An Old Mystery Solved
There is a bit of very early American history that I always touch on very briefly in class that was in the news recently. It has to do with the mysterious disappearance of the English colonists who settled off the coast of North Carolina in the late 1500s. The settling of Jamestown gets more attention because it was the first permanent English settlement in what became the United States. However, the settlers at Roanoke settled first by nearly 20 years. However, when one of their leaders sailed back to England then returned in 1590, the settlement had been abandoned. Everyone was gone. Famously, the word Croatoan was carved onto a tree and offered one of the only obvious clues. But until recently, historians didn’t know for sure what happened to the settlers.
The term Croatoan was a reference to a Algonguian tribe of indigenous people who lived on nearby Hatteras Island. Could it have been that the 115 missing English settlers had gone to live with the Indians and ‘gone native?’ Nobody knew for sure.
However, it appears new evidence has led historians to conclude that some of the settlers moved their settlement inland while others did indeed assimilate with the Croatoan people. The sleuthing apparently involved an old map, some good old fashioned digging in the dirt, and a lot of DNA analysis by the Lost Colony DNA Project.
Next year, when I cover this in class, I’ll have a bit more to say. Is a good reminder that all history is revisionist.
Watch the video below for the full story.
