Roanoke Colony

• 1. Introduction

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  At Roanoke Colony, John White came ashore on the morning of the 18th of August 1590, on his granddaughter's third birthday. He had crossed the Atlantic hoping to find the child and every other settler he had left behind. Fresh tracks marked the sand, but nobody came out to meet him. On a tree he found the letters CRO. Near the entrance of a fenced enclosure, a post carried the full word: CROATOAN. Somewhere between 112 and 121 men, women and children had lived here, and even that headcount is uncertain.

  Sir Walter Raleigh had tried twice to plant the first permanent English settlement in North America on this island. Both attempts ended in abandonment. Why did England stake so much on a thin strip of sand? What drove the first group of soldiers to flee? Why did families follow them into the same place? Why did help take so long to arrive? And why, centuries later, can nobody say for certain where the second group went?

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• 2. Charter and Shortcut

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  In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed along the Outer Banks and mistook Pamlico Sound for the Pacific Ocean. He concluded that the thin barrier islands were an isthmus, which hinted at a short route to China. He pitched the idea to King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England. Neither king acted on it.

  Decades later, in 1578, Queen Elizabeth I granted Sir Humphrey Gilbert a charter to colonize territories "unclaimed by Christian kingdoms". Gilbert had helped crush the first of the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland's Munster province in the early 1570s. The charter's wording was vague, but he read it as covering all of the New World north of Spanish Florida. In 1583 he briefly claimed St. John's, Newfoundland, as England's first territory in North America. He was lost at sea on the voyage home.

  After Gilbert died, the queen divided his charter between his brother Adrian Gilbert and his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh. Adrian received Newfoundland and everything north of it, where geographers hoped to find a Northwest Passage to Asia. Raleigh received the lands to the south, much of which Spain already claimed. Richard Hakluyt had noticed that Verrazzano's supposed isthmus lay inside Raleigh's share. He began campaigning for England to seize the chance.

  Raleigh's charter is dated the 25th of March 1584. It gave him until 1591 to establish a colony or lose his rights. Many expected him to build a base for privateers who would raid Spain's treasure fleets. Despite his broad powers, Raleigh was forbidden to leave the queen's side. He delegated the voyages to associates and ran operations from London.

  The first of those voyages left England on the 27th of April 1584 with two barques. Philip Amadas captained the larger ship, with Simon Fernandes as pilot, while Arthur Barlowe commanded the other. The fleet sighted what is now Cape Fear on the 4th of July. On the 13th of July it landed at an inlet north of Hatorask Island, which was named Port Ferdinando after Fernandes. The Secotan controlled Roanoke Island and the mainland between Albemarle Sound and the Pamlico River, and they soon made friendly contact. Their chieftain, Wingina, had recently been wounded in a war with the Pamlico, so his brother Granganimeo spoke for the tribe.

  Amadas and Barlowe came home in the autumn of 1584 praising the tribes' hospitality and the strategic position of Roanoke. They brought two Native men with them. Wanchese was a Secotan. Manteo was a Croatan whose mother was the chieftain of Croatoan Island. The reports described a bountiful land that echoed the Golden Age and the Garden of Eden, though Raleigh may have polished those accounts. Elizabeth was impressed. In 1585, while knighting Raleigh, she named his grant "Virginia" and called him "Knight Lord and Governor of Virginia".

  Raleigh now began looking for investors. The next fleet would carry both Manteo and Wanchese back across the ocean.

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• 3. Lane's Garrison

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  About 600 men sailed in 1585, even though the plan called for only 69 colonists. Roughly half were meant to stay, with a second wave to follow. Raleigh designed the first colony as a largely military operation, focused on exploring and evaluating natural resources. Ralph Lane was named governor and Philip Amadas admiral, while Sir Richard Grenville commanded the whole fleet. The civilians included Joachim Gans, a metallurgist, Thomas Harriot, a scientist, and John White, an artist.

  Seven ships left Plymouth on the 9th of April 1585. A severe storm off Portugal sank one of the two small pinnaces and separated the galleass Tiger from the others. Fernandes had prepared for exactly that, naming Mosquetal on Puerto Rico's south coast as the meeting point. Tiger arrived on the 11th of May. Grenville built a camp there, and Lane's men practiced the fortification skills they would soon need. Only one other ship, Elizabeth, ever turned up, on the 19th of May.

  Grenville then seized two Spanish ships in the Mona Passage. Lane took one of them to Salinas Bay and captured salt mounds the Spanish had gathered. At La Isabela, the Spanish set hostilities aside to trade with the heavily armed English. On the 26th of June the fleet passed through an inlet at Wococon Island, near present-day Ocracoke Inlet. There Tiger struck a shoal, which ruined most of the food and nearly destroyed the ship.

  That accident rewrote the plan. The surviving provisions could not feed a large garrison, and the shallow inlets of the Outer Banks were poor harbors for big ships. Grenville decided that only about 100 men would stay with Lane until a second fleet arrived. He could not know that fleet had been sent to Newfoundland, to warn fishermen that Spain was seizing English merchant ships. Until help came, the colony would depend on the generosity of its Native neighbors.

  Trouble with those neighbors began quickly. After a silver cup went missing, Grenville sent Amadas to Aquascogoc to demand its return. When the villagers produced nothing, the English decided that severe retribution was needed to avoid looking weak. Amadas and his men burned the entire town and its crops, and the people fled. Manteo then arranged a meeting with Granganimeo, who agreed to provide land on Roanoke Island. Lane began building a fort on its north side.

  Grenville sailed for England on the 25th of August 1585. In Bermuda a few days later, he raided the Spanish galleon Santa Maria de San Vicente, which had drifted away from its fleet. Its treasure was enough to make the entire Roanoke expedition profitable and stirred excitement at Elizabeth's court. Records show that 107 men stayed with Lane. Historians disagree about whether White went home with Grenville or spent the winter on the island.

  Many colonists had come expecting gold and silver. When none turned up, they grew bitter about the whole venture. They tried to trace the source of the Native copper and never found it. Little is known about the months between September 1585 and March 1586. Corn from neighboring villages, plus venison, fish and oysters, probably carried the men through, but monotony likely wore down morale. Meanwhile Amadas explored Chesapeake Bay as far as Cape Henry and the James River. The Secotan had called Skicóak the region's largest city, perhaps raising hopes of something like the Inca or Aztec kingdoms. He found a modest settlement instead, though he admired the climate and soil.

  Harriot and Gans traveled through Virginia, meeting tribes and taking stock of resources. Harriot noticed that every town the colonists visited soon suffered a deadly epidemic, perhaps influenza or smallpox. Some Secotan suspected the English of unleashing supernatural forces. When Wingina fell sick, his own people could not treat him, and he recovered after asking the English for prayers. He then begged them to share that power with other stricken communities, which only hastened the spread of disease. The epidemic probably damaged the fall harvest.

  Harriot's survey of Virginia's people and resources was published in 1588, and engravings of White's illustrations joined the 1590 edition. Much of their original research, however, was lost when the colony was evacuated in 1586.

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• 4. Pemisapan's Reckoning

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  By the spring of 1586, the Secotan had grown weary of feeding the English. The death of Granganimeo, a powerful advocate for the colony, helped turn Wingina against the newcomers. Wingina took the name Pemisapan, meaning "one who watches", and set up a temporary capital on Roanoke Island. The English did not immediately see the danger.

  In March, Lane told Pemisapan he wanted to explore beyond Secotan territory. Pemisapan encouraged the idea and warned that the Chowanoke leader Menatonon was gathering allies, with three thousand warriors at Choanoac. At the same time, he told Menatonon that the English were coming, so that both sides would expect a fight. Lane arrived with a well-armed party and found representatives of the Chowanoke, Mangoak, Weapemeoc and Moratuc. They were not planning an attack at all. Lane captured Menatonon easily, and the chief explained that Pemisapan had requested the council.

  Menatonon won Lane's trust with tempting leads. He described a rich and powerful king to the northeast, presumably the Powhatan leader. He confirmed rumors of a sea just beyond the head of the Roanoke River. His son Skiko spoke of a western land called Chaunis Temoatan, rich in a metal that Lane thought might be copper or even gold. Lane ransomed Menatonon, sent Skiko back to Roanoke as a hostage, and led forty men about 100 miles up the Roanoke River. They found deserted villages and warriors lying in ambush. Pemisapan had warned the Moratuc that the English were hostile, and they had withdrawn their food. Lane's party straggled back shortly after Easter, half-starved and empty-handed.

  Rumors that Lane had been killed were spreading, and Pemisapan had been preparing to leave the colony to starve. Lane's return alive surprised him. The elder Ensenore argued for the English, and the Weapemeoc leader Okisko pledged loyalty to Queen Elizabeth and Raleigh. Pemisapan ordered his people to sow crops and build fishing weirs for the settlers. That accord was brief. Ensenore died on the 20th of April. Wanchese, now a senior advisor, had decided during his time in England that the newcomers were a threat. Pemisapan pulled the Secotan off Roanoke, destroyed the weirs and forbade food sales. Lane sent his men out in small groups to forage and beg in the Outer Banks and on the mainland. Grenville's promised fleet had not even left England.

  Skiko, though held hostage, wanted to honor his father's wish for peace. He warned Lane about a war council planned for the 10th of June. Pemisapan used copper gained from trading with the colony to tempt other tribes into a final offensive. Okisko declined, although individual Weapemeocs could join. The plan was to ambush Lane and other key leaders in their sleep, then signal a general attack. Lane sent false word that an English fleet had arrived, which forced Pemisapan to move sooner. Pemisapan gathered allies at Dasamongueponke on the 31st of May. That evening, Lane attacked the warriors posted on Roanoke.

  On the 1st of June, Lane, his top officers and twenty-five men went to Dasamongueponke, pretending to discuss a Secotan attempt to free Skiko. Once they were admitted to the council, Lane gave the signal. Pemisapan was shot and fled into the woods. Lane's men caught him and brought back his severed head, which was impaled outside the fort.

  That same month, the fleet of Sir Francis Drake made contact. He was returning from raids on Santo Domingo, Cartagena and St. Augustine with refugees, slaves and hardware he had meant to leave with Raleigh's colony. Drake agreed to leave four months of supplies and one of his ships, the Francis. A hurricane swept the Francis out to sea. Lane then persuaded his men to evacuate, and Drake took them home along with Manteo and another Native man, Towaye. Three colonists were left behind and never heard from again. No record shows the refugees and slaves arriving in England, so their fate is unclear. The fleet reached England in July 1586, and the colonists introduced tobacco, maize and potatoes.

  A single supply ship sent by Raleigh reached Roanoke just days after Drake left, found no trace of the colonists, and departed. Two weeks later, Grenville arrived with a year's worth of supplies and 400 men in reinforcements. He searched the area and questioned three Native men, one of whom explained the evacuation. Grenville sailed home but left fifteen men to hold Raleigh's claim.

  According to the Croatan, a coalition of mainland tribes attacked that detachment soon afterward. Five of the Englishmen were away gathering oysters. Two attackers, appearing unarmed, approached the camp and asked to meet peacefully with two of the English. One of them hid a wooden sword and killed an Englishman. Another 28 attackers then showed themselves, but the second Englishman escaped to warn his unit. The attackers set fire to the house holding the food stores, and a second Englishman was killed. The remaining nine retreated to the shore and fled by boat. They picked up four comrades returning from the creek and went on to a small island near the entrance to Hatteras harbor. The thirteen survivors were never seen again.

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• 5. Families on the Island

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  On the 7th of January 1587, Raleigh approved a corporate charter to found "the Cittie of Raleigh", with John White as governor and twelve assistants. Hakluyt, Harriot and White had persuaded him to try again. Roanoke Island was no longer safe after the fighting under Lane and the death of Wingina. Hakluyt recommended Chesapeake Bay, partly because he believed the Pacific coast lay just beyond the explored parts of Virginia.

  About 115 people agreed to go. They were largely middle-class Londoners, perhaps hoping to become landed gentry. Among them were White's pregnant daughter Eleanor and her husband Ananias Dare. Unlike Lane's expedition, this one carried women and children but no organized military force. Manteo and Towaye came along. Three ships left on the 8th of May. White captained the flagship Lion, with Fernandes as master and pilot. Edward Spicer commanded a flyboat, and Edward Stafford a pinnace.

  On the 22nd of July, the flagship and pinnace anchored at Croatoan Island. White planned to take forty men in the pinnace to Roanoke, consult the fifteen men Grenville had left there, and continue to Chesapeake Bay. Once White boarded, a gentleman on the flagship speaking for Fernandes ordered the sailors to leave the colonists on Roanoke. The next morning, White found the site of Lane's colony. The fort had been dismantled, and the houses stood vacant, overgrown with melons. The only trace of Grenville's men was a set of human bones that White believed belonged to one of them.

  Trouble followed fast. Colonist George Howe was killed by a Native man while searching alone for crabs in Albemarle Sound. Stafford went with Manteo to restore relations with the Croatan, who said a coalition led by Wanchese had attacked Grenville's detachment. The colonists sought a truce through the Croatan but heard nothing back. On the 9th of August, White led a pre-emptive strike on Dasamongueponke. The enemy, fearing reprisal for Howe's death, had already left, and the English accidentally attacked Croatan looters. Manteo smoothed things over again. For his service, he was baptized and named "Lord of Roanoke and Dasamongueponke".

  On the 18th of August 1587, Eleanor Dare gave birth to a daughter, christened Virginia as "the first Christian born in Virginia". Margery Harvye gave birth soon afterward, though nothing else is known about her child. The colonists decided to move 50 miles up Albemarle Sound, and they persuaded a reluctant White to return to England and plead for help. He left with the fleet on the 27th of August 1587.

  White reached England on the 5th of November 1587, just as reports of a mobilizing Spanish Armada had reached London. Elizabeth had forbidden any able ship to leave, so that it could join the coming battle. Over the winter, Grenville won permission to sail for the Caribbean, with White allowed to ride in a resupply ship. Unfavourable winds kept the fleet in port until Grenville was ordered to stay and defend England. White was allowed to take two smaller ships, the Brave and the Roe, and they left on the 22nd of April 1588. Their captains chased Spanish prizes along the way to improve their profits. On the 6th of May, French mariners, or pirates, attacked them near Morocco. Nearly two dozen crew died and the supplies bound for Roanoke were looted. England kept its shipping ban even after the Armada's defeat in August, to prepare a Counter Armada for 1589.

  Spain had been gathering intelligence on Roanoke since 1585. Its officials feared the English had built a pirate haven but could not find one. They overestimated English success, and rumors spoke of a mountain made of diamonds and a route to the Pacific. After a failed reconnaissance in 1587, Philip II ordered Vicente González to search Chesapeake Bay in 1588. González found nothing there, but on the way back he chanced upon Port Ferdinando, which looked abandoned. He left without a thorough investigation. The defeat of the Armada kept Philip from ordering an attack. A reported 1590 plan to destroy Roanoke and settle Chesapeake Bay was only disinformation, meant to mislead English intelligence.

  In 1590, Raleigh arranged passage for White on a privateering expedition organized by John Watts. Six ships would spend the summer raiding Spanish outposts in the Caribbean. The flagship Hopewell and the Moonlight would split off to take White to his colony. Raleigh was handing the venture to new investors at that very moment. The two ships anchored at Croatoan Island on the 12th of August, and nothing suggests White used the time to ask the Croatan for information. On the evening of the 15th, crews saw plumes of smoke on Roanoke Island. The next day they investigated another column on the southern end of Croatoan and found nothing. White's landing party then spent two days trying to cross Pamlico Sound, with considerable difficulty and loss of life. On the 17th they sighted a fire on the north end of Roanoke and rowed toward it, but arrived after nightfall. The men spent the night in their anchored boats, singing English songs in the hope that the colonists would hear.

  Inside the palisade, the search party found the houses dismantled and everything portable removed. Several large trunks had been dug up and looted, including three belonging to White that held the belongings he left in 1587. None of the colony's boats lay along the shore. White took the carved words as proof of a peaceful departure. In 1587 the colonists had agreed to leave a "secret token" showing their destination, and a cross pattée as a duress code.

  The party returned to Hopewell that evening and planned to sail for Croatoan the next day. Then Hopewell's anchor cable snapped, leaving the ship with one working cable and anchor. The risk of shipwreck ended the search. Moonlight set off for England. Hopewell's crew offered a compromise in which they would winter in the Caribbean and return in the spring of 1591. The ship was blown off course, failed to land in the Azores, and was forced back toward England, arriving on the 24th of October 1590. White's report said the settlers had probably just relocated and might still be found alive. That belief suited Raleigh very well.

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• 6. Rumors and Rival Agendas

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  A petition in 1594 asked a court to declare Ananias Dare legally dead, so that his son, John Dare, could inherit his estate. It was granted in 1597. Raleigh took a different view of the matter. So long as the settlers could not be proven dead, he could legally maintain his claim on Virginia. During his first transatlantic voyage in 1595, he claimed to be searching for his lost colonists. He later admitted this was cover for his hunt for El Dorado. On the way home he passed the Outer Banks and said weather kept him from landing.

  When the price of sassafras skyrocketed, Raleigh tried to enforce his monopoly on Virginia by pointing to the possible survival of the colonists. He funded a 1602 mission to the Outer Banks, led by Samuel Mace. Raleigh bought his own ship and guaranteed the sailors' wages so they would not be distracted by privateering. Yet the itinerary and manifest show that harvesting sassafras far south of Croatoan Island was the top priority. By the time Mace neared Hatteras, bad weather prevented him from lingering. In 1603 Raleigh was implicated in the Main Plot and arrested for treason against King James, which effectively ended his Virginia charter.

  Bartholomew Gilbert led one more search in 1603, bound for Chesapeake Bay. Bad weather forced the ship to land somewhere nearby. On the 29th of July, a group of Native Americans killed the landing team, Gilbert included, for reasons nobody knows. The remaining crew returned to England empty-handed.

  After Jamestown was founded in 1607, John Smith was captured by the Powhatan. He met their leader Wahunsenacawh, often called Chief Powhatan, and his brother Opechancanough. They described a place called "Ocanahonan", where men wore European-style clothing, and another called "Anone", with walled houses. Smith later arranged with Wowinchopunk, king of the Paspahegh, to investigate "Panawicke", another place reportedly inhabited by men in European dress. The colony's crude map of the region also marked "Pakrakanick" with a note: "Here remaineth four men clothed that came from Roonock to Ocanahawan."

  In the summer of 1608, Smith sent the map and a letter back to England. The original is lost. Pedro de Zúñiga, the Spanish ambassador to England, obtained a copy and passed it to Philip III of Spain. That copy, now called the Zúñiga Map, was rediscovered in 1890. A dispute with the Paspahegh ended Smith's plan to explore Pakrakanick before it began. He also sent two search parties to find "the lost company of Sir Walter Rawley". Neither found any sign of the Roanoke colonists.

  By May 1609, word had reached England's Royal Council for Virginia that Wahunsenacawh had massacred the 1587 colonists. The source of the allegation is unknown. Machumps, Wahunsenacawh's brother-in-law, had recently arrived in England and is known to have supplied information about Virginia. The Council drafted orders for Jamestown to relocate to "Ohonahorn", near the mouth of the Chowan River. Its supposed advantages included the "Riche Copper mines of Ritanoc" and "Peccarecamicke", where a chieftain named "Gepanocon" was said to hold four of Raleigh's colonists. The new acting governor, Thomas Gates, was delayed when the Sea Venture was wrecked at Bermuda. He reached Jamestown in May 1610, several months into the Starving Time. The crisis may have deterred the colonists from moving. An expedition went to the Chowan River, but no record of its findings survives.

  William Strachey arrived in Jamestown with Gates and Machumps in May 1610. By 1612 he was back in England, writing The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia. It described "Peccarecamek", "Ochanahoen", "Anoeg" and "Ritanoe" in ways that matched Smith's map. Strachey also added details about "the slaughter at Roanoak". He suggested that the lost colonists had lived peacefully for twenty years with a tribe beyond Powhatan territory. Wahunsenacawh, he claimed, attacked them without provocation on the advice of his priests, shortly before the Jamestown colonists landed. Seven English survived: four men, two boys and one woman. They fled up the Chowan River and came under the protection of a chieftain named "Eyanoco", for whom they beat copper at "Ritanoe". The book also describes an attack on the Chesepians, after priests warned Wahunsenacawh that a nation would rise in Chesapeake Bay to threaten him. Some infer that the colonists had moved there and died in the same assault. The London Company never published the book, and it was forgotten until 1849.

  The Powhatan attacked Jamestown in 1622, and English writing about Native Americans changed sharply afterward. Writers increasingly questioned whether Native people were fully human. The London Company sponsored propaganda arguing that the attack justified genocidal retaliation, to reassure backers that their investment was safe. In that climate, Samuel Purchas wrote Virginia's Verger in 1625, asserting England's right to possess its North American claim. He argued that the natives, as a race, had forfeited their land through bloodshed. He cited the 1586 ambush of Grenville's garrison, an alleged attack on White's colonists, and the 1622 massacre. For the 1587 colony, he offered only one line: "Powhatan confessed to Cap. Smith, that hee had beene at their slaughter, and had divers utensills of theirs to shew."

  Smith's own writings never mention any confession. Historian Helen Rountree dismisses the passage as "an anti-Indian polemic". Even taken at face value, Wahunsenacawh might have invented the story to intimidate Smith. The European objects offered as proof could have come from other sources, such as Ajacán.

  In 1672, the inlet between Hatorask and Croatoan islands closed, and the new landmass became Hatteras Island. Sea traffic past Roanoke had already declined because of the dangerous waters. John Lawson explored northern Carolina from 1701 to 1709 and met the Hatteras people. He was the first historian to investigate the region since White left in 1590. The Hatteras told him that several of their ancestors had been white, and some of them had gray eyes. Lawson theorized that members of the 1587 colony had joined their community after losing hope of contact with England. On Roanoke Island he found the remains of a fort, along with English coins, firearms and a powder horn.

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• 7. Digging for Proof

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  President James Monroe visited the ruins Lawson had described on the 7th of April 1819. The site was already becoming a tourist attraction. Interest in the colony had otherwise faded, until George Bancroft published his account in A History of the United States in 1834. He cast the colonists as foundational figures in American culture, especially White's infant granddaughter Virginia Dare, and the public embraced the story.

  By the 1860s, visitors described the deteriorated "fort" as little more than an earthwork shaped like a small bastion. They also reported holes dug nearby by people hunting for relics. The 1921 silent film The Lost Colony and road development did further damage. In the 1930s, J. C. Harrington pushed for restoration. The National Park Service took over administration in 1941 and designated the area Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. In 1950 the earthwork was rebuilt to approximate its original size and shape.

  A very different kind of evidence arrived in 1998. Climatologist David W. Stahle of the University of Arkansas and archaeologist Dennis B. Blanton of the College of William and Mary led a team that studied growth rings from a network of bald cypress trees. Their data ran from 1185 to 1984. It showed an extreme drought in Tidewater between 1587 and 1589, and 1587 was the worst growing season in the entire 800-year record. The result fit the concerns the Croatan voiced about their food supply.

  Since 2005, computer scientist Roberta Estes has founded several organizations for DNA analysis and genealogical research. Her interest in the missing colonists inspired projects to find a genetic link to possible Native American descendants. Autosomal DNA is unreliable for this, because so little of the colonists' genetic material would survive five or six generations. Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA hold up better over long spans. The obstacle is a point of comparison. Sequencing DNA from 430-year-old bones is conceivable, but no bones from the Lost Colony exist to test. As of 2019, the project had not identified a single living descendant.

  Archaeology on Roanoke Island began in 1887, when Talcott Williams discovered a Native American burial site. He returned in 1895 to excavate the fort and found nothing significant. Ivor Noël Hume made several compelling finds in the 1990s, but none could be tied to the 1587 colony rather than the 1585 outpost. In 1995, anthropologist David Sutton Phelps Jr. organized an excavation at Cape Creek in Buxton, North Carolina, after Hurricane Emily uncovered Native American artifacts there. His team found a ring in 1998 that seemed to be a gold signet ring bearing the heraldry of a Kendall family. The find was celebrated as a landmark. Phelps never published a paper on it or had the ring properly tested. X-ray analysis in 2017 showed it was brass, and experts could not confirm the Kendall connection. Such a cheap, anonymous object is hard to link to any one person, and it may have arrived in the New World later.

  Common artifacts pose a deeper problem, since they could come from the 1585 colony or from Native Americans who traded with other European settlements. Andrew Lawler suggests what a conclusive find would look like. The remains would be female, since the 1585 colony was exclusively male. They would be buried in the Christian manner, lying on the back and oriented east to west. They would also be dated before 1650, when Europeans had spread throughout the region. Few human remains of any kind have turned up at sites tied to the Lost Colony.

  Erosion may explain the shortage. The northern shore of Roanoke Island, where both the Lane and White colonies stood, lost 928 feet (283 m) between 1851 and 1970. Extending that trend back to the 1580s, parts of the settlements are probably underwater, along with any artifacts.

  In November 2011, researchers at the First Colony Foundation noticed two corrective patches on White's map La Virginea Pars. At their request, the British Museum examined the map on a light table. One patch, at the meeting of the Roanoke and Chowan rivers, covered a symbol for a fort at the head of Albemarle Sound. The faint outline of a fort, drawn in what might be invisible ink, appeared on the patch itself. One theory holds that White tried to hide the fort from the Spanish, who saw the colony as a threat. The symbol is not to scale, so it covers thousands of acres in Bertie County, North Carolina. The location is presumed to lie in or near the large Weapemeoc village of Mettaquem.

  In 2012, archaeologist Nicholas Luccketti proposed calling the spot "Site X", as in "X marks the spot." A team excavated it in 2015. In October 2017, the First Colony Foundation reported fragments of Tudor pottery and weapons there. It read them as evidence of a small group of colonists living peacefully in the area. The difficulty is ruling out that the Lane colony, or the trading post Nathaniel Batts set up in the 1650s, left those objects. In 2019 the Foundation announced plans to expand the research onto land donated to North Carolina as Salmon Creek State Natural Area.

  In 2020, other artifacts turned up in North Carolina that researchers believe may come from survivors of the Lost Colony. One site lay about fifty miles west of Roanoke Island. Analysts compared the objects with later settlers' belongings, such as clay pipes, which were invented later. Another researcher found items at a site about fifty miles south of Roanoke Island.

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• 8. Theories of Disappearance

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  Speculation about the colonists has never stopped since the 1590s. Academics say the subject attracts obsession and sensationalism with little scholarly benefit. Most conjecture starts from what is known. When White returned, the site was fortified but showed no sign of battle or of withdrawal under duress. No human remains or graves were reported, which suggests everyone was alive when they left. They apparently expected White to look for them.

  David Beers Quinn concluded that the colonists set out for their original destination, Chesapeake Bay, using the pinnace and other small boats. A small group would have waited at Croatoan to direct White to the new settlement. When White failed to find anyone, the main body would have quickly merged with the Chesepians, and the lookouts would have blended into the Croatan. Quinn thought Samuel Mace's 1602 voyage might have kidnapped Powhatans and carried them to England. There they could have spoken with Thomas Harriot and revealed that Europeans were living in the region. That, Quinn believed, explained the optimism about the colonists' survival after 1603.

  Strachey accused Wahunsenacawh of killing the colonists and the Chesepians in separate passages. Quinn decided these were one attack on a blended community, in April 1607. He supposed Wahunsenacawh might have wanted revenge for the speculative kidnappings. In his view, John Smith learned of the massacre first but quietly reported it to King James, rather than putting it in print. Quinn's peers had reservations, since the theory leans heavily on Strachey and Purchas.

  The idea that the colonists joined nearby tribes has been floated since at least 1605. They would gradually have run out of ammunition and clothing and dropped European language, dress and farming as Algonquian life proved more convenient. Colonial-era Europeans noticed that people taken into Native American society for long periods, even as captives or slaves, were often reluctant to return. The reverse was seldom true. So assimilated colonists or their descendants might never have sought out later English settlers.

  Which tribe took them in remains open. It is widely accepted that the Croatan were ancestors of the 18th-century Hatteras, though the evidence is circumstantial. The present-day Lumbee tribe identifies as descendants of both the Croatan and the Lost Colonists, by way of the Hatteras. Some 17th-century maps use "Croatoan" for places on the mainland across Pamlico Sound, which were associated with the Machapunga by 1700. Oral traditions about the Croatan crossing the mainland are common in eastern North Carolina. Ernest M. Bullard transcribed the "Legend of the Coharie" in Sampson County in 1950.

  More famously, state legislator Hamilton McMillan proposed in the 1880s a link to Robeson County. He said its Native American community kept surnames and speech patterns from the 1587 colonists. At the time, the community was considered free people of color. His efforts convinced the North Carolina legislature to recognize it in 1885 under the name "Croatan". The tribe petitioned for a new name in 1911 and settled on Lumbee in 1956. The Catawba and the Coree are also linked to the colonists in some accounts. S. A'C. Ashe was convinced the colonists went west to the Chowan River banks in Bertie County. Conway Whittle Sams claimed they scattered after attacks by Wanchese and Wahunsenacawh, along the Chowan River and south to the Pamlico and Neuse rivers.

  Reports of pale-skinned, blond-haired people among Native tribes go back to 1607. They are often credited to assimilated colonists. Albinism, which occurs far more often among Native Americans than among people of European descent, may explain them more simply.

  Mark Horton, an archaeologist from the University of Bristol, found European artifacts at a Native village site on Hatteras Island. They included part of a sword and part of a gun. Scott Dawson, who worked with him, wrote the 2020 book The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island. Dawson also described an olive jar, glass and other manufactured items in an article in American Heritage magazine. He declared, "They were never lost. It was made up. The mystery is over." Alain Outlaw, an archaeologist at Christopher Newport University, called this "storytelling, not evidence-based information". Luccketti disagreed. He wrote, "I have not seen any evidence at Croatoan of artifacts that indicate that Englishmen were living there." The book itself admitted there was no "smoking gun", and it was not peer reviewed.

  In 2025, Dawson and Horton announced that another Hatteras Island dig had uncovered large amounts of hammerscale, small metal flakes left over from forging iron. The layer was preliminarily dated to the late 16th century. They argued that nobody would have traded such waste, and that Native Americans would not have known how to forge iron. Skeptics note there is no associated hearth, and that other processes could leave hammerscale. The results have not been peer reviewed.

  Another possibility is that the colonists tried to sail home in the pinnace left behind in 1587. If so, the ship could have been lost with all hands, explaining the missing boat and the missing people. The colony may well have included sailors able to attempt it. Ships of that size could cross the Atlantic, though they usually traveled with others. Fear of Spanish attack on the usual Caribbean route might have pushed them toward a direct course. Such a trip was not unthinkable. In 1563, French settlers at the failed Charlesfort colony on Parris Island, South Carolina, built a crude boat and made it back to Europe. The colonists could also have sailed north in hope of meeting English fishing fleets in the Gulf of Maine. The pinnace could not carry everyone. They may have built a second vessel from local lumber and spare parts, as survivors of the 1609 Sea Venture shipwreck later did. Even then, some would have stayed behind.

  Anthropologist Lee Miller proposed a conspiracy involving Sir Francis Walsingham, Simon Fernandes, Edward Strafford and others to maroon the colonists. The goal, she argued, was to undermine Raleigh, whose activities cut across Walsingham's covert plans to make England a Protestant world power. That would have blocked a relief mission until Walsingham's death in 1590. Miller also suggested the colonists were separatists seeking refuge from religious persecution. Raleigh sympathized with separatists, while Walsingham saw them as a threat to eliminate. In her account, a small group went to Croatoan while the main body sheltered with the Chowanoke. Their European diseases would have devastated the Chowanoke and upset the regional balance of power. The Chowanoke were then attacked, and survivors captured, by the "Mandoag", a powerful nation to the west known to Jamestown colonists only through vague accounts. Miller concluded the "Mandoag" were the Eno, who traded the captives as slaves across the region. Critics point to Walsingham's considerable financial support for Raleigh's expeditions. They also note that Fernandes was willing to bring White back to England rather than abandon him with the others.

  Local legends in Dare County tell of an abandoned settlement called "Beechland", inside what is now the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. Reports there of small coffins, some with Christian markings, have fed talk of a Lost Colony link. Engineer Phillip McMullan and amateur archaeologist Fred Willard concluded that Raleigh dispatched the 1587 colonists on a secret sassafras-harvesting operation. Like every other theory about Roanoke, theirs still lacks a single bone from the colony to test.

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