Advertise in this article

Image via Wikipedia

Unit Two – Sir Walter Raleigh and the Roanoke Colony

Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to send a colony of English people to this country. Queen Elizabeth gave him a charter which gave him a large territory in America so he sent out an exploring expedition in 1584.  This was ninety-two years after the discovery by Columbus and this expedition was commanded by two captains, named Amidas and Barlowe.

 They landed on the coast that is now called North Carolina and the country pleased them very much. They were   impressed at the wild grapevines, which grew to the tops of the highest trees, and they found the Indians very friendly. They stayed about six weeks in the New World, and when they got back to England, they declared that the part of America they had seen was the paradise of the world.

Raleigh was much encouraged by the accounts which his two captains gave of the new country they had found. It was named Virginia at this time, in honor of Queen Elizabeth, who was often called the "Virgin Queen." But the name Virginia, which is apply to two of our states today, was then used for nearly the whole eastern part between Maine and Georgia.

In 1585, the year after the return of the first expedition, Raleigh sent out a colony to remain in America. Sir Richard Grenville, a famous seaman, had command of this expedition but he soon returned to England, leaving the colony in charge of Ralph Lane.

There were no women in Ralph Lane's company. They made their settlement on Roanoke Island, which lies near to the coast of North Carolina, and they explored the mainland in many directions.

They spent much time in trying to find gold, and they seem to have thought that the shell beads worn by the Indians were pearls. Like all the others who came to America in that time, they were looking for a way to get across America, which they believed to be very narrow.

They hoped to reach the Pacific Ocean, and so open a new way of sailing to China and the East Indies.

The Indians by this time were tired of the European explorers and were anxious to get rid of them. They told Lane that the Roanoke River came out near the sea and all they had to do was follow it.

Lane believed this story, and set out with most of his men to find a sea at the head of the river. Long before they got to the head of the Roanoke, they ran out of food, but Lane made a brave speech to his men, and they decided to go on.

Having nothing else to eat, they killed their two dogs and cooked the meat with sassafras leaves to give it a relish. When this meat was gone they got into their boats and ran swiftly down the river having no food to eat on the way home. Lane got back to Roanoke Island just in time to keep the Indians from killing the men he had left there.

Sir Francis Drake came to see the colony on his return from an expedition to the West Indies. He gave the company on the island a ship and whatever else they needed. But while he was at Roanoke a storm arose which drove out to sea the ship he had given to Lane. This so discouraged the colonists that they returned to England.

Ralph Lane and his companions were the first to carry tobacco into England. They learned from the Indians to smoke it in Indian fashion, by drawing the smoke into their mouths and puffing it out through their nostrils. Raleigh adopted the practice, and many distinguished men and women followed his example. Some of the first tobacco pipes in England were made by using a walnut shell for the bowl of the pipe and a straw for the stem.

Raleigh set to work to send out another colony, only this time he sent women and children, as well as men, intending to make a permanent settlement.

The governor of this company was John White. Soon after White's company had settled themselves on Roanoke Island, an English child was born. This little girl, being the first English child born in Virginia, was named Virginia Dare.

John White, the governor of the colony, who was Virginia Dare's grandfather, went back to England for supplies. He was detained by the war with Spain, and, when he got back to Roanoke Island, the colony had disappeared.

Raleigh had spent so much money already that he was forced to give up the attempt to plant a colony in America. But he sent several times to seek for the lost people of his second colony, without finding them. Twenty years after John White left them, it was said that seven of them were still alive among the Indians of North Carolina, but no one knows what happened to the lost Colony of Roanoke. 

Unit 2 Walter Raleigh
Unit Two - The first attemps to colonize the New World.  Workseets and text.   You must be logged in to download.
07-20-2010  143.62 KB 143