Roanoke Colony
Encyclopedia
The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island
in Dare County
, present-day North Carolina
, United States
was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement
in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh
and carried out by Ralph Lane
and Richard Grenville
, Raleigh's distant cousin. The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England
. The settlement is known as "The Lost Colony," and the fate of the colonists is still unknown.
granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter
for the colonization of the area of North America known as Virginia. This charter specified that Raleigh had seven years in which to establish a settlement in North America
, or lose his right to colonization. Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World
and a base from which to send privateer
s on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain
. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado
.
s and Croatan
s. Barlowe returned to England with two Croatans named Manteo
and Wanchese
, who were able to describe the politics and geography of the area to Raleigh. Based on this information, Raleigh organized a second expedition, to be led by Sir Richard Grenville.
Grenville's fleet departed Plymouth
on April 9, 1585, with five main ships: the Tiger (Grenville's), the Roebuck, the Red Lion, the Elizabeth, and the Dorothy. Unfortunately, a severe storm off the coast of Portugal separated the Tiger from the rest of the fleet. The captains had a contingency plan if they were separated, which was to meet up again in Puerto Rico
, and the Tiger arrived in the "Baye of Muskito" (Guayanilla Bay
) on May 11. While waiting for the other ships, Grenville established relations with the Spanish
there while simultaneously engaging in some privateering against them, and also built a fort. The Elizabeth arrived soon after the fort's construction. Eventually, Grenville tired of waiting for the remaining ships, and departed on June 7. The fort was abandoned, and its location remains unknown.
When the Tiger sailed through Ocracoke Inlet
on June 26, it struck a shoal
, ruining most of the food supplies. They were able to repair the ship and in early July, were reunited with the Roebuck and Dorothy, both of which had arrived in the Outer Banks
some weeks previous. The Red Lion had been with them, but had merely dropped off its passengers and left for Newfoundland for privateering.
After the initial exploration of the mainland coast and the native settlements there, the natives of the village of Aquascogoc
were blamed for stealing a silver cup. In retaliation, the village was sacked and burned. English writer and courtier Richard Hakluyt
's contemporary reports of the first voyage to Virginia, compiled from accounts by various financial backers including Sir Walter Raleigh (Hakluyt himself never traveled to the New World) also describes this incident.
Despite this incident and a lack of food, Grenville decided to leave Ralph Lane
and 107 men to establish the colony at the north end of Roanoke Island
, promising to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies. They disembarked on August 17, 1585. Lane built a small fort on the island and ordered the surrounding areas to be explored. There are no surviving pictures of the Roanoke fort, but it was likely similar in structure to the one in Guayanilla Bay.
As April 1586 passed, there was no sign of Grenville's relief fleet. Meanwhile in June, bad blood from the stolen cup incident spurred an attack on the fort, which the colonists were able to repel. Soon after the attack, when Sir Francis Drake
paused on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean
and offered to take the colonists, including the metallurgist Joachim Gans, back to England, they accepted. On this return voyage, the Roanoke colonists introduced tobacco
, maize
, and potato
es. The relief fleet arrived shortly after Drake's departure with the colonists. Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville returned to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind a small detachment both to maintain an English presence and to protect Raleigh's claim to Virginia
.
. They were led by John White
, an artist and friend of Raleigh who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. White was later appointed Governor and Raleigh named 12 assistants to aid in Roanoke's settlement. They were ordered to travel to Roanoke first to gather Grenville's men, but when they arrived on July 22, 1587, they found nothing except a skeleton that may have been the remains of one of the English garrison. They were counting on these men to help with the new colony, but when they could find no one, they gave up hope of ever seeing Grenville's men alive. The fleet's commander, Simon Fernandez
, now refused to let the colonists return to the ships, insisting they establish the new colony on Roanoke. His motive remains unclear.
With no choice, White re-established relations with the Croatans and tried to establish friendly relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had battled the previous year. The hostile tribes refused to meet with him. Shortly thereafter, colonist George Howe was killed by an Indian while searching alone for crabs in Albemarle Sound
. Fearing for their lives, the colonists persuaded Governor White to return to England to explain the colony's desperate situation and ask for help. Left behind were about 115 colonists — the remaining men and women who had made the Atlantic crossing plus White's newly born granddaughter Virginia Dare
, the first English child born in the Americas.
led to every able English ship being commandeered to fight, which left White with no seaworthy vessels available to return to Roanoke. He managed to hire two small vessels considered unnecessary for England's defense and sailed for Roanoke in the spring of 1588. White's attempt to return to Roanoke was foiled by human nature and circumstance; the two vessels were small, and their captains were greedy. They attempted to capture several Spanish ships on the outward-bound voyage to improve their profits, but they were captured themselves and their cargo seized. With nothing left to deliver to the colonists, the ships returned to England.
on a tree nearby, indicating that their disappearance had been forced. As there was no cross, White took this to mean they had moved to "Croatoan Island" (now known as Hatteras Island
), but he was unable to conduct a search. A massive storm was brewing and his men refused to go any further. The next day, they left.
entered Raleigh's employment in the early 1580s, after graduating from Oxford University. While he did not accompany them on the first voyage, Harriot may have been among the men of Arthur Barlowe's 1584 expedition of the colony. He trained the members of Raleigh's first Roanoke expedition in navigational skills and eventually sailed to Roanoke with the second group of settlers, where his skills as a naturalist became particularly important along with those of painter and settlement leader John White. Between their arrival in Roanoke in April 1585 and the July of 1586, Harriot and White both conducted detailed studies of the Roanoke area, with Harriot compiling his samples and notes into several notebooks that unfortunately did not survive the colony's disappearance. However, Harriot also took descriptions of the surrounding flora and fauna of the area, which survive in his work A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, written as a report on the colony's progress to the English government on the request of Raleigh. Viewed as propaganda for the colony by modern historians, this work has become vastly important to Roanoke's history not only because of Harriot's observations on wildlife, but also because of his depictions of Indian activities at the time of the colony's disappearance. In the text, Harriot reports that relations between the Roanoke Indians and the English settlers were mutually calm and prosperous, contradicting other historical evidence that catalogues the bloody struggles between the Roanoke Indians and both of Raleigh's commanders, Sir Richard Grenville and his successor Ralph Lane. Harriot recounts little to none of these accounts in his report to England and does not mention the disorderly state of the colony under either Grenville's or Lane's tenure, correctly assuming these facts would prevent Roanoke from gaining more settlers. Ironically, Harriot's text did not reach England, or the English press, until the year of 1588, by which time the fate of the "Lost Colony" was sealed in all but name.
that would generate a decent profit back in England. By the time they could turn their attention to the colonists, the weather had turned bad and they were forced to return without even making it to Roanoke Island. Having been arrested by King James I
for treason, Raleigh was unable to send any further missions.
Meanwhile, the Spanish had different reasons for wanting to find the colony. Knowing of Raleigh's plans to use Roanoke as a base for privateering, they were hoping to destroy it. Moreover, they had been getting mostly inaccurate reports of activities there, and as such they imagined the colony to be far more successful than it really was. In 1590, they found the remnants of the colony purely by accident, but assumed it was only an outlying base of the main settlement, which they believed was in the Chesapeake Bay area (John White's intended location). But just as the Anglo-Spanish War prevented White from returning in a timely manner, Spanish authorities in the New World could not muster enough support back home for such a venture.
people; it has yet to be established if they did assimilate with one or other of the native populations.
, that was attacked by another tribe, identified by the Jamestown Colony as the "Mandoag" (an Algonquian name commonly given to enemy nations). The "Mandoag" are believed to be either the Tuscarora, an Iroquois-speaking tribe, or the Eno, also known as the Wainoke.
The so-called "Zuniga Map" (named for Pedro de Zúñiga, the Spanish ambassador to England, who had secured a copy and passed it on to Philip III of Spain
), drawn circa 1607 by the Jamestown settler Francis Nelson, also gives credence to this claim. The map states "four men clothed that came from roonock" were living in an Iroquois site on the Neuse
. William Strachey
, a secretary of the Jamestown Colony, wrote in his The historie of travaile into Virginia Britannia in 1612 that, at the Indian settlements of Peccarecanick and Ochanahoen, there were reportedly two-story houses with stone walls. The Indians supposedly learned how to build them from the Roanoke settlers. There were also reported sightings of European captives at various Indian settlements during the same time period. Strachey wrote in 1612 that four English men, two boys, and one maid had been sighted at the Eno settlement of Ritanoc, under the protection of a chief called Eyanoco. The captives were forced to beat copper
. The captives, he reported, had escaped the attack on the other colonists and fled up the Chaonoke river, the present-day Chowan River
in Bertie County, North Carolina
. For four hundred years, various authors have speculated that the captive girl was Virginia Dare.
John Lawson wrote in his 1709 A New Voyage to Carolina that the Croatans living on Hatteras Island used to live on Roanoke Island and that they claimed to have had white ancestors:
From the early 17th century to the middle 18th century European colonists reported encounters with gray-eyed American Indians who claimed descent from the colonists (although at least one, a story of a Welsh priest who met a Doeg warrior who spoke the Welsh language, is likely to be a hoax). Records from French Huguenot
s who settled along the Tar River
in 1696 tell of meeting Tuscaroras with blond hair and blue eyes not long after their arrival. As Jamestown was the nearest English settlement and they had no record of being attacked by Tuscarora, the likelihood that origin of those fair-skinned natives was the Lost Colony is high.
In the late 1880s, North Carolina state legislator Hamilton McMillan discovered that his "redbones" (those of Indian blood) neighbors in Robeson County
claimed to have been descended from the Roanoke settlers. He also noticed that many of the words in their language had striking similarities to obsolete English words. Furthermore, many of the family names were identical to those listed in Hakluyt's account of the colony. Thus on February 10, 1885, convinced that these were the descendants of the Lost Colony, he helped to pass the "Croatan bill", that officially designated the Native American population around Robeson county as Croatan. Two days later on February 12, 1885, the Fayetteville Observer
published an article regarding the Robeson Native Americans' origins. This article states:
However, the case was far from settled. A similar legend claims that the now-extinct Saponi of Person County, North Carolina
, are descended from the English colonists of Roanoke Island. Indeed, when these Native Americans were last encountered by subsequent settlers, they noted that these Native Americans already spoke English
and were aware of the Christian
religion. The historical surnames of this group also correspond with those who lived on Roanoke Island, and many exhibit European
physical features along with Native American features. However, no documented evidence exists to link the Saponi to the Roanoke colonists.
Other tribes that claim partial descent from surviving Roanoke colonists include the Catawba (who absorbed the Shakori and Eno people), and the Coree
and the Lumbee
tribes. The Lost Colony DNA Project
was established to test all of these claims.
Furthermore, Samuel A'Court Ashe
was convinced that the colonists had relocated westward to the banks of the Chowan River
in Bertie County
, and Conway Whittle Sams claimed that after being attacked by Wanchese and Powhatan, the colonists scattered to multiple locations: the Chowan River, and south to the Pamlico
and Neuse Rivers.
hypothesized that the colony moved wholesale and was later destroyed. When Captain John Smith
and the Jamestown colonists settled in Virginia in 1607, one of their assigned tasks was to locate the Roanoke colonists. The weroance
Chief Powhatan
told Captain Smith about his Virginia Peninsula
-based Powhatan Confederacy, and went on to say that he had wiped out the Roanoke colonists just prior to the arrival of the Jamestown settlers because they were living with the Chesepian
, a tribe living in the eastern portion of the present-day South Hampton Roads
sub-region who, besides having refused to join Chief Powhatan's Powhatan Confederacy, were also prophesied to rise up and destroy his empire.
Chief Powhatan reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim, but no bodies were found and no archaeological evidence has been found to support this claim, however, and that which was found at a Chesepian village site in Great Neck Point
in present-day Virginia Beach suggests that the Chesepian tribe was related to the Pamlico
in Carolina, rather than the Powhatans. There were also reports of a Native American burial mound in the Pine Beach area of Sewell's Point
in present day Norfolk, Virginia
, where the principal Chesepian village of Skioak may have been located.
has suggested that the colony might have been attacked and its members eaten by Native American cannibals.
colony of Fort Charles
in coastal South Carolina
and then massacred the inhabitants of Fort Caroline
, a French colony in present-day Jacksonville
, Florida
. However, this is unlikely, as the Spanish were still looking for the location of England's failed colony as late as 1600, ten years after White discovered that the colony was missing.
, mother of Virginia Dare
. They told of the travelings of the colonists and their ultimate deaths. Most historians believe that they are a fraud, but there are some today that still believe the stones are genuine.
organized "The Croatoan Project", an archaeological investigation into the events at Roanoke. The excavation team sent to the island uncovered a 10 carat
(42%) gold 16th century English signet ring, gun flints
, and two 16th century copper farthings at the site of the ancient Croatoan capital, 50 miles (80 km) from the old Roanoke colony. Genealogists were able to trace the lion crest on the signet ring to the Kendall coat of arms, and concluded that the ring most likely belonged to one Master Kendall who is recorded as having lived in the Ralph Lane
colony on Roanoke Island from 1585 to 1586. If this is the case, the ring represents the first material connection between the Roanoke colonists and the Native Americans on Hatteras Island.
It is also believed that the reason for the extreme deficiency in archaeological evidence is due to shoreline erosion. Since all that was found was a rustic looking fort on the north shore, and this location is well documented and backed up, it is commonly believed that the settlement must have been nearby. The northern shore, between 1851 and 1970, lost 928 feet because of erosion. If in the years leading up to and following the brief life of the settlement at Roanoke, shoreline erosion was following the same trend, it is likely the site of dwellings is underwater, along with any artifacts or signs of life.
is an ongoing effort underway by the Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA
of Houston, TX. The project will use DNA testing to help determine whether some Lost Colony survivors assimilated with the local Native American tribes either through adoption or enslavement. The project will attempt to locate and test as many potential descendants as possible. Testing is also planned for some of the recovered remains.
David W. Stahle, of the University of Arkansas
, Department of Geography, in Fayetteville, Arkansas
, and archaeologist Dennis B. Blanton, of the Center for Archaeological Research at The College of William and Mary
in Williamsburg, Virginia
, used tree ring cores from 800-year-old bald cypresses taken from the Roanoke Island
area of North Carolina
and the Jamestown
area of Virginia
to reconstruct precipitation and temperature chronologies.
The researchers concluded that the settlers of the Lost Colony landed at Roanoke Island
in the summer of the worst growing-season drought in 800 years. "This drought persisted for 3 years, from 1587 to 1589, and is the driest 3-year episode in the entire 800-year reconstruction," the team reported in the journal Science. A map shows that "the Lost Colony drought affected the entire southeastern United States
but was particularly severe in the Tidewater region near Roanoke [Island]." The authors suggested that the Croatan who were shot and killed by the colonists may have been scavenging the abandoned village for food as a result of the drought.
-winning playwright Paul Green wrote The Lost Colony
in 1937 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Virginia Dare
. The play presents a conjecture of the fate of Roanoke Colony. It has played at Waterside Theater at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island nearly continuously since, with the only interruption being during World War II
. Alumni of the cast include Andy Griffith
(who played Sir Walter Raleigh), William Ivey Long
, Chris Elliott
, Terrence Mann
, and Daily Show correspondent Dan Bakkedahl
.
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....
in Dare County
Dare County, North Carolina
-National protected areas:* Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge * Cape Hatteras National Seashore * Fort Raleigh National Historic Site* Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge* Wright Brothers National Memorial-Demographics:...
, present-day North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement
English colonial empire
The English colonial empire consisted of a variety of overseas territories colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries....
in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
and carried out by Ralph Lane
Ralph Lane
Sir Ralph Lane was an English explorer of the Elizabethan era. He was part of the unsuccessful attempt in 1585 to colonize Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He also served the Crown in Ireland and was knighted by the Queen in 1593....
and Richard Grenville
Richard Grenville
Sir Richard Grenville was an English sailor, sea captain and explorer. He took part in the early English attempts to settle the New World, and also participated in the fight against the Spanish Armada...
, Raleigh's distant cousin. The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England
Kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...
. The settlement is known as "The Lost Colony," and the fate of the colonists is still unknown.
Raleigh's charter
On March 25, 1584, Queen Elizabeth IElizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter
Charter
A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...
for the colonization of the area of North America known as Virginia. This charter specified that Raleigh had seven years in which to establish a settlement in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, or lose his right to colonization. Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
and a base from which to send privateer
Privateer
A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...
s on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado
El Dorado
El Dorado is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into a highland lake.Later it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold" that has fascinated – and so far eluded – explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors...
.
First voyages to Roanoke Island
On April 27, 1584, Raleigh dispatched an expedition led by Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the Eastern coast of North America. They arrived on Roanoke Island on July 4, and soon established relations with the local natives, the SecotanSecotan
The Secotans were one of eight groups of Native Americans dominant in the Carolina sound region, between 1584 and 1590, with which English colonizers had varying degrees of contact...
s and Croatan
Croatan
The Croatan were 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....
s. Barlowe returned to England with two Croatans named Manteo
Manteo (Croatan)
Manteo was a Native American Croatan Indian, the chief of a local tribe that befriended the English explorers that landed at Roanoke Island in 1584. In 1585 the English returned to Roanoke, arriving too late in the year to plant crops and harvest food, and Manteo helped the colonists to make it...
and Wanchese
Wanchese (chief)
Wanchese was the last known ruler of the Roanoke Native American tribe encountered by English colonists in the late sixteenth century. Along with Chief Manteo he travelled to London in 1584, where the two men created a sensation at court...
, who were able to describe the politics and geography of the area to Raleigh. Based on this information, Raleigh organized a second expedition, to be led by Sir Richard Grenville.
Grenville's fleet departed Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
on April 9, 1585, with five main ships: the Tiger (Grenville's), the Roebuck, the Red Lion, the Elizabeth, and the Dorothy. Unfortunately, a severe storm off the coast of Portugal separated the Tiger from the rest of the fleet. The captains had a contingency plan if they were separated, which was to meet up again in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, and the Tiger arrived in the "Baye of Muskito" (Guayanilla Bay
Guayanilla, Puerto Rico
Guayanilla is a municipality of Puerto Rico located in southern coast of the island, bordering the Caribbean Sea, south of Adjuntas, east of Yauco; and west of Peñuelas and about 12 miles west of Ponce. Guayanilla is spread over 16 wards and Guayanilla Pueblo...
) on May 11. While waiting for the other ships, Grenville established relations with the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
there while simultaneously engaging in some privateering against them, and also built a fort. The Elizabeth arrived soon after the fort's construction. Eventually, Grenville tired of waiting for the remaining ships, and departed on June 7. The fort was abandoned, and its location remains unknown.
When the Tiger sailed through Ocracoke Inlet
Ocracoke Inlet
Ocracoke Inlet is an estuary located in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, United States that separates Ocracoke Island and Portsmouth Island. It connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pamlico Sound. It is the southern terminus of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It is the northern terminus of the...
on June 26, it struck a shoal
Shoal
Shoal, shoals or shoaling may mean:* Shoal, a sandbank or reef creating shallow water, especially where it forms a hazard to shipping* Shoal draught , of a boat with shallow draught which can pass over some shoals: see Draft...
, ruining most of the food supplies. They were able to repair the ship and in early July, were reunited with the Roebuck and Dorothy, both of which had arrived in the Outer Banks
Outer Banks
The Outer Banks is a 200-mile long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina, beginning in the southeastern corner of Virginia Beach on the east coast of the United States....
some weeks previous. The Red Lion had been with them, but had merely dropped off its passengers and left for Newfoundland for privateering.
After the initial exploration of the mainland coast and the native settlements there, the natives of the village of Aquascogoc
Aquascogoc
The Aquascogoc is the name given to a Native American tribe and also the name of a village encountered by the English during their late 16th century attempts to settle and establish permanent colonies in what is now North Carolina, known at the time as Virginia...
were blamed for stealing a silver cup. In retaliation, the village was sacked and burned. English writer and courtier Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and...
's contemporary reports of the first voyage to Virginia, compiled from accounts by various financial backers including Sir Walter Raleigh (Hakluyt himself never traveled to the New World) also describes this incident.
Despite this incident and a lack of food, Grenville decided to leave Ralph Lane
Ralph Lane
Sir Ralph Lane was an English explorer of the Elizabethan era. He was part of the unsuccessful attempt in 1585 to colonize Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He also served the Crown in Ireland and was knighted by the Queen in 1593....
and 107 men to establish the colony at the north end of Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....
, promising to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies. They disembarked on August 17, 1585. Lane built a small fort on the island and ordered the surrounding areas to be explored. There are no surviving pictures of the Roanoke fort, but it was likely similar in structure to the one in Guayanilla Bay.
As April 1586 passed, there was no sign of Grenville's relief fleet. Meanwhile in June, bad blood from the stolen cup incident spurred an attack on the fort, which the colonists were able to repel. Soon after the attack, when Sir Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
paused on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
and offered to take the colonists, including the metallurgist Joachim Gans, back to England, they accepted. On this return voyage, the Roanoke colonists introduced tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
, maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
, and potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es. The relief fleet arrived shortly after Drake's departure with the colonists. Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville returned to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind a small detachment both to maintain an English presence and to protect Raleigh's claim to Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
.
Additional voyages to Roanoke Colony
In 1587, Raleigh dispatched a new group of 150 colonists to establish a colony on Chesapeake BayChesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
. They were led by John White
John White (surveyor)
John White was an English artist, and an early pioneer of English efforts to settle the New World. He was among those who sailed with Richard Grenville to North Carolina in 1585, acting as artist and mapmaker to the expedition. During his time at Roanoke Island he made a number of watercolor...
, an artist and friend of Raleigh who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. White was later appointed Governor and Raleigh named 12 assistants to aid in Roanoke's settlement. They were ordered to travel to Roanoke first to gather Grenville's men, but when they arrived on July 22, 1587, they found nothing except a skeleton that may have been the remains of one of the English garrison. They were counting on these men to help with the new colony, but when they could find no one, they gave up hope of ever seeing Grenville's men alive. The fleet's commander, Simon Fernandez
Simon Fernandez
Simon Fernandez was a 16th century Portuguese navigator and sometime pirate who piloted the 1585 and 1587 English expeditions to found colonies on Roanoake island, part of modern-day North Carolina but then known as Virginia...
, now refused to let the colonists return to the ships, insisting they establish the new colony on Roanoke. His motive remains unclear.
With no choice, White re-established relations with the Croatans and tried to establish friendly relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had battled the previous year. The hostile tribes refused to meet with him. Shortly thereafter, colonist George Howe was killed by an Indian while searching alone for crabs in Albemarle Sound
Albemarle Sound
Albemarle Sound is a large estuary on the coast of North Carolina in the United States located at the confluence of a group of rivers, including the Chowan and Roanoke. It is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Outer Banks, a long barrier peninsula upon which the town of Kitty Hawk is located,...
. Fearing for their lives, the colonists persuaded Governor White to return to England to explain the colony's desperate situation and ask for help. Left behind were about 115 colonists — the remaining men and women who had made the Atlantic crossing plus White's newly born granddaughter Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Eleanor and Ananias Dare. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina, USA. What became of Virginia and the other colonists remains a mystery...
, the first English child born in the Americas.
White returns to England
White sailed for England in late 1587. Crossing the Atlantic at that time of year was a considerable risk, as shown by Fernandez's claim that their ship barely made it back. Plans for a relief fleet were delayed by the captain's refusal to return during the winter. The coming of the Spanish ArmadaSpanish Armada
This article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...
led to every able English ship being commandeered to fight, which left White with no seaworthy vessels available to return to Roanoke. He managed to hire two small vessels considered unnecessary for England's defense and sailed for Roanoke in the spring of 1588. White's attempt to return to Roanoke was foiled by human nature and circumstance; the two vessels were small, and their captains were greedy. They attempted to capture several Spanish ships on the outward-bound voyage to improve their profits, but they were captured themselves and their cargo seized. With nothing left to deliver to the colonists, the ships returned to England.
Return to the Lost Colony
Because of the continuing war with Spain, White was not able to mount another resupply attempt for three more years. He finally gained passage on a privateering expedition that agreed to stop off at Roanoke on the way back from the Caribbean. White landed on August 18, 1590, on his granddaughter's third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. His men could not find any trace of the 90 men, 17 women, and 11 children, nor was there any sign of a struggle or battle. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. All the houses and fortifications had been dismantled, which meant their departure had not been hurried. Before he had left the colony, White had instructed them that if anything happened to them, they should carve a Maltese crossMaltese cross
The Maltese cross, also known as the Amalfi cross, is identified as the symbol of an order of Christian warriors known as the Knights Hospitaller or Knights of Malta and through them came to be identified with the Mediterranean island of Malta and is one of the National symbols of Malta...
on a tree nearby, indicating that their disappearance had been forced. As there was no cross, White took this to mean they had moved to "Croatoan Island" (now known as Hatteras Island
Hatteras Island
Hatteras Island is a barrier island located off the North Carolina coast. Dividing the Atlantic Ocean and the Pamlico Sound, it runs parallel to the coast, forming a bend at Cape Hatteras. It is part of North Carolina's Outer Banks and includes the towns of Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton,...
), but he was unable to conduct a search. A massive storm was brewing and his men refused to go any further. The next day, they left.
Thomas Harriot
Born in 1560, Thomas HarriotThomas Harriot
Thomas Harriot was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer, and translator. Some sources give his surname as Harriott or Hariot or Heriot. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to Great Britain and Ireland...
entered Raleigh's employment in the early 1580s, after graduating from Oxford University. While he did not accompany them on the first voyage, Harriot may have been among the men of Arthur Barlowe's 1584 expedition of the colony. He trained the members of Raleigh's first Roanoke expedition in navigational skills and eventually sailed to Roanoke with the second group of settlers, where his skills as a naturalist became particularly important along with those of painter and settlement leader John White. Between their arrival in Roanoke in April 1585 and the July of 1586, Harriot and White both conducted detailed studies of the Roanoke area, with Harriot compiling his samples and notes into several notebooks that unfortunately did not survive the colony's disappearance. However, Harriot also took descriptions of the surrounding flora and fauna of the area, which survive in his work A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, written as a report on the colony's progress to the English government on the request of Raleigh. Viewed as propaganda for the colony by modern historians, this work has become vastly important to Roanoke's history not only because of Harriot's observations on wildlife, but also because of his depictions of Indian activities at the time of the colony's disappearance. In the text, Harriot reports that relations between the Roanoke Indians and the English settlers were mutually calm and prosperous, contradicting other historical evidence that catalogues the bloody struggles between the Roanoke Indians and both of Raleigh's commanders, Sir Richard Grenville and his successor Ralph Lane. Harriot recounts little to none of these accounts in his report to England and does not mention the disorderly state of the colony under either Grenville's or Lane's tenure, correctly assuming these facts would prevent Roanoke from gaining more settlers. Ironically, Harriot's text did not reach England, or the English press, until the year of 1588, by which time the fate of the "Lost Colony" was sealed in all but name.
Investigations into Roanoke
Twelve years passed before Raleigh decided to find out what happened to his colony. Led by Samuel Mace, this 1602 expedition differed from previous voyages in that Raleigh bought his own ship and guaranteed the sailors' wages so that they would not be distracted by privateering. However, Raleigh still hoped to make money from the trip, and Mace's ship landed in the Outer Banks to gather aromatic woods or plants such as sassafrasSassafras
Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia.-Overview:...
that would generate a decent profit back in England. By the time they could turn their attention to the colonists, the weather had turned bad and they were forced to return without even making it to Roanoke Island. Having been arrested by King James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
for treason, Raleigh was unable to send any further missions.
Meanwhile, the Spanish had different reasons for wanting to find the colony. Knowing of Raleigh's plans to use Roanoke as a base for privateering, they were hoping to destroy it. Moreover, they had been getting mostly inaccurate reports of activities there, and as such they imagined the colony to be far more successful than it really was. In 1590, they found the remnants of the colony purely by accident, but assumed it was only an outlying base of the main settlement, which they believed was in the Chesapeake Bay area (John White's intended location). But just as the Anglo-Spanish War prevented White from returning in a timely manner, Spanish authorities in the New World could not muster enough support back home for such a venture.
Hypotheses on the disappearance
The end of the 1587 colony is unrecorded, leading to its being referred to as the "Lost Colony", and there are multiple hypotheses as to the fate of the colonists. The principal hypothesis is that they dispersed and were absorbed by either the local Croatans on Hatteras Island, or another AlgonquianAlgonquian peoples
The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...
people; it has yet to be established if they did assimilate with one or other of the native populations.
Integration with local tribes
In her 2000 book Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, historian Lee Miller postulated that some of the Lost Colony survivors sought shelter with the ChowanokeChowanoke
The Chowanoke, also spelled Chowanoc, was an Algonquian-language American Indian tribe. They were the largest and most powerful Algonquian tribe in present-day North Carolina, occupying most or all of the coastal banks of the Chowan River in the northeastern part of the state at time of the first...
, that was attacked by another tribe, identified by the Jamestown Colony as the "Mandoag" (an Algonquian name commonly given to enemy nations). The "Mandoag" are believed to be either the Tuscarora, an Iroquois-speaking tribe, or the Eno, also known as the Wainoke.
The so-called "Zuniga Map" (named for Pedro de Zúñiga, the Spanish ambassador to England, who had secured a copy and passed it on to Philip III of Spain
Philip III of Spain
Philip III , also known as Philip the Pious, was the King of Spain and King of Portugal and the Algarves, where he ruled as Philip II , from 1598 until his death...
), drawn circa 1607 by the Jamestown settler Francis Nelson, also gives credence to this claim. The map states "four men clothed that came from roonock" were living in an Iroquois site on the Neuse
Neuse River
The Neuse River is a river rising in the Piedmont of North Carolina and emptying into Pamlico Sound below New Bern. Its total length is approximately , making it the longest river entirely contained in North Carolina. The Trent River joins it at New Bern. Its drainage basin, measuring in area,...
. William Strachey
William Strachey
William Strachey was an English writer whose works are among the primary sources for the early history of the English colonisation of North America...
, a secretary of the Jamestown Colony, wrote in his The historie of travaile into Virginia Britannia in 1612 that, at the Indian settlements of Peccarecanick and Ochanahoen, there were reportedly two-story houses with stone walls. The Indians supposedly learned how to build them from the Roanoke settlers. There were also reported sightings of European captives at various Indian settlements during the same time period. Strachey wrote in 1612 that four English men, two boys, and one maid had been sighted at the Eno settlement of Ritanoc, under the protection of a chief called Eyanoco. The captives were forced to beat copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
. The captives, he reported, had escaped the attack on the other colonists and fled up the Chaonoke river, the present-day Chowan River
Chowan River
The Chowan River is a blackwater river formed with the merging of Virginia's Blackwater and Nottoway rivers near the stateline between Virginia and North Carolina. According to the USGS a variant name is Choan River....
in Bertie County, North Carolina
Bertie County, North Carolina
-External links:**...
. For four hundred years, various authors have speculated that the captive girl was Virginia Dare.
John Lawson wrote in his 1709 A New Voyage to Carolina that the Croatans living on Hatteras Island used to live on Roanoke Island and that they claimed to have had white ancestors:
A farther Confirmation of this we have from the Hatteras Indians, who either then lived on Ronoak-Island, or much frequented it. These tell us, that several of their Ancestors were white People, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is confirm'd by gray Eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians, and no others. They value themselves extremely for their Affinity to the English, and are ready to do them all friendly Offices. It is probable, that this Settlement miscarry'd for want of timely Supplies from England; or thro' the Treachery of the Natives, for we may reasonably suppose that the English were forced to cohabit with them, for Relief and Conversation; and that in process of Time, they conform'd themselves to the Manners of their Indian Relations.
From the early 17th century to the middle 18th century European colonists reported encounters with gray-eyed American Indians who claimed descent from the colonists (although at least one, a story of a Welsh priest who met a Doeg warrior who spoke the Welsh language, is likely to be a hoax). Records from French Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
s who settled along the Tar River
Tar River
The Tar River is a river that is approximately long, of northeast North Carolina flowing generally southeast to an estuary of Pamlico Sound. The Tar River becomes the tidal Pamlico River once it underpasses the U.S...
in 1696 tell of meeting Tuscaroras with blond hair and blue eyes not long after their arrival. As Jamestown was the nearest English settlement and they had no record of being attacked by Tuscarora, the likelihood that origin of those fair-skinned natives was the Lost Colony is high.
In the late 1880s, North Carolina state legislator Hamilton McMillan discovered that his "redbones" (those of Indian blood) neighbors in Robeson County
Robeson County, North Carolina
Robeson County is a county in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of 2010 it had a population of 134,168. Since then, it has been one of the 10% of United States counties that were majority-minority; its combined population of American Indian, African American and Latino residents comprise over...
claimed to have been descended from the Roanoke settlers. He also noticed that many of the words in their language had striking similarities to obsolete English words. Furthermore, many of the family names were identical to those listed in Hakluyt's account of the colony. Thus on February 10, 1885, convinced that these were the descendants of the Lost Colony, he helped to pass the "Croatan bill", that officially designated the Native American population around Robeson county as Croatan. Two days later on February 12, 1885, the Fayetteville Observer
Fayetteville Observer
The Fayetteville Observer is a daily newspaper published in Fayetteville, North Carolina. It has been locally owned by the same family for over 80 years, and claims to be the largest independent newspaper in the state....
published an article regarding the Robeson Native Americans' origins. This article states:
"...They say that their traditions say that the people we call the Croatan Indians (though they do not recognize that name as that of a tribe, but only a village, and that they were Tuscaroras), were always friendly to the whites; and finding them destitute and despairing of ever receiving aid from England, persuaded them to leave [Roanoke Island], and go to the mainland... They gradually drifted away from their original seats, and at length settled in Robeson, about the center of the county..."
However, the case was far from settled. A similar legend claims that the now-extinct Saponi of Person County, North Carolina
Person County, North Carolina
Person County is a county located in the Piedmont region in north-central North Carolina in the United States. It is part of the Durham-Chapel Hill Metropolitan Area. The population was 39,464 at the 2010 census.The county seat is Roxboro...
, are descended from the English colonists of Roanoke Island. Indeed, when these Native Americans were last encountered by subsequent settlers, they noted that these Native Americans already spoke English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and were aware of the Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
religion. The historical surnames of this group also correspond with those who lived on Roanoke Island, and many exhibit European
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
physical features along with Native American features. However, no documented evidence exists to link the Saponi to the Roanoke colonists.
Other tribes that claim partial descent from surviving Roanoke colonists include the Catawba (who absorbed the Shakori and Eno people), and the Coree
Coree
The Coree were a very small Native American tribe, who once occupied a coastal area of southeastern North Carolina in the area now covered by Carteret and Craven counties...
and the Lumbee
Lumbee
The Lumbee belong to a state recognized Native American tribe in North Carolina. The Lumbee are concentrated in Robeson County and named for the primary waterway traversing the county...
tribes. The Lost Colony DNA Project
Lost Colony DNA Project
The Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project was founded by a group led by Roberta Estes in 2005 in order to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke using historical records, migration patterns, oral histories and DNA testing.- Project background :...
was established to test all of these claims.
Furthermore, Samuel A'Court Ashe
Samuel A'Court Ashe
Samuel A'Court Ashe was a Confederate infantry captain in the American Civil War and celebrated editor, historian, and North Carolina legislator. Prior to his death in 1938, he was the last surviving commissioned officer of the Confederate States Army...
was convinced that the colonists had relocated westward to the banks of the Chowan River
Chowan River
The Chowan River is a blackwater river formed with the merging of Virginia's Blackwater and Nottoway rivers near the stateline between Virginia and North Carolina. According to the USGS a variant name is Choan River....
in Bertie County
Bertie County, North Carolina
-External links:**...
, and Conway Whittle Sams claimed that after being attacked by Wanchese and Powhatan, the colonists scattered to multiple locations: the Chowan River, and south to the Pamlico
Pamlico River
The Pamlico River is a tidal river that flows into Pamlico Sound, in North Carolina in the United States of America. It is formed by the confluence of the Tar River and Tranters Creek....
and Neuse Rivers.
Chesepians
Historian David Beers QuinnDavid Beers Quinn
David Beers Quinn was an Irish historian who wrote extensively on the voyages of discovery and colonisation of America. Many of his publications appeared as volumes of the Hakluyt Society...
hypothesized that the colony moved wholesale and was later destroyed. When Captain John Smith
John Smith of Jamestown
Captain John Smith Admiral of New England was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania and friend Mózes Székely...
and the Jamestown colonists settled in Virginia in 1607, one of their assigned tasks was to locate the Roanoke colonists. The weroance
Weroance
Weroance is an Algonquian word meaning tribal chief, leader, commander, or king, notably among the Powhatan confederacy of the Virginia coast and Chesapeake Bay region. The Powhatan Confederacy, encountered by the colonists of Jamestown and adjacent area of the Virginia Colony beginning in 1607,...
Chief Powhatan
Chief Powhatan
Chief Powhatan , whose proper name was Wahunsenacawh , was the paramount chief of Tsenacommacah, an alliance of Algonquian-speaking Virginia Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia at the time English settlers landed at Jamestown in 1607...
told Captain Smith about his Virginia Peninsula
Virginia Peninsula
The Virginia Peninsula is a peninsula in southeast Virginia, USA, bounded by the York River, James River, Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay.Hampton Roads is the common name for the metropolitan area that surrounds the body of water of the same name...
-based Powhatan Confederacy, and went on to say that he had wiped out the Roanoke colonists just prior to the arrival of the Jamestown settlers because they were living with the Chesepian
Chesepian
The Chesepian or Chesapeake were a NativeAmerican tribe who inhabited the area now known as South Hampton Roads in the U.S. state of Virginia prior to their annihilation by the Powhatan Confederacy early in the 17th century. They occupied an area which is now the Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake,...
, a tribe living in the eastern portion of the present-day South Hampton Roads
South Hampton Roads
South Hampton Roads is a region located in the extreme southeastern portion of Virginia in the United States, and is part of the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC MSA with a population about 1.7 million....
sub-region who, besides having refused to join Chief Powhatan's Powhatan Confederacy, were also prophesied to rise up and destroy his empire.
Chief Powhatan reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim, but no bodies were found and no archaeological evidence has been found to support this claim, however, and that which was found at a Chesepian village site in Great Neck Point
Great Neck Point
Great Neck Point is a point of land and neighborhood in Virginia Beach, Virginia on the Lynnhaven River. It is home to the Adam Keeling House and the Keeling family cemetery....
in present-day Virginia Beach suggests that the Chesepian tribe was related to the Pamlico
Pamlico
The Pamlico were a Native American people of North Carolina. They spoke an Algonquian language also known as Pamlico or Carolina Algonquian.- Geography :...
in Carolina, rather than the Powhatans. There were also reports of a Native American burial mound in the Pine Beach area of Sewell's Point
Sewell's Point
Sewells Point is a peninsula of land in the independent city of Norfolk, Virginia in the United States, located at the mouth of the salt-water port of Hampton Roads. Sewells Point is bordered by water on three sides, with Willoughby Bay to the north, Hampton Roads to the west, and the Lafayette...
in present day Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. With a population of 242,803 as of the 2010 Census, it is Virginia's second-largest city behind neighboring Virginia Beach....
, where the principal Chesepian village of Skioak may have been located.
Lost at sea, starvation
One possibility is that the colonists simply gave up waiting, tried to return to England on their own, and perished in the attempt. When Governor White left in 1587, he left the colonists with a pinnace and several small ships for exploration of the coast or removal of the colony to the mainland.Cannibalism
Archaeologist Lawrence StagerLawrence Stager
Lawrence E. "Larry" Stager is Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and is Director of the Harvard Semitic Museum...
has suggested that the colony might have been attacked and its members eaten by Native American cannibals.
Spanish
Another theory is that the Spanish destroyed the colony. Earlier in the century, the Spanish did destroy evidence of the FrenchFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
colony of Fort Charles
Charlesfort-Santa Elena Site
Charlesfort-Santa Elena Site is an archeological site on Parris Island, South Carolina, which is also known as Ribaut Monument, San Marcos, San Felipe, or 38BU51 and 38BU162...
in coastal South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
and then massacred the inhabitants of Fort Caroline
Fort Caroline
Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States. Established in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, on June 22, 1564, under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, it was intended as a refuge for the Huguenots. It lasted one year before being obliterated by the...
, a French colony in present-day Jacksonville
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. However, this is unlikely, as the Spanish were still looking for the location of England's failed colony as late as 1600, ten years after White discovered that the colony was missing.
Dare Stones
From 1937 to 1941 a series of stones were discovered that claimed to have been written by Eleanor DareEleanor Dare
Eleanor White Dare of Westminster, London, England was a member of the Roanoke Colony and the daughter of John White, the colony's governor. While little is known about her life, more is known about her than most of the sixteen other women who left England in 1587 as part of the Roanoke...
, mother of Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Eleanor and Ananias Dare. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina, USA. What became of Virginia and the other colonists remains a mystery...
. They told of the travelings of the colonists and their ultimate deaths. Most historians believe that they are a fraud, but there are some today that still believe the stones are genuine.
Archaeological evidence
In 1998, East Carolina UniversityEast Carolina University
East Carolina University is a public, coeducational, engaged doctoral/research university located in Greenville, North Carolina, United States. Named East Carolina University by statute and commonly known as ECU or East Carolina, the university is the largest institution of higher learning in...
organized "The Croatoan Project", an archaeological investigation into the events at Roanoke. The excavation team sent to the island uncovered a 10 carat
Carat (purity)
The karat or carat is a unit of purity for gold alloys.- Measure :Karat purity is measured as 24 times the purity by mass:where...
(42%) gold 16th century English signet ring, gun flints
Flintlock
Flintlock is the general term for any firearm based on the flintlock mechanism. The term may also apply to the mechanism itself. Introduced at the beginning of the 17th century, the flintlock rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the doglock, matchlock and wheellock...
, and two 16th century copper farthings at the site of the ancient Croatoan capital, 50 miles (80 km) from the old Roanoke colony. Genealogists were able to trace the lion crest on the signet ring to the Kendall coat of arms, and concluded that the ring most likely belonged to one Master Kendall who is recorded as having lived in the Ralph Lane
Ralph Lane
Sir Ralph Lane was an English explorer of the Elizabethan era. He was part of the unsuccessful attempt in 1585 to colonize Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He also served the Crown in Ireland and was knighted by the Queen in 1593....
colony on Roanoke Island from 1585 to 1586. If this is the case, the ring represents the first material connection between the Roanoke colonists and the Native Americans on Hatteras Island.
It is also believed that the reason for the extreme deficiency in archaeological evidence is due to shoreline erosion. Since all that was found was a rustic looking fort on the north shore, and this location is well documented and backed up, it is commonly believed that the settlement must have been nearby. The northern shore, between 1851 and 1970, lost 928 feet because of erosion. If in the years leading up to and following the brief life of the settlement at Roanoke, shoreline erosion was following the same trend, it is likely the site of dwellings is underwater, along with any artifacts or signs of life.
Lost Colony DNA Project
The Lost Colony DNA ProjectLost Colony DNA Project
The Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project was founded by a group led by Roberta Estes in 2005 in order to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke using historical records, migration patterns, oral histories and DNA testing.- Project background :...
is an ongoing effort underway by the Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA
FamilyTreeDNA
Family Tree DNA is a commercial genetic genealogy company based in Houston, Texas with its partner laboratory, Arizona Research Labs, housed at the University of Arizona. Family Tree DNA offers analysis of autosomal DNA, YDNA, and mtDNA to individuals for genealogical purposes based on DNA samples...
of Houston, TX. The project will use DNA testing to help determine whether some Lost Colony survivors assimilated with the local Native American tribes either through adoption or enslavement. The project will attempt to locate and test as many potential descendants as possible. Testing is also planned for some of the recovered remains.
Climate factors
Also in 1998, a team led by climatologistClimatology
Climatology is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time, and is a branch of the atmospheric sciences...
David W. Stahle, of the University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
, Department of Geography, in Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County, and the third largest city in Arkansas. The city is centrally located within the county and is home to the University of Arkansas. Fayetteville is also deep in the Boston Mountains, a subset of The Ozarks...
, and archaeologist Dennis B. Blanton, of the Center for Archaeological Research at The College of William and Mary
College of William and Mary
The College of William & Mary in Virginia is a public research university located in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States...
in Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an independent city located on the Virginia Peninsula in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of Virginia, USA. As of the 2010 Census, the city had an estimated population of 14,068. It is bordered by James City County and York County, and is an independent city...
, used tree ring cores from 800-year-old bald cypresses taken from the Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....
area of North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
and the Jamestown
Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
area of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
to reconstruct precipitation and temperature chronologies.
The researchers concluded that the settlers of the Lost Colony landed at Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....
in the summer of the worst growing-season drought in 800 years. "This drought persisted for 3 years, from 1587 to 1589, and is the driest 3-year episode in the entire 800-year reconstruction," the team reported in the journal Science. A map shows that "the Lost Colony drought affected the entire southeastern United States
Southeastern United States
The Southeastern United States, colloquially referred to as the Southeast, is the eastern portion of the Southern United States. It is one of the most populous regions in the United States of America....
but was particularly severe in the Tidewater region near Roanoke [Island]." The authors suggested that the Croatan who were shot and killed by the colonists may have been scavenging the abandoned village for food as a result of the drought.
Portrayals and re-enactments
Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning playwright Paul Green wrote The Lost Colony
Lost Colony (play)
The Lost Colony is a historical play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green about Roanoke, the first English colony in North America. The play is based on the historical accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh's failed attempts to establish a permanent settlement in the 1580s in part of what was...
in 1937 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Eleanor and Ananias Dare. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina, USA. What became of Virginia and the other colonists remains a mystery...
. The play presents a conjecture of the fate of Roanoke Colony. It has played at Waterside Theater at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island nearly continuously since, with the only interruption being during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Alumni of the cast include Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. He gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's epic film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead...
(who played Sir Walter Raleigh), William Ivey Long
William Ivey Long
William Ivey Long is an American costume designer for stage and film. His most notable work includes The Producers, Hairspray, Nine, Crazy for You, Grey Gardens and Young Frankenstein.-Early life and education:...
, Chris Elliott
Chris Elliott
Christopher Nash "Chris" Elliott is an American actor, comedian and writer. He is best known for his comedic sketches on Late Night with David Letterman, starring in the cult comedy series Get a Life and for his recurring role as Peter MacDougall on Everybody Loves Raymond...
, Terrence Mann
Terrence Mann
Terrence Vaughan Mann is an American actor, director, singer, songwriter and dancer who has been prominent on the Broadway stage for the past three decades...
, and Daily Show correspondent Dan Bakkedahl
Dan Bakkedahl
Dan Bakkedahl is an American improvisational actor, comedian and teacher from Chicago's Second City. Born in Rochester, Minnesota and raised in Stuart, Florida, he attended St...
.