A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

[Sequoia]

by James Horn

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A leading historian of early Virginia, Horn (A Land as God Made It) relates the convoluted, fascinating story of the failed 1598 venture on Roanoke Island: a British settlement whose 100 men, women, and children disappeared without a trace. Horn teases from the record as no one before the Lost Colony of 1587, which had not even been intended to settle on the island. Horn recounts its travails, hostilities with the Indians, requests to England for support that failed to arrive for three years, by which time the settlers were gone. Based on the available evidence, Horn finds that the colonists did not die but intermarried with local Indians. Over a century later, a North Carolina settler, venturing to Roanoke Island, found Indians who claimed Englishmen among their ancestors (and some gray-eyed tribesmen seemed to support the claim). He places it all in the context of the political and economic tumult of the time for an outstanding historical mystery/adventure tale with an ending perhaps less tragic than historians have long believed.

amazon.com

This is quite an interesting little book. Usually in grade school history you might get a page or two of this history but this is really a gem. For one thing, the colonists were not supposed to go there but further on up the coast. The captain dumped then on Roanoke Island because there were buildings there from the first failed attempt and he didn't want to deal with them anymore. As for the first attempt by England, less than a year those men caused trouble by stealing food and killing the natives figured out these white men were trouble that would eventually destroy them if they didn't act first. The friendly natives, as always, were betrayed in the end. This book gets to the point without a lot of extra information.

[Liberation Angel]

1. kickit & R

Love that stuff

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. Lies My Teacher Told Me discusses this a bit.

I just got the 2nd edition.

He states that many people ran off to live with the natives, and were forcibly crying, fighting and wailing when they were brought back to English settler society. Women had far more status and much less work to do among the indigenous peoples and they did not have severe rules and punishments.

If you are not familiar with Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your History Book got Wrong, by James Loewen, you will find out why history is so boring the way it is taught. The authors don't want to offend anyone, so movements spring up out of nowhere with no cause, and women and minorities and the labor movement and socialism are minimized or not mentioned at all.