Lynne Scott Constantine
Digital Photomontage, 2024. 18” x 24”
“Lost Nations” rethinks the cultural history of the “Lost Colony,” a small English settlement founded on Roanoke Island in 1587, in which Virginia Dare, the first child of English parents in North America, was born, and whose inhabitants vanished sometime before 1590.
The colony was little more than a footnote to history until 1834, when historian George Bancroft romanticized the colony’s disappearance and revived the story of Virginia Dare. Three years later, Eliza Lanesford Cushing, a historical novelist and playwright, created the term “Lost Colony” and mythologized Virginia Dare, imagining her as a chaste beauty gliding through the woods and dazzling the Indians.
Virginia Dare’s legend lives on today in the Roanoke Island theater production The Lost Colony, and in numerous children’s books. In some circles, however, her legend has been appropriated as a symbol of white nationalism. Her “pure Caucasian blood” became part of the cultural argument against Southern European immigration in the early years of the 20th century, and today the Southern Poverty Law Center cites VDARE, named after Virginia Dare, as one of the largest white-supremacist organizations in the US.
In “Lost Nations,” I counter the “Lost Colony” with recognition of a far more substantive loss: the decimation of the indigenous population on Roanoke Island and northeastern North Carolina through a combination of imported disease, warfare, and removal from the land that was their historic home. Although indigenous peoples continue to be an important part of North Carolina today, day-to-day acknowledgment of the original inhabitants of coastal North Carolina persists mainly in place names and street signs. Sadly, we see a similar taking for granted of much indigenous flora and fauna, especially the now greatly diminished acres of protective maritime forests that sheltered and fed the first inhabitants and the settler colonists.
Image Sources: 1) From top left: Map by Emma Willard, “Locations and Wanderings of the Aboriginal Tribes, The Directions of their Wanderings, from ‘History of the United States, or Republic of America,’ 1828 (Boston Rare Maps); 2 John White and others viewing “Croatoan” carved onto palisade post, altered with addition of silhouette (State Archives of North Carolina); 3) Highly manipulated version of the illustration of Virginia Dare from a woodcut in “North Carolina Illustrated” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1857; she is wearing a “Hello My Name Is” badge identifying her as VDARE 4) Front view of the first “Dare Stone,’ supposedly found in 1937 on the east bank of the Chowan River, and now widely believed to be a hoax. The inscription claims to be from Eleanor White Dare, mother of Virginia Dare, explaining the fate of the colony, including the supposed death of her daughter. (Brenau College, Gainesville GA); 5) John White’s 1585 map of coastal exploration (British Museum). All other images in the photomontage are photographs I have taken and manipulated for the purpose of this piece.