The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke's Forgotten Indians

4. A Killing and Its Consequences

G ranganimeo died sometime during the winter of –. Afterward Wingina changed his name to Pemisapan and, according to Lane, began plotting against the English. The precise significance of the name change is difficult to discern. We will never know for sure what it meant. We do know that Powhatan Indians changed their names on occasion. Opechancanough, for instance, took a new name during the winter of –, prior to the surprise attack he launched against the English colonists along the James River. The young woman known best as Pocahontas changed her name on a number of occasions during her life.1 James A. Geary, a linguist who assembled a glossary of Carolina Algonquian words, suggested that the name Pemisapan might reflect the vigilant attitude of one who watched from a distance, or one who supervised, “as if that were his office.” This is possible. Wingina’s adoption of a new name probably was related closely to Algonquian spirituality and the weroance’s developing understanding of the English. He had arrived at an important conclusion, a seminal moment in his life, and what followed from this point was going to be very different from all that came before. Pemisapan, as we shall call him from now on, one who watched things closely, had concluded that his people’s survival depended upon separating themselves from the English, whose arrival in Ossomocomuck had initiated drastic and devastating changes in his community.2 Governor Ralph Lane, who said little about the meaning of the name change, dedicated the second part of his account to a description of “the conspiracy of Pemisapan, the discoverie of the same, and at the last, of our          A K  I C request to depart with Sir Francis Drake for England.” Pemisapan, Lane believed, orchestrated a massive Indian uprising directed toward the extermination of the English colonists. There is no reason to believe everything the colony’s governor had to say. Indeed, Lane’s account is our only source for the final months of the colony’s existence. As a result, we must handle his words with care. It is a difficult document to read, owing to the author’s imprecise language and the palpable confusion his work manifests. We must, as a result, question all his assumptions, his choice of words. We must look carefully at his descriptions of the things that he saw, and try to see these events from the perspective of Pemisapan’s followers. It is an imortant undertaking, for, at the end of the chain of events Lane described, Pemisapan lay dead with his head in Edward Nugent’s hand.3 Pemisapan’s proximity to the newcomers, Lane’s story went, provided him with enough richly valued English copper through trade to purchase a large following. According to Lane’s own self-serving account, Pemisapan sent word to the powerful Chowanoacs and Mangoaks of the interior, warning them that Lane and his men intended to sail into their territory and attack and kill any Indians they encountered. Indian villages along the Sound, then, should abandon their villages, remove their corn, and so starve the English invaders and their aggressive leader.4 But there is a problem here. Lane wrote his account of these events after his return to England in . At the time of this expedition, he believed something very different. Lane had told Pemisapan that he hoped to sail up the Albemarle Sound on a voyage of exploration, and he asked Pemisapan for guides. Pemisapan , Lane wrote, “did never rest to solicite continually my going upon them, certifying me of a general assembly . . . made by Menatonon at Choanoak of all his Weroances, & allyes to the number of  bowes preparing to come upon us att Roanoak, and that the Mangoaks also were joined in the same confederacie, who were able of themselves to bring as many more to the enterprise.”5 Ominous news, this. Pemisapan told Lane that perhaps , warriors, an incredible number, would descend on the English colony. It was to confront this “confederacie” that Lane began his voyage. But was Pemisapan telling Lane the truth? Pemisapan had enemies, we know. His warriors fought and had suffered to a point where he saw the English as important allies. Perhaps, by encouraging Lane to confront the Choanoac weroance Menatonon, Pemisapan intended to use the English as a weapon against an important native rival. The English had already roughed up closer threats          at Aquascogoc and along the Albemarle Sound...