Manteo (c. 1564 – c. 1590) was a Croatan Native American, and was a member of the local tribe that befriended the English explorers who landed at Roanoke Island in 1584. Though multiple stories claim he was a chief, it is understood that his mother was actually the principal leader (Weroansqua) of the tribe. Her office would not have automatically passed down to her children as a number of English at the time may have assumed.

In 1585 the English returned to Roanoke, arriving too late in the year to plant crops and harvest food, and Manteo helped the colonists make it through the harsh winter. He traveled to England on two occasions, in 1584 and 1585. After staying there, he was among those who sailed for the New World in 1587 along with Governor John White and his colonists, who founded the failed settlement later known as "The Lost Colony". On Sunday, August 13, 1587, Manteo was christened on Roanoke Island, making him the first Native American to be baptized into the Church of England.

Very little is known of Manteo's early life. He was born into the Croatan tribe, a small Native American group living in the coastal areas of what is now North Carolina. They may have been a branch of the larger Roanoke people or allied with them. The Croatan lived in current Dare County, an area encompassing the Alligator River, Croatan Sound, Roanoke Island, and parts of the Outer Banks, including Hatteras Island. Manteo first entered the historical record through his encounter with English explorers in 1584, when Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched the first of a number of expeditions to Roanoke Island to explore and eventually settle the New World.

Early English encounters with the natives were friendly, and Manteo became one of the first Native Americans to travel to England. Despite the difficulties in communication, the explorers persuaded "two of the savages, being lustie men, whose names were Wanchese and Manteo" to accompany them on the return voyage to London, in order for the English people to report both the conditions of the New World that they had explored and what the usefulness of the territory might be to the English.

Once safely brought to England in September 1584, Manteo and Wanchese soon caused a sensation at court. Raleigh's priority, however, was not publicity but rather intelligence about his new land of Virginia, and he restricted access to the exotic newcomers. He assigned the scientist Thomas Harriot the job of deciphering and learning the Carolina Algonquian language, using a phonetic alphabet of his own invention in order to effect the translation.

Both Wanchese and Manteo were hosted at Raleigh's London residence, Durham House. Unlike Manteo, Wanchese evinced little interest in learning English and did not befriend his hosts, remaining suspicious of English motives in the New World. He soon considered himself as a captive of the English rather than as their guest. By Christmas of 1584, Harriot learned to converse in Carolina Algonquian with the two Croatans. Accounts suggest that Manteo was far more co-operative than Wanchese.

Harriot and Manteo spent a number of 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.