Fort Raleigh National Historic Site - ritage Education Program
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site - Heritage Education Program
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site - Heritage Education Program

Introduction

Roanoke Revisited supplements concepts in core curricula courses and provides teachers and their students with appropriated information for the study of pre-colonial America. Although each classroom teacher is likely to find multiple uses for the materials, the suggested method for implementation is through the use of peer-counseling techniques and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site - Heritage Education Program experiential activities.

This program divides the study of the Roanoke voyages into seven UNITs. The links provided furnish additional information about the topics treated in brief in the heritage education program described on this page.

Teachers and students are encouraged to visit Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, The Lost Colony, the Elizabethan Gardens, and Roanoke Island Festival Park after completing their classroom study of the Roanoke voyages and colonies. They are encouraged, further, to take advantage of programs offered at those sites that are designed to reinforce and expand upon concepts introduced in this heritage program.

The Roanoke Colonies Research Office, which acts as a clearinghouse for information related to all aspects of study regarding the Roanoke Colonies including such fields of study as anthropology, American studies, archaeology, biology, history, geography, literature and Native American studies, is a good website to visit for the serious student.

Moreover, the information on this page and the links provided in this program can be used for research purposes in the accomplishment of other projects related to the Roanoke voyages and colonies.

A Bibliography of Books, Pamphlets, and Articles on the Roanoke Island Colonies provides a bibliography of source materials on the Roanoke voyages. A List of Participants in the Roanoke Voyages provides an alphabetical list of most of the known colonists and explorers associated with the Roanoke voyages. Additionally, The White-DeBry Map of Virginia (1590) the most important contemporary published map of the settlement area.

Available as part of this educational package is the Teachers' Heritage Education Roanoke Revisited Handbook, which is an adaptation of the Official National Park Service Handbook 130, FORT RALEIGH and the First English Settlement in the New World by Charles W. Porter III, produced by the Division of Publications, National Park Service, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, printed by the Government Printing Office, and currently out of print.


UNIT 1

The Elizabethan Expansion

At the beginning of the 1580s, the balance of power at home and abroad was against England's Queen Elizabeth. By its end, she ruled the seas. She had also expanded her realm and reached the zenith of her personal popularity at home and abroad. Notwithstanding the religious conflicts and invasion threats that punctuated the era and colored its life and thought, English merchants expanded their trade and increased their wealth. Many of them invested heavily in the schemes of adventurers attempting to extend the dominion of England beyond the seas. The Roanoke voyages of 1584 — 1590 were part of the great Elizabethan expansion. Had these enterprises not been started simultaneously with two escalating crises that affected the whole of England, the probability of their immediate success would have been much higher.

While the Roanoke colonies were being planted, plots to place the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne were uncovered. Within months of her execution in February 1587 - an event that added fuel to the simmering religious problem — Ralegh's final colony sailed for the new world. Before the colony could be reinforced and resupplied, the Spanish Armada attacked England. By the time Elizabeth stabilized her position at home and abroad, the Roanoke colony had been deserted. Eclipsed by the naval victory over the Armada, the colonists and their New World nonetheless made cameo appearances in the music, theatre, and literature of the day.

The following links provide additional details needed for an understanding of the conflicts and forces that helped shape the Roanoke voyages:

UNIT 2

Exploration of Roanoke Island, 1584

Almost bounded by Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe in 1580 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the first phase of English colonizing efforts in the New World was initiated by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and continued by his half-brother Sir Walter Ralegh. Gilbert, after an aborted voyage in 1578, took possession of Newfoundland in 1583, but was lost at sea on his return to England. Shortly thereafter, Ralegh received a patent to plant settlements in the unclaimed area south of Gilbert's territory. Exercising his grant with amazing speed, he prepared a reconnaissance voyage which departed England on 27 April 1584, and arrive at the coast of what is now North Carolina, appropriately enough, on the 4th of July.

The following links develop separate aspects of the half-brothers' reconnaissance voyages:

UNIT 3

Ralegh's First Colony, 1585 - 1586

The reconnaissance expedition that returned to England in mid-September 1584 delivered a glowing report of the new territory and its people. In spite of the escalating cold war between England and Spain, an enthusiastic Ralegh sent a colony of 108 men in the spring of 1585 to establish a settlement in the New World. Sir Richard Grenville transported the first settlers to the coast of modern North Carolina, made preliminary explorations of the area, put Ralph Lane in charge of the colony, and returned to England for supplies, capturing prize ships along the way. In the eleven months that followed, Lane and his men explored the surrounding area and assessed the economic potential of its resources. Deteriorating relations with the Native Americans and a shortage of food and supplies created severe hardships for the fledgling settlement, worsened by Grenville's failure to resupply them by the appointed time. Disheartened, the colonists abandoned the settlement and sailed to England with Sir Francis Drake when he stopped by Roanoke Island at the end of his West Indian voyage in June 1586. Upon their arrival in England, many of the ex-colonists complained loudly about life in the New World, but Thomas Harriot, in his "A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" (1588), extolled the land's potential.

The following links provide an overview of persons and events associated with the 1585 - 1586 colony and develop telling details:

UNIT 4

John White's Watercolors

 Many of Thomas Harriot's descriptions in his Brief and True Report were illustrated by his associate John White, an artist who was also a member of the Grenville expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585. It is clear that Harriot remained with the Lane colony for the full term, the length of John White's stay cannot be determined from the evidence now know to exist. He may have remained with Harriot, or he may have returned to England with Grenville. Whatever his length of stay, his task must have been to prepare accurate depictions of the plants, animals, and native inhabitants of the region. White's surviving paintings of the area (many may have been thrown overboard during evacuation of the colony), taken together with engravings of paintings that reached England but were lost later, make up the fullest sixteenth-century pictorial representation of the New World.

The following links contain essays that develop different aspects of the Native American culture of the region in the 1580s:

UNIT 5

The Lost Colony of 1587

Shortly after the abrupt exit of Ralegh's first colony, Mary Queen of Scots reared - and lost - her head, and conflicts with Spain escalated beyond hope of peaceful resolution. Undeterred, Ralegh sent a second colony to the New World. Less military in approach, the 1587 venture included men, women, and children. Led by Governor John White, the colonists departed from England on 8 May 1587. Instead of traveling to their intended destination on the Chesapeake Bay, however, they disembarked at Roanoke Island. Plagued with a shortage of food and supplies, and unable to coexist peaceably with the Native Americans, the colony experienced difficulty from the outset. On 27 August 1587, just thirty-seven days after the colonists' arrival on the Carolina coast, Governor John White left the settlement and returned to England for supplies. The outbreak of war with Spain thwarted his plans for prompt relief of the colony, and he did not return to Roanoke Island until 1590, at which time he found the settlement abandoned. Because of inclement weather and White's own lack of authority, his fellow voyagers aborted their search for the colonists and returned to England. White apparently never came back to the North Carolina coast, and the fate of his colony and the meaning of the message "Croatoan," which he found on a post at the settlement site, still remain shrouded in mystery.

The following links expand specific aspects of the 1587, 1588, and 1590 enterprises:

UNIT 6

Links With Jamestown and New England

 After John White's 1590 voyage to Roanoke Island, both he and Sir Walter Ralegh withdrew from planting colonies in the New World. White accepted the loss - but not the demise - of his colony, and retired to his Irish estate in Newtown, near Killmore. Ralegh concentrated on his Irish estates, rather than the more costly overseas settlements. Nevertheless he staunchly maintained, even after his conviction in 1603 on charges of treason and the consequent reversion of his patent to the Crown, that the 1587 colony had survived. Reports that at least some of the colonists were still alive continued to surface as late as 1610. That the Jamestown settlers tried to find the 1587 colonists is beyond doubt. Reports gathered by the Jamestown settlers plausibly suggest that some of the lost colonists coexisted or cohabited with the Indians living on the lower Chesapeake Bay - the stated destination of the 1587 voyage - until massacred by the powerful Powhatan Confederation in the early 1600s. A few escaped and were rumored to be living in captivity or servitude, always just out of the Jamestown settler' reach. Little evidence supports these reports, however.

Even though Ralegh and White were not directly involved with the new settlements in North Virginia (New England) and South Virginia (Virginia proper and mid-Atlantic), some other primary participants in the Roanoke ventures were. Richard Hakluyt and Sir Thomas Smythe, for example, were major promoters of and investors in the colonies at both Roanoke Island and Jamestown. Ralegh's nephews sir John and Ralegh Gilbert were among the leaders of the Plymouth enterprise. And some of the lessons learned during the Roanoke era influenced English activities in eastern North America well into the next century.

This section links to standard texts described in the Checklist of Books, Pamphlets, and Articles on the Roanoke Island Colonies that address the influence of the Roanoke colonies and the fate of the lost colony, and to works on the settlement of Virginia and New England.

UNIT 7

Search for the "Cittie Of Ralegh"

 The "Cittie of Ralegh" is the name of the settlement that the 1587 colonists planned to create on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. The only known site actually inhabited by the planters is the vicinity of the settlement built in 1585 by the Ralph Lane Colony on the north end of Roanoke Island, North Carolina. This area has traditionally been identified as the location of the "Cittie of Ralegh," but no one knows whether the "Cittie" was ever more than a legal entity. Archaeological investigations in the area have resulted in the reconstruction of an earthen structure similar to the sconce Ralph Lane is known to have built in Puerto Rico in 1585 en route to Roanoke Island. (It also resembles the octagonal bastion built in Maine by Popham in 1607.) Although numerous items of interest have been discovered in a series of archaeological digs, the locations of the colonists' houses have not been ascertained. The most recent investigation, however, has established the site of a "science center" used by Joachim Ganz and others with the Lane colony to smelt copper and make metallurgical tests. Significant clues to the location of a wooden fort associated with both colonies have also come to light. Because the immediate area of the new finds has been subjected to only limited disturbance since the 16th century, the possibility of locating more parts of the settlements is real.

This section links to archaeological works described in the Bibliography of Books, Pamphlets, and Articles on the Roanoke Island Colonies and to current information about archaeological and other investigations that may be found in the Management Documents of the Fort Raleigh Main Site.

Pertinent material may be found on the Roanoke Colonies Research Office website as well.

Take a look at On the Lighter Side...

Roanoke Island - The Roanoke Revisited - Heritage Education Program

Contact Information:

http://www.nps.gov/fora/test/roanokerev.htm
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
National Park Service
Rt. 1, Box 675
Manteo, NC 27954
Call (252) 473-5772