Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony

Front Cover
Skyhorse Publishing Inc., 2012 - History - 384 pages
November 1587. A report reaches London that Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition, which left England months before to land the first English settlers in America, has foundered. On Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, a tragedy is unfolding. Something has gone very wrong, and the colony—115 men, women, and children, among them the first English child born in the New World, Virginia Dare—is in trouble. But there will be no rescue. Before help can reach them, all will vanish with barely a trace.
The Lost Colony is America’s oldest unsolved mystery. In this remarkable example of historical detective work, Lee Miller goes back to the original evidence and offers a fresh solution to the enduring legend. She establishes beyond doubt that the tragedy of the Lost Colony did not begin on the shores of Roanoke but within the walls of Westminster, in the inner circle of Queen Elizabeth’s government. As Miller detects, powerful men had reason to want Raleigh’s mission to fail. Furthermore, Miller shows what must have become of the settlers, left to face a hostile world that was itself suffering the upheavals of an alien invasion. Narrating a thrilling tale of court intrigue, spy rings, treachery, sabotage, Native American politics, and colonial power, Miller has finally shed light on a four-hundred-year-old unsolved mystery.

From inside the book

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS
PART ONE
1 THE DISAPPEARANCE
2 A CASE OF MISSING PERSONS
GOVERNOR
4 OF LONDON
5 OF POPULATION
15 POLITICAL TURMOIL
16 THE PLAYERS
17 THE MOTIVE
18 THE GAME
19 THE FALL
PART FOUR
20 RALEIGHS SEARCH
21 JAMESTOWN

6 OF RELIGION
7 THE COLONISTS
8 IN CERTAIN DANGER
PART TWO
9 SABOTAGE
GRENVILLE AND THE SECOTAN 1585
LANES COMMAND 15851586
12 CHAUNIS TEMOATAN AND A MURDER 1586
PART THREE
13 THE LOST COLONISTS 1587
14 RALEIGHS RISE TO POWER
22 WAR ON THE POWHATAN
23 REQUIEM
24 DEEP IN THE INTERIOR
25 WHO ARE THE MANDOAG?
26 EPILOGUE
WINGINA AND THE SECOTAN
THE MEANING OF MANDOAG AND NOTTOWAY
NOTES AND REFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Lee Miller holds a masterrsquo;s degree in anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. She was head of research and a writer for the CBS TV series 500 Nations and a consultant for the BBC TV series Land of the Eagle. She has also served as a consultant for various Indian nations, as well as for U.S. federal and state agencies, including the Library of Congress. Of Kaw heritage, she is the founder of the Native Learning Foundation and the author of From the Heart: Voices of the American Indian. She lives in upstate New York.