to England, he noted how local Indians liked to adorn themselves with copper. Trading copper with Powhatan, a powerful chief, might have protected the Virginia settlers from attacks, said Luccketti, a Jamestown researcher working in Manteo this month.
An eroding site
Finding more of the Roanoke settlements might clarify those connections. The trouble is, nature is not on the side of research. Land at Fort Raleigh has disappeared, eroded by Roanoke Sound.
"It's a race against time," said Eric Klingelhofer, director of historical archaeology at Mercer College and another veteran of Jamestown digs.
That is why archaeologists funded by the foundation last year focused on underwater studies off shore, digging 7 feet into the sand and scouring it with metal detectors. This month, they found shards of what looks like 16th-century pottery by the beach, but not a whole lot more.
Evans gets excited whenever they find anything. He has no need to learn where the lost, second wave of colonists went; that might wreck the allure of Fort Raleigh. But he is burning to know exactly where all those English souls passed their days.
"Where is the settlement?" he asked. "Where is the original fort?"
hee hee -
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1101web/roanoke.html
UPDATE - added a link to the original source documents:
There's evidence they explored and sailed the northern bays and waterways - and may have ended up, eventually, in North Dakota - where were found, early on, "white Indians with blue eyes" - the Mandans
I don't understand why there would be a food shortage problem with fish and game abound.
"they were England's earliest land grab in North America"
The choice of words here tells me that the article is written from the point of view of an anti-English interest. If you know history, you know what I mean.
The lesson was that the Roanoke Island colony was the first English attempt.
My favorite book growing up was "the Flamingo Feather" by Kirk Munroe describing the interaction of the French, Sapnish and indian struggle over the terrority.
I'll jump in here to comment on the people.
Recently there has been a major effort by the folks known as Mullengons who live in East Tennessee and southwest virginia to explore in detail their heritage. There is near certainty that they spring from these very early abandoned colonies.
The mix of European and Indian plus other genes resulted in a population that was ostracized by both Indian and Europeans who came later. The Mullengons who can be readily identified by a knot on their head, were pushed westward to the mountains and ridgetops of East Tennessee and Southwest Va.
.....Croatoa or something like that.....
Croatan as in Croatan Sound
The surname "Mullins" is strongly associated with Melungeon heritage, just as "Lowery" and "Oxendine" are associated with the Lumbee indians of eastern NC.
Easily underestimated because of its recently politically incorrect status is the economic importance of tobacco, which was even used as currency.
"Most of us were taught that it was the first European colony in the New World,"
You must have gone to some Yankee school. We were taught that it was the first English colony.
Anyone interested in this topic should read Lee Miller's book Roanoke. It's fascinating and well researched.
By coincidence, I'm just starting to do some research on the Melungeons. Can you recommend any books on the subject?
I suppose that's a plausible theory.
Have you heard of the 16th c. signet ring that ECU archaeologists found on Hatteras Island?
The crest on it was connected to the family of gentleman who was one of the colonists.
see: http://www.outer-banks.com/hatteras-school/dig98.html
Not too long ago I searched for Kirk Monroe on the Kansas geneological registry to find out how an author in the 1800's in Kansas had such a good feel for the precolonial effort in Georgia. I never learned but now get periodic inquires about the monroe family because somehow I'm known there. :)
if you have a really strong interest, come to Kingsport for the annualk homecoming.
I love meeting FReepers and will take you to dinner.
REDRUM
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