The Lost Colony NC is a mystery that has baffled scholars for a few hundred years.
Watch this story unfold and vanish before your eyes.
The Muse loves a good tale and this story of The Lost Colony Roanoke Island is one of the best.
A Church in London has a small statue of Virginia Dare
displayed in honor of the first child born in the new land, America.
What happened at The Lost Colony of Roanoke?
115 Settlers vanished from Roanoke Island, North Carolina around 1587.
Here’s a story that happened along the coast of North Carolina the year 1587. A group of English settlers came to be known as (The Lost Colony Roanoke Island or The Lost City Roanoke) North Carolina to start a new life but three years later more than 100 of the colonists disappeared. That started one of America’s oldest Unsolved Mysteries.
Now 400 years later archaeologists have found evidence that sheds light on where the Colonists might have gone.
The Lost City Roanoke
Scott Dawson is a native of Hatteras Island, and hobby archaeologists.
He spent more than 10 years excavating a site on the island. Dawson found thousands of artifacts from the ground. The treasure was mostly tools, beads, and arrowheads of Native American origin. Along with all of those things were items that possibly belonged to the Settlers.
Scott Dawson believes he and a team of experts have located what was a survivors camp where most of the colonists moved and mingled with the Croatoan tribe of American Indians.
The Lost Colony of Roanoke is one of America’s oldest Unsolved Mysteries and has drawn all kinds of attention from experts from around the world to what is now the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with the hopes of uncovering clues to what caused The Disappearance of 115 English settlers.
Who killed The Lost Colony of Roanoke?
Speculation is that the Colony of settlers either died of disease, were killed by other explorers, or mingled with Native Americans but no definite answer has yet been found.
Dawson has always been fascinated by the history and grew up hearing stories of the Colonists. He recently put out a book about The Lost Colony Mystery and Hatteras Island and it tells about his findings along with a team of archaeologists from the University of Bristol.
The book goes on to explain the Lost Colony mystery and highlight the Native Americans who inhabited the area for thousands of years. He says we’ve got some evidence of a runaway slave they were harboring. There are lots of side stories in this book that have nothing to do with the main story.
The biggest accomplishment of the book is not that they found the Lost Colony mystery clues, it’s that these Indians are no longer here. They showed nothing but love and charity and kindness to take these people in and feed them and assimilate with them and show them friendship and no one even knows who they are.
More than four hundred years ago Queen Elizabeth the First and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh had hoped the 1580s expedition to America would start a new capital for England but something went pretty terribly wrong.
The ship carrying 115 explorers was the first to bring women and children to America.
The group included Governor John White’s pregnant daughter Eleanor White Dare. A few weeks after they landed in Roanoke Island, Eleanor gave birth to the first English baby born in the new world and named her Virginia.
Governor White soon returned to England to ask for more supplies but plans was held up in England for three years because there was a war between England and Spain. When he was finally able to make it back on his granddaughters 3rd birthday the Lost Colony mystery began. They were gone.
Did they ever find the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
The location of the people of the Colony is still a mystery.
Many say the settlers mingled with Native Americans, moved to a more hospitable area,
or were killed by disease or other explorers.
Numerous theories have surfaced about what happened to the 115 English settlers. Some people say they died from disease ,were massacred by either Native Americans or Spanish settlers, or they mingled into a nearby Native American tribe either as friends or slaves. Others believe a group traveled to Hatteras Island.
Vanished
This theory holds a lot of evidence because they found the word Croatoan carved into a wooden post at what is thought to be the area of the Lost Colony Roanoke Island. Bad weather conditions prevented White and he returning explorers from going over to Hatteras after discovering the engraved sign and instead they were forced to go back to England never to see his family or the rest of the explorers again.
The Croatoan was a small group of Native Americans that lived along the coast of what is North Carolina. The tribe received its name from the nearby Island Croatoan.
Like many of the natives living in America when settlers arrived they fell victim to all kinds of calamities including infectious disease like smallpox in 1598.
Experts say they became extinct in the early seventeenth Century. This tribe had learned to speak English. They were also able to communicate with the Roanoke Colonists. That’s what led Dawson to search Hatteras Island for clues.
Mark Horton from the University of Bristol started digging on the island in 2009 when they found copper rings, sword handles, earrings, a token, writing slate’s, even pieces of glass and that led them to believe they came from the Lost Colony.
But it was the items that appear to have once belonged to women as the 1587 Voyage was the only one that brought them to the new world. Dawson says when these colonies became abandoned you get massive political eruptions and disagreements and people walking out and things so it’s not unlikely that one group might have gone up Chesapeake, up the Albemarle but I’m pretty confident one group at least, probably the pretty substantial part, came out to Hatteras Island.
Clear views of ships come in to the shore so that would be ideal to set up camp and wait for the returning vessel. The Native American communities living there were also friendly and they served as allies. Dawson believes Hatteras Island was home to the survivors camp where the explorer’s may have set up camp when they first arrived on Hatteras from Roanoke.
He also believes that the colonists eventually integrated with the native Americans.
The team was supposed to excavate the site in the Spring of 2020 but the coronavirus pushed the work back. Parts are still pending.
Why was Roanoke called The Lost Colony?
Roanoke Island North Carolina near Manteo is in Dare County named for the first child born in the new land, Virginia Dare.
Another clue was discovered in 1937 called the Dare Stone discovered on the North Carolina-Virginia border. The stone was believed to be written by Eleanor White Dare. Remember she was Governor John White’s daughter, mother of Virginia Dare and it possibly tells the story of what happened to the settlers when they left and became the Lost Colony Roanoke Island.
Scholars have since been able to transcribe the markings and try to understand the messages. The experts say the stone says more than half the settlers died and eventually there was news that the ship had arrived off the coast.
The Native Americans were alarmed that the Europeans might take revenge so they fled and soon after that shamans warned of angry spirits and all but seven of the rest of the colonists were killed including Eleanor’s husband. The Stone says they were buried 4 miles east of this River and their names have been written on a second Rock. The Stone also notes that it should be taken to Governor White and that the Native American who brings it to the governor would receive ‘plenty presents’ it was signed EWD for Eleanor White Dare.
The tale of the Lost Colony Roanoke Island continues. This is Carolina – the Lost Colony Mystery- Musings. That’s our Breaking Muse.
