Sir Walter Ralegh's Indian Interpreters, 1584-1618

Author(s): Alden T. Vaughan

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly , Apr., 2002, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp.
341-376
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3491741

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 Sir Walter Ralegh's Indian Interpreters,
1584-1618

Alden T. Vaughan

EVERAL Native Americans who journeyed to England during the

colonial era have enjoyed scholarly and even popular attention:
Manteo, the Roanoke colonists' interpreter-guide; Squanto, th
Pilgrims' "spetiall instrument"; Pocahontas, the Virginia colony's fab
and often fictionalized Powhatan princess; and several well-publicized eigh
teenth-century diplomatic delegates to London, including Tomochichi
the Yamacraws and Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant) of the Mohawks.1
Almost entirely overlooked are many other Indian voyagers to the ea
including those from North and South America who crossed the Atlan
between 1584 and 1618 under the direct or indirect aegis of Sir Walt
Ralegh. During those thirty-five years, perhaps twenty American natives
under his sponsorship were in England to receive instruction in the Engli
language and to impart knowledge useful for colonial enterprises. Most of
Ralegh's Indian recruits sooner or later returned to their homelands, whe
many played key roles in England's early overseas ventures.

Alden T. Vaughan is professor emeritus of history at Columbia University. H

thanks Virginia Mason Vaughan and the Quarterly's outside reviewers for helpf
suggestions.
1 Among recent works that give appreciable attention to one or more transa
lantic travelers are Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off
Early America (Ithaca, 2ooo); Giles Milton, Big Chief Elizabeth: How England
Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World (London, 2000); Michael Lero
Oberg, "Between 'Savage Man' and 'Most Faithful Englishman': Manteo and t
Early Anglo-Indian Exchange," Itinerario, 24 (2000), 146-69; Eric Hinderaker, "T
'Four Indian Kings' and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empir
William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 53 (1996), 487-526; and Dean R. Snow
"Theyanoguin," in Robert S. Grumet, ed., Northeastern Indian Lives, 1632-18
(Amherst, Mass., 1996), 208-26. Older works include two incomplete, unreliab
and largely undocumented studies: Sidney Lee, "The Call of the West: America a
Elizabethan England, III-The American Indian in Elizabethan England," Scribn
Magazine, 42 (1907), 313-30, and Carolyn Thomas Foreman, Indians Abroad
1493-1938 (Norman, Okla., 1943). Trustworthy modern works include, amon
many, Richmond P. Bond, Queen Anne's American Kings (Oxford, 1952), and Isa
Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743-1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, 1984
The quotation about Squanto appears in William Bradford, History of Plymou
Plantation, i62o-i647, 2 vols. (Boston, 1912), 1:202.

William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LIX, Number 2, April 2002

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342 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Because the historical records of late Tudor-early Stuar

woefully incomplete, sometimes confusing, and occasiona
tory, no precise enumeration of the Indians under Ralegh'
trol who traveled to England is possible. A tentative rost
or more from Roanoke Island and the lower Chesapeake
1584 and 1603, of whom only Manteo has received much
stories of twelve or more natives of Guiana and Trinidad who made the
journey between 1594 and 1618 are barely known, although these diverse
and generally long-lived travelers must have been more visible and
notable in England than many of the Indians who attract greater histori-
cal attention. At least three of the South American natives were from
ruling families; one returned home to assume the tribe's leadership at his
father's death. Several had extensive stays in London-the longest for four-
teen years-often lodging in Ralegh's mansion on the Thames. After
returning to their homelands, several English-trained Indians provided cru-
cial aid to later expeditions into Guiana, sometimes saving Englishmen,
including Ralegh, from almost certain death. After his incarceration in
1603, two or more Guiana natives attended Ralegh in the Tower of
London. The last of the Guianans he took to England witnessed his
beheading. By the time King James contrived Ralegh's execution, that
swashbuckling knight-far better known to posterity for battling Irishmen
and Spaniards than for educating and employing Indians-had initiated
and fostered the practice of transporting American natives to England,
training them to speak English, introducing them to Anglican Christianity,
assuring their return to America, and reaping tangible benefits from their
support of England's imperial ventures.
Language, Ralegh seems to have recognized from the outset, was an
essential instrument of empire.2 Without communication between his
explorers and colonists, on the one hand, and the natives of Roanoke
and Guiana, on the other, viable English outposts would be difficult,
perhaps impossible, to maintain, as would be effective exploration and
exploitation of native territory. Ralegh and his linguistically talented
friend Thomas Hariot accordingly implemented indoctrination in
English speech and customs gentle enough for most of his interpreter-
guides to develop lasting loyalty to Sir Walter and his nation. Roanoke
native Wanchese excepted, they were not Calibans whose profit from

2 The large and growing literature on linguistic imperialism got its effective
start in Stephen J. Greenblatt, "Learning to Curse: Aspects of Linguistic
Colonialism in the Sixteenth Century," in Fredi Chiappelli, ed., First Images of
America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, 2 vols. (Berkeley, Calif., 1976),
2:561-80; and Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World
(Chicago, I991). See also Patricia Seed, "Taking Possession and Reading Texts:
Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires," WMQ, 3d Ser., 49 (1992), 183-209.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 343

language instruction was knowing how to curse or whose maltr

inspired rebellion; rather, in both Carolina and Guiana, Ralegh'
appear to have been conscientious translators and staunch alli
own and his agents' subsequent expeditions. Even if, like m
learners of a second language, his repatriated Indians' facility i
often faded in the absence of opportunities to speak it, they f
aided the monolingual explorers who later visited their lands. R
Hariot were proficient schoolmasters.3
Recent scholarship on the liminal figures who helped to bri
gap between Indian and Anglo-American cultures reveals a varie
egories and circumstances.4 Ralegh's interpreters were the initia
that evolving parade of culture brokers, differing from later t
notably in the primacy of language training, the location of that t
in England rather than America, and the transient nature of t
kers' role. Ralegh's Native American interpreters journeyed t
for several months or several years of training and interrogation,
to their native territory with an English expedition (at least tw
had multiple visits to England), and then, more often than not
their previous lives. In stark contrast to most Indian and Euro
intermediaries on subsequent cultural frontiers, the central experie
Ralegh's interpreters was an intense indoctrination at th
empire-an experience that proved extremely useful to Ralegh
colleagues and must have profoundly altered, in ways the spa
records rarely reveal, the lives of his many recruits.
In addition to the Indian intermediaries enlisted and trained under
Ralegh's supervision (and of considerable importance in their own right,
though addressed only tangentially in this article) are the dozen or so
Powhatans from tidewater Virginia carried to England under the Virginia

3 This generalization does not, of course, apply to Manteo, who lived among the
English-in England and in Roanoke-from mid-1584 until, probably, the end of his
life. Presumably his facility in English improved.
4 Most of the recent works on culture brokers focus on the i8th and 19th cen-
turies, but they often raise important issues of roles, motivations, and identities. See,
for example, Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in
the Great Lakes Region, I650o-185 (Cambridge, 1991); Frances Karttunen, Between
Worlds: Interpreters, Guides, and Survivors (New Brunswick, N. J., 1994); Margaret
Connell Szasz, ed., Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker (Norman,
Okla., 1994); James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the
Pennsylvania Frontier (New York, 1999); Daniel K. Richter, "Cultural Brokers and
Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664-1701," Journal ofAmerican
History, 75 (1988-1989), 40-67; and Richard White, "'Although I am dead, I am not
entirely dead. I have left a second of myself': Constructing Self and Persons on the
Middle Ground of Early America," in Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika
J. Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America
(Chapel Hill, 1997), 404-18.

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344 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Company of London's sponsorship between 1607 and 1

Pocahontas party's expedition of the latter year, which num
twelve more. Overlapping the Virginia colony's Indian
England were eleven or more natives from New England,
the Atlantic-in every known case unwillingly-under vari
illegal sponsorships beginning in 1605. The total numb
Americans in Ralegh's England must have exceeded fifty. A
Walter, confined to the Tower from 1603 to I616 and agai
final months of his life in 1618, would have encountered
American natives who were not under his own sponsorsh
surely have influenced, by his example and advice, their
subsequent employment in English colonization. With
from his ships' captains and especially from Hariot, Ralegh
ily responsible for a generation of eastward migration and
able contribution to the transatlantic world.

Prior to Ralegh's involvement with Roanoke and Guiana, a few

American natives had reached England, the earliest circa 501o, the last in
the 1570s. All were treated as curiosities; none was trained as a potential
interpreter-guide. All but one seem to have been acquired forcibly,
although the circumstances are not always clear. The three Americans
Henry VII received at court in the first decade of the sixteenth century
may have come of their own volition, but the contemporary description
of them as "takyn In the Newe ffound Ile land" and behaving "lyke to
bruyt bestis" suggests that they were seized as quasi-human specimens.
In contrast, the Brazilian "king" brought by William Hawkins in 1531
apparently came willingly and was en route back to Brazil with Hawkins
when he died. But the assumption that English explorers could-and
should if necessary-acquire such persons by force or guile was clearly in
place by 1536 when Richard Hore's expedition to Newfoundland chased
a boatload of natives "to meet them and to take them."5 Hore's attempt
at kidnaping failed. Martin Frobisher grabbed one native in northeast-
ern Canada in 1576 and three more in 1577; all soon died in England.
During their brief lives in captivity, Frobisher's Inuits were exotica, not
interpreters or guides in training for English overseas ventures. Yet

5 "London Chronicles on the Voyage of 1498," in James A. Williamson, The

Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Ser.,
no. 120 (Cambridge, 1962), 220-21; "A brief relation of... M. William Haukins," in
Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques &r Discoveries of the
English Nation, 3 vols. (London, 1598-1600), 3:700-01; "The voyage of M. Hore ...
to Newfoundland ... ," ibid., 129-31. In quotations from early documents I have
modernized usage of "u" and "v," "i" and "j" and converted the Anglo-Saxon thorn
(y) to "th."

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 345

Frobisher learned from hard experience the problem of negotiating

natives in mutually incomprehensible tongues, and he expected the
adults he seized in 1577 to become "sufficient for the use of langua
When their early deaths removed that possibility, Frobisher tried re
edly and unsuccessfully on his voyage of 1578 to acquire new captives.6
Ralegh may have learned the value of linguistic intermediaries fr
Frobisher's unhappy experience, from earlier continental European uses
captured or recruited Indians, or from the younger Richard Haklu
admonition that prospective English colonists "firste learne the language
the people nere adjoyninge."7 Whatever Ralegh's inspiration, he-un
most of his predecessors-seems to have rejected the use of forc
recruiting Indians to visit England. As Frobisher had discovered, kidnapi
aroused dangerous local hostility, though that lesson was ignored by sev
subsequent English explorers, especially along the New England coast
occasionally in Virginia, who freely admitted their violent tactics.8
Ralegh probably initiated his wiser policy with his first expedit

6 George Best, A True Discourse of the Late Voyages ofDiscoverie, for the Finding
Passage to Cathaya ... (London, 1578), 29 (2d pagination), 5o, 68 (3d pagination
also William C. Sturtevant and David B. Quinn, "This New Prey: Eskimos in Eu
in 1567, 1576, and 1577," in Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe: A
Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Aachen, 1987), 61-140. The use of native i
preters began with Columbus and was practiced by Portuguese, French, and Sp
expeditions before Ralegh's time, as he almost certainly knew from written an
accounts. Brief overviews of American Indians taken to Europe before c. 1620,
some attention to interpreters, are Sturtevant, "The First American Discovere
Europe," European Review of Native American Studies, 7 (I993), 23-29, and Harald
Prins, "To the Land of the Mistigoches: American Indians Traveling to Europe i
Age of Exploration," American Indian Culture and ResearchJournal, 17 (1993), 175-9
7 Hakluyt, "Discourse of Western Planting," in E.G.R. Taylor, ed., The Ori
Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, 2 vols., Hakluyt So
Works, 2d Ser., nos. 76-77 (London, 1935), 2:215. Although the Roanoke expedi
returned to England before Hakluyt presented the Discourse to the queen, he
likely had already discussed with Ralegh his thoughts on native languages.
8 Ralegh's exceptions to the rule were Grenville's seizure of an Indian on or
Roanoke Island in I186, when the Roanokes and English were virtually at war (s
353 below), and Samuel Mace's seizure of two or more Indians from the l
Chesapeake in 1602 or 1603, although the circumstances of that episode are unclear
pp. 357-58 below). English evidence on the Guianan natives who went to En
denies any coercion, though at least one French source suggests that Ralegh too
Indian from Trinidad involuntarily (see p. 361 below), and a Spanish source sim
charges Ralegh with forcibly taking his last South American Indian to England (se
369-70 below). Some Guianans went to England as "hostages" for the safe
Englishmen who remained in South America; how voluntary those decisions w
arguable. By contrast, the narratives of Frobisher's voyages are candid on the capti
(e.g., Best, True Discourse, 50o (Ist pagination), 11-12 (2d pagination), as are the acc
of George Waymouth's expedition of i6o0 and Edward Harlow's of i6ii. See, res
tively, James Rosier, A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage Made this Pr
Yeere 16o5 (London, I605), sigs. C4r-C4v, and The Complete Works of Captain
Smith, 1588-163z, ed. Philip L. Barbour, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1986), 2:399.

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346 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

dispatched to the Carolina coast soon after he received the queen

for American exploration and colonization in March 1584. Alth
Ralegh's instructions to his captains have not survived, a brief re
the expedition a few years later implies that the acquisition by C
Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe of "two savage men of that co
complied with "their commission."9 Still, the sources are silent
cisely how Ralegh's agents persuaded, negotiated with, or-least
coerced Manteo, a werowance (commander or petty chief) from C
Island, several miles south of Roanoke Island, and Wanchese, a
Roanoke, to return with them to England.1o Wanchese, David Beers
Quinn has suggested, may have been sent by his tribal superiors to
gather information about England's resources. In that case, Roanoke
native leaders may have predicted, and intended to be prepared for, a
European incursion similar to those of the French and Spanish in the
lower Carolinas in the I56os or of the Jesuit missionaries at Chesapeake
Bay in the early 1570s and wanted Wanchese to observe their potential
foe.11 Other explanations are plausible, too, including an unsuspicious
curiosity or hopes of establishing a favorable connection to European
merchandise.
Barlowe's substantial account of Ralegh's first Roanoke expedition,
written soon after its return to England and first published in Hakluyt's
Principall Navigations in 1589, says nothing about when, why, or how
Manteo and Wanchese-neither of whom Barlowe mentions by name-
were persuaded to cross the Atlantic. He does reveal their diverse contri-
butions to English knowledge of native culture, crediting "these men
which we have brought with us into England" with providing helpful
information about tribal rivalries in the Roanoke region. Barlowe also

9 Raphaell Holinshed et al., The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 3

vols. (London, 1587), 3:1369.
10 [Barlowe], "The first voyage made to the coastes of America ... " in
Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations Voiages and Discoveries of the English
Nation (London, 1589), 728-29, and reprinted with minor changes in Hakluyt,
Principal Navigations (I6oo), 3:246-47. Among the many modern books on the rise
and demise of Ralegh's Roanoke outposts-and the most thorough in their atten-
tion to the Indians' contributions-are Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony
(Totowa, N. J., 1984), and, more extensively, Quinn, Set Fairfor Roanoke: Voyages
and Colonies, z584-I6o6 (Chapel Hill, 1985). See also, for their explication of
Roanoke's intercultural context, two works by Oberg: Dominion and Civility: English
Imperialism and Native America, 1585-1685 (Ithaca, 1999), chap. I, and "Gods and
Men: The Meeting of Indian and White Worlds on the Carolina Outer Banks,
I584-1586," North Carolina Historical Review, 76 (I999), 367-90.
11 Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 39; Rene de Laudonniere, A Notable Historie
Containing Foure Voyages... unto Florida, trans. Hakluyt (London, 1587); Clifford
M. Lewis and Albert J. Loomie, The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572
(Chapel Hill, 1953).

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 347

attributes England's understanding of the Carolina Indians' so

largely to what "you [Ralegh] have understood since by these m
we brought home," and ascribes to "those two men" the inform
the Roanokes' only metal-edged tools had been acquired some
years earlier from a wrecked "Christian shippe."'2 The single
contemporaneous description of Manteo and Wanchese in
ignores their role as informants. A German visitor to London
1584 reported that "a ship had arrived that had found a land or
which is said to be larger than England, and which had as
untrodden by Christians. A certain Master or Captain Ral
brought two men of this country with him, and had them abo
son .... They were in countenance and stature like white Moor
usual habit was a mantle of rudely tanned skins of wild an
shirts, and a pelt before their privy parts. Now, however, they
in brown taffeta. No one was able to understand them, and th
most childish and silly figure."'13
Manteo and Wanchese were unintelligible to the German o
because in the early autumn of 1584 they could not have progresse
their linguistic lessons. If Hariot was on the Amadas-Barlowe e
which seems likely, those lessons could have begun in the Ro
or on the return to England.14 At the latest, Hariot started th
when Manteo and Wanchese reached London, where they a
Durham House (owned by the crown but at Ralegh's disposal
to 1603), on the north bank of the Thames. While Hariot taug
and Wanchese the rudiments of the English language, he lear
Algonkian dialect, dubbed by Hariot "the Virginian language."
own pronunciation and to help other Englishmen become bili
devised "An universall Alphabet" of thirty-six symbols in wh
expresse the Virginian speche" and any other spoken language
New World or the Old.15 At the same time, Hariot gleaned as m
could from Manteo and Wanchese about coastal Carolina's g

12 [Barlowe], "First Voyage ... ," in Hakluyt, Principall Navigation

728-33, quotations on 730, 732. When Hakluyt reprinted Barlowe's narra
greatly expanded Principal Navigations (16oo), he added the Indians' name
13 Lupold von Wedel, "Journey through England and Scotland ... i
1585," in Victor von Klarwill, ed., Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners .
H. Nash (London, 1928), 323. A different translation of the passage
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2d Ser., 9 (1895), 251.
14 On the likelihood that Hariot and John White were on the voyage of
Quinn, "Thomas Harriot and the New World," in John W. Shirley, e
Harriot, Renaissance Scientist (Oxford, 1974), 38-39; and Shirley, Thoma
Biography (Oxford, 1983), 105.
15 Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Vi
(Frankfurt, I590), 23; Vivian Salmon, "Thomas Harriot and the English

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348 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

and ethnology in preparation for Ralegh's first English outp

Roanoke Island (see Figure I).
Whether Manteo and Wanchese encouraged Ralegh's plans to e
lish an outpost can only be surmised. The prospect of having a
nient source of European goods and perhaps of European ass
against traditional enemies must have been tempting, and t
Indians probably did not, at this early stage, envision an ex
English presence. But judging from their later response to actual
settlement, Manteo and Wanchese may have assessed very diffe
their experiences abroad. The former seems to have cooperated
Ralegh and Hariot and perhaps enjoyed his stay in England; the
probably disliked and perhaps resented the people and the place.
and his agents nonetheless used Manteo and Wanchese to promot
own hopes for the Carolina coast's commercial potential. In Dec
1584, a trade bill in the House of Commons mentioned "some o
people borne in those p[ar]ties [sic] brought home into this our
of England by whose meanes & direccion ... singuler great com
of that Lande are revealed & made knowen unto us." Ralegh and h
low imperial planners also employed Manteo and Wanchese
potential colonists and investors. A disgruntled survivor of the tr
colony of I185 complained that the expedition would have been fa
successful "yf the Report [of easy riches?] had beene true whic
geven out by twoe straungers[,] Inhabitauntes of the same f
Nation."16 Although language instruction seems to have been fo
in Ralegh's intended pursuits for the Indians, it did not preclude
very welcome and important contributions.
After about eight months in England, Manteo and Wan
returned to Roanoke aboard the second expedition Ralegh dispatc
southern Virginia. Its seven ships and about 6oo men under his k
and veteran of English colonization in Ireland, Sir Richard Gre
sailed from Plymouth in April 1585, with half the complement expe
to remain as a permanent English garrison. Two Spanish reports
expedition's stops at West Indian islands give the only glim
Manteo and Wanchese on their way home. One Spaniard no
English "had brought with them two well-attired Indians"; anoth
cial observed more tellingly that the expedition was "accompan

Algonkian Linguistics," The Durham [University] Thomas Harriot Sem

Occasional Papers, no. 8 (1993); Shirley, Thomas Harriot: Biography, 104-I2
"Harriot and the New World," 48-5o.
16 Hariot, Briefe and True Report, 23; "Bill to Confirm Raleigh's Pat
Passed by the House of Commons," in Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 15
2 vols., Hakluyt Society, Works, nos. 104-05 (London, 1955), I:IZ7; "The Cas
Cape Merchant, Thomas Harvey," ibid., 232.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 349

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FIGURE I

Thomas Hariot
"the Virginia
Governors and

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350 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

two tall Indians, whom they treated well, and who spoke
Although this acknowledgment of Manteo's and Wanchese
of English says nothing about its level of proficiency, Hario
ently turned Ralegh's first two visitors to England into at l
interpreters.
As soon as the Grenville expedition reached the Carolina coast,
Manteo fulfilled Ralegh's hopes. He went ashore with the first landing
party and helped to establish friendly contact with the local Indians, and
although the records do not always mention him as a participant on sev-
eral subsequent explorations, his talents as a translator, guide, and nego-
tiator must have been essential to most meetings with the inhabitants of
the islands and mainland. Manteo was nonetheless unable to prevent
Amadas from excessive retaliation against the village of Aquascogoc,
where "one of the Savages" stole a silver cup and failed to return it. Yet
cultural assumptions rather than differences in language seem to have
been central to the dispute: "Not receiving it [the cup] according to his
promise," an anonymous chronicler reported, "we burnt, and spoyled
their come, and Towne, all the people beeing fledde."18 With Manteo's
help, the two sides may have understood each other perfectly, albeit the
English were determined to punish mercilessly what they saw as unac-
ceptable behavior.
Wanchese, in the meantime, rejoined his people on Roanoke Island.
The reasons for his disaffection from the English can only be surmised:
he may have blamed them for an unpleasant disruption in his life; he
may have felt ill-treated in England; he may have resented Manteo, who
was from a different tribe and apparently of higher status; or perhaps
Wanchese, after his observations in England, saw in the newcomers a
serious threat to the natives of Roanoke, for they-unlike the
Croatans-were to be close neighbors and competitors for the island's
finite resources. And if Wanchese's transatlantic travel increased his
stature in Roanoke society, he must have been a leader in undermining
Ralegh's several Roanoke footholds. In the absence of Indian sources,
Wanchese's precise role in both intracultural and intercultural negotia-
tions remains obscure, but his adamant opposition to English settlement
is clear enough.
17 Anon., "Voyage Made by Sir Richard Greenville ... ," in Hakluyt, Principall
Navigations (1589), 733-36; Diego Hernindez [Fernindez] de Quifiones to Philip II
(June 12, 1585), in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, 2:735; "The Relation of Hernando de
Altamirano," ibid., 741.
18 "Sir Richard Grenville Leaves Plymouth," in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages,
1:173; Holinshed, Chronicles, 3:1401-02; Anon., "Voyage Made by Sir Richard
Greenville," 733-37, quotation on 736. Perhaps Manteo did not accompany this
party, but given its need to deal with the Indians on a sensitive matter, it seems
likely that he was there.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 351

Manteo's attachment to the English, on the other hand, is m

In late July he was Grenville's interpreter in meetings with Gran
of the Roanokes to choose a location for the English settlemen
northern end of Roanoke Island. When Grenville almost imme
returned to England for additional supplies and recruits, Mante
Ralph Lane, Grenville's successor in command and also a vetera
wars in Ireland. Lane's Io8-man outpost included Hariot as resid
entist-ethnographer, sometime interpreter, and part-time Christian
lytizer. Probably with Manteo's help, Hariot expounded to s
natives the principles of Protestant Christianity-England's first
ary effort.19 Manteo also guided Lane's expedition into the main
search of rumored gold mines and an inland sea. Warned
Roanokes that the English were not to be trusted, the tribes alon
travels vanished from view, and the English party returned to its f
nothing gained and on the verge of starvation. Manteo's inability
set the opposition aroused by Lane's rough tactics suggests the lim
any cultural intermediary faced in an area of competing groups
illustrates the importance of Ralegh's English-trained interprete
Manteo was probably the difference between the extermination
vival of this major scouting party into hostile territory when h
Lane that the sound of Indians singing along a riverbank was n
Lane thought, "in token of our welcome" but rather "that they
fight with us"; a volley of arrows immediately followed. Lane a
potentially disastrous ambush because Manteo was there to tra
Indian song.20
Throughout the remainder of the first Roanoke Colony's bri
tence, Manteo continued to provide essential linguistic and dip
aid. But without the overdue supplies from England and in the
mounting Indian opposition, Lane accepted Sir Francis Drake's
transportation home for his whole community. (Three men, tem
away from the fort, were left to fend for themselves.) Irretrievably
the colonists' hasty, storm-tossed departure was ethnographic
collected by Hariot or drawn by John White, from which Engli
and women at home would have learned much about native culture.
Partly offsetting the loss of such materials was the presence of Manteo

19 Hariot, Briefe and True Report, 27, admitted that his missionary efforts were
sometimes hampered by "want of perfect utterance in their language." In 1578 Martin
Frobisher had attempted to establish a missionary outpost at Baffin Island but with-
drew it when he sailed home; Best, True Discourse, 29-30 (3d pagination).
20 Lane, "An account of the ... Englishmen left in Virginia ... ," in Hakluyt,
Principall Navigations (1589), 737-47, quotations on 741; Lane to Hakluyt the elder,
Sept. 3, 1585, ibid., 793; Hariot, Briefe and True Report, 24-32. See Oberg, "Between
'Savage Man' and 'Most Faithful Englishman,'" 157-58.

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352 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

and perhaps another native aboard the Barke Bonner when

Portsmouth.21
By late 1586 three Indians from Ralegh's Roanoke ventu
England. Manteo, now well accustomed to the English
English ways, was helping Ralegh, Hariot, and White to pr
English settlement in southern Virginia.22 Almost nothin
about another American native, Towaye, except that he a
Manteo back to Roanoke in 1587. He may have been in En
I586 but more likely was a kinsman of Manteo who riske
crossing in 1586 to see the wonders Manteo had described a
him some companionship or to obtain further information
men about English power and culture. The latter could ha
case whether Towaye was Manteo's kinsman or from anot
tribe with a desire, for reasons of its own, to see England
eyes of its own observer. In either case, Towaye, along w
likely lodged in Durham House, and they surely attracted
curious onlookers when they explored London in their ani
ments or taffeta suits. During many months of planning
ment, recruiting colonists, and persuading investors, Man
with Towaye's assistance, would have refined White's 1585-
the coastline and his illustrations of the Carolina natives and corrected
Hariot's written observations (soon to be published in several European
languages) on the region's flora, fauna, and inhabitants. He may also
have suggested ways to ameliorate Lane's aggressive legacy. Although
Lane would not himself be part of the new settlement, cordial relations
with the inhabitants would be more vital than ever because the new
colony was to include women and children-a true English plantation,
not a military outpost. Manteo would be crucial to establishing a peace-
ful intercultural climate.23

21 The deteriorating English-Indian relations and the arrival of Drake are nar-
rated (with some confusion) in Lane, "Account of Virginia," in Hakluyt, Principall
Navigations (1589), 742-47, and Walter Bigges, A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir
Frances Drakes West Indian Voyage ... (London, 1589), 50. That Drake intended to
leave about 250 Indians and Africans as slaves for the Roanoke colonists is stated in
several Spanish documents: Diego Fernindez de Quitiones to the Crown, Sept. 1586,
in Irene A. Wright, ed., Further English Voyages to Spanish America, I583-I594, Hakluyt
Society, Works, 2d Ser., no. 99 (London, 195I), 204; Juan de Poseda to the Crown
(Sept. 2, 1586), ibid., zo6; and Diego Fernindez de Quihiones to the president of the
House of Trade (March 22, 1587), ibid., 230. See Quinn, "Turks, Moors, Blacks and
Others in Drake's West Indian Voyage," Terrae Incognitae, 14 (1982), 97-10o4.
22 Oberg, "Between 'Savage Man' and 'Most Faithful Englishman,"' i6i, posits
that Wanchese's hostility to the English gave Manteo "nowhere else to go but
England." I suggest that he would have been safe among his own people at Croatan.
23 The only specific mention of Towaye is in "The names of all the men,
women and Children, which safely arrived in Virginia ... 1587," in Hakluyt,

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 353

The third Indian from the Roanoke region arrived in th

I186 with Grenville, whose relief expedition to Roanoke r
island soon after Lane's colonists departed with Drake. (Gre
none of Lane's three men alive, but he left behind fifteen of h
sengers to maintain England's claim of continuous oc
Although the Roanokes shunned this latest wave of E
Grenville managed to seize three hostages. Two escaped; th
carried to England, probably to his estate in Bideford, Dev
Bideford parish register of March 27, I588, records the
"Raleigh, A Wynganditoian," and on April 7, 1589, the buri
A man of Wynganditoia."24 The cause of death is unspecif
may have succumbed to an epidemic, for the parish register
the deaths at about this time of Grenville's daughter Rebecc
ily servant.25 In any event, this captive's acculturation
During his approximately two and a half years in Devonsh
absorbed enough Anglican theology to join a congregation
Christian burial. Being named, almost surely, for Sir Wal
that he was highly regarded by Grenville and was to some d
Ralegh's extended household. Although Rawly did not
Roanoke to aid-or oppose-English colonists, this partly
Indian probably imparted useful information to Grenville,
other English imperialists and may have been slated f
Grenville's aborted expedition to relieve Roanoke in I588,
ered at Bideford.
In early May 1587, 114 prospective colonists on three s
from Plymouth; Manteo and Towaye appear on the list of p
"Savages. That were in Englande and returned home into V
them." Although the fleet planned to stop at Roanoke Islan
and advise the fifteen men left by Grenville the previous
then to head for Chesapeake Bay, a better location for na
exploring the mainland, and, Ralegh hoped, for amity

Principall Navigations (1589), 770-71, which also indicates the new

human diversity. The rest of this paragraph is conjectural but co
Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 246-47.
24 According to Ralegh some years later, "when some of my peo
name of that Countrie, one of the Salvages answered Wingandacon whic
you weare good clothes, or gay clothes." Hariot probably informed R
initial misunderstanding. Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, 1:116-17, 2:8
in Bideford Parish Register," ibid., 1:495-
25 "The Relation of Pedro Diaz," March 21, 1589, ibid., 2:786-9
Bideford Parish Register," ibid., 1:495. Although the identification cann
Rawly was almost surely Grenville's captive of i586, given his residen
nity where Grenville owned an estate and the absence of evidence t
captive was taken elsewhere.

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354 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

neighbors (see Figure II). There the colonists of 1587 were

Citie of Ralegh in Virginia." Fort Roanoke would rema
hands as a base for raiding Spanish treasure fleets. But opp
the Roanoke Indians disrupted Ralegh's plans. John White'
panions reached the north end of Roanoke Island in late Ju
houses built in I185-I186 either collapsed or overgrown with
the fort's earthworks "rased downe," and no sign of the contin
Grenville in 1586 save "the bones of one ... which the Sava
long before." The Indians were gone too, having
Dasemunkepeuc on the mainland, except for excursio
Roanoke's abundant deer. Only Manteo's commitment to t
gave some hope. His own people, the Croatans of Croatan
far more friendly to the English than were the Roanokes and
White therefore sent about twenty of his men, accompanie
to Croatan "to learne the disposition of the people of t
towards us, and to renew our olde friendshippe with them.
of Europeans, the Croatans prepared for battle. "Then
countreyman, called to them in their owne language, whom
they heard, they returned, and threwe away their bowes, and
some of them came unto us, embracing and entertaining
Manteo's people informed the Englishmen that Wanchese a
Roanokes had exterminated the English contingent left by
I186 and more recently had killed one of White's men. Man
also offered to come to Roanoke and arrange a conference f
tion with the colony's enemies; perhaps the hostility arou
Lane and encouraged by Wanchese could be ameliorated.26
But again there were limits to the multitalented Mante
prevent Ralegh's colonists from intercultural misunderstan
the expected parley with their enemies failed to occur
White acted unilaterally to punish the Roanokes for the de
twenty Englishmen between I185 and 1587.27 On August 9,
of day, White dispatched an expeditionary force of twen
"wherof Manteo was one, whome wee tooke with us to be
the place where those Savages dwelt, where he behaved him
us as a most faithfull English man." Manteo and the Englis
the mainland and assaulted a party of Indians at Dasemunk
one Indian and wounding several. Ironically, the victims tur
Croatans rather than Roanokes. "Although the mistaking of

26 "The names of all the men, women, and Children ... .," in
Principall Navigations (1589), 771; [White], "The fourth voyage mad
1587 ... ." ibid., 764-67; Quinn, Set Fairfor Roanoke, 259-64.
27 This figure combines the 3 men left by Lane in 1586, the I5 (pos
by Grenville later that year, and George Howe, killed in 1587.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 355

?i-. ....~l?:r ?*:~;?: I "~?-l?,-; ?~: ''I? .

;ii:--..
... :ti...
....:$
- ?I .'; ii"?
W ... .. .. ... ... ...
ll? . A .-- -

.. ..O M . : --:? . . . -.-,:. . f. :.. - .,::

.... . .. ... .. .. " . '... .
?;?%Akb 0-44?

,",,,,.. ,~ ?? : . ? F*",,Aw-,.,
' ' "??
l~:; ? '.~f. *, w'-- -
;?j: ~a~s ?? c MWW7?::
--AN,7- ~ ~ '"p

.. . ...... . ........ . .. 4W.

FIGURE II

John White's map of the Virginia coast, detail, as engraved by Theodor

de Bry, showing Croatan Island in the lower left, Roanoke Island just
left of the center, and the entrance to Chesapeake Bay at the far right.
From Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of
Virginia (Frankfurt, 1590). Reproduced courtesy of the Folger
Shakespeare Library.

somewhat grieved Manteo," White recalled, "yet he imputed their harme

to their owne follie, saying to them, that if their Weroans had kept their
promise in comming to the Governour, at the day appointed, they had
not knowen that mischance."28 The response of Manteo's kinsmen is not
recorded.
So thoroughly did Manteo affiliate with the English, both in
England and in America, that a few days after the military fiasco at
Dasemunkepeuc he became the first recorded Indian convert to
Anglicanism. On August 13, 1587 (about nine months before the baptism
of "Rawly" in Devonshire), "our Savage Manteo, by the commandement
of Sir Walter Ralegh, was christened in Roanoak, and called Lord thereof,
and of Dasamongueponke, in reward of his faithfull service."29 Ralegh

28 [White], "Fourth voyage made to Virginia ... 1587," 768.

29 Ibid.

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356 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

apparently hoped to use his Indian friend as more than an inte

and guide, more than a mediator between the English colonists a
Indian neighbors; now he was to be the puppet ruler of the colon
It was an empty gesture and an impossible assignment. The Ro
natives were not Manteo's kinsmen; they had not chosen him;
aiding and abetting their enemy. Even the christening, in the absen
recorded Christian name, appears to have been more show than
stance. That Ralegh, an ocean away, had commanded the christen
the promotion suggests that Manteo did not necessarily p
Christianity to his traditional faith, nor did he expect an E
imposed title to earn the Dasemunkepeucs' allegiance. Ralegh's
tions probably tell more about his naivete than about Roanoke's
or Manteo's preferences.
Manteo's role in the rest of the Roanoke story is even more
tural. No records survive for the period between White's depart
England in 1587 to obtain supplies and reinforcements and his
return in 1590, and evidence is sparse for the remaining years
colonists' existence. White's narrative of his final expedition to
identifies Manteo's loyalty to the English and strong standing in
community as the only promising clue in the otherwise inexplic
appearance of the outpost he had left three years earlier. Confrontin
wrecked fort and his ruined possessions, White took comfort "th
safely found a certaine token of their safe being at Croatoan, which
place where Manteo was borne, and the Savages of the Iland [ar
friends. "30
Thanks to Quinn's exhaustive analysis of the evidence, it now
appears that after White's departure for England in August 1587 the bulk
of the colonists moved-as they had intended from the outset-from
Roanoke Island to somewhere on Chesapeake Bay, over a period of sev-
eral weeks or months. The new English community melded during the
next two decades with neighboring natives to produce, to some extent,
an ethnically and culturally mixed society. The English component of
that society came to a violent end in 1607. According to William
Strachey, secretary of the Jamestown colony, for "20. and od yeares"
before 1607 the colonists "had peaceably lyved and intermixed with those
Savadges" but were slain by Powhatan ("perswaded thereunto by his
Priests") when the English fleet, carrying a new, more militant group of
colonists, arrived at Chesapeake Bay.31 After the exodus to the city of

30 White, "The fift[h] voyage of M. John White into the West Indies and parts of
America called Virginia," in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (i6oo), 3:292-93.
31 Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612), ed Louis B.
Wright and Virginia Freund, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d. Ser., no. 103 (London,

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 357

Ralegh, the fifteen to twenty men remaining at Fort Roanok

have been vulnerable to Indian attack, which could account for
retreat to Croatan Island with barely time to carve a message
next English expedition.
Manteo and Towaye may have shared the fate of either gr
perhaps neither. One or both of them could have accompanied
contingent of colonists to the Chesapeake and fallen victim the
with the English, to Powhatan's attack, if not earlier to acciden
ease. Also plausible is their unwillingness to leave kin and famil
tory. If they remained with the garrison they likely shared its fat
in Manteo's case might have meant survival and a return to h
territory, unless the Roanokes so resented and distrusted the n
of Roanoke" that they killed him-probably by arrows but po
poison-before they assaulted or starved out the English r
Manteo's death, if it occurred soon after White's departure, w
strengthened the main group of colonists' resolve to resettle. S
their principal interpreter, guide, and negotiator, the colonis
likely have abandoned an increasingly inhospitable island f
mainland location. Towaye, if he never fully affiliated with the co
may have peacefully rejoined his people.
About a decade after Manteo and Towaye's lives seem to ha
put in jeopardy by befriending Englishmen, Powhatan's hostilit
Roanoke survivors in his territory was provoked by an Engli
seizure of two or more natives from Chesapeake Bay. In 1603 o
English expedition, probably under Captain Samuel Mace (no d
report of the voyage survives), sent by Ralegh to search for th
colonists, abducted two or more Rappahannocks from Powhatan
ity. Presumably these are the Indians Sir Walter Cope disp
September 1603 canoeing on the Thames. Ralegh was by then
Tower; he seems to have had no hand in the Indians' lodging o
ing, and there is no evidence that they studied English with H
London or elsewhere. At least temporarily they stayed at Sir

1953), 34, 91; Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4 vols. (London, 1625
1813; Virginia Company of London, A True and Sincere Declaration of the Pu
Ends of the Plantation Begun in Virginia ... (London, i6Io), 18; "Instruc
Sr Thomas Gates," in Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the
Company ofLondon, 4 vols. (Washington, D. C., I906-I935), 3:I7; "Anonym
of Virginia," in Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First
16o6-I6op, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Ser., nos. 136-37 (Cambrid
1:238-40; Smith, Complete Works of Captain John Smith, ed. Barbour, :1
265-66, 2:88, o107, 188, 193, 215; John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina
Talmage Lefler (Chapel Hill, 1967). For a more extensive discussion of the
fate, see Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 341-77.

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358 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Cecil's house in the Strand, although Cecil, as well as the royal f

had fled the plague-ridden city. Most Londoners did not hav
option, so a large and curious crowd must have watched the Indi
their canoe, while two English oarsmen kept the busy river's bo
safe distance. Ralegh's "virginians" then drop from sight. They
likely succumbed to the plague; there is no further trace of th
England or of their return to America, although they may have
westward on an unrecorded voyage. If, as seems probable, these w
Indians taken from the Rappahannock in about 1603, they were t
Indian voyagers from North America to England under Sir
Ralegh's direct authority.32

More than a decade before Indians from the Chesapeake paddle

Thames, Ralegh's interest in southern Virginia had waned, thoug
his enthusiasm for enlarging England's presence in the New Wor
his efficacy in obtaining and training native interpreters. Since the
1590s, Ralegh's focus had shifted southward to the more distant
dangerous, and potentially more profitable Orinoco River in Gu
This area would produce its own, distinctive cultural intermediaries.3
Ralegh was perhaps initially intrigued by a passage in Haklu
"Discourse of Western Planting" (1584), which assured Queen El
that northeastern South America was available for English explo
and exploitation because it was not inhabited by Christians, "one
Caribes, Indians, and salvages. In w[hi]ch places is greate ple
golde, perle, and precious stones." That tempting hint of easy
did not prod the queen to action, but it may have encouraged Ra
succumb a few years later to tales of El Dorado from a Spaniard

32 "Sept. 2, 1603. Virginia Indians in the Thames," in Quinn, ed.,

American World: A Documentary History of North America to I612, 5 vols. (N
1979), 5:i6o-6I; Edward Maria Wingfield, "Discourse," in Barbour, ed., Jam
Voyages, 1:227; Quinn, England and the Discovery ofAmerica, 148-Iz62o (Ne
1974), 419-31. Because "Virginia" was the English label for the whole coasta
between Florida and Newfoundland (New England was not named unt
Cope's "virginians" need not have been from the Chesapeake, although the
dence of Mace's seizure of Indians from there at about this time makes the iden
cation probable.
33 The history and culture of the natives of the region is best consulted i
L. Whitehead, Lords of the Tiger Spirit: A History of the Caribs in Colonial V
and Guyana, 49p8-I82o (Providence, 1988), esp. 73-87 (context of Ralegh's v
See also H. Dieter Heinen and Alvaro Garcia-Castro, "The Multiethnic Netw
the Lower Orinoco in Early Colonial Times," Ethnohistory, 47 (2000), 561-7
popular and useful works for Ralegh's venture are John Hemming, The Search
Dorado (London, 1978), and, more imaginative but less authoritative,
Nicholl, The Creature in the Map: A Journey to El Dorado (London, 1995).

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 359

in 1586 by one of his privateers. Although no one could prove the exi
tence of the fabled city's inexhaustible mines, hope engendered belief.
In the early 1590s, Ralegh decided to recoup his fortune and rega
Elizabeth's good graces (lost when he secretly wed one of her ladies-in
waiting) by finding and appropriating El Dorado's fabulous wealth fo
his queen and himself. Indian interpreters would be essential to the ear
stages of Ralegh's search.
While he rounded up investors for his own expedition, Ralegh sen
Captain Jacob Whiddon in 1594 to reconnoiter Guiana.35 As with th
Amadas-Barlowe expedition of 1584, there is no explicit evidence tha
Ralegh instructed his agents to bring home Indians, but the results su
gest that he did.36 Although Whiddon's efforts to explore the Guian
mainland were almost wholly thwarted by Spaniards who themselve
lusted for El Dorado and controlled the nearby island of Trinidad, h
brought home several natives of the area-the first South Americans
known to have reached England since the Brazilian "king" of 1531.37
Because there is no extant account of Whiddon's voyage, the cir-
cumstances under which he recruited Indians and their motives for tak-
ing so risky a voyage must be teased from later, mostly tangential
documents. The Spanish governor of Margarita Island off Guiana's
northern coast reported to Philip II that when Ralegh arrived in
Trinidad in 1595 his ships "put ashore two Indians of that Island whom

34 Hakluyt, "Discourse of Western Planting," 255; Robert Lacey, Sir Walter

Ralegh (New York, 1973), 2o6-io.
35 Nicholl, Creature in the Map, 51-53, argues that Whiddon sailed in 1593 rather
than 1594, contrary to all previous assumptions. Whitehead's edition (see note 36
below) of Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana ...
(London, 1596) does not accept Nicholl's reading.
36 Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, 5, 36. Several editions of Ralegh's account of his
1595 expedition are valuable: the first (1596) for its primacy and its adherence to
Elizabethan orthography and visual characteristics; all quotations in this article are
from that edition unless otherwise noted. Also essential for their explanatory notes
and ancillary documents are the scholarly versions by Robert H. Schomburgk,
Hakluyt Society, Works, Ist Ser., no. 3 (London, 1848); Vincent T. Harlow (London,
1928); and Whitehead (Norman, Okla., 1997). The contributions of Whitehead, an
anthropologist, are especially valuable for his analysis of the Guianan ethnographic
context and his meticulous annotation. In the following notes, the absence of an edi-
tor's name following the title Discoverie of Guiana indicates that the edition of 1596
is cited. Schomburgk's edition modernizes Ralegh's title-hence Discovery.
37 Two other early English expeditions sent out by Ralegh-John Burgh's in
1593 and Robert Dudley's in 1594-I595-seem not to have included Indians who had
been in England nor to have taken any American natives to England on their return.
Burgh's outward voyage occurred too early to have included English-trained inter-
preters; if he took any natives back to England the sparse accounts neglect to say so.
Dudley probably sailed too soon for any of Whiddon's recruits to have been well
versed in English.

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360 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

they had brought with them from England, and two others of
[on the mainland] familiar with the English language." There i
possibility that the Cumanans had gone to England with someon
than Whiddon, or that they learned the language from Englishm
had explored or been shipwrecked in their vicinity and were pic
by Ralegh soon after his arrival and then "put ashore" again. But if,
most likely, Whiddon took four Indians to England in 1594, it w
largest group of Americans thus far to visit England at one ti
Among the reasons these Indians may have had for going to En
was animosity to Spain. Although English reports often exaggera
extent of native resentment of Spaniards, there is abundant evidenc
many tribes were incensed by Spanish enslavement of Indian pearl d
on Margarita Island and their slave raids in the Orinoco Valley.3
the South American visitors, much like Manteo and Wanchese,
undergoing an intensive course in English from Thomas Hariot
were being grilled about the region's geography and ethnograph
Indians may have been enlisting English support for their ongoing s
gle against Spanish explorers and colonists.
Ralegh's narrative of his first expedition to America mentio
assistance of "my Indian interpreter, which I caried out of En
Despite this Indian's help, and perhaps that of other English-t
natives whom Ralegh fails to mention, his expedition of 1595 wa
and inconclusive. His interpreter probably helped him arrange th
tance of Trinidad natives to rout the island's Spanish soldiers and cap
Governor Antonio de Berrio. With his rear thus protected,
crossed to the mainland and explored the Orinoco delta in hopes
covering the fabled city of gold or, at the very least, of laying the
work for a subsequent, more thorough expedition. But the inc
confusing delta leading to the Orinoco and what Ralegh perceive
unreliability of local Indian guides frustrated his search. More en
ing was the response of several local leaders who, Ralegh believed
him as a liberator from the Spanish. Within a few weeks he cl
vast new area for Queen Elizabeth, promised the natives that sh
protect them from their native and European enemies, and estab
durable personal rapport with several Guianan leaders.40

38 Pedro de Salazar to Philip II, c. 1595, in Ralegh, Discoverie of Gui

Harlow, 117; Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, 7, 35. See also "Extract from ...
Liano to the King (March 25-April 12, 1596)," in Ralegh, Discoverie of Gui
Harlow, 122; Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 209-II. It is possible that Whidd
additional Indians to England who did not return the next year with Ralegh.
39 Whitehead, Lords of the Tiger Spirit, 75-81.
40 Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, 1-79, quotation on 7.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 361

With crucial help from his unnamed interpreter, Raleg

arranged a swap of personnel with the cacique of the nation of A
(see Figure III). Topiawari, Ralegh recorded in his Discoverie of
"freely gave me his onelie sonne to take with me into England, .
left with him one Frauncis Sparrow, a servant of captaine [
Gifford, (who was desirous to tarry, and coulde describe a cunt
his pen) and a boy of mine called Hugh Goodwin, to lea
language."41 According to a Spanish report, Topiawari's eigh
twenty-year-old son Cayowaroco (soon nicknamed Gualtero, a S
term for Walter Ralegh) was accompanied to England by three
Indians, and a French explorer recounted the services several ye
of "an Indian, Son to the King of the Island of Trinidad, that the
had taken by Subtillity. . . . It was the Millord-Ralle who carri
away in a Voyage." Ralegh may have taken five or more In
England from Arromaia, Trinidad, and possibly Cumana, w
fought a disastrous battle with the natives on his way home, to t
interrogate before the next expedition.42
Although Ralegh promised Topiawari that he would ret
Guiana the following March and almost surely expected to do so,
two years elapsed before his next, and last, visit.43 In the mea
Ralegh's and Whiddon's recruits served well the English imper
hopes and presumably their own diverse interests. Extant record
tle about Ralegh's direct relations with the Guianans he had bro
England and the several more who returned with later expedition
of them under his sponsorship, but some of the natives almost c

41 Sparrow, then about age 25, was soon captured by the Spanish and man
later wrote a brief description of his adventures; Goodwin, a lad of 16, was ap
mauled to death by tigers. On Sparrow (Sparry) see especially Nicholl, Creat
Map, 255-59 and app. I. On Goodwin's controversial fate, see ibid., 26
Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, ed. Whitehead, 29-30, 32, 56-57; Ralegh, Disc
Guiana, 8o (quotation).
42 "Extract of a report," in Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, ed. Harlow
Lawrence Keymis, A Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (London, 1596
Sparrow's account is in Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4:I247-50. See also Ralegh, D
of Guiana, ed. Whitehead, 29, 30, 49, I85, 2oo; Sparrey's Petition to Ph
i6oo, in Nicholl, Creature in the Map, 346-47; John Mocquet, Travels an
into Africa, Asia, and America ..., trans. Nathaniel Pullen (London, 1696
son of the Trinidad "king" may have been taken from the island or, almost
from the mainland, where many of the island's natives sought refuge
Spanish. One of Mocquet's own Indian captives may have been in Englan
ibid., 69-71.
43 The reasons for the delay are traced in Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 230-40. They
include England's fear of Spanish aid to Irish rebels in I595, Ralegh's participation in
the attack on Cadiz in 1596 in which he incurred a lifelong injury, and, most impor-
tant, his incarceration from 1603 to I616.

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362 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

..??? ._ . ... ... .. ...

I.i ,- :r-.
i

.,?..~?' ?' . : ?~ r ..

I "?

? . :n . .&..... -.

? :":"ii':~J ~ ? "?? ..? ? . -.. "

? ? . . ... ..... -..... ... . .

FIGURE III

Sir Walter Ralegh and Topiawari, cacique of Arromaia, in Guiana. Detail

from Theodor de Bry and sons, Americae, pars VIII (Frankfurt, 1599).
Reproduced courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 363

lived for a time in his London mansion and conversed with the men who
planned further English footholds in the New World. The Indians, espe-
cially those who had lived in England several years, must also have pro-
vided the imperialists with a vast array of useful ethnographic and
geographic information.
For more than a decade after Ralegh's 1595 voyage to Guiana, his
English-trained natives appeared in English travel narratives as inter-
preters and often, after permanently rejoining their people, as welcoming
hosts. In 1596 Lawrence Keymis, Ralegh's close friend and a veteran of the
1595 voyage, took along "John Provost, my Indian Interpreter." (In
Keymis's narrative of the expedition, addressed to Ralegh, the Indian is
also referred to as "John your Interpreter," implying that Provost had
been trained in Ralegh's household and perhaps had been his interpreter
in 1595.) Keymis once calls him "John of Trinidado," which suggests that
he went to England with Jacob Whiddon in 1594, with Ralegh the next
year, or perhaps with both: to England with Whiddon in 1594, to Guiana
and back to England with Ralegh in 1595, and to Guiana again with
Keymis in 1596. A third transatlantic round trip seems likely: to England
with Keymis in 1596, from which he returned to Guiana before 16o9, for
he was almost certainly the "Indian John" who greeted Robert Harcourt's
expedition to Orinoco that year. Harcourt described him as one who
"could speake our language well, and . . . that sometime had been in
England, and served Sr. John Gilbert many yeeres." Living with Gilbert,
Ralegh's nephew, for "many yeeres" would explain Provost's linguistic
skills in 16o9. Keymis further suggests that his expedition of 1596
included additional English-trained natives from Guiana or Trinidad. An
Indian guide in Guiana, Keymis reported, "When he had some time con-
versed with our Indians, that went from England with us he became will-
ing of himselfe to see our country."44 If the plural "Indians" is not a
typographical error, John Provost was not Keymis's only native compan-
ion with overseas experience.
On Ralegh's behalf and with John Provost's guidance, Keymis, in the
spring and early summer of 1596, probed several mouths to the Orinoco
River and, he claimed, found the best route to the interior. Again with
Provost's crucial assistance, Keymis solidified England's good standing
with several Indian nations and reiterated Ralegh's assurances of the pre-
vious year that Englishmen would return in force to protect the queen's
new subjects-a status the natives almost certainly did not comprehend
in the same way the English did-from their Spanish and Indian ene-
mies. Keymis also conferred with the elderly cacique Topiawari, who

44 Keymis, Relation of the Second Voyage, quotations on sigs. Bzr, B3v, C3r, EIv;
Harcourt, A Relation ofa Voyage to Guiana... (London, 1613), 5-6, 13.

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364 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

asked about his son Cayowaroco, still in England. That sum

Ralegh's wife, Bess, informed Sir Robert Cecil that "TOPEAWA
King, that was heer Magisti's subgect, is ded, and his sun return
No records reveal the son's experiences in England or how he ma
homeward voyage, but in subsequent English accounts of Guian
young man is portrayed as a keen supporter of the English agai
Spanish and a devotee of Sir Walter Ralegh. This may be English
ing on both counts, but Cayowaroco seems to have benefited
English assistance against his own enemies, and Ralegh, fr
accounts-by those who admired him and those who despise
was charismatic. That may partly explain his success in recruiting, t
ing, and retaining the loyalty of so many American natives.
Another of Ralegh's English-educated interpreters return
Guiana in late 1596 on The Watte, under Captain Leonard Berry
complement of this one-ship expedition included an Indian
Henry, who must also have been one of Whiddon's recruits in
Ralegh's in 1595. Henry helped the English barter with tribes alo
coast from Brazil to Guiana, and, more important, he allayed I
apprehensions. At the town of Marrac in the Orinoco delta, the
were "very fearefull and ready to run away at the first sight
reported Thomas Masham, the expedition's chronicler, "having s
seene any Christian before. But assoone as Henry our Indian inte
had tolde them what wee were, and our intent, they came to us and
us kindely, and brought us victuals and other things." The head
village in turn assured other tribes of the area that "wee
Englishmen, and came in friendship to trade with them." Mash
account of the voyage mentions two other Indians with English
"William of Cawo" and "Leonard of Cawe . .. who being brou
with Antonie Berreo [of Trinidad] could speak some Spanish an
Indian] Marracons language also." William may have been to En
and back before Masham arrived, or he could have come on The
but been less skilled in English than Henry and therefore barely
tioned in Masham's narrative; Leonard is probably the man later
as Leonard Ragapo who served Ralegh in England.46
After Berry spent two months exploring the mouths of the Orin
he headed home with samples of regional commodities and new

45 Keymis, Relation of the Second Voyage, sigs. BIv-B4v, C2r-EIv; El

Ralegh to Robert Cecil, July 1596, in Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter
2 vols. (London, 1868), 2:402.
46 Masham, "The third voyage set forth by sir Walter Ralegh to Guian
the yeere 1596," in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, (16oo), 3:692-97, quotat
694, 695, 696.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 365

Guiana's "great store of golde." Masham neglected to mention wheth

Henry the interpreter was still on The Watte or had rejoined his peop
nor is there a word about William and Leonard, who, later evidence s
gests, remained behind. In any case, the arrival of The Watte
Plymouth near the end of June 1597 symbolically closed the first ph
of Ralegh's Guiana ventures with its several cooperative native visitors to
England.47 To that point, Ralegh had been responsible for carrying ei
or more Indians from Trinidad and Guiana to England. Several of the
had returned home by then, but others were probably at Durham Ho
in London, perhaps still others at the estates of Ralegh's fellow invest
in overseas projects. King James's imprisonment of Ralegh in 1603
trumped-up charges of treason ended Sir Walter's direct involvement
English exploration of Guiana until his release in 1616. Although Rale
remained keen about New World exploration and often conversed wi
Guianan natives he had brought to England in 1595 or who had arriv
later, other adventurers now put up most of the money and direct
most of the action. They all, however, benefited from the reputed
favorable view of England and English explorers that Ralegh had est
lished in Trinidad and Guiana and, in almost every instance, from
translators he-with crucial assistance from Hariot and perhaps othe
linguists-had trained in England.48
Captain Charles Leigh's expedition of 1604 is a case in point. Leigh
a veteran of voyages to North America, the West Indies, and ev
Guiana in 1597, had already explored the mouths of the Amazon an
Wiapoco (Oyapock) Rivers-the former serving as Guiana's inform
southern boundary, the latter located about 250 miles farther nort
between the Amazon and the Orinoco. Leigh failed to find a feasibl
route to the interior, but he did choose the prospective site for
English trading post, and in March 1604 he sailed for Guiana again wi
a larger expedition.49 Although Leigh took no Indian interpreters fro
England, he soon encountered two who had already crossed the Atlan
in both directions. At the mouth of the Wiapoco, Leigh "found the p
ple readie to give us the best entertainment they could," lavishing t
newcomers with an array of native food. Such generosity stemmed s
stantially from the presence of two Indians "which had beene before
England, and could speake some English"; they were "very willing t
have him and his people abide in their Countrie." Leigh soon su

47 Ibid., 697.
48 Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 245-46; Quinn, Raleigh and the British Empire
(London, 1947), zo2-oz.
49 Leigh's explorations are related in "Captaine Charles Leigh his voyage to
Guiana and plantation there" in Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4:1250-z2, and in "Letter to
Sir Olave Leigh his Brother," July 2, 1604, ibid., 1252z-55.

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366 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

cumbed to Indian entreaties "to stay among them, offering him

owne dwelling Houses and Gardens alreadie planted"; in exc
wrote Leigh, he and his men would "ayde and defend them again
enemies the Caribes and others." Thanks to Ralegh's culture brok
first English outpost in Guiana was about to be established.50
One of the English-speaking Indians was probably "Pluain
Indian that had beene in England," about whom nothing fur
known, except that he was now one of the principal natives of t
Leigh employed the other bilingual native, named William (prob
William encountered by Masham in 1596-1597), as his interpre
not to the captain's satisfaction. Leigh urged his brother in Eng
"procure Sir Walter Rawleighes Indian or my Lord Admirals, for
an Interpreter exceedingly, here is but one, and he understandeth b
tle to any purpose." A visit to England, especially if brief, was clear
guarantee of linguistic facility. Yet the attraction of England, its cu
and its potential for constructive assistance to the natives seems
been more prevalent in Guiana than in most areas of English en
ment. A major reason may have been the absence before I6o0 of
English colony in Guiana-or anywhere else. Leigh's new native
had little reason to fear a weak, isolated outpost. Leigh, in fact,
anxious party, insisting that "for the better assurance of the perfor
of the Salvages promise [of friendship], he demanded pledges of
be sent into England." According to Leigh, the Indians "willingly
scended: which where [sic] in number five, whereof two were o
account," that is, prestigious in their own nation. That June, Le
patched a contingent of his men back to England "with the five
which were plentifully furnished with their Country victuals
accompanying letter to his brother in England, Leigh reduced to fou
number he was sending but raised their status to "principall men in
Countrie." Leigh insisted that these Indians went willingly and
that "if I would, I might have twentie. For they make daily suite to
goe for England." The four he sent, Leigh told his brother in Ju
"are to returne again the first [ship?], but I thinke some of them w
more willing to stay longer." Although Leigh's failure to name
Indians prevents a tracing of their subsequent careers, some of them
in England for several years, judging from the number of Guiana n
who learned English fairly well and, if the English accounts are c
formed strong attachments to Ralegh and other noblemen.51

50 "Captaine Charles Leigh his voyage to Guiana," 1250-51.

51 Ibid., 1250-52; Charles Leigh to Olave Leigh, July 2, 1604, ibid., 125
the latter document, I have reversed the fonts to indicate the emphases in th
nal without subjecting the reader to long passages in italics. See also "The
of Master John Wilson ... in Guiana 16o6," ibid., 126o-65.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 367

Four years after Leigh's infant colony ended with his death in March
1605, Robert Harcourt took two bilingual natives on the latest Englis
voyage to Guiana. At the Bay of Wiapoco, Harcourt, his broth
Michael, and nearly one hundred men encountered a native who "cou
speake our language well, and was knowne to some of my company
bee an Indian, that sometime had been in England"-to wit, Jo
Provost, Lawrence Keymis's interpreter of 1596. Harcourt, in turn, re
troduced the natives to "Martyn their countryman, whom I broug
with mee out of England, they seemed exceeding joyfull, supposing t
hee had been dead, being above foure yeares since hee departed fro
them" (probably one of Leigh's hostages in I6o5), and "Anthony Canab
who . . . had lived in England fourteen yeers" (probably one o
Whiddon's recruits in 1594 or Ralegh's in 1595). Harcourt's exploratio
were greatly aided too by an Indian chief named Leonard Ragapo, w
"hath been heretofore in England with Sr. Walter Raleigh, to whom
beareth great affection; . . . and loveth our Nation with all his heart
John Provost became Harcourt's interpreter for the short remainder
the Indian's life "because hee spake our language much better then eit
of those that I brought with mee, and was ever firme & faithful to u
untill his death." But Leonard Ragapo may have provided even grea
assistance to the expedition. A decade later, Ralegh identified Ragapo
"the same man that tooke Mr. Harcorts brother and 50o of his men when
they came uppon that coast and were in extreame distress, having n
ther meat to carry them home nor meanes to live ther but by the help o
this Indien." Ralegh asserted (with customary hubris) that Ragapo sa
these Englishmen principally because "they made believe that they w
my men."52
Although Ralegh was powerless to shape events in America during
his incarceration in the Tower from 1603 to 1616, he remained in touch
with the Indians who came to England and retained his enthusiasm for
the exploration of Guiana. Several natives of Guiana or Trinidad
attended him in the Tower (the nature of their service remains unclear);
others are reputed to have visited him there.53 And when Ralegh finally

52 Harcourt, Voyage to Guiana, 6-8, 12-15, quotations on 6, 8, 14; "Sir Walter

Ralegh's Journal of His Second Voyage to Guiana," in Ralegh, Discovery of Guiana,
ed. Schomburgk, I97. Harcourt had with him "an Indian boy, who died at Sea in
our returne" to England; Harcourt, Voyage to Guiana, 58. The expedition of Sir
Thomas Roe to Guiana in i6io-i6II seems not to have taken or brought back any
natives nor to have encountered any English-trained Indians, although the absence
of such published information may reflect the participants' urge to hide from
European rivals the location of England's Indian friends. See James A. Williamson,
English Colonies in Guiana and on the Amazon, 16o4-1668 (Oxford, 1923), 52-60.
53 Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 329. Lacey and some of Ralegh's other biographers
insist on such visits by Indians, which are highly plausible, but offer no documentation.

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368 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

persuaded King James to set him free, it was to return to Guian

final grasp at the grand prize: the discovery of gold mines to en
monarch and himself. Sir Walter staked his life on the outcome.
Once again, English-trained natives played significant roles in
Ralegh's imperial scheme. Surprisingly, his account of his last voyage
mentions no Indian in his grand fleet of fourteen ships and a thousand
men. Perhaps by 1617 all the Guianan natives in England had returned
to America or died abroad; the many from Virginia-most notably
Pocahontas's large contingent-would have been of no help in South
America. Or perhaps one or more Guianan natives sailed with Ralegh
but succumbed to the epidemic that killed scores of crewmen and pas-
sengers, including the surgeon, the refiner (essential for gold mining),
and several military officers. Ralegh himself arrived in Guiana critically
ill and was incapacitated during most of his stay; he remained aboard
ship to recuperate and appointed Lawrence Keymis to find and seize the
gold mines.54
Partly compensating for the absence of culture brokers with Ralegh
were two natives who had previously been to England and were ready, as
Ralegh tells it, to serve him again. Off the coast of Wiapoco in early
November 1617, Ralegh "sent in my skiff to enquire for my old sarvant
Leonard [Ragapo] the Indien who [had] bine with me in Ingland 3 or 4
yeers." Failing to find Leonard, who had moved inland, Ralegh "stood
away for Caliana wher the Cassique was also my sarvant and had lived
with mee in the tower 2 yeers"; this was almost certainly "my sarvant
Harry . . . who had almost forgotten his Inglish," although there is a
slim possibility that the cacique and Harry were not the same person, in
which case Ralegh had two old friends among the coastal natives and a
third some distance away. Ralegh expressed appreciation at "being fedd
and assisted by the Indyans of my ould acquaintance, with a greate deale
of love and respect."55

54 The events of this expedition are most thoroughly documented in Ralegh's

journal, of which there are several versions. The best modern edition is Philip
Edwards, Last Voyages: Cavendish, Hudson, Ralegh-The Original Narratives (Oxford,
1988), 198-217; see also 192-94 for Edwards's discussion of the variant versions.
Because Edwards has modernized the text, I quote from the earliest published edi-
tion, appended to Ralegh, Discovery of Guiana, ed. Schomburgk, which adheres quite
faithfully to the manuscript journal's orthography. The quotation is from Ralegh to
Ralph Winwood, Mar. 21, 1617, in G. E. Hadow, ed., Sir Walter Ralegh: Selections
from His "Historie of the World, "His Letters etc. (Oxford, 1917), 185. See also the many
relevant documents in Harlow, ed., Ralegh's Last Voyage (London, 1932).
55 "Sir Walter Ralegh's Journal of His Second Voyage to Guiana," in Ralegh,
Discovery of Guiana, ed. Schomburgk, 197-200; Ralegh to Winwood, Mar. 21, 1617;
Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 329. Harry was almost certainly not the Henry of 1596 (see
pp. 364-65 above) because the latter could not have served Ralegh in the Tower.
Ralegh's earlier incarcerations were in I592 (briefly) and 1603-1616.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 369

While Keymis and the bulk of the expedition ascended the Orino
Harry succored Ralegh's contingent of sick Englishmen. He sent h
brother and two caciques to the ship; they "stayd with mee that nig
Ralegh recalled thankfully, "offring their service and all they had." A f
days later Harry himself "brought mee great store of very good Ca
bread, with which I fedd my company some 7 or 8 dayes, and putt u
hogsed full for store." Ralegh finally came ashore-though he had to
carried on a chair-where Harry provided abundant food. Finall
Ralegh recalled, he "began to gather a little strength." Most of his m
recovered, too.56 Harry, and perhaps other Guiana natives who had b
in England, had saved their lives.
Ralegh's former servants were powerless to save lives in Keym
contingent on the Orinoco. At San Thomd, near the reputed mines,
English fleet of five ships and 400 men clashed with the Spanish ga
son; Ralegh's eldest son, Wat, and at least one other Englishman w
killed before Keymis's army overwhelmed the Spanish and burned th
town.57 Three Indian women and two men were part of the booty.
women soon ran away; the men remained in English hands. O
Pedro Criollo or Pedro the Creole, was happy to join the English, w
dressed him in fancy clothes and called him "Don Pedro." The othe
Guayacunda-usually forenamed Christoval by the Spanish
Christopher by the English-was from the Andean town of Sogamoso
in 1617 served the governor of San Thomd, who died in the battle
Whatever Guayacunda's loyalties, the English valued his fluency
Spanish as well as native languages and, as an employee of the slain g
ernor, needed his presumed familiarity with San Thomd's min
resources.

After a desultory search for the gold mine, Law

valuable human booty sailed downriver to Trin
heartsick Ralegh. In his profound grief and di
blamed Keymis for the expedition's failure and
death. After a dressing-down by Sir Walter, Key
cabin and committed suicide.59 Ralegh, with p

56 "Sir Walter Ralegh's Journal of His Second Voyage

57 The battle for San Thome is narrated, based large
Hemming, Search for El Dorado, 185-88.
58 "Fray Pedro Simon's Narrative of Ralegh's Expe
Ralegh's Last Voyage, 173, 187, 197-98, 201-o2. Harlow in
Spanish eyewitnesses.
59 Ralegh to Elizabeth Ralegh, Mar. 22, 1618, in Hado
195. Ralegh wrote similar accounts of Keymis's suicide,
Winwood, Mar. 21, 1617, and in his "Apologie," in Harlow
328-29.

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370 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

King James now dashed, returned to England accompanie

cultural intermediaries. Could he have foreseen the extent of the
monarch's wrath, Ralegh might have chosen to stay in Guiana. "To
you that I might be here King of the Indians," he wrote to Bess fro
America, "were a vanitie; but my name hath still lived among them. H
they feed me with fresh meat, and all that the countrey yields; all offer
obey me."60
Aboard the Destiny on its homeward voyage, Pedro and Christoph
seemed Ralegh's best hope for a royal pardon. Those two Indians-the
former willingly, the latter, according to Spanish accounts, un
duress-could attest to Guiana's ubiquitous gold and silver mines and
the Spaniards' responsibility for initiating the recent hostilities. In t
face of such testimony the king and his advisors might allow Ralegh o
more expedition to the Orinoco. Guided by two natives of the territo
and with a fresh army and better luck, Englishmen would finally claim E
Dorado. This thin reed became thinner still with Pedro's death en route
to England. Ralegh's fading hopes now rested on Christopher's reluctant
shoulders.61
Under pressure from the Spanish ambassador and Sir Walter's old
rivals, King James again consigned Ralegh to the Tower, where he kept
touting Guiana. Through letters and conversations Ralegh repeatedly
argued the case for another try, with the Indians playing significant roles.
Even before his incarceration, Ralegh wrote to Nicholas Carew from
Plymouth that "your Lordship will have learnt the reasons given by
Kemys for not discovering the mine, which could have been done,
notwithstanding his obstinancy, by means of a cacique of the country, an
old acquaintance of mine . . . inasmuch as the cacique offered pledges to
do it. The servant of the Governor [of San Thomr], moreover, who is
now with me, could have led them to two gold mines, not two leagues
distant from the town, as well as to a silver mine, at not more than three
harquebuss shots distant." After Ralegh was clapped in the Tower, his
jailer, Sir Thomas Wilson, informed the king that "Sir W. R. saith of one
Christofero that he brought home with him nowe who was the governers
man of Guyana ... will take it upon his lyfe that he is able to shewe and
say heer they are 7 or 8 severall mynes of Gold."62 Such messages fell on

60 Ralegh to Elizabeth Ralegh, Nov. 14, 1617, in E. Edwards, Life ofRalegh, 2:349.
61 Simon, "Narrative of Ralegh's Expedition," in Harlow, ed., Ralegh's Last
Voyage, 187, 197-98, 201-o2; Ralegh to Lord Carew, June 21, 1618, ibid., 247.
62 Ralegh to Lord Carew, June 21, I618, 247; "The Examination of Robert Mering
at the Tower," Sept. 4, 1618, ibid., 255; Thomas Wilson to King James, Sept. 18, 1618,
ibid., 273; Memoranda by Sir Thomas Smith, Sept. 18, 1618, in Calendar of State
Papers, Domestic Series, James I (iz66-i6i8), ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London,
I858), 575, and microfilm reel 167, fols. 148-49.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 371

deaf ears. James wanted to end Ralegh's life and strengthen Englan
ties to Spain; the prattling of an Indian stolen from Spanish-occup
Guiana impressed him not at all.
After the reimposition of his conviction for treason and tacit accusa-
tions of invading the king of Spain's territory, Ralegh was beheaded
November 1618.63 Christopher Guayacunda observed the event "close
hand" and perhaps with considerable regret. If Guayacunda was
unwilling voyager to England, he may have succumbed to Raleg
charm during many conversations en route to England, and from
Tower Ralegh had tried to find him a place, according to Sir Thom
Wilson, "in some noblemans service." Almost certainly saddened
news of Ralegh's death were the survivors of visits to England who w
now back home-Leonard Ragapo, Harry, Anthony Canabre, and oth
who were likely still alive. They may eventually have learned of Raleg
execution from the only Indian eyewitness, for between I618 and 16
Christopher Guayacunda journeyed from London to Madrid (as a ca
tured Spanish subject he was probably claimed by the ambassador t
England), from there to Cartagena, and finally to Sogamoso.64 The l
of Ralegh's Guianan interpreters had come home.

The natives of Trinidad and Guiana who had been to England w

remarkable from several standpoints besides their apparent loyalty to Sir
Walter Ralegh. They totaled at least twelve, probably several more,
thus were the largest number from a single region to visit England unti
Pocahontas and her companions in 1616 swelled the Chesapeake regio
total to more than a score. The length of the Guiana and Trini
natives' stays in England were, moreover, relatively long, topped b
Anthony Canabre's fourteen years. Almost all of the Guiana a
Trinidad natives apparently went willingly and eventually returne
home, circumstances that seem to have been causally connect
Guianans who witnessed a kinsman's return no longer feared the voy
as several instances suggest. Although the sparse records do not perm
definitive reckoning, of the twelve who are known to have been in
England before 1609, at least eight at that date had survived
inevitable assault on their health, including the virulent plagues of 1
and 1609; others may have returned thereafter. Perhaps the So
Americans' greater longevity abroad is a statistical anomaly, but a m

63 Ralegh's final months are well described in Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 394-40
and P. Edwards, Last Voyages, I90-9I, although neither author menti
Guayacunda's presence.
64 Wilson to King James, Sept. 18, 1618, 273; "Examination of Robert Merin
255; Simon, "Narrative of Ralegh's Expedition," 189.

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372 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

likely explanation combines their exceptional hardiness

plausible, young, healthy men were most likely to volu
arduous trip) and early exposure in America to diseas
Spanish and other European explorers. In any event, the
that Indians in England quickly expired from diseases req
tial modification.
Ralegh's South American recruits may also have been r
vert to Anglican Christianity than their North American
though the small numbers and the absence of Indian records
conclusion highly tentative. European claims that Indian
version were legion, beginning with Columbus's initial vo
mostly wishful thinking. Time and again, Christians mi
expressions of interest in European beliefs and rituals for a d
card the old faith and embrace the new, persistently ov
Indian propensity to syncretize their traditional religion
als, artifacts, and beliefs. The newcomers' religious cere
Indians believed, might bring protection from diseases o
natives' power over people and events.65 Hence Charles Le
misunderstood why the Indians requested his men "to t
pray"; Robert Harcourt may have similarly misread the actio
who "come unto us (already) at time of prayer," "shew revere
"content that we baptize their children, and will after ca
Christian names wee give them ... and shew a kinde of w
instructed & reformed." In any event, the only Indians from
coast or Guiana and Trinidad who are identified in the sources as true
converts to Christianity had all lived in England. As of 16o9, according to
Harcourt, three Indians--John Provost, Anthony Canabre, and Leonard
Ragapo-had become Christians, though he does not specify what that
term meant to them. Only for Provost is there descriptive detail. Harcourt
related that "This Indian (as I have heard) being at the point of death,
desired some of my company ... to sing a Psalme with him. .... And hee
acknowledged that he had bene a wicked sinner: but did hope that he
shold be saved by the precious blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, &
desired all them that were then present to beare witnes that he dyed a
Christian, yea (as he added) a Christian of England."66 When Manteo and

65 The high level of spirituality in Guiana and Roanoke suggests that, in both
regions, native interest in the newcomers' religion should come as no surprise. For
Guiana, see Whitehead, Lords of the Tiger Spirit. Oberg, "Between 'Savage Man' and
'Most Faithful Englishman,"' I5o-56, explicates the intercultural process for
Roanoke.
66 "Captaine Charles Leigh his voyage to Guiana," Iz25; Harcourt, Voyage to
Guiana, 6, 8, 14, 6o; the second quotation is from the "revised and enlarged" edition
of Harcourt's relation, ed. C. Alexander Harris, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Sert., No.
60o (London, 1928), 147.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 373

Rawly are added to Ralegh's nominal converts to Christianity in Guia

he emerges as the leading proselytizer of the first phase of English c
nization, however modest his numbers and indirect his own mission
efforts.

More measurable and significant is Ralegh's introduction of

American natives into the transatlantic cultural exchange. Before 1584,
the eight natives of the Western Hemisphere known to have been
brought to England were objects of curiosity for the court and public,
remembered principally by the portraits of Frobisher's captives during
their brief lives abroad.67 The English must have learned very little
about Native American culture from these short-lived visits, nor could
the Americans have learned much about England. None, with the possi-
ble exception of the visitors to the court of Henry VII, were in England
long enough to have become fluent in English, and none paved the way
for English settlements in America.
Ralegh drastically changed the role of Indians in England between
1584 and 1618. Although the specifics of their travel to England are in
many instances not recorded, nor are their reasons for making the jour-
ney, sometimes more than once, Ralegh's intent at least seems clear: first,
to train each of his recruits to understand and speak English profi-
ciently; second, as the language lessons progressed, to interrogate them
for useful geographic, economic, and ethnographic information; third,
to expose them to Anglican Christianity, although the records are frus-
tratingly silent about just how that exposure occurred; and, finally, to
return them to their homelands where, on English vessels and with over-
land parties, they allowed Ralegh or his agents to explore unfamiliar terri-
tory and arrange strategic alliances. Surely those were Ralegh's intentions
for Manteo and Wanchese (though the latter thwarted his intention); they
were probably his intentions also for Towaye and Rawly, and perhaps for
the two or three "virginians" of 1603. The list of Trinidad and Guiana
interpreters-in-training is much longer and their contributions to English
exploration are generally greater than any early English-trained Indian's
except Manteo. While the roles, even the names, of several South
Americans are unknown-such as Charles Leigh's four or five recruits of
I6o5-the contributions of John Provost, Anthony Canabre, and Leonard

67 On Indians as curiosities, see Alden T. Vaughan, "Trinculo's Indian:

American Natives in Shakespeare's England," in Peter Hulme and William H.
Sherman, eds., "The Tempest" and Its Travels (London, 2000); for the visual record
of Frobisher's Eskimos, see Sturtevant and Quinn, "New Prey," 89-91. Curiously,
no visual record survives of Ralegh's far more numerous, longer-lived, and impor-
tant (to English interests) American natives. The first illustrations of Indians in
England after the 157os are probably of the two Powhatans on the Virginia
Company of London's lottery poster of early 1616.

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374 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Ragapo are fairly well documented, as are, more sparsely, th

Harry, and William. In each instance, the ability to inte
language for English explorers was the essential cont
mented in several instances by familiarity with the local
terrain or by vital provisions of food and shelter.
What Ralegh seems not to have expected-though sur
comed the results-was the later assistance that several o
Indian servants voluntarily performed when they wer
home territories and no longer beholden to him. That
Ralegh seems clear, perhaps because he had treated the
made sure they got home. Perhaps, too, their experien
given them new status at home, where the linguistic s
knowledge gained in England made them unusually ade
increasingly intercultural and international politics, as Sp
Dutch, and French encroachments multiplied.68
Ralegh's early emphasis on effective communication m
own vital concern with language-prose and poetry, writt
throughout his career. It may also reveal a common thread i
overseas experience. Some communication was possible betwe
very different languages by gestures and rough drawings, b
tant opportunities for misunderstandings were immense
communication required at least one person who could speak
languages with substantial accuracy. One solution, as Hak
gested, was for Englishmen to learn the natives' languages. T
ally happened, initially when Europeans were intentiona
live with the natives-in Ralegh's case, for example, when
Sparrow with Topiawari in 1595. But Ralegh saw speedier
England and greater control over the education of the int
taking Indians to London, where he could supervise t
Because Ralegh was not a true linguist, Hariot bridged
chasm. Not only does Hariot appear to have taught Mant
well, but, as Strachey, who compiled his own extensive
words, attested, Hariot "spake the Indian language.
Hariot's phonetic system had little direct influence on lat
guistic practices, it probably inspired some explorers a

68 It seems likely that several of the Indians who went to Eng

those from Trinidad, already had some skill in the Spanish lan
became trilingual or, more likely, highly multilingual because they c
than one native language. Some may also have had a command of D
69 Strachey, Historie of Virginia Britania, 21-22. By i618, if n
Ralegh understood one or more languages of Guiana. See "Exami
Mering," 255-56.

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 RALEGH'S INDIAN INTERPRETERS 375

attempt bilingualism.70 And until his death in 1621, Hariot pro

trained most of the Indians who reached England-from 1584 to
1603 at Durham House, thereafter at the earl of Northumberland
House, near London.71 Even so, until his own death three years
Hariot's, Ralegh was the principal link, at least nominally, between n
interpreters and English overseas ventures. The score or so of Am
Indians who crossed the Atlantic under his sponsorship between 1
1618, Wanchese excepted, appear to have valued their English sojourn
have admired Sir Walter Ralegh, and, back in America, to have been
petent translators for, and sometimes saviors of, English explorers.
But circumstances changed. Ralegh's recruits from Roanoke
South America, along with Indians from Virginia and New E
whose transatlantic trips occurred during the early years of Ralegh's
ceration, predated successful English colonies. By 1616, wh
Pocahontas party reached England during Ralegh's preparations f
final, fateful voyage to America, the need for English-trained interp
and guides had sharply diminished. Virginia now boasted a few b
settlers who could meet-however imperfectly-England's need fo
preters, while several Indians who had learned the colonists' lang
Virginia supplemented the several who had been to England, thus pro
ing the Powhatans with their own translators.72 A few years later in
England, the English-trained Patuxet Squanto would play a short but
matic role in the survival of New Plymouth, but by-and-large the si
in the northern colonies mirrored that in the South: once effective colo-
nization was underway, Indian and English interpreters learned each
other's tongue in America rather than in England; the colonial frontier
was an adequate language laboratory. Although American natives would
continue to visit imperial Britain for another century and a half, it would
not be for the reasons Ralegh and his agents had transported Manteo,
John Provost, Leonard Ragapo, and the others across the Atlantic. Most
subsequent American Indian visitors would have diplomatic or missionary

70 For evidence that some English explorers in Guiana could speak native lan-
guages by the early I7th century, see Wilson, "Relation, I6o6," in Purchas, Purchas
His Pilgrimes, 4:1265.
71 Quinn, "Harriot and the New World," 49-50; Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 245.
Hariot's manuscript vocabulary of Algonkian words and phrases may have been
helpful to some of his contemporaries and successors, but it burned in London's
Great Fire of 1666. It seems probable that Hariot gave language instructions to the
captives brought from New England in 1605 who lived in London (others were in
Plymouth). Hariot was then living at Syon House, the home of Ralegh's good
friend, the earl of Northumberland.
72 For English interpreters who learned the Indians' language, see J. Frederick
Fausz, "Middlemen in Peace and War: Virginia's Earliest Indian Interpreters,
1608-I632," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 95 (1987), 41-64; "Indian"
in Fausz's title refers to the language rather than the interpreters' ethnicity.

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376 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

rather than linguistic goals, and they sought to influence Britain's i

policy rather than facilitate its agendas. Gone was the era when Am
natives with training at Sir Walter Ralegh's London mansion we
links in England's transatlantic empire.

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