The Lost Colony of Roanoke is one of early America’s most enduring mysteries. Founded in 1587 as the first English settlement in the New World, the colony vanished, leaving behind only two cryptic words, discovered by a relief expedition, as a clue to the colonists’ whereabouts. The mystery and drama surrounding its disappearance propelled the Lost Colony from a footnote in the history books into the object of speculation and legend. While the aura of mystery still surrounds the Lost Colony, shadowy evidence offers a possible explanation of why the colony was abandoned and hints at the survival of the colonists decades after they vanished.
The Roanoke colony had its beginnings in the early English attempt to rival Spain’s dominance of the New World and reap some of the massive wealth that was fueling Spanish imperial ambitions. To that end, Sir Walter Raleigh obtained a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I to begin the first English colony in the Americas. A 1584 scouting expedition recommended the island of Roanoke, off the coast of modern-day North Carolina, as an excellent location for a settlement, with suitable anchorage and friendly inhabitants. An expedition of 108 soldiers was dispatched the next year. While relations with the Roanoke islanders were initially stable, the military commander, Ralph Lane, lacked the required diplomatic skills and needlessly antagonized the native Secotan people. As winter set in the food situation became critical, triggering hostilities between the English soldiers and the Native Americans. The arrival of spring saw no lessening of the tensions and the tardiness of a promised resupply fleet worried the soldiers. Modern climatologists have concluded that the Roanoke settlers made their attempt to found a colony during the driest period in 800 years, a factor contributing to the poor food supply found on the island. The fortuitous passing of a fleet led by Sir Francis Drake gave the beleaguered soldiers an opportunity to disentangle themselves from a difficult situation, and the expedition returned to England with the colonists. However, Lane’s actions tainted relations with the native people of Roanoke and helped ensure the men and women who came after him would inherit a legacy of distrust. The overdue supply ships arrived shortly afterward and, upon finding the colony abandoned, left behind a small garrison of fifteen men.
In August 1587, a new expedition, this time including women and children, departed England to found a colony at Chesapeake Bay. En route to the planned site of the new colony, the ships stopped at Roanoke to collect the men left behind in 1586. The colonists found only a single skeleton and no other trace of the soldiers, an omen of things to come. To the colonists’ shock, Simon Fernandez, the pilot of their fleet, refused to take the colonists on to Chesapeake or to even allow them back aboard the ships. Fernandez’s motives have never been fully understood, although author Lee Miller speculates that there was an ongoing effort to sabotage the colonization effort as part of a plan to discredit Raleigh. With no other option, the colonists began readying Roanoke to be their new home. Trouble immediately followed, when Native Americans killed a colonist who was foraging for food, demonstrating a continued hostility to the colonists. To respond to these problems, the colonists selected Governor John White to return to England to request more aid. He left behind approximately 115 English colonists, including his granddaughter Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas. White’s timing could not have been worse as he sailed into the teeth of the Anglo-Spanish War. Under threat from Spain, Queen Elizabeth I had ordered all available ships to the defense of England. It was not until August 1590 that White was able to return to Roanoke. What he discovered on his return, however, was only the beginnings of a mystery that has persisted to the modern day.
White found the site of the colony abandoned. The only clue left as to the colonists’ whereabouts was the word “Croatoan” inscribed on a post at the entrance to the stockade and the letters “CRO” carved into a tree. Although undoubtedly upsetting to White, the disappearance of the colonists was not unexpected. The colonists had discussed contingency plans with White before his departure. The colonists had declared their intention to move fifty miles inland and away from the hostile Secotan on Roanoke. White found no evidence of a sudden or forced disappearance. Instead, the settlement had been carefully dismantled and did not appear to be the site of any violence. White also discovered several buried chests containing the personal belongings of some of the colonists, including his own possessions. The colony’s small ships were missing, as were the fort’s cannon and other weaponry. Perhaps of some small comfort to White was the fact that he found no cross on the grounds as this was the prearranged signal to indicate that the colonists were in serious danger. With little to go on, White opted to search for what he thought was a splinter group of colonists who had taken refuge with the friendlier Native Americans on the nearby island of Croatoan. Fate again conspired against White. Poor weather caused his ship to veer off course and an obstinate crew prevented him from searching Croatoan for evidence of any survivors. The later Jamestown colonists had orders to search for the missing Roanoke settlers, and the historical records attest to stories of Englishmen living among Native Americans. Colonists’ tales recount finding crosses and English words carved on trees in the area. However, the Jamestown settlement eventually reported the Roanoke settlers as dead.
Sir Walter Raleigh and Tobacco
Although Sir Walter Raleigh’s (1552–1618) most haunting association in American folklore is doubtless with the disappearance of the Roanoke settlement, he is perhaps best remembered in American lore as a sort of fairy godfather to the tobacco industry. Tobacco had been brought to Europe by the Spanish before Raleigh helped to popularize it at the British court, but there can be little argument with the assertion that it was partly through Sir Walter Raleigh that smoking became fashionable in Elizabethan England, and the subsequent American love affair with tobacco—both in terms of popular perceptions of smoking as sophisticated and of the economic consequences of this popularity—would outlive Raleigh by centuries. Raleigh’s importance to North Carolina was emphasized in 1792 when the new capital was named after him; moreover, a brand of tobacco has borne his name and visage for more than seventy-five years.
C. Fee
The true mystery of Roanoke is the final fate of the colonists, which has never been conclusively determined. Evidence supports the prevailing theory that the colonists split into two groups, one moving to Croatoan to wait for White’s return and the other moving inland. As they expected White to return quickly, his long delay led to the colonists forging stronger ties with their Native American benefactors and eventually assimilating. It is possible that the lost colonists survived until at least 1607 when hostile neighboring tribes attacked and destroyed the Roanoke settlers and their Native American allies. Reports from the Jamestown settlement hint that some lost colonists potentially survived even longer as captives. As with any well-known mystery, the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists has also spawned its share of supernatural solutions in literature and folklore. Virginia Dare and the other lost colonists are a fixture of early American history textbooks, and the story of the Lost Colony has been chronicled in plays, documentaries, films, and in episodes of the television programs Sleepy Hollow and Supernatural. Scientific and historical interest in the colony has grown in the last half-century. Recent discoveries have shed new light on the Roanoke mystery. Archeological digs have uncovered new clues as to the fate of the colonists, including evidence of early English habitation at Croatoan. Researchers have discovered markings on a 400-year-old map that may indicate the location of the Roanoke colonists’ new haven after abandoning the island, while a private group has begun an initiative to start DNA testing to find any possible descendants. Although centuries in the making, the final solution to the mystery of the Lost Colony may yet be within reach.
Daniel Fandino
See also Founding Myths; Legends
Further Reading
Horn, James. 2010. A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. New York: Basic Books.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. 2007. Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield.
La Vere, David. 2011. The Lost Rocks: The Dare Stones and the Unsolved Mystery of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony. Wilmington, NC: Burnt Mill Press.
Miller, Lee. 2012. Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony. New York: Skyhorse.
Roanoke—Primary Document
John White, The Fifth Voyage (1593)
No other event in early colonial history has been subject to as much wild speculation as the Lost Colony of Roanoke. While certainly a shock for the English who returned to find the island deserted, nothing in John White’s 1590 account anticipates the fascination that the colony would hold on Americans continuing to the present. Writing that he was “greatly joyed” at finding “a certain token of their safe being at Croatoan,” White considered the case of the vanished colony without need of further investigation. The fate of the colonists has never been explained. The most common contemporary theories include assimilation into the Native American population, massacre by hostile tribes, conquest and destruction by Spain, and starvation.
Our boats and all things fitted again, we put off from Hatorask, being the number of 19 persons in both boats: but before we could get to the place, where our planters were left, it was so exceeding dark, that we overshot the place a quarter of a mile: there we spied towards the north end of the island the light of a great fire through the woods, to the which we presently rowed: when we came right over against it, we let fall our grapnel near the shore, & sounded with a trumpet a call, & afterwards many familiar English tunes of songs, and called to them friendly; but we had no answer, we therefore landed at day-break, and coming to the fire, we found the grass & sundry rotten trees burning about the place. From hence we went through the woods to that part of the island directly over against Dasamongwepeuk, & from thence we returned by the water side, round about the north point of the island, until we came to the place where I left our colony in the year 1586. In all this way we saw in the sand the print of the savages’ feet of 2 or 3 sorts trodden the night, and as we entered up the sandy bank upon a tree, in the very brow thereof were curiously carved these fair Roman letters C R O which letters presently we knew to signify the place, where I should find the planters seated, according to a secret token agreed upon between them & me at my last departure from them, which was, that in any ways they should not fail to write or carve on the trees or posts of the doors the name of the place where they should be seated; for at my coming always they were prepared to remove from Roanoak 50 miles into the mainland. Therefore at my departure from them in An 1587 I willed them, that if they should happen to be distressed in any of those places, that then they should carve over the letters or name, a Cross in this form, but we found no such sign of distress. And having well considered of this, we passed toward the place where they were left in sundry houses, but we found the houses taken down, and the place very strongly enclosed with a high pallisade of great trees, with cortynes and flankers very fortlike, and one of the chief trees or posts at the right side of the entrance had the bark taken off, and 5 feet from the ground in fair capital letters was graven CROATOAN without any cross or sign of distress; this done, we entered into the pallisade, where we found many bars of iron, two pigs of lead, four iron fowlers, iron sacker-shot, and such like heavy things, thrown here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds. From thence we went along by the water side, towards the point of the creek to see if we could find any of their boats or pinnaces, but we could perceive no sign of them, nor any of the last falcons and small ordinance which were left with them, at my departure from them. At our return from the creek, some of our sailors meeting us, told that they had found where divers chests had been hidden, and long since dug up again and broken up, and much of the goods in them spoiled and scattered about, but nothing left, of such things as the savages knew any use of, undefaced. Presently Captain Cooke and I went to the place, which was in the end of an old trench, made two years past by Captain Amadas: where we found five chests, that had been carefully hidden of the Planters, and of the same chests three were my own, and about the place many of my things spoiled and broken, and my books torn from the covers, the frames of some of my pictures and maps rotten and spoiled with rain, and my armor almost eaten through with rust; this could be no other but the deed of the savages our enemies at Dasamongwepeuk, who had watched the departure of our men to Croatoan; and as soon as they were departed dug up every place where they suspected any thing to be buried: but although it much grieved me to see such spoil of my goods, yet on the other side I greatly joyed that I had safely found a certain token of their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was born, and the savages of the island our friends.
When we had seen in this place so much as we could, we returned to our boats, and departed from the shore towards our ships, with as much speed as we could: For the weather began to overcast, and very likely that a foul and stormy night would ensue. Therefore the same evening with much danger and labor, we got ourselves aboard, by which time the wind and seas were so greatly risen, that we doubted our cables and anchors would scarcely hold until morning: wherefore the captain caused the boat to be manned with five lusty men, who could swim all well, and sent them to the little island on the right hand of the harbor, to bring aboard six of our men, who had filled our cask with fresh water: the boat the same night returned aboard with our men, but all our cask ready filled they left behind, impossible to be had aboard without danger of casting away both men and boats: for this night proved very stormy and foul.
Source: Burrage, Henry S. “The Fifth Voyage of M. John White, 1590.” Early English and French Voyages, Chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534–1608. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1906, pp. 316–319.