WHAT RALPH LANE SAID
IN 1586To the Northwest the farthest place of our discovery was to Chawanook distant from Roanoak about 130 miles. Our passage thither lies through a broad sound, but all fresh water, and the channel of a great depth, navigable for good shipping, but out of the channel full of shoals...
Chawanook itself is the greatest province and Seigniorie lying upon that river, and that the town itself is able to put 700 fighting men into the field, besides the force of the province itself.
The king of the said province is called Menatonon, a man impotent in his limbs, but otherwise for a savage, a very grave and wise man, and of a very singular good discourse in matters concerning the state, not only of his own country, and the disposition of his own men, but also of his neighbors round about him as well far as near, and of the commodities that each country yields.
When I had him prisoner with me, for two days that we were together, he gave me more understanding and light of the country than I had received by all the searches and savages that before I or any of my company had had conference with: it was in March last past 1586.
Among other things he told me, that going three days' journey in a canoe up his river of Chawanook, and then descending to the land, you are within four days' journey to pass over land Northeast to a certain king's country, whose province lies upon the Sea, but his place of greatest strength is an island situated, as he described unto me, in a bay, the water round about the island very deep.
Out of this bay he signified unto me, that this King had so great quantity of pearls, and does so ordinarily take the same, as that not only his own skins that he wears, and the better sort of his gentlemen and followers are full set with the said pearls, but also his beds, and houses are garnished with them, and that he has such quantity of them, that it is a wonder to see...
The king of Chawanook promised to give me guides to go overland into that king's country whensoever I would: but he advised me to take good store of men with me, and good store of victual, for he said, that king would be loth to suffer any strangers to enter into his country, and especially to meddle with the fishing for any pearls there, and that he was able to make a great many of men in to the field, which he said would fight very well...
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(Ralph) Lane's 1586 description of the location of Chowanoke (Chawanook) is one of the most specific in the English records; he says: "From Muscamunge (near Edenton) we enter the river, and the jurisdiction of Chowanoke (the society): there the river (the Chowan) beginneth to straighten until it comes to Chowanoke (the town) and then groweth to be as narrowe as the Thames betweene Westminster and Lambeth" (Quinn and Quinn 1982:25). The archaeological site of Chowanoke is located exactly on the only high bluffs at that point where the river begins to narrow between Hertford and Gates counties, and where environmental factors and location below the mouth of the Wiccacon River at its confluence with the Chowan confirm both Lane's description and the location shown on two of John White's maps. ~ From The Carolina Algonkian Project, copyright 2001.
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