and Indian Legend
Virginia Dare
Many tall tales have been started from the mystery about the Lost Colony of Virginia.
Virginia Dare is the subject of an indian legend which has many variations.
The granddaughter of Governor John White, Virginia Dare was the first child born of English parents in the new world. The child's mother was White's daughter Eleanor. Her father, Ananias Dare, served as one of the Governor's assistants. Virginia was born on August 18, 1587, days after the colonists arrival on Roanoke Island. Her baptism on Sunday following her birth was the second recorded Christian sacrament administered in North America. The first baptism had been administered a few days earlier to Manteo, an Indian chief who was rewarded for his service by being christened and named ''Lord''.
In the Early Virginia settlement there was a child born, the one the pale people knew as Virginia Dare.
The Indian people of the Chesapeake area called the newborn White Fawn.
The legend is said that when she died, her spirit assumed the form of a white fawn, whose face would gaze across the sea yearning for the far way shore. If anyone could catch the fawn and shoot her with a silver arrowhead this would restore her to a mortal being.
The Hatteras people lived along these shores, they were friends with the pale people who had come from far across the sea.
A young hunter, it is said a chiefs son, came across the abandoned settlement of Roanoke, there were no people livng there anymore. He saw a beautiful white doe and drew his bow to shoot it but he did not let the arrow go.
Legends grew from this, and the white doe was well known among the hunters of Roanoke Island. They would often see her browsing among the brown herds of deer. Many tried to hunt her but it is said their arrows fell harmlessly at her hooves. This added to the legend of the White Doe. It was said the white doe was the leader of all the deer of Roanoke Island.
As time went on the white doe became a legend as well as a great challenge for the hunters.
They decided to hold a large deer hunt and the best bow hunters would come and join the hunt for the white doe. Only one hunter, the chiefs son, had an arrow with a silver tip. It is said it came from the Queen far across the sea.
The doe was hunted and trailed until she came to the ruins of the old settlement. The hunter took aim and let loose the arrow that sent the silver tipped arrow into the beautiful does heart.
Then he tossed his bow aside, ran to the doe and lifted her head. and in her dying eyes he saw the face of a beautiful woman, and she whispered her name, Virginia Dare, and died.
So the legend of Virginia Dare among the Indians of Roanoke.
This tale has survived in one form or another since the earliest of history of North Carolina.
Some claim the white doe still roams the Outer Banks.
Virginia, stands hauntingly silenced in the white Carrara marble crafted by the American sculpturer, Maria Louisa Lander in her Italian studio around 1859. Lander was as inventive as a missing children artist surmising how the daughter of Elinor White and Ananias Dare lineage would appear as a young adult. Today the marble, inspired by Lander’s visit to the British Museum, graces the sensual 16th century-style Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island