The First Colony Foundation has published a book tracing what the nonprofit group has learned since forming in April 2003 about the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony.
The watercolors that White produced during his yearlong voyage can be found in two sources: a collection of originals at the British Museum in London and the illustrated edition of Hariot’s
A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia. Hariot’s illustrated report, published by Theodor de Bry in 1590, includes etchings based on White originals, some of which were later lost. Many more of White’s illustrations were destroyed when, as the colonists deserted Virginia, Drake’s sailors threw overboard a chest containing his work.
White’s surviving illustrations provide a detailed account of Indian life informed by the artist’s European training and cultural expectations. Often posing his subjects in the Hapsburg style, White drew a warrior decorated in body paint and holding a bow, and a chief looking to his right and with one arm akimbo. White also captured Virginia Indian cultural activities, such as a couple sitting on a mat eating, a group of men and women