a history of north carolina

Do you know how Dare County got its name?

Who were the first people to live in Burke County?

Who was Nathaniel Greene?

What was the Trail of Tears?

Who was James Iredell?

What were the Mecklenburg Resolves?

Why is James K. Polk considered the best one-term POTUS?

Why were Clay and Jackson mortal enemies?

How many NC counties are named for Indian words or tribes?

Is Lincoln County named for Abe Lincoln?Is Lee County named for Robert E. Lee?

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What NC county’s name means “across the woods”?

Where is “old” Hanover?

Is Carolina named for a woman, like Virginia?

Who was the notorious pirate from Beaufort County?

The Colony At Roanoke by Ralph Lane

1586

To the Northwest the farthest place of our discovery was to Chawanook distant from Roanoak about 130 miles. Our passage thither lies through a broad sound, but all fresh water, and the channel of a great depth, navigable for good shipping, but out of the channel full of shoals...

Chawanook itself is the greatest province and Seigniorie lying upon that river, and that the town itself is able to put 700 fighting men into the field, besides the force of the province itself.

The king of the said province is called Menatonon, a man impotent in his limbs, but otherwise for a savage, a very grave and wise man, and of a very singular good discourse in matters concerning the state, not only of his own country, and the disposition of his own men, but also of his neighbors round about him as well far as near, and of the commodities that each country yields.

When I had him prisoner with me, for two days that we were together, he gave me more understanding and light of the country than I had received by all the searches and savages that before I or any of my company had had conference with: Among other things he told me, that going three days' journey in a canoe up his river of Chawanook, and then descending to the land, you are within four days' journey to pass over land Northeast to a certain king's country, whose province lies upon the Sea, but his place of greatest strength is an island situated, as he described unto me, in a bay, the water round about the island very deep.

Out of this bay he signified unto me, that this King had so great quantity of pearls, and does so ordinarily take the same, as that not only his own skins that he wears, and the better sort of his gentlemen and followers are full set with the said pearls, but also his beds, and houses are garnished with them, and that he has such quantity of them, that it is a wonder to see...The king of Chawanook promised to give me guides to go overland into that king's country whensoever I would: but he advised me to take good store of men with me, and good store of victual, for he said, that king would be loth to suffer any strangers to enter into his country, and especially to meddle with the fishing for any pearls there, and that he was able to make a great many of men in to the field, which he said would fight very well...

The Colony At Roanoke by Ralph Lane 1586 (excerpted)

Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón was a Spanish conquistador and explorer who tried to start a colony in 1526. He was the first European colonizer of what is now South Carolina.

De Ayllón's expedition sailed from Hispaniola to South Carolina on two ships; the settlers included African slaves. The colony, called San Miguel de Guadalupe, was disrupted by a fight over leadership. During this turmoil, the slaves rebelled and fled the colony to live among the Cofitachiqui Indians. De Ayllón and the other colonists died in a fever epidemic.

Spanish Exploration of the Carolinas

The first European to explore North America was Spaniard Ponce De Leon. In 1513, de Leon led an expedition of the Florida peninsula. The Italian, Giovanni da Verrazano followed for the French in 1524. he sailed up and down the Carolina coast between the Cape Fear River and the Roanoke River before sailing north to what is now New York and New England.

In 1539, another Spaniard, Hernando de Soto, led an expedition into the interior of North America. In 1540, having heard of possible gold mines, the expedition turned north-east through Georgia to the Piedmont of South Carolina. They did not find the gold and so de Soto led his men north into the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina where he spent one month resting the horses. De Soto then entered Tennessee and Northern Georgia, where he spent another month eating native foods, then turned south toward the Gulf of Mexico to meet his two ships bearing fresh supplies from Havana. Heading west and south into Alabama, on May 8, 1541, de Soto's troops reached the Mississippi River. The expedition is the first to be documented in official reports as seeing the river.

The Columbian Exchange: The interaction of organisms resulting from contacts between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres (transfer from Europe and Africa to the Americas, and vice versa).

Old World → New World

Domestic animalshorses cattle pigs

sheep goats

chickens

Cropsrice

wheat barley oats

coffee sugar cane citrus fruits

bananas melons

Kentucky bluegrass

Diseasessmallpox measles mumps malaria

yellow fever influenza

whooping cough typhus

chicken pox the common cold

New World → Old World

Domestic animalsturkeys llamas alpacas

guinea pigs

Cropsmaize (corn)

potatoes sweet potatoes

cassava peanuts tobacco squash peppers

tomatoes pumpkins

cacao (the source of chocolate) sunflowers pineapples avocados

vanilla

Diseases syphilis

English Exploration and the Lost Colony, 1496-1600

Although England was but a negligible world power in the late fifteenth century, it mustered enough resources to begin its own age of exploration. In 1496, King Henry VII commissioned the Genoese sea captain John Cabot to look for a shorter sea route to China. Cabot did not find the Northwest Passage, but he did discover the Grand Banks, a fishing region off the continental shelf of North America and claimed them for England. Cabot was lost at sea on his second voyage. His son, Sebastian, retraced Cabot’s route and reached as far as the entrance into Hudson’s Bay

The book suggests ways colonies could benefit England: (1)to extend “the reformed religion”(2)to expand trade(3)to provide England with needed resources and markets(4)to enlarge the Queen’s revenues and navy(5)to discover a Northwest Passage to Asia(6)to provide an outlet for the growing English population(7)to stop the expansion of rivals Spain and France in the region

English Motives for Colonizing

The key architects of English colonization were two cousins, prominent in the court of Queen Elizabeth: Walter Raleigh and Richard Hakluyt. Raleigh provided the money; Hakluyt, the reasoning.

Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting, (1584) offers the clearest expression of why England should create colonies in the New World. The Oxford clergyman wrote it to convince Elizabeth I to grant permission to colonize America.

“This westerne discoverie will be greately for the inlargement of the gospell of Christe [and] the refourmed relligion. This will yelde all the commodities of Europe, Affrica, and Asia, as far as wee were wonte to travell, and supply the wantes of all our decayed trades. This will be for manifolde imploymente of nombers of idle men. This will be a great bridle to the Indies of the kinge of Spaine; and [will be] a means that one or twoo hundred saile of his subjectes shippes [may go] at fysshinge in Newfounde lande.” Richard Hakluyt

Queen Elizabeth I granted Raleigh a charter to send a private expedition to North America in 1584.

Raleigh sent Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to lead a “reconnaissance mission” (a fact-finding trip), which left Plymouth in April 1584. The ships found an inlet through the Outer Banks, sailed into Pamlico Sound, and explored the territory.

They met a friendly welcome from the Indians.

They returned to England, reporting that they had found “a most Pleasant and fertile ground.” They brought back to England with them plant samples; and two Indians, Manteo (a Croatoan) and Wanchese (a Roanoke). This was the first time people in England saw American Indians.

Their report to Raleigh so impressed the Queen that she knighted him. He named the colony Virginia, after her.

The Amadas-Barlowe Expedition

The Ralph Lane Colony

In 1585, Raleigh sent a fleet under the command of Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville to establish a colony in “Virginia.” 500 men, (108 of whom intended to remain as colonists, including Manteo and Wanchese,) set sail in the spring for the New World.

The fleet landed at the northern end of Roanoke Island in May and set about building a fort to protect themselves from Spanish or Indian attack.

In August, Grenville took the fleet back to England, planning to return to the colony with more supplies, and Lane became Governor. It was too late in the year to plant crops; so the colonists relied on fishing and gifts of food from the Indians. As winter approached, food sources became more scarce and the colonists began stealing food from the Indians. Tensions grew.

Lane moved the settlement inland, up Albemarle Sound, hoping to find gold and more food.

When the friendly Roanoke chief died, his son, Wingina, became the new chief.

Wingina influenced inland Indians not to trade with the English and hatched a plot to murder Lane. Friendly Roanoke warned Lane, and Lane’s men went to Wingina’s village, pretending to have a parlay. Then on his order, Lane’s men surprised the Indians. With the Indians defeated, Lane had Wingina beheaded.

Tensions continued to plague the English settlement as spring arrived in 1586. Grenville’s fleet had not yet returned; so when Francis Drake’s ship unexpectedly arrived in June, the colonists returned to England. Two days later, Grenville arrived and when the Indians told him of the colony’s departure, he set sail back to England. He left fifteen volunteers behind to secure the English claim.

The Lane Colony was not a total failure. It introduced tobacco, maize, and the marsh potato to England. The last would become an essential element of the Irish diet, and tobacco would become the crop that saved America.

Raleigh organized another attempt at colonizing the New World. This time it would be at Chesapeake Bay and would be agricultural, rather than militaristic. It would be led by John White, an artist on the Ralph Lane mission. To entice settlers, Raleigh granted each colonist 50 acres of land; 117 men, women, and children agreed to go.

It left England in April and went first to Roanoke Island to drop off supplies for the soldiers left behind by Grenville, but found no trace of the men except for the bones of one. Rather than take them up to the Chesapeake, the commander of the fleet, a privateer named Fernandez, left them on Roanoke in the midst of hostile Indians.

Roanoke, The Lost Colony

White left the settlers, including his granddaughter, Virginia Dare (born in August 1587, she was the first English child born in the New World), and returned to England for supplies.

Before leaving, White carved the letters C.R.O. into a tree and told the men to carve a cross over them as a distress signal should they run into trouble before he returned. He did not return for three years because of the conflict with Spain and the Spanish Armada.

When White reached the settlement in 1590, no one was there. He looked for a cross on the tree, but found none. He found only the word Croatoan carved into a post. Thinking that the mission had moved to Croatoan Island, he sailed south in search of the settlers. He found no English settlement on Croatoan.

War with Philip II of Spain during the 1590s kept England from making another stab at colonizing the New World until the early 1600s.

No trace of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has ever been found.