historyanalysisThe Public Domain Review1585 · Roanoke, Virginia, USA
A 1585 watercolour set shows Roanoke's Algonquian world before the colony vanished
In 1585 John White, governor of England's Roanoke colony in Virginia, painted watercolour portraits and village scenes of the Algonquian-speaking peoples the settlers lived beside. Watercolour allowed far finer detail than the woodcuts and engravings common then, so his images are among the most detailed European views of Native American life from the sixteenth century. Theodore de Bry later engraved versions of them for a 1590 book, and some details, such as an English doll in a child's hands, were added or changed in the process. When White returned in 1590 he found the colonists gone, leaving only the carved word CROATOAN on a post, and their fate remains unsolved.
The paintings are some of the earliest eyewitness images of Indigenous life on the Atlantic coast, made before European contact reshaped those communities. They also show how one artist's work travelled through engraving and print to shape how Europeans imagined America.
Virginia Dare, White's granddaughter born on Roanoke in 1587, was the first child of English parentage born in North America.
Image: The Public Domain Review
