Grounding his story in documentary and fragmentary archaeological
evidence, British archaeologist Hume (Martin's Hundred, 1982)
tantalizingly reconstructs the history of the earliest English
settlements in America. The British drive for colonies grew out of
England's 16th-century rivalry with Spain; hence the earliest
English settlements in America were planted in the midst of the
"Terra Florida" that explorers had claimed for the Spanish crown.
After some abortive attempts to create an English foothold in the
New World, Sir Walter Raleigh sent more than 100 English colonists
under gentleman-artist John White to lay claim to the land the
Elizabethans called "Virginia." They landed in Roanoke, in what is
now North Carolina, in July 1587. After establishing a fort and
colony, White and some members of the group returned to England.
When several more English ships arrived in Roanoke in 1589, the
colony had vanished with few, cryptic traces. Hume painstakingly
reviews the sparse evidence, both from contemporary journals and
from modern forays over the site, of the Lost Colony: Almost
surely, the settlers were massacred by Indians, although little
evidence exists today either of their presence at Roanoke or of
their fate. Similarly, Hume tracks the more successful but often
tragic history of the Jamestown settlement from its birth in 1607,
using artifacts and journals of the period to trace the colony's
growth from its unpromising beginning as a small disease-ridden
group of adventurers into a prosperous community. Hume focuses
particularly on the relationship between the settlers and the
Indians, which went from mutual idealization to demonization within
a few years. This culminated in the 1622 slaughter by the Indian
chief Opechancanough of English settlers in the area around
Jamestown and an English backlash against the natives that spelled
the ultimate doom of their culture. Hume breaks little novel
historical ground, although he eloquently recounts the
archaeological record and brings alive the lost settlements of the
early American past with wit and style. (Kirkus Reviews)
In The Virginia Adventure, Noel Hume turns his attention to the
two earliest English settlements in Virginia, Roanoke and James
Towne, with fascinating results. Combining information gathered
through excavations of the sites with contemporary accounts from
journals, letters, and official records of the period, the author
illuminates the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain John Smith,
and Powhatan; the life and death of Pocahontas; and the
dissapearance of the Roanoke colony.
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