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. 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.
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. William S. Powell. (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1996), s.v. “Wanchese.”