Roanoke

The native town of Roanoke was the first town visited by Englishmen in the New World — Sir Walter Raleigh sent expeditions to the island in 1584, led by Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. It is hypothesized that this may have been a banking town for shell beads, as the word seems to have been analogous to money. This was also a town of the Secotan Nation and appears to have been the home of Granganimo, who was brother of the Secotan chief Wingina. Not long after English colonists built their settlement, Roanoke town was abandoned, likely as part of Wingina’s separation from the English.