surprised — 

 maybe stunned 

 — if his ECU 

 team actually 

 finds evidence 

 of the Lost 

 Colony. Like 

 most histori- 

 ans, he 

 believes the 

 forsaken 

 colonists 

 traveled to 

 southern 

 Chesapeake 

 Bay. There, 

 they met an 

 untimely 

 demise at the 

 hands of the 

 Powhatans, 

 the powerful 

 confederacy 

 headed by 

 Pocahontas's 

 father. This is 

 the story told 

 by the 

 Jamestown 

 colony's 

 secretary 

 William 

 Strachey, 

 writing in his 

 Historie of 

 Travell into 

 Virginia Britania in 1612. 



The colonists may have gone to 

 Croatan briefly, however. Manteo, one 

 of two Native Americans who visited 

 London with Sir Arthur Barlowe in 

 1584, was a Croatan, and his mother 

 was head of the Croatan chiefdom. 

 Manteo aligned with the English when 

 other villages — Aquascogoc, 

 Dasemunkepeuc and the Secotan — 

 joined forces against the Roanoke 

 colonists in 1587. Having treated the 

 Native Americans harshly during their 

 brief sojourn at Roanoke, the English 



had very few native friends or allies. 

 It would not be surprising if they 

 looked to Croatan for temporary 

 sanctuary. 



Even if Phelps doesn't solve 

 the mystery of the Lost Colony, 

 the Croatan dig promises to cast 

 piercing new light on more interest- 

 ing mysteries about the coastal 

 Algonkians and their 17th-century 

 encounters with the English. 



The English had little presence 

 in North Carolina for 60 years after 

 the Roanoke colonists disappeared. 

 After 1650, however, the English 

 pushed the colonial frontier south 

 from Virginia. Conflicts arose 

 quickly between the natives and 

 newcomers over hunting, fishing, 

 grazing and land rights. 



Early on, the Algonkians and 

 their Iroquoian neighbors success- 

 fully resisted English intrusions. On 

 the eve of the 18th century, they still 

 outnumbered the European colonists. 

 But they soon succumbed to small- 

 pox, influenza and other Old World 

 diseases. The Algonkian chiefdoms 

 had all been destroyed or subjugated 

 by English forces by the end of the 

 Tuscarora War of 1711-1713. 



Only the broadest outlines of 

 these Native Americans' final reign 

 can be detected in historical docu- 

 ments, and we know nothing from 

 their point of view. The coastal 

 natives had been annihilated in six 

 decades, between 1650 and 1715, and 

 archaeological digs such as the one at 

 Croatan are the only way we'll ever 

 learn more about them. 



The Croatan capital died too. In 

 its heyday, the village stretched at 

 least half a mile. But when English 

 surveyor John Lawson published his 

 New Voyage to Carolina in 1709, he 

 reported only "16 fighting men" at 

 Croatan (by then known as Hatteras). 

 In 1733, Edward Mosely made the 

 last known reference to natives at the 



Croatan site. On a North Carolina map 

 published in London, he scribbled 

 "Indians, none now inhabiting the See 

 Coast, but about 6 or 8 at Hatteras." 



During my visit to Buxton, I 

 talked late into the nights with the 

 ECU archaeologists. On those warm 

 summer evenings, Phelps unfurled 

 vivid imaginary maps of the Croatan 

 capital. Listening to him, I could 

 envision the bustling village. I 

 pictured long houses covered with 

 reed and grass mats scattered along 

 the inlet, broad cornfields tangled with 

 squash and bean vines, elegant fish 

 weirs in Pamlico Sound and Croatan 

 boatmen crisscrossing the sound to 

 trade with distant English and native 

 villages. 



We also talked about history and 

 archaeology, the smoke and ashes of 

 our past. At the Buxton dig, I was 

 struck by how patiently the archaeolo- 

 gists worked. They toiled with 

 painstaking rigor, an inch at a time. 

 They seemed burdened by the 

 knowledge that they, unlike historians, 

 have but one chance to retrieve the 

 past. To an archaeologist, the earth 

 confides its mysteries only once. After 

 the ECU team has dug, sifted, sorted, 

 classified and refilled the Croatan site, 

 it can never be studied again. The 

 work can't be hurried and must be 

 done right the first time. 



It is a duty I don't envy. For now, 

 as new construction lays claim to 

 coastal lands, there is no time for 

 patience. □ 



Dmvd Cecelski is a historian at 

 the University of 

 North Carolina- 

 Chapel Hill's 

 Southern Oral 

 History Program 

 and a regular 

 columnist for 

 Coastwatch. 



COASTWATCH 17 



