Description
The Virginia Company of London’s 1606 charter encouraged colonists to “bring the infidels and salvages” to humane civilitie” – key to their educational and missionary programme. As a result, those traveling back across the Atlantic were encouraged to bring captives. Nanawack was one of those captives, sent back by Lord DeLaWarr (as governor of the colony). Initially, his stay in England was unsuccessful, assuming conversion was its object, but he was eventually moved into the house of a “godly family”. Sadly he died there, and neither his burial place nor date of death is recorded. Since we do not know exactly where he was placed, we have put his map pointer on DeLaWarr’s ancestral pile and birthplace, Wherwell Abbey in Hampshire.
Bibliographic sources
Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 51-2; Thrush, Indigenous London, 44