page_title: Thomas Harriot
section_title: Roanoke
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Harriot / Biography / Roanoke
caption_attribution_description: English: Dancing Secotan Indians in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by John White in 1585. Deutsch: Tanz der Secotan-Indianer in North Carolina. Aquarell von John White aus dem Jahr 1585.
context_page_description: Thomas Harriot, also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator who made advances within the scientific field. Thomas Harriot was recognized for his contributions in astronomy, mathematics, and navigational techniques. Harriot worked closely with John White to create advanced maps for navigation. While Harriot worked extensively on numerous papers on the subjects of astronomy, mathematics, and navigation the amount of work that was actually published was sparse. So sparse that the only publication that has been produced by Harriot was The Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. The premise of the book includes descriptions of English settlements and financial issues in Virginia at the time. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles. Harriot was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 26 July 1609, over four months before Galileo Galilei.
  After graduating from St Mary Hall, Oxford, Harriot travelled to the Americas, accompanying the 1585 expedition to Roanoke island funded by Sir Walter Raleigh and led by Sir Ralph Lane.
context_section_description: After his graduation from Oxford in 1580, Harriot was first hired by Sir Walter Raleigh as a mathematics tutor; he used his knowledge of astronomy/astrology to provide navigational expertise, help design Raleigh's ships, and serve as his accountant. Prior to his expedition with Raleigh, Harriot wrote a treatise on navigation. He made efforts to communicate with Manteo and Wanchese, two Native Americans who had been brought to England.  Harriot devised a phonetic alphabet to transcribe their Carolina Algonquian language.
  Harriot and Manteo spent many days in one another's company; Harriot interrogated Manteo closely about life in the New World and learned much that was to the advantage of the English settlers. In addition, he recorded the sense of awe with which the Native Americans viewed European technology:
  "Many things they sawe with us...as mathematical instruments, sea compasses...[and] spring clocks that seemed to goe of themselves – and many other things we had – were so strange unto them, and so farre exceeded their capacities to comprehend the reason and meanes how they should be made and done, that they thought they were rather the works of gods than men."
  He made only one expedition, around 1585–86, and spent some time in the New World visiting Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina, expanding his knowledge by improving his understanding of the Carolina Algonquian language. As the only Englishman who had learned Algonquin prior to the voyage, Harriot was vital to the success of the expedition. Hariot smoked tobacco before Raleigh, and may have taught him to do so.
  His account of the voyage, named A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, was published in 1588 (probably written a year before). The True Report contains an early account of the Native American population encountered by the expedition; it proved very influential upon later English explorers and colonists. He wrote: "Whereby it may be hoped, if means of good government be used, that they may in short time be brought to civility and the embracing of true religion."  At the same time, his views of Native Americans' industry and capacity to learn were later largely ignored in favour of the parts of the "True Report" about extractable minerals and resources.
  As a scientific adviser during the voyage, Harriot was asked by Raleigh to find the most efficient way to stack cannonballs on the deck of the ship. His ensuing theory about the close-packing of spheres shows a striking resemblance to atomism and modern atomic theory, which he was later accused of believing. His correspondence about optics with Johannes Kepler, in which he described some of his ideas, later influenced Kepler's conjecture.
caption: Watercolor by John White of Roanoke Indians
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