Introduction For historians, the words of Thomas Harriot and the watercolours of John White have ... more Introduction For historians, the words of Thomas Harriot and the watercolours of John White have long served as the principle window into native life in North Carolina as encountered by the English settlers. Their words and images, however, provide at best a brief and biased snapshot of regional native cultures, belying the complexity and the diachronic continuum of native identities. Physical data from contact-period Algonquian sites ground and complicate the portraits drawn by White and Harriot, while native understandings challenge scholarly assumptions and notions of historical ‘truth’. For example, while the fate of the lost Roanoke settlers may remain a mystery to scholars, there is no lack of certainty for members of North Carolina’s state-recognized tribal groups. They know that the colonists were absorbed into native society by their ancestors, as noted by Christopher Oakley: ‘every Indian community in the state has, at one time or another claimed a relationship to the ill-fated settlement’. Reliance on the documentary and pictorial record over alternative historical sources and narratives impedes the aim of moving beyond European visions to acknowledging the cacophony of past and present American voices. For a more complete understanding of the meaning and ongoing significance of the John White watercolours to emerge, the contributions of archaeology and the voices of the descendant communities must be taken into consideration. This discussion therefore prioritizes consideration of the tangible physical evidence about 16thcentury native life and addresses the more intangible complexities of contemporary native identities and their connections with the past.
Introduction For historians, the words of Thomas Harriot and the watercolours of John White have ... more Introduction For historians, the words of Thomas Harriot and the watercolours of John White have long served as the principle window into native life in North Carolina as encountered by the English settlers. Their words and images, however, provide at best a brief and biased snapshot of regional native cultures, belying the complexity and the diachronic continuum of native identities. Physical data from contact-period Algonquian sites ground and complicate the portraits drawn by White and Harriot, while native understandings challenge scholarly assumptions and notions of historical ‘truth’. For example, while the fate of the lost Roanoke settlers may remain a mystery to scholars, there is no lack of certainty for members of North Carolina’s state-recognized tribal groups. They know that the colonists were absorbed into native society by their ancestors, as noted by Christopher Oakley: ‘every Indian community in the state has, at one time or another claimed a relationship to the ill-fated settlement’. Reliance on the documentary and pictorial record over alternative historical sources and narratives impedes the aim of moving beyond European visions to acknowledging the cacophony of past and present American voices. For a more complete understanding of the meaning and ongoing significance of the John White watercolours to emerge, the contributions of archaeology and the voices of the descendant communities must be taken into consideration. This discussion therefore prioritizes consideration of the tangible physical evidence about 16thcentury native life and addresses the more intangible complexities of contemporary native identities and their connections with the past.
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