Manteo

Manteo was a Croatan man who travelled to England with the Roanoke expeditions and served as an interpreter and intermediary. He was baptised in 1587 and named Lord of Roanoke, but his later fate is unknown after the disappearance of the English colony.

Manteo returned to the Carolina coast with the English and continued to act as an intermediary at a time of deteriorating relations between colonists and neighbouring communities. In 1587 he was baptised and formally given the title Lord of Roanoke by the English governor John White. His fate after the disappearance of the colony is unknown, leaving the surviving record dependent largely on English accounts of the expeditions.

Angela Hunt’s Roanoke draws Manteo into its reconstruction of the failed English colony as an Indigenous intermediary whose knowledge of the Carolina coast and relationship with the settlers complicate any simple division between English and Native communities. Giles Milton’s Big Chief Elizabeth follows the historical Manteo and Wanchese from the first Roanoke ventures to their journey to England, showing how translation, diplomacy and radically different expectations shaped the earliest English attempts at settlement.