Well before the Jamestown settlers first sighted the Chesapeake Bay or
the Mayflower reached the coast of Massachusetts, the first English
colony in America was established on Roanoke Island. David Stick tells
the story of that fascinating period in North Carolina's past, from the
first expedition sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 to the
mysterious disappearance of what has become known as the lost colony.
Included in the colorful cast of characters are the renowned
Elizabethans Sir Francis Drake and Sir Richard Grenville; the Indian
Manteo, who received the first Protestant baptism in the New World; and
Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents in America.
Roanoke Island narrates the daily affairs as well as the perils that
the colonists experienced, including their relationships with the
Roanoacs, Croatoans, and the other Indian tribes. Stick shows that the
Indians living in northeastern North Carolina -- so often described by
the colonists as savages -- had actually developed very well organized
social patterns.
The fate of the colonists left on Roanoke Island by John White in 1587
is a mystery that continues to haunt historians. A relief ship sent in
1590 found that the settlers had vanished. Stick makes available all of
the evidence on which historians over the centuries have based their
conjectures. Methodically reconstructing the facts -- and exposing the
hoaxes -- he invites readers to draw their own conclusions concerning
what happened.
Exploring the significance of that first English settlement in the New
World, Stick concludes that speculation over the fate of the lost colony
has overshadowed the more important fact that the Roanoke Island
colonization effort helped prepare for the successful settlement of
Jamestown two decades later. "Had it been otherwise," he contends, "
those of us living here today might well be speaking Spanish instead of
English."
The four hundredth anniversary of the exploration and settlement of what
came to be called North Carolina occurred in 1984. For that occasion,
America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee commissioned this factual
and readable history.
