John White was a gifted artist and explorer who made five separate voyages to North America, where he became a student of the culture and language of the Algonquian-speaking tribes. White was part of the 1585 English military expedition to establish a fort at Roanoke as a base of exploration of the Virginian mainland. White recorded illustrations of the landscape and several Native settlements as he explored far into the tributaries of the Chesapeake. After relations between the fort at Roanoke and Native peoples turned to hostility in the summer of 1586, White returned to England. White was granted a corporate charter to establish a new settlement where the waters were more navigable and the Native inhabitants seemed friendlier. In 1587 White, as governor of the new settlement with his pregnant daughter and more than 100 colonists, stopped to check on the fort at Roanoke. When he found the site deserted, White determined to establish a settlement on the site of the abandoned fort. The first English child born in the Americas, White's granddaughter Virginia Dare, was born in Roanoke in August 1587. Leaving the settlers behind, White returned to England intending to resupply the colony. The Anglo-Spanish War kept White from returning to Roanoke until 1590, when he found the settlement again abandoned. White found the word “CROATOAN”—a nearby friendly tribal village—carved into a post. However, an approaching storm prevented White from searching for survivors. White departed for the Caribbean and never returned to Roanoke, dying shortly after writing an account of the Roanoke voyages that included this map.