Pemisapan

Chief of Roanoc and Secotan nations

• Born: 1550
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: June 1, 1586
• Place of death: Dasamonquepeuc (now in North Carolina)

Pemisapan was the first North American Indian to be confronted by English explorers of the New World, and he was one of the first victims of the hostility that developed between the English and the American Indians during Sir Walter Ralegh’s attempt to establish the first English colony.

Early Life

Nothing is known for certain about the early years of the life of Pemisapan (peh-mee-SAH-pahn). He was a son of Ensinore and was known originally as Wingina. At some point, his father became manamatowick, or king, of the tribes inhabiting what is now called Roanoke Island, North Carolina, and the western neighboring mainland to the Neuse River. As ruler of the Roanoc or Secotan nation, Ensinore exercised his power through local subkings and warriors called weroances.

As a young male of that class, in an Algonkian-speaking Eastern Woodlands culture, Wingina’s upbringing and training would have centered on military and political leadership and hunting skills and would have probably included an initiation ritual into manhood called the huskanaw. Initiates between ten and fifteen years of age would be taken into the woods for months, given hallucinogenic drugs fashioned from roots, occasionally beaten, and usually caged.

Prior to 1582, Ensinore retired as manamatowick in favor of Wingina, and his other son Granganimeo became a weroance of Roanoke Island. Competition for resources in what was a subsistence economy that centered on hunting, fishing, and the cultivation of corn, squash, beans, gourds, and pumpkins was keen, and warfare with neighboring Neiosioke and Pamlico nations occurred quite frequently. In 1582, the Neiosiokes allegedly fell on some Roanocs while at a peaceful get-together, murdering the men and taking some thirty women and children as slaves. At the time of the first reconnaissance expedition by the English in 1584, Wingina was recuperating from severe wounds sustained in battle with either the Neiosiokes or Pamlico at his mainland town of Secotan. (He had reportedly sustained two wounds to his body, one going straight through his thigh.) It was his brother Granganimeo who made the initial contact with the English explorers, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe.

Life’s Work

Initial contact proved friendly, and Amadas and Barlowe, who had been dispatched to the New World by Sir Walter Ralegh, took back to England with them (undoubtedly with Wingina’s consent) two younger Indians: Manteo and Wanchese.

The following year, however, the English returned and brought back Manteo and Wanchese, but they also established a military colony under command of Captain Ralph Lane, who built a redoubt on Roanoke Island, which he called Fort Ralegh . Relations began to deteriorate after Lane’s superior, Sir Richard Grenville, before returning to England, massacred the Roanocs at the village of Aquascogoc in retaliation for the theft of a silver cup. The English awed the Indians with their firearms, armor, and steel weapons, but they did not grow their own food; the English depended on the Roanocs and other Indians to supply them with food, which strained the resources of an already fragile economy. The imperious and arrogant attitude of some Englishmen, Lane among them, and cultural miscommunications contributed to an increased atmosphere of mistrust.

Despite requests by the Roanocs for the English to assist them in waging war against their Neiosioke and Pamlico enemies, Lane refused to get involved, and this may have been interpreted as a sign of gross ingratitude on the part of the newcomers. As European diseases such as smallpox began taking a toll on the indigenous population and Roanoc society began to unravel, an anti-English party (that included Wanchese) began to emerge. Wingina himself seemed to vacillate, but for the time being appeared to listen to the weroances who favored cooperating with the English. Notable among them were Ensinore and Granganimeo, who believed that Lane and his men were actually long-dead ancestors who had returned to life.

Changes occurred early in 1586. In March, Granganimeo succumbed to what was probably smallpox or measles. Wingina changed his name to Pemisapan. Then, on April 20, 1586, the aged Ensinore sickened and died also most likely because of smallpox or measles and the last effective pro-English voice was eliminated from the ruling council, a fact that was not lost on Lane, who gathered information from Indians such as Manteo, who remained friendly to the English.

Having long suspected Pemisapan’s true intentions, Lane was convinced that the chieftain was concocting a plot to annihilate Fort Ralegh’s garrison. Lane had heard that Pemisapan was going to attempt to assemble at least seven hundred warriors from the Roanoc, Weampemeoc, Chawanoac, and other adjacent nations to burn the fortress on June 10, 1586. Lane later said the story was based on intelligence passed on to him by Skyco, a young weroance of the Chawanoac nation (allied to Pemisapan) whom Lane was holding hostage.

There had been debate as to whether the plot actually existed or whether, at best, Lane was breaking under the strain and had become delusional. Thomas Hariot, a scientist who accompanied the expedition, of which he would write his own account, was highly skeptical and had always asserted that Pemisapan had acted honorably.

Lane was determined to make a preemptive strike, an ambush, and on June 1, 1586, sailed from Roanoke Island to the mainland town of Dasamonquepeuc, where Pemisapan was known to be staying. On encountering Pemisapan and his weroances in the village, Lane ordered his men to fire by uttering the prearranged command “Christ, our victory!” Pemisapan was among those who fell, but within a few moments he got up again and ran toward the woods. Shot again before he reached the underbrush, he was pursued and eventually slain by a soldier named Edward Nugent, who returned to Dasamonquepeuc to present Lane with Pemisapan’s severed head.

Significance

Pemisapan’s fate might be seen as a prototype of the antagonism that still haunts American Indians and Europeans. Though Pemisapan’s assassination might have eased the threat to Lane’s colony temporarily, the English left with Sir Francis Drake’s fleet three weeks later. It is probable that Lane’s actions made it more difficult for the second Roanoke Island settlement (the Lost Colony) of 1587-1588 and even to have ensured its ultimate failure.

Bibliography

Durant, David N. Ralegh’s Lost Colony: The Story of the First English Settlement in America. New York: Atheneum, 1981. Strongly slanted toward Lane’s version of events, to the point of granting him heroic stature, and supportive of the theory of duplicity on Pemisapan’s part.

Hulton, Paul. America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. The best visual account of the Roanoke settlement. Includes depictions of Secotan, life among the Roanocs, and perhaps the only pictorial likeness of Pemisapan.

Miller, Lee. Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. New York: Penguin, 2002. An iconoclastic work that takes a radically different view, arguing that Lane was paranoid and becoming mentally ill and that Pemisapan’s plot was nonexistent.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Believes in the conspiracy but blames Grenville rather than Lane for having poisoned intercultural relations between American Indians and Europeans.

Quinn, David Beers. Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584-1606. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Gives a matter-of-fact narration that attempts to place the Roanoke colonies into a larger perspective.

Rountree, Helen C. The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. A detailed depiction of Eastern Algonkian society, with a particularly thorough analysis of the huskanaw ceremony.

Rountree, Helen C., and E. Randolph Turner, III. Before and After Jamestown: Virginia’s Powhatans and Their Predecessors. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002. In the absence of substantial material on the Outer Banks Algonkians, this detailed account of a similar, neighboring society is highly useful.

Stick, David. Roanoke Island: The Beginnings of English America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. The most balanced and impartial attempt to discern Pemisapan’s motives. Leaves it open to question as to whether there was a true conspiracy.