Virginia Dare
New World firstborn
Of Roanoke Colony
Disappeared
With kith and kin
Without a trace
Your people lost
Only a cryptic phrase
“Croatan” carved into a tree trunk
Its meaning cannot be deciphered
Did your people impose their will
On an unwilling land and its native peoples?
Did you succumb to nature’s wrath?
A North Carolina barrier island
Malaria bred in the wetlands
Salt marsh, sandy soil ill suited
For Old World agriculture
Innocent baby, unknowing, born to English parents
There was hope in your birth, new beginnings,
Raleigh, the colony’s founder, returning from Britain,
Expecting, a thriving settlement,
Finding only desolation, a people vanished
Questions without answers
A mystery in the ages to come
Twenty years passed, before the English tried to
Colonize the land again- 1607 – this time to the North
In Virginia – named in honor of Queen Elizabeth –
The new settlement – Jamestown – homage to the
Reigning monarch, James I – a dour Calvinistic Scotsman
Jamestown nearly suffered the same fate as Roanoke
Saved only by the intercession of a woman
Pocahontas – Chief Powhattan’s daughter
Pleading to save the life of an influential man
Captain John Smith – his leadership rallied the settlers
Summoned the will to survive
Among the privileged English gentry
Unaccustomed to hard labor of the earth
Came to American seeking riches and renown
Though not wrought of their own hands
In England, farm laborers did their bidding
The drudgery of cultivation
Necessity forced their hands to tillage
Then, tobacco – a boon from the Indians – became
The new cash crop – all of Europe clamoring for more
Impetus to the slave trade from Africa
To work the tobacco plantations
British civilization took root
American history began
The passage of five centuries – the mystery of Roanoke unsolved
And your legacy, Virginia Dare,
I want to believe
You were not wickedly slain
An Indian woman with mercy snuggled
You in her papoose – mothered you as her own
Despite your fair face – bloodlines commingled through time
The folklore of North Carolina tells another tale
You perished with the colony
Yet, your spirit remains – transformed
Taking the shape of a white deer
Sighted on moonlight nights striding
Exquisitely through the scrub pines of the North Carolina forest
Forever, a presence in the land