The Lost Colony of Roanoke

Shelley Seifarth

It was the age of discovery that first provoked intrigue and curiosity of new lands, particularly the Americas, and how the Europeans could expand to fit their society within the borders of this unknown and unexplored land. By the 1580s, more had been learned about the Americas, but any colonization until this point had not even been attempted. And so it was the English, under Queen Elizabeth I's rule, that were issued to establish a colony along the east coast of North America. However, when this great accomplishment was finally made in 1587, it was not long founded until it's ultimate fate ended in the disappearance of the colony 3 years later, instantly creating one of the greatest American mysteries that will ever be.

Exploration of the east coast with intentions of finding land appropriate for building a colony began in the early part of 1584 by Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been issued a charter to do so by England's Queen Elizabeth I. After significant exploration, the expedition led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe touched the area of what is now known as the North Carolina coast in the vicinity of Hatteras. It was Roanoke Island that was finally chosen as the site of colonization because of what they thought was a convenient placement ten miles off the mainland of North Carolina. In fact, the final report presented to Raleigh by the two explorers boasted of a bountiful land inhabited by friendly and benevolent natives.

When Amadas and Barlowe brought back to London two intelligent natives from the island, Manteo and Wanchese, Queen Elizabeth was so astoundingly pleased with the reports she had been given on the great promise of the founded region in Roanoke that she decided to name this newly discovered land Virginia in honor of herself. Together, the two Indians that were brought back, along with the excitement of the queen created quite the stir in London and in the meantime, Manteo and Wanchese were taught English so that they could be used to promote Raleigh's plan for a colonizing expedition, which he immediately began organizing. To his great disappointment, the queen refused permission for Raleigh to go and command the mission himself, so he passed the task along to his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, who had already gained quite the reputation in leading voyages which provided him with the necessary respect that was needed to successfully carry out the expedition that Raleigh expected.

In April of 1585, Grenville was finally ready to set sail, with his acquired seven ships complemented by nearly six hundred men, one hundred of whom were to be settlers. Among this initial company were Ralph Lane, a professional soldier, who was also to be governor of the colony, John White, an artist, and Thomas Hariot, a scientific observer. On June 26 the expedition reached Ocracoke Island of the North Carolina coast but it was not until July 29 that they moved to Roanoke Island where they planted a settlement. The month of time in between had been occupied with exploring rivers and sounds of the region. By the time Grenville sailed away on August 25, to return to England, the party of men had unloaded the vessels, traded with the Indians, collected information about the country, erected huts, and prepared a settlement, Fort Raleigh, on the northern tip of Roanoke Island. Out of the original 600 hundred men that arrived, 108 remained, under the leadership of Ralph Lane.

Despite the experience of Lane and the month of preparations that had been made before Grenville left for England, the colonists were not prepared as settlers. The wisdom and knowledge held by Lane granted him with a mindset of having no misgivings about stealing from the Indians. Being a soldier himself, he did recognize the significance of maintaining peaceful relationships with the near-by Indians. Furthermore, these settlers goals were focused and driven by greed of gold, silver, and pearls, none of which were truly of help to them in surviving in this new land. With the season far too advanced to even hope for crops for another year, they had to depend on the Indians, with whom their relationship was already deteriorating. Their situation progressively worsened until eventually, the Indians plotted to starve them out by denying them food. The plight was ultimately heightened when the English raided the main village of the Roanoke Indians and murdered their chief in open warfare.

So in June of 1586, when Sir Francis Drake appeared off the coast of Roanoke Island and offered his aid, the 108 men led by Lane, with much relief, took advantage of this offer. The men had been desperately waiting for supplies promised by Grenville but they had not arrived. Ironically, just a short time later, a ship with supplies sent by Raleigh arrived at Roanoke, but when the crew found the fort abandoned, they sailed back to England. Then, just another few weeks later, Grenville himself arrived with supplies and new recruits. Finding the fort in the same state as the previous supply ship had, he decided to leave a holding force of fifteen men there at the site so that the English would not lose possession of the land they had already acquired.

Meanwhile, the first expedition of the 108 men had not been in vain. John White, who had arrived back in England with Lane and the rest of the crew, had spent the year on Roanoke Island making maps and drawings of the plant, animal, and human life in the area explored during the year they were there. Thomas Hariot had also made contributions by conducting many scientific observations and notes. These benefits only made Raleigh even more determined to make yet another establishment on Roanoke Island, this time a more permanent settlement and not just a military force. Immediately, Raleigh began preparing and on May 8, 1587, a group of 150, including men, women, and children with John White as their governor, set sail for Roanoke once again.

By July, the group of colonists arrived on the island, planning to retrieve the fifteen men left there by Grenville and then move on to the southern tip of Chesapeake Bay. But when a search was made to locate these men, the only trace that was discovered was one skeleton. The fate of these fifteen men has been given such reasons as being slaughtered by the mainland Indians, who were rather disheartened by the treatment they had received by Lane's previous group of men. The other possibility given for their disappearance was that all or some of the fifteen men had left on one of the small boats they possessed to gain some more supplies. Whatever their fate had been, John White's newly arrived colony made the decision to remain on Roanoke Island despite what had happened to the fifteen men, and ignoring the recommendations they had to move further north. White had wanted to sail on to Chesapeake Bay, expecting to form a new City of Raleigh but Simon Fernandez, the pilot of the voyage, was more intent on privateering, so notwithstanding the protests, White and the rest of the settlers remained on Roanoke, and began repairing the houses of the previous settlers.

Of great significance during this time, White had Manteo, one of the Indians that had been brought back to England after the first expedition, baptized a Christian. The close relationship that had been developed with Manteo helped in establishing a friendly relationship with his band of people, the Croatoan Indians, who were enemies with the Roanoke Indians that had given Lane and his men so much trouble. Manteo, who was made the "Lord of Roanoke", was the first recorded Protestant baptism conversion in the New World and also the first English title of nobility granted to an American Indian.

But perhaps the better known incident of great significance, was the birth of Virginia Dare, in August 1587, to the parents, Ananias and Eleanor Dare. Eleanor was the daughter of John White and this child was the first child born to English parents in the new world. Her baptism, which took place on the Sunday after her birth, was the second recorded Christian sacrament service administered in North America.

Before his granddaughter was even one month old, White was begged to leave the colony and return to England. Supplies had become quite scanty and the colonists thought it would be more effective for White to personally go to Raleigh with the news that the people of Roanoke must have reinforcements immediately. So, on August 27, 1587, White left 112 colonists--eighty-four men, seventeen women, and eleven children to wait for his return.

In November, White finally reached the shores of England, he found the entire country awaiting the threat of the great Spanish Armada. Immediately Raleigh procured a small ship of supplies to be sent to the colonists of Roanoke while a larger expedition was being organized. But neither of the pinnaces set sail and in the spring of 1588, when Grenville coordinated an even smaller relief expedition to be sent, permission was refused because Queen Elizabeth had called all vessels to her service for the defense against the Spanish. When White was finally given two small ships, he could not control his seamen, who had more interest in the ensuing battles in the sea, so they had to return to England's port and continue waiting. In the early months of 1589, Raleigh resumed his efforts of organizing a relief party for the Roanoke colony, but nothing happened until the spring of 1590, when White was permitted to go with a privateering expedition that promised to land him in Roanoke.

It was mid-August of that year that the two vessels anchored off the Oregon Inlet, at Hatorsaske, not far from Roanoke Island, where smoke was seen rising into the air. Giving hope that the colonists were still alive, Governor White, accompanied by a small company set out in two boats on the morning of the 16^th for Roanoke Island. While travelling the small distance, attention was brought to another column of smoke arising from what is now the Nags Head dunes. They decided to investigate for the source of this smoke. This task ended up consuming most of the day and brought no success.

The next day, they again set out for Roanoke Island only to meet with repeated misfortune. First, one of the boats capsized in the inlet, killing the captain and six other men. Able to proceed with the search, White and the rest of the company over estimated the placement of the colony's establishment by a quarter of a mile because of the fast approaching nightfall. They immediately began blowing a trumpet and sang English tunes, in hope of finding the settlers, but they received no answer. When morning came, they finally arrived in the area of where John White had left his colony three years earlier. Climbing the bank leading to the settlement area, they found the letters CRO carved in Roman letters on a tree. When they reached the actual site, they found that the houses had been dismantled but a "very fort-like" barrier of tree trunks remained. Carved in one of the tree posts with the bark peeled off, was the word CROATOAN.

It had been agreed that a maltese cross or sign of distress would be left if the settlers had to leave under dangerous conditions, but no cross was ever found, nor a trace of any person. They did discover some buried chests, containing some torn papers, books, and pictures that White himself had left. Some heavy guns remained as well but it was noted that smaller artillery had been taken away. These heavy guns and other some other objects lying around were almost overgrown with grass, indicating that the settlement had been long abandoned. With stormy weather approaching, White and the rest of the company had to set sail for the return to England without having a chance to even search Croatoan Island. White was never again able to come to America to search for his daughter, granddaughter and other colonists.

Incapable of financing another trip to the islands, White had to depend on Raleigh to provide the essentials needed to set out a rescue expedition. It was said that if Raleigh has not established a colony by March 24, 1591, that his patent would expire. But as long as the colony he had sent to Roanoke was "lost", and not destroyed, his patent would remain valid, which has been a suggested as a reason why Raleigh did not at first invest much money or effort in sending out any search. On the other hand, as late as 1602, Raleigh was still seeking for his lost colony. It was in that year that he sent out an expedition that proved to produce no hope of ever discovering the whereabouts of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. With the establishment of Jamestown of Virginia, in 1607, the settlers eagerly maintained an interest in learning any information of the lost colony from the Indians in the area, but no solid data was ever procured.

Remaining a mystery to this day, the fate of the "Lost Colony" has been the topic of much debate and has been the source of numerous legends. Over the years, many explanations have surfaced, all being no more than theory and some containing more validity than others. For instance, one of the most credible and accepted possibilities is that the colonists, or some of them were infused into the Croatoan band. This would correlate with the evidence discovered at the abandoned settlement; the letters CRO and CROATOAN carved into trees. More proof for this rationale was the Hatteras Indians, who may have been of the same band, were found long afterward to have shown evidences of white blood and told of early white ancestors. John Lawson, an explorer of the North Carolina coast had even wrote about the "gray-eyed" Hatteras Indians and how many of them could "talk in a Book." Still another account of support comes from Sheriff Frank Calhoun of Roanoke Island who claimed that his grandfather, who was an Indian, had a blond, blue-eyed mother, Malockie Paine, who was believed to have descended from the colonist Henry Paine.

Another theory, which was supported by early reports of the Jamestown settlers, is that some of the settlers reached the Chesapeake Bay region and were killed there by the Powhatan about the time of the arrival of the Jamestown settlers. Modern historians claim that the settlers migrated northward by boat to the headquarters of the Currituck Sound. Once reaching that region, it is assumed that they travelled overland to territory then occupied by the Chespian Indians, who were a friendly tribe. It was here that the lost colonists lived peacefully with the Chespians for 20 years until Powhatan ordered the total elimination of the benevolent tribe, which would have then included the English from Roanoke.

Yet another prospect is that the colonists, despairing of relief, sailed for England in a boat left for them by White, and were lost at sea. This possibility could be quite plausible because evidence in tree rings shows that in the years of 1587-1589, there were some of the most horrible droughts in 800 years. In this case, the area's driest three year period may have caused the colony to make a desperate escape, even the risky one of fleeing in a small boat.

Yet more theories maintain such justifications that the Spanish in Florida destroyed the colony in an attack that had been planned by the officials in St. Augustine. Even other stories suggest that Indians actually attacked the settlement in a massacre of the colonists, while other skepticism accuses disease as the culprit.

Whatever the answer may be, there has never been an agreement on one solid theory because of the lack of physical evidence. Because of this, men will always ponder the mystery that was hidden in that one word, CROATOAN--which was all that prevailed of England's first real attempt to establish a foundation in America. In the end, the colony passed out of history but did not escape the scope of historical speculation.

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http://www.wm.edu/wmnews/042398/drought.html

http://www.outerbanks-nc.com/manteo/history/vadare.htm