THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE

Sabine Minthorn, Cayuse Mother and Baby







FROM THE WEIRD 100 BOOK

DEFINITION:

The Lost Colony of Roanoke was a group of English settlers who disappeared from Roanoke Island, North Carolina, without a trace, sometime between 1587 and 1590, leaving behind nothing but the word ‘CROATOAN” carved into a fence post.

WHAT THE BELIEVERS SAY: The complete disappearance of 113 or more people, along with everything they possessed, suggests the possibility of some kind of supernatural abduction scenario. Perhaps they were all seized by aliens and beamed up to a Mothership??

John White thought it fortunate that he was arriving back at the Roanoke settlement on the day of his granddaughter’s third birthday. He had returned to England nine days after Virginia Dare’s birth in the New World, and the war with Spain had prevented his return until now. For three years, he had kept his daughter Eleanor and granddaughter Virginia in his thoughts as the British decimated the Spanish Armada, and now he was soon to see them again. “She is probably a spitting image of her mother,” he mused as his three ships neared shore. They had fired off a cannon blast to alert the settlers of their return and they had seen smoke rising from the island, which they believed was from a signal fire.

But John White and his crew were not greeted with a warm welcome from the settlers. Upon landing, they found... nothing. All the houses and structures had been “taken down.” and on a palisade fence, White found carved the word ‘CROATOAN,” which he had given them to “signifie the place, where I should find the planters seated, according to a secret token agreed upon between them and me at my last departure from them... for at my coming away, they were prepared to remove fifty miles into the maine.

More than four hundred years later, the disappearance of the Roanoke settlers remains one of American history’s most puzzling riddles.

Are there any theories about the disappearance that are more plausible than others?

Yes, and many historians believe that the notion that the settlers migrated to Croatoan on Hatteras Island makes the most sense. John White had told the settlers to carve the name of their destination on a tree or fence if they decided to pack up and move, and he had also told them to cut a Maltese cross above the name of the place if they were being forced to leave,or if they were being taken away as prisoners. There was no Maltese cross above the word Croatoan, suggesting that their departure was of their own free will.

Were they, thus assimilated into the bloodline of the Chesapeake Indians?

English explorer John Lawson visited Roanoke Island 119 years after the disappearance of the colony He spent some time with the Hatteras Indians, who were direct descendants of the original Croatoan tribe. He later wrote that the Indians told him that “several of their ancestors were white people and could talk into a book as we do, the truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being found infrequently among these Indians and no others.

Could the colonists have been slaughtered by the Croatoan Indians, and one of the colony’s last survivors carved the name of their murderers on the palisade? Possible, but both the Spanish and the English not only carefully investigated the site of the original colony, but also searched far and wide for any sign of the colonists and came up empty-handed. One would think that there would be signs of the bloody massacre of more than one hundred people - even if it was nothing more than blood on the sand.

What about the supernatural theories? Some have posited that the entire colony was abducted by aliens, and that they were beamed up to a spaceship. This would explain the total lack of any evidence whatsoever that there had ever been anyone on Roanoke Island upon John White’s arrival.

As with all farfetched, supernatural or paranormal theories, we cannot disprove that this is what happened, as implausible as it sounds.

And thus the continuing mystery, and our conclusion here that the fate of the lost colony of Roanoke is, in the end, still inconclusive.

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Croatan Indian History



The legal designation in North Carolina for a people evidently of mixed Indian and white blood, found in various eastern sections of the state, but chiefly in Robeson County, and numbering approximately 5,000. For many years they were classed with the free Negroes, but steadily refused to accept such classification or to attend the Negro schools or churches, claiming to be the descendants of the early native tribes and of white settlers who had intermarried with them.

About 20 years ago their claim was officially recognized and they were given 9, separate legal existence under the title of "Croatan Indians," on the theory of descent from Raleigh's lost colony of Croatan (q. v.). Under this name they now have separate school provision and are admitted to some privileges not accorded to the negroes. The theory of descent from the lost colony may be regarded as baseless, but the name itself serves as a convenient label for a people who combine in themselves the blood of the wasted native tribes, the early colonists or forest rovers, the runaway slaves or other negroes, and probably also of stray seamen of the Latin races from coasting vessels in the West Indian or Brazilian trade.