“Within certaine dayes after my returne from the sayd journey [up the Roanoke] Menatonon sent a messenger to visite his sonne the prisoner with me, and sent me certaine pearle for a present, or rather, as Pemisapan tolde mee, for the ransome of his sonne, and therefore I refused them: but the greatest cause of his sending then, was to signifie unto mee that hee had commanded Okisko, King of Weopomiok, to yeelde himselfe servant, and homager to the great Weroanza of England, and after her to Sir Walter Ralegh: to perfourme which commandement received from Menatonon the sayd Okisko joyntly with this Menatonons messenger sent foure and twentie of his principallest men to Roanoke to Pemisapan, to signifie that they were ready to perfourme the same, and so had sent those his men to let me knowe that from that time forwarde, hee, and his successours were to acknowledge her Majestie their onely Soveraigne and next unto her as aforesaid.”
This done and acknowledged by them all in the presence of Ensenore, and Pemisapan and his council, apparently quite changed Pemisapan’s disposition. At all events he agreed with Ensenore that his people should set up weirs for the colonists, and sow his land. This was done, and by the end of April the Indians had sown sufficient land to produce a crop that would have kept the whole company for a year. The king also gave the colonists a plot of land for themselves to sow. These proceedings put them in “marvellous comfort,” for if they could keep themselves till the opening of July, which was the beginning of the Indian harvest, they would then have, even though their expected new supplies from England had not then arrived, enough store of their own to sustain them.
But Ensenore died within a few days after these promising arrangements, and now Pemisapan perfected his conspiracy. The plot was artfully contrived. First king Okisko of Weopomiok, who had so dramatically given his allegiance to the English queen, was to be moved through the agency of a “great quantitie of copper” to take a hand in it with the Mangoaks to the number of seven or eight hundred bows. They of Weopomiok were to be invited ostensibly to a “certaine kind of moneths mind,” or ceremony which the savages were wont to hold in memory of a dead personage, in this case Ensenore. At the same time the Mangoaks and the Chespians with their allies, to the number of seven hundred, were to be assembled at “Dasamonguepeio” or Dasamonguepeuk—the mainland lying west of Roanoke Island. The clans here were to lie low in ambush till signals were exchanged with the other forces, the signals to be fires, denoting the moment for action. Then Pemisapan and his fellows were to seize and execute Lane and some of his principal men, while the Dasamonguepeuk bands were to cross to Roanoke and despatch the rest of the colony. It was expected that they would then be dismayed by hunger and scattered over the island and elsewhere, seeking crabs and fish for food. For it was to be agreed that from the time of the formation of the conspiracy no corn or other supplies should be sold the colony, and that the weirs which had been built for them should be robbed at night and broken up. By these means Pemisapan felt assured that Lane would be enforced for lack of sustenance at Roanoke to disband his people into sundry places to live upon shell fish as the savages themselves were accustomed to do while their corn was growing.