Thomas Harriot 1560-1621

Birth and Education

Thomas Harriot  was born in Oxford County in 1560 to an apparently unremarkable family of unrecorded lineage.  While his father is mentioned as a “plebeian” or commoner and there are records of a married sister as well as relations in Berkshire virtually no other genealogical information is known.  His innate genius earned him a place at Oxford University where he matriculated on December 20th 1577 as a “Commoner of St. Mary’s Hall” and then graduated with a BA in July 1580.  He displayed from an early age remarkable linguistic abilities as recorded by his life long friend Tom Buckner. 
During this period at Oxford he was befriended by the Geographer Richard Hakluyt and Thomas Allen a keen astronomer.  Hakluyt introduced Harriot to Walter Raleigh who was then studying at Oriel College Oxford the “preserve of the gentry and nobility.”

Virginia

Following the voyages of Columbus, Spain had made major strides in developing an overseas Empire throughout the Americas and had, in consequence, become the richest country in Europe.  A central legal framework for ownership established in Spanish law was based on discovery and mapping rather than occupation.
England had made few attempts to acquire overseas lands until the 1580s.  The only significant early expedition supported by and under the English flag was that of John Cabot  and his son Sebastian in 1497 when Cape Breton was claimed in the names of Venice and England.  This had led to much activity in the fisheries of Newfoundland but no colony was established.
In 1578 Sir Humphrey Gilbert [1539-1583] had made, with Raleigh his half-brother, an unsuccessful expedition to Cape Verde Islands and in 1582 Maurice Brown returned from his voyage and spent considerable time with Raleigh at his home, Durham House.  It is thought that Brown may have promulgated the idea of colonisation for profit. Gilbert sought, and was granted, a patent for the establishment of a colony and sailed with Brown on a disastrous expedition in 1583 when Brown was drowned in the wreck of the Delight and Gilbert in that of the Squirrel.
Nothing daunted, Raleigh recognised the potential of colonisation and established an inner circle to organise further expeditions.  Atlantic navigation then in its infancy presented a major challenge and following advice from Hakluyt Raleigh employed Harriot to address the issue.  Harriot not only developed astronomical aids but also created new navigation tools and produced a guide called Articon which unfortunately is not extant.  Hakluyt in his Discourse on Western planting produced in 1584 addressed the difficulties presented in English Law, which required occupation to establish ownership, and also promoted the principle and possibility of colonisation for profit.
Armed with this support and fortified with his support from the Queen, Raleigh obtained a patent similar to Gilbert’s and with similar privileges dated 25th March 1584.
Central to this, and later expeditions by Raleigh, was a social and philosophical motivation for colonial efforts wherein Raleigh “offers Elizabeth not only a rich country and the weakening of Spanish colonial power but also colonial subjects who do not have to be subjected.”    H.T. Goranson  has suggested that the key to the easy subjection of the natives is their response to representations and symbols and particularly European technology and materials.  Goranson also attributes a further motivation in that the expedition was “to search for new World wisdom to revolutionize thought”  and suggests that this was central to Harriot’s study of Native American culture while others undertook exploration and led him to the possibility of “a religion-free system of abstraction and logic.”
In 1584 Raleigh made an exploratory voyage to Virginia.  The following year Raleigh assembled an armada of 7 ships under Admiral Sir Richard Grenville which sailed from Plymouth on the 19th May 1585.  On board the flag ship Tyger was Harriot charged with making astronomical observations.  The party comprised some 200 men including Thomas Candish or Cavendish who later circumnavigated the world; and John White  charged with mapping and making sketches in the new world.  They arrived on the 20th of June at Cape Fear.  July was spent in surveying but Harriot spent his time recording the “topography, flora and fauna”  of Roanoke Island and meeting the local tribes and communicating with them through the phonetic alphabet he had generated from his studies with the  Indians who had returned to England with the 1586 expedition.  Two ships returned to England later that year including that of Admiral Grenville which arrived in Plymouth on the 18th of October 1585.  “There were left in Virginia as Raleigh’s ‘first colonie,’ one hundred and nine men.”   In July 1586 Sir Francis Drake and his fleet returned to England bringing the remaining colonists.
Following the failure of this expedition it appeared that English attempts at colonisation had stalled irrevocably.  In 1588 Harriot published “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia.”  According to Harriot the motivation for its production was to counter the fact that “there haue bin diuers and variable reportes with some slaunderous and shamefull speeches bruited abroad by many that returned from thence…”   However in the article “The credit of truth” the author states that the report

“can be seen in some senses as a last ditch effort to Save Raleigh’s Virginia and all the economic advantages it could carry..  The elaborate folio, with its elegant engravings and impressive topography, is yet another sleight-of hand trick, diverting its audience’s attention from the negative reports published in Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations and from the serious problems Raleigh had fulfilling the terms of his patent.”

Undoubtedly urgency was lent to this purpose by the expiration of Raleigh’s Charter on the 24th March 1590 if no settlers were in place. 
The book is divided into four sections: the first two deal with flora, fauna and the produce of the area; the third deals with the native people, their culture religion etc.; and the final section provides a summing up.  Perhaps the most notable sections are those dealing with Tobacco and Potatoes.  Vppówoc;

“The Spaniardes generally call it Tobacco.  The leues thereof being dried and brought into powder: they use to take fume or smoke thereof by sucking it through pipes made of claie…whereby their bodies are notably preserued in health, and know not many greeuous diseases wherewithal wee in England are oftentimes afflicted.”

Potatoes or:

 “Openavk are kind of roots of round forme, some of the bignes of walnuts, some far greater, which are found in moist and marish grounds growing many together one by another in ropes, or as thogh they were a string.  Being boiled or sodden they are very good meate.”

He also describes turkeys and later describes the impact of a European disease, probably the common cold, on the native population:

“after our departure from euerie such towne, the people began to die very fast, and many in short space; in some townes about twentie, in some fourtie, and in one sixe score…”

It appears that Harriot held the view that the natives understanding was based on basic senses, particularly those of taste and touch as being central to a perception of the world.
Harriot’s book is the “first original authority in our language relating to that part of English North America”  or the area called by the Indians Wingandacoa and named Virginia in England in 1584.  The drawings were made by Captain John White during his sojourn in Roanoke and De Bry made the engravings from White’s work.  It is one of the rarest early English printed books with;
 
“One copy is in the Grenville Library; another is in the Bodleian; a third slumbers in the University of Leyden; a fourth is in the Lennox Library; a fifth in Lord Taunton’s; a sixth in the late Henry Huth’s; and a seventh produced 300 in 1883 in the Drake sale.”

The first edition was printed in February 1588 [1589] with the De Bry illustrated edition in 1590.