*[Ich trinke lieber eine Heisse Schokolade.]
Metals and minerals, especially silver and gold, counted among the chief objectives of the colony established on Roanoke Island in 1585. It was known by this time that Virginia contained iron and copper, but the emphasis was on the precious metals. Governor Lane of the First Colony wrote in the summer of 1585 that, "Gans will search for ores in the very bowels of the earth." At first the search was along the coastal waterways and they looked for surface indications.
The Tidewater terrain was not encouraging. It was the exact opposite of the terrain in which the Germans had developed their training. They had called their mines in Germany the Bergwerke (the mountain works). In Virginia, their first contact was with flat sandy soil. Here, finding any stones was not easy. (Later, we know that they did not even shoe their horses in the Tidewater region because the soil was so soft and free of stones.) The ores, when they were found, were in the Piedmont region above the present day Fredericksburg and Richmond. The one encouraging sign of the search by the first colony was that some of the Indians were wearing copper ornaments around their necks.
The search initially was mostly in the coastal regions and they extended their search for considerable distances along the coast. The realization developed that the coastal regions would not contain any minerals or metals. The Indians told Governor Lane about the rich mines in the hills to the west of Roanoke. As they ventured inland, they (the party from the First Colony) encountered Indians and the way they treated the Indians did not encourage the Indians to cooperate. The English were dependent on the Indians for food and needed their good will.
To reach the mines, Lane set out with a party in boats rowing up the Roanoke against a strong current. The first thirty miles were easy as the river was broad and tame. Lane had procured insufficient supplies in his eagerness to get underway. He expected to obtain food from the Indians. The Indians had moved away from the river with their women and corn and left the riverside villages empty. Even if the upper- river Indians had had no contact with the Europeans, they had heard reports from the coastal Indians. With only two days of food left and none available from the Indians, the Indians launched an attack on Lanes party with arrows. The resolve to continue up river was weakened by the Indian hostility and the lack of food. They rowed downstream very rapidly and on Easter day of 1586 they returned to Roanoke Island, their base of operations. Lane in his report back to London emphasized that they planned on continuing the search up river in the summer. They would prepare better than they had been in this first probe.
*[I prefer drinking hot chocolate.]
(16 Jan 07)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.