Manteo's World

Helen C. Rountree

Description

Roanoke. Manteo. Wanchese. Chicamacomico. These place names along today's Outer Banks are a testament to the Indigenous communities that thrived for generations along the Carolina coast. Though most sources for understanding these communities were written by European settlers who began to arrive in the late sixteenth century, those sources nevertheless offer a fascinating record of the region's Algonquian-speaking people. Here, drawing on decades of experience researching the ethnohistory of the coastal mid-Atlantic, Helen Rountree reconstructs the Indigenous world the Roanoke colonists encountered in the 1580s. Blending authoritative research with accessible narrative, Rountree reveals in rich detail the social, political, and religious lives of Native Americans before European colonization. Then narrating the story of the famed Lost Colony from the Indigenous vantage point, Rountree reconstructs what it may have been like for both sides as stranded English settlers sought to merge with existing local communities. Finally, drawing on the work of other scholars, Rountree brings the story of the Native people forward as far as possible toward the present.

Featuring maps and original illustrations, Rountree offers a much needed introduction to the history and culture of the region's Native American people before, during, and after the founding of the Roanoke colony.

Sujets

• History of India
• Politics of India
• Indian religions
• Culture of India
• Agriculture in India
• Culture change

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469662947
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

Manteo’s World
Manteo’s World
Native American Life in Carolina’s Sound Country before and after the Lost Colony
Helen C. Rountree with Wesley D. Taukchiray
Original paintings by Karen Harvey
The University of North Carolina Press   CHAPEL HILL
Publication of this book was supported in part by a generous gift from Kim and Phil Phillips.
© 2021 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Paintings by Karen Harvey © 2021 Karen Harvey
Set in Merope Basic by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rountree, Helen C., 1944– author. | Taukchiray, Wes, 1948– author. | Harvey, Ren (Karen), illustrator.
Title: Manteo’s world : Native American life in Carolina’s Sound Country before and after the Lost Colony / Helen C. Rountree with Wesley D. Taukchiray ; original paintings by Karen Harvey.
Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021009993 | ISBN 9781469662923 (cloth ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469662930 (pbk. ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469662947 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Algonquian Indians—North Carolina—Outer Banks— Civilization. | Algonquian Indians—North Carolina—Outer Banks— History—16th century. | Algonquian Indians—First contact with Europeans—North Carolina—Outer Banks—History—16th century. | Cultural fusion—North Carolina—Outer Banks—History—16th century. | Outer Banks (N.C.)—History—16th century.
Classification: LCC E 99. A 35 R 68 2021 | DDC 974.004/9755—dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2021009993
Cover illustration by Karen Harvey. Used by permission of the artist.
To Paulette Rae Taukchiray (1981–2020)
Contents Preface Introduction PART I    |    The Indian World, 1583 1      The Land and the Waters 2      First View of Indian Settlements 3      The People and Their Everyday Work 4      Religion and Medicine 5      Trade, Politics, Diplomacy, and War PART II    |    A More Complicated, Faster-Moving World 6      Dealing with New Foreigners 7      Foreigners Merging In 8      Merging in the Other Direction Afterword Notes Bibliography Index
Figures, Maps, and Tables
FIGURES 2.1   De Bry engraving of Pomeioke    26 2.2   De Bry engraving of Secota    27 2.3   House framework with vaulted roof partially tied    31 2.4   Approaching a fish weir    34 2.5   Overhead view of a modern fish weir    35 2.6   Half of a stream valley    40 3.1   A woman and her daughter    43 3.2   Returning from nutgathering    52 3.3   Man with hunting gear    54 4.1   John White painting of townspeople dancing    66 4.2   Conjuror’s trick    70 5.1   Diplomatic meeting    79 5.2   Detail of Gribelin engraving of a couple eating    83 6.1   The English dropped in    92 7.1   Indian hemp ( Apocynum cannabinum )    110
MAPS 1.1   Wetlands in the Carolina Sounds region    9 1.2   Inlets and resulting salinities in the Carolina Sounds    10 2.1   North Carolina borderlands and language families    19 2.2   Village locations in 1585–86    21 8.1   Historic period locations of the Roanoke/Hatteras, Pomeioke/Pamlico, and Secota/Mattamuskeet Indians    125 8.2   Historic period locations of the Weapemeoc/Yeopim Indians    132 8.3   Historic period locations of the Chowanoke Indians    138
TABLES 1.1   Year-round fish and shellfish, by salinity    15 1.2   Starchy food-producing root plants, by salinity    17 4.1   Sample of native wild medicinal plants    72
Preface
I have been researching southern Algonquian speakers for half a century, beginning with Virginia in 1969 (first visit to modern people in 1967) and emphasizing culture as well as history, and then expanding my data gathering geographically to include Maryland and North Carolina. When the Smithsonian Institution’s Handbook of North American Indians , vol. 15, Northeast came out, the chapters on the Algonquian-speaking Indians of the Mid-Atlantic region (written in 1972–73) were done by the only published scholar on Virginia Indians available as of 1970, when the contract was drawn up: Christian F. Feest, an Austrian. No other American anthropologists were interested. Several students of Frank G. Speck who had done Virginia fieldwork in the 1930s and 1940s were still actively working, but they were doing it elsewhere. I met several of them in 1970–71 and found none to be willing to supervise my Ph.D. dissertation. Christian, who contacted me in 1972 and with whom I have been friends since, was and still is primarily a museum scholar, concentrating on artifacts rather than on people. We agreed at the outset that his chapters in the Handbook (Feest 1978a, 1978b, 1978c) were pitifully small, given the riches of the documents that were “out there,” but he had to work within the constraints of a handbook. He also had to do all his research in the one calendar year he could spend in the United States, so the quality of the history part of his chapters is remarkably good. He did not plan to go on and do in-depth books on the culture and history, as I hoped to do, so I decided then that my life’s work as a cultural anthropologist—then training to be a historian as well—would be to see that book-length treatments of all the southern Algonquian speakers reached publication. This volume is the last piece of that project.
In doing my project, I have worked with several other scholars who researched Native American history in depth in areas adjacent to eastern Virginia: Thomas Davidson for the Maryland Eastern Shore (Rountree and Davidson 1997), the late Rebecca Seib for Southern Maryland (Seib and Rountree 2014), and, with this volume, Wesley D. Taukchiray for the Carolina Sounds region. All three found themselves, when they completed their research, in jobs that did not allow writing time. My university professorship and, beginning in 2000, my retirement did allow me time, so I have been glad to become their scribe while making additions of my own. I also made or acquired the needed illustrations and then fought the manuscripts into publication for us.
Wes Taukchiray has worked as a contract historian in the Carolinas and Virginia for over forty-five years. During most of that time, he generously sent me photocopies of anything he found related to the Algonquian speakers in North Carolina and Virginia, so I regard him as my history researcher for this volume and as, deservedly, the senior author on the history chapter. Several other historians have tackled one or another of the Carolina Algonquians, but as of 2014, no one was working toward a book-length treatment of all of them together, nor of the culture of the 1580s. I had waited nearly forty years to see someone fill the gap, not wanting to invade someone else’s “territory,” but now, with Wes’s help, I am wading in.
I am indebted to several other people for their invaluable help in getting this book completed. The editorial staff at the University of North Carolina Press acted as a sounding board as soon as I contacted them, something I badly needed because I was too close to the manuscript (seeing the trees) to have a proper “feel” for continuity and proportion (seeing the forest). The people who served as readers for the Press were likewise helpful. Wes and I received excellent assistance at the North Carolina State Archives; in particular, Edward Vann did some serious hunting for us when our time in Raleigh ran out. Karen Kupperman read an early draft of the “merging-in” chapter and recommended further readings to strengthen it. Last but not least, I profited greatly, when writing the first chapter, from having worked with “hard scientists” in Maryland during my time as senior author on John Smith’s Chesapeake Voyages, 1607–1609 . I had been doing pleasure reading about the Sounds region’s hydrology and geology for many years, but these colleagues—especially marine biologist and historical biologist Kent Mountford, ichthyologist Bob Lippson, geologist Jeff Halka, and plant biologist/paleontologist Grace Brush—gave me the grounding I needed to do a better job with other aspects of the region’s natural history.
A WORD ABOUT THE ARTIST
Karen Harvey (“Ren”) is a part-time artist in Nashville. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, near the Grand River Reserve, and seeing so many Indian faces in her youth, she easily draws them more accurately than poor John White could when seeing Indians for the first time. She has been doing Native American portraits with people from many times and tribes, in a variety of mediums and for a long time now, always backed up by careful research.
In September 2018, Ren embarked upon a new, longer-term project: redoing the portraits that John White painted in the Carolina Sounds in the mid-1580s, so that in face and body build they were more Indians than freakish anatomy lessons (especially needed for the de Bry engravings, made from White’s