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?"
LOL!
How about . . .
YRALLIH!
I'm pretty sure I knew this Phil Evans. The name rings a bell. We were both undergrads in the History Dept. at UNC at the same time.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Sounds quite probable. I had never thought of that.
If you look at a coastal map you can easily see how if a hurricane close a channel here and opened one there, Cedar Island could have been the original site. It has been shown that such channel creation and elimination has taken place.
Interestingly, the location of the inlet used on later expeditions (Port Ferdinando) is known definitively. That inlet also closed. There is a NC Historical Marker about said inlet on NC 12 near Bodie Island lighthouse.
The most compelling aspect of the theory is the accents of the "High Tiders." If you talk to the people who live there many will tell you that they don't know how their families came to be in the area.
Re: the "Hoi Toider" accent-
I read a book by two UNC linguistics professors once on the Ocracoke Island brogue. It was quite fascinating.
Another good book was Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony by Lee Miller. She has quite a unique take on the mystery.
I love the theory also because it would kill Mark Basnight to find out that his district has no real claim to the Lost Colony.
LOL! That in itself would be wonderful. He is such a tool.
ping
Miller may well be the source of the theories I related. I know it was a female historian I got them from -- but it wasn't from that book. I read about them about 15 or 20 years ago.
As you documented, once you start putting all the pieces together it all makes perfect sense.
The Miller book is quite recent. I am not sure if it could be her.
The book is recent but I'm pretty sure I read the theory in a newspaper article. It could be a long-held theory she only recently put in a book. Or maybe Miller borrowed it from the person I (almost) recall. But I do recall that it was a female historian.
From Beer & Food: An American History by Bob Skilnik. Coming February, 2007
As far back as the period of 1584 to 1586, when a first attempt was made by English settlers to establish a colony on Roanoke Island, now a part of North Carolina, beer was foremost on their minds. What was lacking, however, was the kind of good quality malted barley that was (and still is) the foundation of the English brewing industry. Instead, multi-colored native corn, whether referred to by the settlers as pagatown, Turkie wheate, or mayze, served the purpose of not only making palatable bread, but also having produced “as good ale as was to be desired.” The Roanoke settlement, however, disappeared in a few short years, the debate is still going on today as to the fate of the original inhabitants.
Some years later, a new Virginia colony was established. Like the original English settlers, these adventurers also discovered the versatility of Indian corn and attempted to make beer from it. In a letter submitted by explorer Captain George Thorpe to the records of the Virginia Company in London, Thorpe wrote that the Virginia colonists had supposedly found a way to brew “a good drink from Indian corn...” There’s enough evidence, however, to suggest that these claims were a bit of puffery for the benefit of investors back home, and that when it came down to it, some of these same colonists who bragged about their delicious corn ale would do almost anything for a pint or two of English-brewed ale made with imported malt. On occasion, that opportunity appeared with the arrival of “ship’s beer” from England.
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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