Big Chief Elizabeth: How England's Adventurers Gambled And Won The New World

The follow-up to his bestselling Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Giles Milton's Big Chief Elizabeth is a sprawling, ambitious tale of how the aristocrats and privateers of Elizabethan England reached and colonised the "wild and barbarous shores" of the New World. Milton's story ranges from John Cabot's voyage to America in 1497, to the foundation of the English colony at Jamestown by 1611. The main focus is Sir Walter Ralegh's attempts to establish an English settlement in Roanoke, now North Carolina, after the first voyage there in 1584. The book vividly depicts Elizabethan relations with Native Americans, the conflicts that ensued, and includes amusing anecdotes such as the encounter with Big Chief or Weroanza Wingina. It features notable figures like Walter Ralegh, Thomas Hariot, Arthur Barlowe, and Ralph Lane, and recounts myths involving John Smith and Pocahontas. The book offers an entertaining overview of early Anglo-American history, though it lacks a central narrative.