Roanoak (review)

Film Review Roanoak. The three hour docudrama, produced by James K. McCarthy and Timothy Marx for South Carolina Public Television, was aired over the PBS network in June 1 986 as part of the American Playhouse series. For information on the availability of Roanoak write South Carolina Educational Communications Inc., 1029 Woodbum Road, SC 29302. Send $5 to the same address for copies of the detailed 18 page study guide to the film. This piece first appeared as a Film & History FLASH REVIEW in June, 1986 under the title The Confrontation of Cultures: A Review of Roanoak. Roanoak begins, as it should, with the Carolina Algonquians, demonstrating that the English first intruded on a dynamic culture with its own problems and strengths, one that saw the coming of Europeans within that context. The rank and file Indians are played by Ojibways from Minnesota speaking a living Algonquian language, and their speeches are accompanied by subtitles. The decision to use the Ojibways was controversial, and it meant that the leading actors among the Indians learned their lines phonetically, but the use of the language conveys powerfully the sense of two alien cultures coming into contact with the arrival ofthe English ships. The English story at Roanoke begins with a reconnoitering voyage sent by Sir Walter Raleigh, backer of this venture, to find a suitable location for a colony that could also be a base for privateers striking at the Spanish treasure fleet. Captains Amadas and Barlowe ofthis voyage came back describing the island sheltered within the Outer Banks of North Carolina as ideal, near the sea yet hidden. In addition to their news, they brought two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, who were to learn English and teach their language and their knowledge of the area to Raleigh's scientific advisor, Thomas Hariot. Manteo and Wanchese would ultimately find themselves in the classic situation of cultural intermediaries: offered great opportunities for individual advancement, but alienated from their own culture. Manteo cast his lot with the English, and Wanchese became their sworn enemy. It is a measure of how subtle this film is that neither man is made into a caricature; the plight of each is sympathetically portrayed. In 1585, a full colony was sent under the command of Ralph Lane, fresh from service in the brutal Irish wars. This colony, composed entirely of men and mostly soldiers, paid a price for Adamas and Barlowe's easy optimism. The flagship the Tiger, ran aground and much of the food intended to see the settlement through the winter was spoiled. It was clear from the beginning that the site was poor, and the colony was charged with the task offinding a deepwater bay to the north, Chesapeake Bay, that their Portuguese pilot, Simon Ferdinando do, swore existed. The colony got through the winter by trading for food with the neighboring Indians, principally through the Roanokes themselves. The Roanokes initially welcomed the Europeans because oftheir trade goods, especially metal tools and weapons, and this tribe became powerful as they accumulated stores of such goods, and were the conduit 81 through which other tribes obtained them. There is clear evidence that the historic balance in Indian life was disturbed by the colonists' activities. By spring, 1586, the Roanokes were fed up with feeding the helpless settlers; their own food supply had never been intended to sustain 1 00 extra mouths. Ensenore, a close advisor to the chief, Wingina, died. He had been the principal advocate of friendship with the English. The English got wind of a great gathering of Indians, maybe to mourn Ensenore, maybe to attack the settlement, and Lane decided to strike first. The supply ships, promised for early spring, had not arrived, and the situation was explosive. In the attack, Wingina was killed. Roanoak graphically makes the point that European warfare was far more savage than Indian, as Governor Lane offered gold for Wingina's head. The series' second episode closes with this butchered trophy displayed on a pole in contemporary English fashion. A week later, Sir Francis Drake, fresh from a year of plundering Spanish America, called in and, once it was clear that the situation was untenable, took the settlers home...