Revisited: The Secotan Alliance explores our shared history from a fresh perspective

Gray Parsons, president and founder of the nonprofit Secotan Alliance (Photo courtesy Erica Lewis)

By Corinne Saunders

Edited by Matt Walker

Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the spring issue (Issue 14.1) of Outer Banks Milepost, currently on newsstands; find a list of distribution points by clicking here: https://www.outerbanksmilepost.com/outposts/.

Chief Wingina was a powerful figure.

Perhaps too powerful.

As the leader of the Roanoac tribe — for which Roanoke Island is now named — Wingina organized and led the Secotan Alliance of Algonquian tribes and villages that inhabited today’s Dare, Hyde, Beaufort, Washington and Tyrrell counties.

In 1586, the English colonizers learned he was working to expand the alliance further inland to resist English intrusion. As a result, he was brutally beheaded by an English soldier, an act that irrevocably shaped the region’s — and our nation’s — future.

“He was the first Indigenous leader on the entire North American continent to be murdered by the British military for resisting colonization,” says Gray Parsons, president and founder of the nonprofit Secotan Alliance. “When you think about that, that’s a pretty big deal, historically.”

A Frisco resident who traces his lineage in part to the Machapunga/Mattamuskeet tribe — a participant in Wingina’s alliance — Parsons founded the modern-day Secotan Alliance in 2023 to tell Wingina’s story from the Indigenous perspective, presenting him not as a threat to the colonizers, but as a martyr and Indigenous hero protecting his way of life.

As the Secotan Alliance’s website notes: “By the time of his death he had already experienced [Ralph] Lane’s attempts to: enslave his people; force their conversion to Christianity; pledge loyalty to the royal monarchy; and steal and waste Secotan food resources while refusing to fish or grow food themselves.”

Furthermore, the colonizers’ way of living was “in direct conflict with the sacred relationship that Wingina’s people held with Creation for thousands of years.”

Today the Secotan Alliance works to introduce people to Wingina’s and other tribes’ collective role in our past, while also sharing the Indigenous “Earth ethic” of living sustainably and respecting the environment and all living creatures in a modern context.

“You could argue Wingina was the first environmentalist in North America,” says Parsons. “Because no one else really threatened the natural resources in a wasteful way like the English.”

It’s clearly a compelling message. Last May, more than 100 people attended the alliance’s first public outreach event at Manteo’s College of The Albemarle campus — “In the Spirit of Wingina… and Beyond.” Over two days, Indigenous experts and acclaimed professors and scholars of Indigenous history gave riveting presentations, including that of keynote speaker Dr. Michael Leroy Oberg, author of The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke’s Forgotten Indians.

Parsons says Oberg’s work was not just a moving tale of early contact — but an academically sound history book with a fresh perspective.

“That book touched me in a way that no other book I had ever read about this area [did],” he says. “That book told our story, and it did it in a balanced, accurate way. And, because he’s a professor at SUNY — State University of New York — he was held to an academic standard.”

Danny Couch, a former county commissioner and Buxton resident known for his grasp of local history, attended last year’s conference and says, “Everyone was blown away.”  

He notes that while the tribe on present-day Hatteras Island was never large in numbers, “It was a more sophisticated society than we realized.”

He also says Wingina “would still have been relevant today,” and that his real power was in bringing people together — and recognizing the foreigners’ true nature.

“He was a peacemaker...He knew these guys [the English] were full of shit.”

True to the word “alliance,” not all of the nonprofit’s members are Indigenous. Secretary Cathy Steever is a retired engineer who has volunteered at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in Manteo for nearly four years. She gives public talks on the first contact between cultures that happened here, focusing on the Indigenous perspective rather than the European perspective.

“Everybody wants to know where the colonists went…the 110 colonists,” Steever observes. “Well, how about the 5,000 Algonquians, you know? What happened to them?”

This May 30-31, there will be a second lecture series, “In the Spirit of Wingina 2: Our Women…Our Words…Our Water.” In addition to historical and environmental lectures, and oral tradition from Indigenous descendants in Manteo, there are plans for an evening of jazz and Indigenous drums with poetic arts at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head.

Erica Lewis, Parsons’ wife and treasurer for the nonprofit, says she hopes this year’s multifaceted lineup will drive an even larger turnout.

“I see it as an important because not many people know about the Indigenous people who occupied this territory prior to European contact,” says Lewis, whose roots include the Saponi-Occoneechee people of present-day Virginia.

But the Secotan Alliance isn’t just recalibrating the record book. They work to share views and realities from the modern Indigenous experience, many of which may go unnoticed or unrepresented in day-to-day life.

“There are Indigenous people here today who just kind of blend in with the rest of society,” says Lewis. “They go to work, they may worship like other people and things of that nature, but they're still Indigenous Americans. And some people, they don’t see it unless they see a feather in their hair or if they wear certain garments that scream Indigenous American.”

With every effort to share Indigenous peoples’ role in our collective history, they perpetuate Wingina’s legacy into the future.

“His living spirit remains,” says Parsons, “as do we.”

Want to attend this year’s event? “In the Spirit of Wingina 2: Our Women…Our Words…Our Water” takes place Friday and Saturday, May 30-31. Advance registration is requested, and the free event is appropriate for attendees ages 16 and up. For more details or to register, visit www.secotanalliance.org.

Event posters courtesy of Gray Parsons

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