John White’s North American Reptiles 129 
Sir Walter Raleigh as governor of a group of 1 13 men and women sent 
in 1587 as a second attempt to establish a colony on Roanoke Island, 
“Virginia” (now North Carolina). White, along with the eminent scientist 
Thomas Harriot, had gone with the earlier group in 1585, stayed with 
them on the island for a year, and returned (as did the rest of the 
colonists) with Sir Francis Drake to England in 1586. The second group 
that White accompanied in 1587 did not fare particularly well; only a 
little more than a month after their arrival on Roanoke (22 July 1587), 
White departed again (27 August 1587) for England to procure supplies 
for the colonists. In that interval, on 18 August 1587, his daughter 
Eleanor, wedded to Ananias Dare, gave birth to the first child born of 
English parents in America — Virginia Dare. A second child (name and 
sex unknown) was born on Roanoke Island to Dyonis and Margery 
Harvey, just a week or so later. 
Unfortunately, war with Spain was then imminent, and hence 
supplies, ships, and personnel were diffcult to obtain. Not until 1590, 
three years after his departure to obtain succor for the colonists, was it 
possible for White to return to Roanoke Island, where little trace of the 
colonists, including White’s daughter and granddaughter, was found. 
Thus ensued the mystery of the “Lost Colony,” famous in the history of 
early English settlement in America. Quinn (1985) concluded that most 
migrated to southeastern Virginia, where they lived peacefully with a 
friendly Indian tribe until about 1607, when they were massacred by 
Powhatan’s tribe. The rest, a very small group, remained for a time on 
Roanoke Island, but ultimately moved to nearby Croatoan Island to 
await White, presumably living with Indians there, but their fate is 
unknown. 
White retired into virtual obscurity in Ireland shortly after the 
unsuccessful relief mission returned to England. His career as an 
administrator and governmental leader was ignominious, but not so his 
visual records of paintings, drawings, and maps, executed less than a 
quarter of a century before the first successful English colonization took 
place in Virginia. 
John White’s role as herpetologist was a small facet of the large 
part he played in early American history and of the contribution he 
made to the image of America among educated Europeans. He was a 
gifted artist of the first rank in his time. Although direct credit was long 
in coming, since his copiers gained far greater fame than he, his 
paintings created images of native North America that linger today on 
both sides of the Atlantic, to a considerable extent as a result of his 
collaboration with Harriot (1588). White’s Lost Colony has fostered 
legends that continue to stimulate the imaginations of those who have 
concern for colonial American history. 
