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1. Epidemic, Encounter, and Colonial Promotion in Virginia
- University of Massachusetts Press
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37 Chapter 1 epidemic, encounter, and colonial Promotion in Virginia Invisible Bullets and Early American Colonization I n 1585, Sir Walter Ralegh sent an expedition to the “new found land of Virginia” with Queen Elizabeth’s nominal support and the use of her pinnace.1 The colony of several hundred men was England’s first attempt to establish a permanent settlement in the Americas, although Ralegh also directed the men to search for gold and a northwest passage that would provide a western route to East Indian ports. After a stop in the West Indies, where some of the men picked up sugar cane and plantains they hoped to cultivate in Virginia, the colonists landed in present-day North Carolina, or, as the Carolina Algonquians called their land, Ossomocomuck .2 There the English colonists established trading relations with the Roanoke Algonquians and their werowance, or leader, Wingina.3 Several colonists also observed the land and the Roanoke peoples, for Ralegh had commissioned the mathematician Thomas Harriot and the painter John White to map Virginia’s coastline and to survey local resources.4 Harriot published some of his findings in 1588: his Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia presented some of the earliest descriptions of the Carolina Algonquians and of Virginia’s natural resources.5 38 chapter 1 The Report is best known today for its description of the Roanoke Algonquians’ explanation of a mysterious illness, which broke out among the Natives but left the colonists unscathed. As Harriot wrote, the Roanokes attributed the disease to “invisible bullets,” and, he explained, “Those that were immediately to come after vs they imagined to be in the aire, yet inuisible & without bodies, & that they by our intreaty & for the loue of vs did make the people to die in that sort as they did by shooting inuisible bullets into them” (29). Both literary scholars and historians have observed that Harriot’s description of the Roanokes’ theory of disease as caused by “invisible bullets” was at odds with prevailing Galenic medical philosophies, which conceptualized illnesses not as discrete entities that entered and diseased the body but rather as interior conditions or imbalances stimulated by the environment.6 To explain this incompatibility, scholars have identified alternative contexts that could have shaped Harriot’s description of disease as “bullets.” Stephen Greenblatt argues that Harriot described the epidemic and the Roanokes’ responses in order to test theories about the political uses of religious power, theories seen as heterodox in England. Greenblatt suggests that Harriot recorded “alien voices” in order to document potentially subversive perspectives that justified the deployment of colonial power, and that attested to the superiority of English culture.7 This recording ultimately solidified Harriot’s “hypothesis about the origin and nature of European culture and belief,” in this way allowing him to produce knowledge about European beliefs for European readers.8 JoyceChaplinhasrevisedGreenblatt’sanalysisbyplacingHarriot’saccount of the “invisible bullets” in the context of early modern natural philosophy (29).ShefocusesinparticularonHarriot’sinterestinatomism,acontroversial theory that “matter was composed of discrete, durable particles,” similar to bullets.9 Chaplin argues that Harriot placed a description of “natural phenomena being formed of distinct particles” in the Roanoke Algonquians’ mouths in order to explore such ideas without being directly associated with them.10 RatherthanreportingactualNativeideasorwords,Harriotattributedhisown ideas to Native sources in order to avoid accusations of impiety and to contribute to scientific conversations among Europeans. Both of these previous studies show how European religious and scientific debates,respectively,informedHarriot’saccountoftheCarolinaAlgonquians’ illness, but they occlude the cross-cultural contexts in which Harriot’s Report was produced.11 Philosophical and religious theories from Europe were not [44.210.235.247] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:03 GMT) Epidemic, Encounter, and Colonial Promotion 39 the only concepts available to Harriot to describe the mysterious epidemic, nor were Algonquian voices “alien” to Harriot by the time he wrote the Report.12 He had observed the Carolina Algonquians’ medical knowledge and practices during his time in Ossomocomuck, as he and colonist John White traveled throughout the area to document its peoples, flora, and fauna. Given their ignorance of the geography prior to 1585, it is extremely unlikely that Harriot and White traveled alone; Roanoke guides probably accompanied the men and determined where they went and what they observed on their expeditions. Harriot also reported having “special familiarity” (26) with theRoanokepriests,andasIdiscussinmoredetailbelow,hesmokedtobacco after the Roanokes’ “maner” [sic] (16). Furthermore,HarriotandrepresentativesoftheRoanokeAlgonquianshad multipleoccasionstoencounteroneanother’smedicalknowledgeevenbefore Harriot arrived in Ossomocomuck. Two of Ralegh’s men, Arthur Barlowe and...