Harriot, Thomas (1560-1621)

Thomas Harriot (1560-1621)

English Ethnographer

Sources

Youth. Little is known about Thomas Harriot’s early life. He was born in Oxford in 1560, and at the age of seventeen he enrolled at university, where he studied science and mathematics. After graduation he joined Sir Walter Raleigh’s household staff and worked as a tutor. Raleigh was fascinated by Harriot’s lessons in astronomy, navigation, and math and enlisted his aid when in 1584 Raleigh received a charter to colonize the New World. At his patron’s request Harriot drew up the plans for Arthur Barlowe’s exploratory voyage, and with a textbook he had written he taught the pilots and crewmen how to apply their nautical navigational skills to the exploration of land.

The Lane Expedition. When Barlowe returned with glowing reports of the future site of the colony, Harriot decided to join the Ralph Lane expedition. His job was to record astronomical observations, aid in navigation, and with John White observe the native inhabitants as well as their natural environment with the aim of mapping and surveying the colony. He was well prepared to undertake an ethnographical investigation of the Algonquian population because he had spent a full winter with two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, who had been captured by Barlowe during his visit to the area. Harriot learned the Algonquian tongue spoken by the Indians while he taught his two charges English; he also began to develop a phonetic alphabet to aid in recording their speeches and vocabulary. Upon their arrival at Roanoke, Harriot spent the next several months recording his observations of Indian life while White painted what he saw.

A Briefe and True Report. Harriot published his observations upon his arrival back in England in 1588. He began A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia with a chapter on Virginia’s “Marchantable Commodities.” What caught his eye first were tent caterpillars he took to be silkworms. With careful cultivation of mulberry trees, the plant on which silkworms fed, Harriot predicted “there will rise as great profite in time to the Virginians, as there of doth now to the Persians, Turkes, Italians and Spaniards.” Other economic endeavors for which he thought the colony was well suited included the cultivation of sassafras, used as a treatment for venereal disease, and wine grapes. Cedar, a valuable wood, was plentiful, and the great walnut and oak trees provided nuts and acorns from which a “good and sweete oyle” could be made. The colony also held out great potential for miners and hunters. He had found iron deposits in two areas, and the copper ornaments worn by the wereowances suggested that the mineral would not be hard to find. Deer, bears, and wildcats could provide hunters with enough furs to make a “good profite.”

Assessment of the Natives. Having outlined where and how colonists could extract a living from the Carolina coast, Harriot went to great pains to describe the Algonquian groups already resident in the area. He first assured the readers they had nothing to fear: the Indians had “no edge tooles or weapons, of yron or Steele to offend us with.” They also lacked any defenses for English weapons, having only shields made of bark and armor made of woven twigs. Their towns were small, with only ten to twelve homes on average, and they were organized as chiefdoms under the command of various wereowances. “In respect of us,” Harriot informed his English audience, “they are a people poore, and for want of skill and judgement....” And the fact that they believed their god had created woman first, Harriot implied, was further evidence of their inferiority. In conclusion he reminded readers that were it not for certain English provocations, which were nonetheless justifiable to his mind, the colony might have survived. The Indians, he asserted, gave what they got, and future settlers ought, he believed, to take the lesson into consideration.

Impact. A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia sold perhaps two or three hundred copies. However, it was republished two years later complete with engravings of the detailed and naturalistic paintings made by White. The second edition, undertaken by the Flemish printer and engraver Theodor de Bry, was translated into Latin, French, German, and reissued in English. With the addition of the drawings and the accessibility that different translations offered, the book became incredibly popular and was reissued for several decades. Indeed, the story of the first Roanoke colony became standard reading among a literate European population that was fascinated by the New World. One of the most avid readers was John Smith, who later governed the Jamestown colony. Not only did he prefigure his behavior based on what Harriot wrote, but also he took the volume as a model and patterned his own writings about Virginia after it. Harriot’s small book also transformed the way Europeans wrote about the New World. Instead of simply describing native behaviors and the flora and the fauna, those who followed Harriot began to rationalize native cultures and to develop scientifically based interpretations of the land and its human, animal, and vegetable inhabitants in order to calculate the wealth that they might extract from their colonies.

Later Years. Unlike White, Harriot did not return for the second Roanoke colony. Instead he became a favorite in the household of Henry, earl of Northumberland. Although he corresponded with Johannes Kepler, the famous German astronomer and mathematician, Harriot failed to make any further contribution to the sciences. He died of cancer of the nose in 1621.

Sources

Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: The Complete 1590 Theodor de Bry Edition (New York: Dover, 1972);

David Beers Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke: Voyages and Colonies, 1584–1606 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).