I quote the late Christopher Hitchens, “History is a tragedy and not a morality tale.”
But the precedent the Roanoke colonists thought they were setting was more like the gentrification of Brooklyn. Not that innocent bystanders haven’t been harmed in Bushwick—priced out of their humble abodes so that craft kombucha brewers, aspiring mobile app developers, Anusara yoga practitioners, and indie musicians who drive part-time for Uber could move in.
Traveling to Roanoke in 1587 were eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and nine children (including, we must assume, at least a couple of adolescents muttering, “This sucks”). They were Londoners—tradesmen, artisans, and their families. The venture was a sixteenth-century version of a real estate investment trust. The REIT had a charter from Queen Elizabeth that formed a corporation headed by Sir Walter Raleigh (comfortably back in England).
The colonists hoped to become genteel, to attain the status of landed gentry. Although the gentleman managing the scheme, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, John White, was a member of the gentry by virtue of being a celebrated watercolor artist.
As far as scholars can tell, the colonists had estate management skills and agricultural expertise about equal to indie musicians in Brooklyn. Or not even, given the musicians’ cannabis grow rooms. And while Roanoke Colony did become a “gated community” after George Howe was killed, there were no provisions for organized security or defense.
Besides not getting along with their new neighbors, in whose backyards they were camping, the colonists had angry perplexities of their own. The expedition was so poorly provisioned that within a month of their arrival the colonists petitioned Governor White to return to England for more supplies.
He didn’t get back until three years later. Some things came up. A 1588 relief mission was distracted by a side hustle in privateering and a fight with French pirates near Morocco, which to a modern sailor with GPS would be very much in the wrong direction from North Carolina. Then there was the Spanish Armada. Seafaring watercolor artists were needed on the home front.
When the governor of the Roanoke Colony finally landed back on Roanoke Island his colony was gone. All that was left was an abandoned palisade with the word “Croatoan” carved on a post.
White took this to mean that the colonists had moved to the nearby island called Croatoan or, perhaps, had made some Airbnb arrangements with the Croatoans, who were friendly to the English. Or they had been friendly until they were mistaken for Dasamongueponkes and killed. Maybe Croatoans were friendly again.
White meant to go find out. But some other things came up. One of his ships wanted to go home. The other broke an anchor cable and was blown so far off course, with White aboard, that it came ashore in the Azores.
As long as his Roanoke colonists were not proven to be dead, Sir Walter Raleigh could maintain his corporate claim on what was loosely called “Virginia” (everything on the continent north of Spanish Florida). This may cast doubt on the complete sincerity of Raleigh’s claim to have been trying to find them on his 1595 voyage to the New World while he was also searching for El Dorado.
No other major effort to locate the Roanoke colonists was made until after the Jamestown Colony was established in 1607, and by then there was no trace. No one knows what happened to the residents of the Lost Colony. I think that, full of angry perplexity, they stomped off in a huff.
Which set another precedent for America. People do not emigrate because things are going well at home.
This was true for ancient migrants from Asia 20,000 years ago. Or 30,000 years ago or 40,000 years ago—there is fractious conflict about that too. Geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists turn out to be as polarized as the rest of us. (Fortunately their lengthy scientific terms pretty much keep their angry perplexities from being aired on Twitter.)
Nonetheless, there was some time when some people headed over the Bering Strait land bridge waving farewell. “See you later, you frozen Siberians with your itchy woolly mammoth long underwear and mastodon meat on your breath. We’re off to the beautiful Pacific Northwest—waterfront property, split-level longhouses, decorative totem pole lawn ornaments, and salmon frying on the barbecue grill!”
Then—midst weekend sightseeing jaunts to watch the glaciers retreat and hunting trips to bag soon-to-be-extinct trophy megafauna—they proceeded to have their own Roanoke Colony moments. Never mind that there wasn’t anybody else already living in the New World to quarrel with.
In November 2015 National Geographic published an article by Glenn Hodges, “First Americans,” detailing “new finds, theories, and genetic discoveries” about the populating of the Western Hemisphere. (Given the current animosity surplus, I’m sure somebody’s mad at National Geographic too, because of cultural appropriation, or because you have to be a member of the National Geographic Society to get the magazine so this is probably a secret society maybe funded by George Soros, or because an old, dead, white male had accumulated thirty years of back issues in the attic and these fell through the kitchen ceiling on the heads of the “Flip or Flop” TV crew, or something.)
Anyway, the article said:
If you look at the skeletal remains of Paleo-Americans, more than half of the men have injuries caused by violence, and four out of ten have skull fractures. The wounds don’t appear to have been the result of hunting mishaps, and they don’t bear telltale signs of warfare, like blows suffered fleeing an attacker. Instead it appears that these men fought among themselves—often and violently. The women don’t have these kinds of injuries, but they’re much smaller than the men, with signs of malnourishment and domestic abuse.
Nor did the post-Roanoke
