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The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County in present-day North Carolina was an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Between 1585 and 1587, groups of colonists were left to make the attempt. The final group disappeared after a period of three years elapsed without supplies from England, leading to the continuing mystery known as "The Lost Colony."

Raleigh recieves rights to colonize

Sir Walter Raleigh had received a charter for the colonization of the area of North America known as Virginia from Queen Elizabeth I of England. The charter specified that Raleigh had ten years in which to establish a settlement in North America or lose his colonization rights.

Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World, and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain, with whom the English were perennially at war.

Exploration

In 1584, Raleigh dispatched an expedition to explore the eastern coast of North America for an appropriate location. The expedition was led by Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who chose the Outer Banks of modern North Carolina as an ideal location from which to raid the Spanish, and proceeded to make contact with local Native American tribes. They then returned to England to report their finds: samples of local flora and fauna, and two natives: Manteo and Wanchese.

First group of settlers

The following spring, a colonizing expedition composed solely of men, many of them veteran soldiers who had fought to establish English rule in Ireland, was sent to establish the colony. The leader of the settlement effort, Sir Richard Grenville, was assigned to further explore the area, establish the colony, and return to England with news of the venture's success. The establishment of the colony was initially postponed, perhaps because most of the colony's food stores were ruined when the lead ship struck a shoal upon arrival at the Outer Banks, or due to punitive action taken against natives. After the initial exploration of the mainland coast and the native settlements located there, the natives were blamed for stealing a silver cup. In response the last village visited was sacked and burned, and its weroance executed by burning.

Despite this incident and a lack of food, Grenville decided to leave Ralph Lane and approximately 75 men to establish the English colony at the north end of Roanoke Island, promising to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies.

By April 1587, relations with a neighboring tribe had degraded to such a degree that they attacked an expedition led by Lane to explore the Roanoke River. In response he attacked the natives in their capital, where he killed their weroance, Wingina.

As April passed there was no sign of Grenville's relief fleet. The colony was still in existence in June when Sir Francis Drake paused on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean, and offered to take the colonists back to England, an offer they accepted. The relief fleet arrived shortly after the departure of Drake's fleet with the colonists. Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville decided to return to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind fifteen men to maintain both an English presence and Raleigh's claim to Virginia.

Second group

In 1587, Raleigh dispatched another group of colonists. These 121 colonists were led by John White, an artist and friend of Raleigh's who had accompanied the previous expeditions to Roanoke. The new colonists were tasked with picking up the fifteen men left at Roanoke and settling farther north, in the Chesapeake Bay area, however no trace of them was found, other than the bones of a single man. The one local tribe still friendly towards the English, the Croatans on present-day Hatteras Island, reported that the men had been attacked, but that nine had survived and sailed up the coast in their boat.

The settlers landed on Roanoke Island on July 22, 1587. On August 18, White's daughter delivered the first English child born in the Americas: Virginia Dare. Before her birth, White reestablished relations with the neighboring Croatans and tried to reestablish relations with the tribes that Ralph Lane had attacked a year previously. The aggrieved tribes refused to meet with the new colonists. Shortly thereafter, George Howe was killed by natives while searching for crabs alone in Albemarle Sound. Knowing what had happened during Ralph Lane's tenure in the area and fearing for their lives, the colonists convinced Governor White to return to England to explain the colony's situation and ask for help. There were approximately 117 colonists—115 men and women who made the trans-Atlantic passage and a new born baby, Virginia Dare, when White returned to England.

Crossing the Atlantic as late in the year as White did was a considerable risk, confirming the claim by White's pilot, Simon Fernandez, that their vessel barely made it back to England. Plans for a relief fleet were initially delayed by the captains' refusal to sail back during the winter. Then, the coming of the Spanish Armada led to every able ship in England being commandeered to fight, which left White with no seaworthy vessels with which to return to Roanoke. He did manage, however, to hire two smaller vessels deemed unnecessary for the Armada defense and set out for Roanoke in the spring of 1588. This time, White's attempt to return to Roanoke was foiled by human nature and circumstance; the two vessels were small, and their captains greedy. They attempted to capture several vessels on the outward-bound voyage to improve the profitability of their venture, until they were captured themselves and their cargo taken. With nothing left to deliver to the colonists, the ships returned to England.

Because of the continuing war with Spain, White was not able to raise another resupply attempt for two 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 in 1590, on his granddaughter's third birthday, but found the settlement deserted. He organized a search, but his men could not find any trace of the colonists. Some ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children had disappeared; there was no sign of a struggle or battle of any kind. The only clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a post of the fort and "Cro" carved into a nearby tree. White took this to mean that they had moved to Croatoan 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, White stood on the deck of his ship and watched, helplessly, as they left Roanoke Island.

Theories regarding the Native Americans and the disappearance

The end of the 1587 colony is unrecorded (leading to its being known as the "Lost Colony"), and there are multiple theories on the fate of the colonists. The principal theory is that they dispersed and were absorbed by either the local Croatan or Hatteras Indians, or still another Algonquian people; it has yet to be established if they did assimilate with one or other of the native populations. The Lumbee, an indigenous people living to the southwest of Roanoke Island in present-day Robeson, Scotland, Hoke, and Cumberland counties, North Carolina, were purported to be the descendants of some of the Lost Colony settlers. Members of the Lost Colony had carved a single word into a tree: "Croatoan" (also spelled Croatan). Despite John White's difficulty in locating the settlers, about fifty years later, the Croatan people were reportedly found to be practicing Christianity.

Writing in 1891, Stephen B. Weeks opined that "their language is the English of 300 years ago, and their names are in many cases the same as those borne by the original colonists." Weeks, however based his report on a theory that was then being widely disseminated by Hamilton McMillan, a conservative Democrat who represented Robeson County, North Carolina, in the late 19th century. McMillan wanted to split the Post-Reconstruction pro-Republican Indian/Black vote in his county. The Native Americans of Robeson County had suffered egregiously at the hands of white Robesonians both before and after the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, the Indians of Robeson County were politically allied with the county's Black population. By championing Indian interests, McMillan hoped to draw them into his party's fold and establish a Democratic majority in the county. In all probability, McMillan also confused the oral traditions of some ancestral Lumbee families who spoke of migrating from the Roanoke River and Neuse River basin during the mid-18th century where groups of Saponi and Tuscarora had settlements. However, contemporary anthropologists and historians posit that these particular oral traditions belong to families whose ancestors were Yeopin, Potoskite, Nansemond, Saponi, and Tuscarora--peoples who had incurred devastating loss of life and land in the wake of the Tuscarora War in the early 18th century. Anthropologists and historians contend that they may have joined with the migrating Hatteras of Roanoke Island as well as with Cheraw families on Drowning Creek, now known as the Lumbee, or Lumber River.

A similar legend claims that the Native Americans of Person County, North Carolina, are descended from the English colonists of Roanoke Island. Indeed, when these Indians were first encountered by subsequent settlers, they noted that these Native Americans already spoke English and were of the Christian religion. The historical surnames of this group also correspond with those of the Roanoke Island settlers, and many exhibit Caucasian racial features along with Native American features. Others discount these coincidences and classify the Indians of Person County as an offshoot of the Saponi tribe.

On the other hand, American anthropologist Lee Miller, in Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony proposed that the expedition was sabotaged from the beginning by Sir Walter Raleigh's rival at court, Elizabeth's "spymaster," Francis Walsingham, while other theorists contend 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. Native peoples told Captain Smith of people within fifty miles of Jamestown who dressed and lived as the English. Captain Smith was also told by Powhatan, weroance of the Powhatan Tribe, that he had wiped out the Roanoke colonists just prior to the arrival of the Jamestown settlers because they were living with the Chesapeake, a tribe that refused to join Powhatan's confederacy. Powhatan reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim. However, this might be unlikely because of the fact that no bodies were found.

Still others speculate 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. Another claim suggests that, with the region in drought, the colony must have suffered a massive food shortage.

There are those who theorize that the Spanish destroyed the colony. Earlier in the century, the Spanish had eliminated Fort Caroline in Florida as well as a French colony near present-day Jacksonville. The theory however is unlikely since 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.

Archaeological evidence

In 1998, "The Croatoan Project," an archaeological dig sponsored by East Carolina University, discovered the first material connection between Roanoke and the Croatan. The archaeological exploration uncovered a 10 carat gold 16th century English signet ring. The ring was discovered along with a flintlock for a 16th century English musket and two 16th century copper farthings inside an excavated pit within the bounds of the ancient capital of the Croatan chiefdom, 50 miles (80 km) from Roanoke.

The gold signet ring with the crest of a walking lion has been traced to the Kendall family, and its presence at Croatan probably links it to a "Master" Kendall, who was a member of the Ralph Lane colony on Roanoke Island in 1585 to 1586. The discovery of the ring marked the first material connection between the English colonists and the Native Americans on Hatteras Island. Its face depicts a lion, a symbol of English authority that would typically be worn by a nobleman. Sifted from sand taken from 4 feet (1.2 m) down in an archaeological excavation pit, the ring was discovered by David Phelps, director of the East Carolina University Coastal Archaeology Office.

Climate factors

Also in 1998, a team led by climatologist David W. Stahle, of the University of Arkansas Department of Geography (Fayetteville, AR), and archaeologist Dennis B. Blanton, of the Center for Archaeological Research at The College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA), 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 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." 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.

Symphonic drama

Written by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Green in 1937 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the birth of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, The Lost Colony is an epic outdoor drama combining music, dance, and acting to tell a fictional recounting of the ill-fated Roanoke Colony. It has played at Waterside Theater at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island during the summer months near-continuously since that time with the only interruption being World War II. Alumni of the cast who have gone on to fame include Andy Griffith, who played Sir Walter Raleigh; William Ivey Long, Chris Elliot; Terrence Mann; and Daily Show correspondent Dan Bakkedahl.

In television and film

On an episode of the CW program Supernatural entitled "Croatoan," an alternate reason is given for the disappearance of the colony. In this show it is attributed to a demonic virus which render the host unable to make decisions for themselves and causes them to become bent on spreading the virus and harming those who would try to resist.

In DC Comics, Roanoke was visited by Melmoth, a future king, who had been exiled in the past. Using inherent magic, he trapped the entire town and impregnated all the women. Believing they had been cursed by the Devil, the women and their half-human children burrowed underground and founded Limbo Town, based on their original society and their preconceptions of witchcraft. A descendant of the town is Klarion the Witch-Boy.

The novel and TV miniseries Storm of the Century, written by Stephen King, alludes to the mystery of the Lost Colony, claiming that the Demon in the story, Andre Linoge, had demanded a child from the Roanoke colonists to raise as his heir. The colonists refused, and the Demon forced them to walk into the Atlantic Ocean and commit suicide.

Notes

1. Miller, Lee (2001). "Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony". New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 0-14-200228-3
2. Martin, Dave (January 29, 2002). "Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony" (review). From DCDave.com. Retrieved August 24, 2006.

References

• Hariot, Thomas, John White and John Lawson (1999). A Vocabulary of Roanoke. Evolution Publishing: Merchantville, NJ. ISBN 1-889758-81-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) This volume contains practically everything known about the Croatan language spoken on Roanoke Island.
• Milton, Giles (2000). Big Chief Elizabeth. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York. ISBN 0374265011. Critically acclaimed account, based on contemporary travel accounts from 1497-1611, of attempts to establish a colony in the Roanoke area.

External links

• Lost Roanoke Colony
• Article in Atlanta Journal about Lumbee and Lost Colony
• The Lost Colony musical drama

• History of North Carolina
• Lost cities and towns
• History of the Thirteen Colonies