Sir Walter Ralegh's Indian interpreters, 1584-1618

William and Mary Quarterly

Volumn 59, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 341-375

  Vaughan, Alden T ^a  

^a Columbia University ^*

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EID: 0141511219     PISSN: 00435597     EISSN: 1933-769     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3491741     Document Type: Article

References (139)

1. Among recent works that give appreciable attention to one or more transatlantic travelers are Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, 2000)
2. Giles Milton, Big Chief Elizabeth: How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New orld (London, 2000)
3. Michael Leroy Oberg, "Between 'Savage Man' and 'Most Faithful Englishman': Manteo and the Early Anglo-Indian Exchange," Itinerario, 24 (2000), 146-69
4. Eric Hinderaker, "The 'Four Indian Kings' and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 53 (1996). 487-526
5. and Dean R. Snow, "Theyanoguin," in Robert S. Grumet, ed., Northeastern Indian Lives, 1632-1816 (Amherst, Mass., 1996), 208-26
6. Older works include two incomplete, unreliable, and largely undocumented studies: Sidney Lee, "The Call of the West: America and Elizabethan England, III - The American Indian in Elizabethan England," Scribner's Magazine, 42 (1907), 313-30
7. and Carolyn Thomas Foreman, Indians Abroad, 1495-1938 (Norman, Okla., 1943)
8. Trustworthy modern works include, among many, Richmond P. Bond, Queen Anne's American Kings (Oxford, 1952)
9. and Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant, 1743-1807: Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, 1984)
10. The quotation about Squanto appears in William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, 2 vols. (Boston, 1912), 1:202
11. 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 vofs. (Berkeley, Calif., 1976), 2:561-80
12. and Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago, 1991)
13. See also Patricia Seed, "Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires," WMQ, 3d Set., 49 (1991), 183-209
14. Most of the recent works on culture brokers focus on the 18th and 19th centuries, 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, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991)
15. Frances Karttunen, Between Worlds: Interpreters, Guides, and Survivors (New Brunswick, N. J., 1994)
16. Margaret Connell Szasz, ed., Between Indian and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker (Norman, Okla., 1994)
17. James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York, 1999)
18. Daniel K. Richter, "Cultural Brokers and Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664-1701," Journal of American History, 75 (1988-1989), 40-67
19. 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
20. "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
21. "A brief relation of . . . M. William Haukins," in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations Voyages Troniques & Discoveries of the English Nation, 3 vols. (London, 1598-1600), 3:700-01
22. "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."
23. George Best, A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discoverie, for the Finding of a Passage to Cathaya. . . (London, 1578), 29 (2d pagination), 50, 68 (3d pagination)
24. See also William C. Sturtevant and David B. Quinn, "This New Prey: Eskimos in Europe in 1567, 1576, and 1577," in Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Aachen, 1987), 61-140
25. The use of native interpreters began with Columbus and was practiced by Portuguese, French, and Spanish expeditions before Ralegh's time, as he almost certainly knew from written and oral accounts. Brief overviews of American Indians taken to Europe before c. 1620, with some attention to interpreters, are Sturtevant, "The First American Discoverers of Europe," European Review of Native American Studies, 7 (1993), 23-29
26. and Harald E. L. Prins, "To the Land of the Mistigoches: American Indians Traveling to Europe in the Age of Exploration," A me rican Indian Culture and Research Journal, 17 (1993), 175-95
27. Hakluyt, "Discourse of Western Planting," in E.G.R. Taylor, ed., The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Ser., nos. 76-77 (London, 1935), 2:215. Although the Roanoke expedition returned to England before Hakluyt presented the Discourse to the queen, he very likely had already discussed with Ralegh his thoughts on native languages
28. Ralegh's exceptions to the rule were Grenville's seizure of an Indian on or near Roanoke Island in 1586, when the Roanokes and English were virtually at war (see p. 353 below), and Samuel Mace's seizure of two or more Indians from the lower Chesapeake in 1602 or 1603, although the circumstances of that episode are unclear (see PP- 357-S8 below). English evidence on the Guianan natives who went to England denies any coercion, though at least one French source suggests that Ralegh took an Indian from Trinidad involuntarily (see p. 361 below), and a Spanish source similarly charges Ralegh with forcibly taking his last South American Indian to England (see pp. 369-70 below). Some Guianans went to England as "hostages" for the safety of Englishmen who remained in South America; how voluntary those decisions were is arguable. By contrast, the narratives of Frobisher's voyages are candid on the captivities (e.g., Best, True Discourse, 50 (1st pagination), 11-12 (2d pagination), as are the accounts of George Waymouth's expedition of 1605 and Edward Harlow's of 1611
29. See, respectively, James Rosier, A True Relation of the Most Prosperous Voyage Made this Present Yeere 1650 (London, 1605), sigs. C4r-C4v
30. and The Complete Works of Captain John Smith, 1588-1631, ed. Philip L. Barbour, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, 1986), 2:399
31. RaphaellHolinshed et al., The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 3 vols. (London, 1587), 3:1369
32. [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
33. and reprinted with minor changes in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1600), 3:246-47
34. Among the many modern books on the rise and demise of Ralegh's Roanoke outposts - and the most thorough in their attention to the Indians' contributions - are Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony (Totowa, N. J., 1984)
35. and, more extensively, Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606 (Chapel Hill, 1985)
36. 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. 1
37. and "Gods and Men: The Meeting of Indian and White Worlds on the Carolina Outer Banks, 1584-1586," North Carolina Historical Review, 76 (1999), 367-90
38. Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke, 39
39. Rene de Laudonniere, A Notable Historie Containing Fottre Voyages . . . unto Florida, trans. Hakluyt (London, 1587)
40. Clifford M. Lewis and Albert J. Loomie, The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572 (Chapel Hill, 1953)
41. [Barlowe], "First Voyage . . . ," in Hakluyt, Princtpall Navigations (1589), 728-33, quotations on 730, 732
42. When Hakluyt reprinted Barlowe's narrative in the greatly expanded Principal Navigations (1600), he added the Indians' names
43. Lupoid von Wedel, "Journey through England and Scotland . . . in 1584 and 1585," in Victor von Klarwill, ed., Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners. . . . trans. T. H. Nash (London, 1928), 323
44. A different translation of the passage appears in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2d Ser., 9 (1895), 251
45. On the likelihood that Hariot and John White were onthe voyage of 1584, see Quinn, "Thomas Harriot and the New World," in John W. Shirley, ed., Thomas Harriot, Renaissance Scientist (Oxford, 1974), 38-39
46. and Shirley, Thomas Harriot: A Biography (Oxford, 1983), 105
47. Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia . . . (Frankfurt, 1590), 23
48. Vivian Salmon, "Thomas Harriot and the English Origin of Algonkian Linguistics, The Durham [University] Thomas Harriot Seminar, Occasional Papers, no. 8 (1993)
49. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: Biography, 104-12
50. Quinn, "Harriot and the New World," 48-50
51. Hariot, Briefe and True Report, 23
52. "Bill to Confirm Raleigh's Patent As Passed by the House of Commons," in Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, 1584-1590, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, Works, nos. 104-05 (London, 1955), 1:127
53. "The Case of the Cape Merchant, Thomas Harvey," ibid., 232
54. Anon., "Voyage Made by Sir Richard Greenville . . . ." in Hakluyt, Principall Navigations (1589), 733-
55. 36; Diego Hernández [Fernández] de Quiñones to Philip II (June 12, 1585), in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, 2:735
56. "The Relation of Hernando de Altamirano," ibid., 741
57. "Sir Richard Grenville Leaves Plymouth," in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, 1:173
58. Holinshed, Chronicles, 3:1401-02
59. 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
60. Lane to Hakluyt the elder, Sept. 3, 1585, ibid., 793
61. See Oberg, "Between 'Savage Man' and 'Most Faithful Englishman,'" 157-58
62. and Walter Bigges, A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Frances Drakes West Indian Voyage .. . (London, 1589), 50
63. That Drake intended to leave about 250 Indians and Africans as slaves for the Roanoke colonists is stated in several Spanish documents: Diego Fernández de Quiñones to the Crown, Sept. 1586, in Irene A. Wright, ed., Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583-1594, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Ser., no. 99 (London, 1951), 204
64. and Diego Fernández de Quiñones to the president of the House of Trade (March 22, 1587), ibid., 230
65. See Quinn, "Turks, Moors, Blacks and Others in Drake's West Indian Voyage," Terrae Incognitae, 14 (1982), 97-104
66. "Entries in Bideford Parish Register," ibid., 1:495
67. "The Relation of Pedro Diaz," March 21, 1589, ibid., 2:786-90
68. "The names of all the men, women, and Children . . . ," in Hakluyt, Principall Navigations (1589), 771
69. [White], "The fourth voyage made to Virginia . . . 1587 . . .," ibid., 764-67
70. [White], "Fourth voyage made to Virginia . . . 1587," 768
71. Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612), ed Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d. Ser., no. 103 (London, 1953), 34, 91
72. Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4 vols. (London, 1625), 4:1728, 1813
73. Virginia Company of Londo, A True and Sincere Declaration of the Purpose and Ends of the Plantation Begun in Virginia . . . (London, 1610), 18
74. "Instructions . . . to Sr Thomas Gates," in Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London, 4 vols. (Washington, D. C., 1906-1935), 3:17
75. "Anonymous map of Virginia," in Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Ser., nos. 136-37 (Cambridge, 1969), 1:238-40
76. Smith, Complete Works of Captain John Smith, ed. Barbour, 1:150, 244, 265-66, 2:88, 107, 188, 193, 215
77. John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, ed. Hugh Talmage Lefler (Chapel Hill, 1967)
78. "Sept. 2, 1603. Virginia Indians in the Thames," in Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, 5 vols. (New York, 1979), 5:160-61
79. Edward Maria Wingfield, "Discourse," in Barbour, ed., Jamestown Voyages, 1:227
80. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620 (New York, 1974), 419-31- Because "Virginia" was the English label for the whole coastal region between Florida and Newfoundland (New England was not named until 1616), Cope's "virginians" need not have been from the Chesapeake, although the coincidence of Mace's seizure of Indians from there at about this time makes the identification probable
81. The history and culture of the natives of the region is best consulted in Neil L. Whitehead, Lords of the Tiger Spirit: A History of the Caribs in Colonial Venezuela and Guyana, 1498-1820 (Providence, 1988), esp. 73-87 (context of Ralegh's voyages)
82. See also H. Dieter Heinen and Alvaro Garcia-Castro, "The Multiethnic Network of the Lower Orinoco in Early Colonial Times," Ethnohistory, 47 (2000), 561-79
83. Two popular and useful works for Ralegh's venture are John Hemming, The Search for El Dorado (London, 1978)
84. and, more imaginative but less authoritative, Charles Nicholl, The Creature in the Map: A Journey to El Dorado (London, 1995)
85. Hakluyt, "Discourse of Western Planting,quot; 255
86. Robert Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh (New York, 1973), 206-10
87. 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
88. Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, 5, 36
89. 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)
90. Vincent T. Harlow (London, 1928); and Whitehead (Norman, OkIa., 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 editor's name following the title Discoverie of Guianaindicates that the edition of 1596 is cited. Schomburgk's edition modernizes Ralegh's title - hence Discovery
91. Pedro de Salazar to Philip II, c. 1595, in Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, ed. Harlow, 117
92. Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, 7, 35
93. in Ralegh, Discovere of Guiana, ed. Harlow, 122
94. Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 209-11. It is possible that Whiddon took additional Indians to England who did not return the next year with Ralegh
95. Whitehead, Lords of the Tiger Spirit, 75-81
96. Ralegh, Discoverie of Guiana, 80 (quotation)
97. Lawrence Keymls, A Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (London, 1596), sig. C4
98. Sparrow's account is in Purchas Hit Pilgrimet, 4:1147-50
99. Sparrey's Petition to Philip II, c. 1600, In Nieholl, Creature in the Map, 346-47
100. John Moequet, Travels and Voyages into Africa, Asia, and America . . ., trans. Nathaniel Pullen (London, 1696), 68
101. The son of the Trinidad "king" may have been taken from the island or, almost as likely, from the mainland, where many of the island's natives sought refuge from the Spanish. One of Mocquet's own Indian captives may have been in England briefly; Ibid., 69-71
102. The reasons for the delay are traced in Lacey, Sir Walter Ralegh, 130-40. They include England's fear of Spanish aid to Irish rebels in 1595, Ralegh's participation in the attack on Cadiz in 1596 in which he incurred a lifelong injury, and, most important, his incarceration from 1603 to 1616
103. Harcourt, A Relation of a Voyage to Guiana . . . (London, 1613), 5-6, 13
104. Keymis, Relation of the Second Voyage, sigs. B1V-B4V, C21-E1V
105. Elizabeth Ralegh to Robert Cecil, July 1596, in Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, 2 vols. (London, 1868), 2:402
106. Masham, "The third voyage set forth by sir Walter Ralegh to Guiana . . . in the yeere 1596,"
107. Quinn, Raleigh and the British Empire (London, 1947), 201-02
108. Leigh's explorations are related in "Captaine Charles Leigh his voyage to Guiana and plantation there" in Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4:1250-52
109. and in "Letter to Sir Olave Leigh his Brother," July 2, 1604, ibid., 1252-55
110. "Captaine Charles Leigh his voyage to Guiana," 1250-51
111. Harcourt, Voyage to Guiana, 6-8, 12-15, quotations on 6, 8, 14
112. "Sir Walter Ralegh's Journal of His Second Voyage to Guiana," in Ralegh, Discovery of Guiana, ed. Schomburgk, 197. Harcourt had with him "an Indian boy, who died at Sea in our returne" to England
113. Harcourt, Voyage to Guiana, 58. The expedition of Sir Thomas Roe to Guiana in 1610-1611 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
114. See James A. Williamson, English Colonies in Guiana and on the Amazon, 1604-1668 (Oxford, 1923), 52-60
115. 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
116. in G. E. Hadow, ed., Sir Walter Ralegh: Selections from His "Historie of the World," His Letters etc. (Oxford, 1917), 185
117. See also the many relevant documents in Harlow, ed., Ralegh's Last Voyage (London, 1932)
118. Ralegh to Winwood, Mar. 21, 1617
119. "Sir Walter Ralegh's Journal of His Second Voyage to Guiana," 199-201
120. The battle for San Thomé is narrated, based largely on Spanish sources, in Hemming, Search for El Dorado, 185-88
121. "Fray Pedro Simon's Narrative of Ralegh's Expedition," in Harlow, ed., Ralegh's Last Voyage, 173, 187, 197-98, 201-02. Harlow includes several depositions by Spanish eyewitnesses
122. Ralegh to Elizabeth Ralegh, Nov. 14, 1617, in E. Edwards, Life of Ralegh, 2:349
123. Simon, "Narrative of Ralegh's Expedition," in Harlow, ed., Ralegh's Last Voyage, 187, 197-98, 201-02
124. Ralegh to Lord Carew, June 21, 1618, ibid., 247
125. "The Examination of Robert Mering at the Tower," Sept. 4, 1618, ibid., 255
126. Thomas Wilson to King James, Sept. 18, 1618, ibid., 273
127. Memoranda by Sir Thomas Smith, Sept. 18, 1618, in Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, James I (1616-1618), ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (London, 1858), 575, and microfilm reel 167, fols. 148-49
128. and P. Edwards, Last Voyages, 190-91, although neither author mentions Guayacunda's presence
129. Wilson to King James, Sept. 18, 1618, 273
130. "Examination of Robert Mering," 255
131. Simon, "Narrative of Ralegh's Expedition," 189
132. Obere, "Between 'Savage Man' and Most Faithful Englishman,'" 150-56, explicates the intercultural process for Roanoke
133. the second quotation is from the "revised and enlarged" edition of Harcourt's relation, ed. C. Alexander Harris, Hakluyt Society, Works, 2d Ser., No. 60 (London, 1928), 147
134. 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)
135. 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 important (to English interests) American natives. The first illustrations of Indians in England after the 1570s are probably of the two Powhatans on the Virginia Company of London's lottery poster of early 1616
136. Strachey, Historie of Virginia Britania, 21-22. By 1618, if not long before, Ralegh understood one or more languages of Guiana
137. See "Examination of Robert Mering," 255-56
138. For evidence that some English explorers in Guiana could speak native languages by the early 17th century, see Wilson, "Relation, 1606," in Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, 4:1265
139. For English interpreters who learned the Indians' language, see J. Frederick Fausz, "Middlemen in Peace and War: Virginia's Earliest Indian Interpreters, 1608-1632," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 95 (1987), 41-64; "Indian" in Fausz's title refers to the language rather than the interpreters' ethnicity