Wanchese (fl. 1584-86):; Wanchese was an Algonquian Indian from Roanoke Island who, along with Manteo, another Algonquian Indian, was taken to England by Arthur Barlowe’s 1584 reconnaissance party to the New World. It is thought that Manteo and Wanchese, rather than being kidnapped or tricked into coming to England, actually were intentionally sent to England by their tribes in order to gather intelligence so that the Algonquians might better deal with the English. He and Manteo both returned to the Americas in 1585, accompanying Sir Richard Grenville on his voyage in the Tiger through the Caribbean and finally reaching Wokokon (modern Ocracoke Island). Once back in North America Wanchese returned to his own people, and, as conflict and enmity grew between the colonists under Ralph Lane and the tribes on and around Roanoke, it appears Wanchese was among those hostile Indians surrounding Chief Pemisapan, and that after Pemisapan’s death, Wanchese was among the leaders of the group of Indians who remained in conflict with the colonists.;
Works Cited:; Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. William S. Powell. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1996), s.v. “Wanchese.”;