Walter Raleigh has claims to be the key figure in the English colonisation of the New World. Although there had been a pioneering probe by Sir Richard Horne in 1536 (which ended in cannibalism), England's interest in North America quickened only in the 1580s - not, coincidentally, the era when Elizabeth I challenged Philip II of Spain in the Indies. Raleigh and his associates, such as Sir Richard Grenville, envisaged rich pickings for shareholders in an American company, and settlers were motivated to brave the perils of the Atlantic by reports of a rich, and above-all disease-free, promised land. The first Raleigh-sponsored expedition, in 1584, established friendly contacts with Indians near Roanoke Island, Virginia and even brought two of the "savages" back to England, where they caused a sensation.
Knighted by the queen and backed by her enthusiasm, Raleigh sent out another expedition in 1587 under Grenville. His choice as "governor" of the new land, Ralph Lane, fell foul of the previously friendly Indians when the colonists introduced smallpox. After some bloody warfare, Lane decided he could not sustain himself; the half-starved and demoralised settlers were taken back to England by Sir Francis Drake. Still undaunted, Raleigh sent out a third expedition in 1587 under John White. The new pioneers were supposed to settle in Chesapeake Bay, but the fleet's captain landed the 118 men, women and children at Roanoke and refused to go to Chesapeake. Seeing that they would be marooned indefinitely, for all relief ships would proceed to the non-existent "new settlement" at Chesapeake; the disgruntled colonists forced their leader John White to abandon his daughter and granddaughter and brave wind and waves once more to return to England.
Because of the threat from the Spanish Armada and other mishaps, White was unable to return until 1590. He found a message that suggested the colonists had gone to Croatoan near Cape Ilatteras and tried to sail there but was driven into the Atlantic by storms and forced to return to London. He never saw his family again. Milton spends a lot of time, as have historians before him, on the mystery of the "lost colony". The most likely solution to the mystery is that they intermarried with Indian tribes in the Chesapeake area but were then massacred in 1607 by the Powhatan "emporer" when the Jamestown colonists arrived and the Indians feared the two sets of whites would make common cause.
While he is retreading this fairly well known story, Milton tells a lively, fluent tale. True, he is often in error, as when he refers to Sir Philip Sidney as Elizabeth's "beloved Philip Sidney". The recent biography by Alan Stewart makes it clear that Elizabeth never liked the soldier-poet. But while he is on Anglocentric ground one cannot complain too much. The real problem with this book begins with the title. Milton devotes a great deal of attention to the founding of the Jamestown colony by the Wingfield-Newport expedition in 1607, and the famous subsequent events involving the Powhatan chief, Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, but these were events in the reign of James I and nothing to do with "Big Chief Elizabeth".
More seriously, Milton's publishers have given hostages to fortune by claiming that this is the first history to tell this story from the Indian point of view. In the first place, it cannot be the first such narrative, for there have already been several, of which Helen Rountree's recent Pocahontas' People is a good example. Secondly, this does not even attempt to tell the story from the Native American point of view, and all the signs are that Milton is not equipped for the job. He nowhere refers to the Powhatan chief by his proper name, Wahunsonacock, but calls him Powhatan, a nickname given him by the colonists from the name of one of his many residences.
Milton does not differentiate the tribes clearly, or tells us that those in the vicinity of Roanoke Island were Secotans, as opposed to the nine Algonquian nations united under Wahunsonacock in the Powhatan Con federacy in the Cheapeake area. He says that an unidentified chief named Mentatonon submitted to Lane and Queen Elizabeth, but does not tell us that Menatonon (actually paramount chief of the Chowanocs) did so only after Lane kidnapped his son and held him a prisoner in leg irons. As a popular introduction to the subject, this book is good fun, but it is woefully inadequate from the standpoint of both scholarship and accuracy.
Frank McLynn is a biographer and critic