A familiar knowledge of the history of one's own country increases patriotism and stimulates valor. For this reason the study of written records called history should be supplemented by research into myths, folk-lore, and legends. While the value of history lies ever in its truth, it must yet bear the ideals of the people who participated in the events narrated. Tradition was the mother of all history, and was necessarily robed in the superstitions of the era of which the tradition tells. History writers, jealously guarding the truth, have striven to banish all traditions which seemed colored by fancy or even freighted with a moral lesson. These exiled traditions, bearing the seed-germs of truth, cannot die, but, like wandering spirits, float down the centuries enveloped in the mists of superstition, until finally, embodied in romance or song, they assume a permanent form called legend and become the heritage of a people. Legends are the satellites of history because they have their origin in the same events, and the history of all countries is interspersed with them.

The legend of The White Doe is probably the oldest and possibly the least known of all the legends which relate to the history of the United States. It is a genuine American legend, and the facts from which it had its origin form the first chapter in the history of English colonization in North America. Those facts are found in the repeated attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to establish an English colony in the New World. The Spaniards were in Florida, the French were in Nova Scotia, but England had gained no possessions in North America when Raleigh began his efforts. This fact assumes more importance when we remember that civilization has made the greatest progress in those parts of America where the English became dominant. In South America, dominated by the Spaniards, civilization has made no strides, while in the United States a new nation has arisen whose ultimate destiny none may limit or foretell. As the gates of a new century open and disclose almost unlimited fields for human progress, this new nation, with an enthusiasm and courage born of success, has taken her place to lead in the eternal forward search for better opportunities and higher life for the human race. All this grand destiny, all this ripening opportunity, like a harvest from a few seeds, is traced back, event after event, to the early struggles of those who braved the dangers of sea and forest in the attempts to colonize America. Those pioneer efforts, so generously promoted by Sir Walter Raleigh, though only partially successful, were the stepping-stones which later led to the better-known settlement of Jamestown, in Virginia. A brief rÉsumÉ of those stepping-stones will make them familiar to all.

In 1584 Queen Elizabeth made a grant to Raleigh for all the land from Nova Scotia to Florida, which was called Virginia, in honor of the Virgin Queen, as Elizabeth was called.

The first expedition sent out under this grant was in the same year, 1584, and was entirely at the expense of Sir Walter Raleigh, as were all of the expeditions up to 1590. It was solely for the purpose of exploration, and was under the command of Amadas and Barlowe, who, after coasting along the Atlantic shores, entered Pamlico Sound and landed on the island of Roanoak, on the coast of the present State of North Carolina. They made the acquaintance of the tribes there resident, explored the country on the coast, and returned to England to bear enthusiastic testimony to the delightsomeness of the country. They took with them back to England two native Indian chiefs, Manteo and Wanchese, who returned to America on a subsequent voyage, as the official records tell.

The following year, 1585, a colony of one hundred and seven men landed on this same island of Roanoak. They came organized to occupy and possess the land granted to Raleigh, and to secure such benefits therefrom as in those days were deemed valuable. They remained one year, exploring the country and trying to establish relations with the Indians. They built houses, planted crops, and looked forward to the arrival of more men and food, which had been promised from England. But no ships came, provisions grew scarce, and before the crops they had planted were mature enough to harvest, Sir Francis Drake, the great sea-rover of that day, appeared off the island with a fleet of vessels.

Knowing the dangers of that coast, he did not attempt to come to the island, but sent in to learn of the welfare of the colony, and offered to supply their immediate needs. They asked, among other things, that their sick and weak men be taken back to England, that food for those who remained be given them, and for a vessel in which they might return home if they so desired, all of which Drake granted. But a dreadful storm arose, which lasted three days and drove the promised vessel out to sea, with a goodly number of the colonists and the promised food on board. Seeing thus a part of their number and their food gone, the remaining colonists became homesick and panic-stricken and begged Drake to take them all to England, which he did. Thus ended the first attempt at English colonization in North America.

Fifteen days after their departure Sir Richard Grenville arrived with three vessels, bringing the promised supplies, but found the men gone. Wishing to hold the country for England until another colony could arrive, he left fifteen men on the island with provisions for two years, and he returned to England. Those fifteen men are supposed to have been murdered and captured by the Indians, as the next colony found only some bones, a ruined fort, and empty houses in which deer were feeding.

The leaving of those fifteen men is considered the second attempt at colonization, and is recognized as a failure. But all success is built only by persistent repetition of effort, and so, in 1587, another colony came from England to this same island of Roanoak. Among those colonists were seventeen women and nine children, thus proving the intention of making permanent homes, and the hope of establishing family ties which should for all time unite England and North America. A few days after the arrival of this colony at Roanoak, Virginia Dare was born,—she being the first child born of English parents on the soil of North America,—and because she was the first child born in Virginia she was called Virginia. Her mother, Eleanor Dare, was the daughter of John White, the governor of the colony, and the wife of one of the assistant governors.

The Sunday following her birth she was baptized, this being another fact of official record.

By Sir Walter Raleigh's command the rite of baptism had been administered, a few days earlier, to Manteo, an Indian chief, who had visited England with a returning expedition, as previously mentioned. This baptism of the adult Indian and of the white infant were the first Christian sacraments administered in North America, and are worthy of commemoration.

The colonists soon found that to make possible and permanent their home in a new land many things were needed more than they had provided. So at their urgent request their leader, Governor White, grandfather of Virginia Dare, consented to return to England to secure the needed supplies, with which he was to return to them the following year. When White reached England he found war going on with Spain, and England threatened with an invasion by the famous Spanish Armada. His queen needed and demanded his services, and not until 1590—three years later—did he succeed in returning to America. When at last he came the colonists had disappeared, and the only clue to their fate was the word "Croatoan," which he found carved on a tree; it having been agreed between them that if they changed their place of abode in his absence they would carve on a tree the name of the place to which they had gone.

The arrival of those colonists, the birth and baptism of Virginia Dare, the return of White to England, the disappearance of the colony, and the finding of the word Croatoan, these facts form the record of that colony, the disappearance of which is a mystery which history has not solved.

But tradition illumines many periods of the past which history leaves in darkness, and tradition tells how this colony found among friendly Indians a refuge from the dangers of Roanoak Island, and how this infant grew into fair maidenhood, and was changed by the sorcery of a rejected lover into a white doe, which roamed the lonely island and bore a charmed life, and how finally true love triumphed over magic and restored her to human form,—only to result in the death of the maiden from a silver arrow shot by a cruel chieftain.

This tradition of a white doe and a silver arrow has survived through three centuries, and not only lingers where the events occurred, but some portions of it are found wherever in our land forests abound and deer abide. From Maine to Florida lumbermen are everywhere familiar with an old superstition that to see a white doe is an evil omen. In some localities lumbermen will quit work if a white deer is seen. That such a creature as a white deer really exists is demonstrated by their capture and exhibition in menageries, and to-day the rude hunters of the Alleghany Mountains believe that only a silver arrow will kill a white deer.

The disappearance of this colony has been truly called "the tragedy of American colonization," and around it has hung a pathetic interest which ever leads to renewed investigation, in the hope of solving the mystery. From recent search into the subject by students of history a chain of evidence has been woven from which it has come to be believed that the lost colony, hopeless of succor from England, and deprived of all other human associations, became a part of a tribe of friendly Croatoan Indians, shared their wanderings, and intermarried with them, and that their descendants are to be found to-day among the Croatoan Indians of Robeson County, North Carolina.

(Those who desire to investigate this supposed solution of the mystery can easily secure the facts and the conclusions formed by those who have made a careful study of the subject.)

Of course, it can never be known certainly whether Virginia Dare was or was not of that number, but the full tradition of her life among the Indians is embodied in the legend of The White Doe.

Much has been written about the Indian princess Pocahontas, and much sentiment has clustered around her association with the Jamestown colony, while few have given thought to the young English girl whose birth, baptism, and mysterious disappearance link her forever with the earlier tragedies of the same era of history. It seems a strange coincidence that the Indian maiden Pocahontas, friend and companion of the White Man, having adopted his people as her own, should sleep in death on English soil, while the English maiden, Virginia Dare, friend and companion of the Red Man, having adopted his people as her own, should sleep in death on American soil,—the two maidens thus exchanging nationality, and linking in life and in death the two countries whose destinies seem most naturally to intermingle.

The scattered fragments of this legend have been carefully collected and woven into symmetry for preservation. Notes from authentic sources have been appended for the benefit of searchers into the historical basis of the poem, which is offered to the public with the hope that it may increase interest in the early history of our home land and strengthen the tie which binds England and the United States.

Sallie Southall Cotten.