The Lost Colony One of the great mysteries of the New World is what happened to the colonists that settled on Roanoke Island, in 1587 Virginia.



One of the trees, or posts, had the bark peeled off, and carved on it in capital letters was the word CROATOAN, but without the maltese cross or sign of distress that John White had asked the settlers to use in such messages in the event of enforced departure from Roanoke Island. It was the only message left by the 117 colonists... The carving has never been satisfactorily explained and the mystery of the Lost Colony has never been solved.

In the four centuries since their disappearance, Eleanor and Virginia Dare have become true American heroines, players in an epic unsolved mystery that still challenges historians and archaeologists as one of America’s oldest. In 1587, over 100 men, women and children journeyed from Britain to Roanoke Island on North Carolina’s coast and established the first English settlement in America. Within three years, they had vanished with scarcely a trace. England’s initial attempt at colonization of the New World was a disaster, and one of America’s most enduing legends was born.

How the First Colony Disappeared BY GOVERNOR JOHN WHITE (1590)

About the sixteenth of July 1587, we arrived at the mainland of Virginia, which Simon Ferdinando took to be the Island of Croatoan. Here we came to anchor and rode there two or three days. Finding ourselves deceived, we weighed anchor and sailed along the coast, where in the night, had not Captain Stafford been more careful in looking out than our Simon Ferdinando was, we should have been cast away upon the coast at a point called Cape of Fear, for we came within two cables' length of it; such was the carelessness and ignorance of our master.

The two and twentieth day of July we came safely to Cape Hatteras where our ship and pinnace anchored. The Governor went aboard the pinnace accompanied by forty of his best men, intending to pass up to Roanoke. He hoped to find those fifteen Englishmen whom Sir Richard Grenville had left there the year before. With these he meant to have a conference concerning the state of the country and the savages, intending then to return to the fleet and pass along the coast to the Bay of Chesapeake. Here we intended to make our settlement and fort according to the charge given us among other directions in writing under the hand of Sir Walter Raleigh. We passed to Roanoke and the same night at sunset went ashore on the island, in the place where our fifteen men were left. But we found none of them, nor any sign that they had been there, saving only that we found the bones of one of them, whom the savages had slain long before. The Governor with several of his company walked the next day to the north end of the island where Master Ralph Lane, with his men the year before, had built his fort with sundry dwelling houses. We hoped to find some signs here, or some certain knowledge of our fifteen men. When we came thither we found the fort razed, but all the houses standing unhurt, saving that the lower rooms of them, and of the fort also, were overgrown with melons of different sorts, and deer were in rooms feeding on those melons. So we returned to our company without the hope of ever seeing any of the fifteen men living. The same day an order was given that every man should be employed in remodelling those houses which we found standing, and in making more cottages. On the eighteenth a daughter was born in Roanoke to Eleanor White, the daughter of the Governor John White and the wife of Annanias Dare. This baby was christened on the Sunday following, and because this child was the first Christian born in Virginia she was named Virginia Dare. By this time our shipmasters had unloaded the goods and victuals of the planters and taken wood and fresh water, and were newly calking and trimming their vessels for their return to England. The settlers also prepared their letters and news to send back to England.

When our boats were fitted again, we put off from Hatteras, numbering nineteen persons in both boats. Before we could get to the place where our settlers were left, three years before, it was so exceedingly dark that we overshot the place by a quarter of a mile. There we espied, towards the north end of the island, the light of a great fire through the woods, to which we presently rowed. When we came right over against it, we let fall our grapnel near the shore and sounded a call with a trumpet, and afterwards many familiar English tunes. We called to them in friendly tones, but had no answer; we therefore landed at day-break, and coming to the fire, found the grass and sundry rotten trees burning about the place. From thence we went through the woods to that part of the island where I left our colony in the year 1587. All along this way we saw in the sand the print of the savages feet of two or three sorts, trodden during the night. As we went up the sandy bank, upon a tree and on the very brow thereof, were curiously carved these fair Roman letters, C R 0: which letters at once we knew to signify the place where I should find the settlers living, according to a secret token agreed upon between them and me, at my last departure from them. This agreement was, that they should in no wise fail to write or carve on the trees or posts of the doors the name of the place where they should be seated; for when I came away they were prepared to remove from Roanoke fifty miles inward. Therefore at my departure from them, in the year 1587, I told them that if they should happen to be distressed in any of those places, that then they should carve over the letters or name, a cross in this form but we found no such sign of distress Having well considered all this, we passed towards the place where we had left the people in sundry houses; but we found the houses taken down, and the place very strongly enclosed with a high palisade of great trees, looking very fort-like. One of the chief trees, or posts, at the right side of the entrance, had the bark taken off, and five feet from the ground, in fair capital letters, was graven C R O A T O A N, without any cross or sign of distress. This done, w e entered inside the palisade, where we found many bars of iron, two pigs of lead, four iron fowlers, iron sacker-shots, and such heavy things, thrown here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds. From thence we went along the waterside, towards a point of the creek, to see if we could find any of their boats or the pinnace, but we could perceive no sign of them nor any of the small arms which were left with them at my departure from them.

At our return from the creek, some of our sailors, meeting us, told us that they had found where several chests had been hidden, and long since dug up again. These had been broken up, and much of the things in them spoiled and scattered about. Presently Captain Cook and I went to the place, which was in the end of an old trench made six years ago by Captain Amadas. Here we found fine chests that had been carefully hidden by the planters, and among the same chests three were my own. About the place I found many of my things spoiled and broken, and my books torn from the covers, the frames of some of my pictures and maps rotten and spoiled with rain, and my armor almost eaten through with rust. This could be no other but the deeds of the savages, our enemies, who had watched the departure of our men to Croatoan, and as soon as they were departed, these men dug up every place where they suspected anything to be buried; but although it grieved me much to see such spoil of my goods, yet on the other hand, I greatly rejoiced that I had safely found a certain token of their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was born, and where the savages of the island were our friends.

White went to England leaving eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and eleven children at Roanoke; but he could not get back til three years later. This extract tells us what he found. White did not get to Croatoan, and nothing was ever seen again of a single one of the one hundred and seventeen white people who were left there three years before. Nobody knows what became of little Virginia Dare. End Quote.



In the years that followed, evidence emerged that might have showed they had spent time with the Hatteras Indians of the Croatoan Tribe.

. In 1709, English explorer John Lawson visited Roanoke Island and spent some time among the Hatteras Indians, descendants of the Croatoan tribe. In A New Voyage to Carolina, he wrote "that several of their ancestors were white people and could talk in a book as we do, the truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being found infrequently among these Indians and no others."

In the 1880s, with the approach of the Roanoke Colony’s 300th anniversary, a North Carolina man named Hamilton MacMillan proposed a theory that holds some credence today. MacMillan lived in Robeson County in southeastern North Carolina near a settlement of Pembroke Indians, many of whom claimed that their ancestors came from "Roanoke in Virginia".

According to MacMillan, the Pembrokes spoke pure Anglo-Saxon English and bore the last names of many of the lost colonists. Furthermore, "Roanoke in Virginia" was how Raleigh and his contemporaries referred to Roanoke Island. The Pembrokes also had European features: fair eyes, light hair, and an Anglo bone structure. MacMillan’s findings, published in 1888 pamphlet, gained a great deal of attention from the academic community and renewed interest in the lost colony.

By 1612, the Jamestown leaders had received numerous reports that at least some of the Roanoke colonists were living nearby. They sent out several search parties, but had no success, and soon gave up the search.

What became of the remainder of the colonists left on Roanoke Island? Scholars speculate that they were left behind to meet White upon his return from England, but soon fled to Croatoan, leaving the mysterious carvings behind as a signal to White. Spanish archives reveal that they were gone by June, 1588, when a raiding party put in at Roanoke Island only to find the settlement deserted. Scholars assume that they were then assimilated into the Croatoan tribe.

Today, the north end of Roanoke Island is regularly visited by historians and archaeologists hoping to uncover new evidence as to the fate of the colony. So far, none has been forthcoming. The post and the tree bearing the carvings have long since vanished, although many of the live oaks in the National Historic Site were seedlings during the colonists tenure. No archaeological clues as to the whereabouts of the Cittie of Raleigh have ever been uncovered, and the 500-acre park remains mostly an enigma, apropos to the events that unfolded here 400 years ago.


One Theory Below:

The Lumbee Tribe

The earliest European settlers, of record, in what is now Robeson County arrived in the region during the early eighteenth century. The area around Rowland was claimed by English and a few French settlers. Scots settled in what is now the Maxton area. The first settlers encountered a group of Indians who reportedly spoke some English and used primitive agriculture practices. The exact orgins of these Indians, now known as the Lumbee Indians, is unknown, but one romantic theory widely held by the Lumbees is that they are descendants of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony of 1587.

The Lumbee don't entirely understand why people persist in calling the Roanoke colony the "Lost Colony," since they left an explicit note telling where they were going (Croatan, the lands of some friendly Cheraw Indians) and since the descendents of the Croatan Cheraw were found some 50 years later speaking English, practicing Christianity, and sporting about 75% of the last names the colonists had brought with them. By all accounts, though, those descendents--who called themselves "Lumbee" Indians, after the river running through their traditional lands--were mixed-race, so mixed-race they were not sent to Oklahoma with the other Native Americans of North Carolina in the 1820's and 30's.

The Lumbee Tribe, located in southeastern North Carolina mainly in the counties of Robeson, Hoke, and Scotland, consists of about 44,000 members. The Lumbee take their name from the Lumbee River, known as the Lumber River today, which flows through their homeland. This number makes the Lumbee the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River and the ninth largest in the nation. Also, the Lumbee are the largest non-reservated, and non-federally recognized tribe in the United States. In addition, the Lumbee make up roughly one-half the state of North Carolina's Native American population of 84,000.

If your ancestors came from North Carolina and your family tradition is full of tales of Indian ancestors, don’t immediately think of the Cherokee. There were many tribes in North Carolina, long before the Cherokee came down into the south from the Great Lakes near the Canadian border area. The early Southeastern tribes did not die off, they did not disappear, nor did they vanish as some seem to think. They were assimilated into the Black communities when the census takers rode from farm to farm and house to house. If a person was dark skinned, the census taker automatically listed them as mulatto, free blacks, or free persons of color, regardless of their true race. Many men who had married or co-habited with an Indian woman, hid the wife and children when the census taker came to their home and the family all were listed as white. These records do not come anywhere close to being accurate when listing the family members race. Race was something that was in the mind of the census taker. If he thought the family was white he listed them as white, but if the he thought the family looked dark it did not matter what race they were they were listed as mulatto, free blacks, or free persons of color. This did not allow for the thousands of families who were American Indians that lived among the white people. These Indians were lost among the incorrect records. The same goes for the many who tried to enlist into the Confederate Army during the Civil War and they were discharged/booted out because they were according to one author negroes when they were actually Croatan Indians. These people like many other tribes were a tri-racial society by the time the Civil War began.


When you research and see mulatto listed don’t always think, Black and White. In the Early American Census the many were Indian and White.