Hidden Corners of History- The Lost Colony

The Lost Colony

Jarrod E. Stephens

The Ashland Beacon

May is celebrated as the month in which the first permanent English settlement in America was established in Jamestown, Virginia. May 14, 1607 marked a glorious day for the establishment of what would become America. If you only take a glance at the story then it sounds quite glamorous and exciting. However, when you dig deeper and discover the grueling struggles that the settlers faced, the story becomes a lot darker. Not to mention the fact that Jamestown actually succeeded while other attempted settlements failed miserably.

There had been several attempts to colonize the eastern shores of America in the 1500s but none had been successful. In fact, the attempt to settle on present day Roanoke island off the coast of present-day North Carolina helped to create a mystery that is still puzzling the minds of historians.

Sir Walter Raleigh, a well-known Englishman, was given permission from Queen Elizabeth I to explore what we know as Virginia. He chose John White to lead the expedition. In 1587, White and more than 100 other people boarded a vessel and sailed towards the New World. Instead of getting to a more suitable location for the settlement, they were forced to get off on Roanoke Island which was a less than ideal location. A failed attempt to settle the area had happened in 1585 and they began rebuilding the remains of the fort.

After the fort was finished White decided that he wanted to move the settlers inland before winter but the relationship between the English and Natives took a sharp turn for the worse. A settler, George Howe was killed by the Secotan tribe and White wanted to avenge the ambush. Unfortunately, White’s men attacked the wrong tribe. They attacked the Croatoan. The idea of moving inland was abandoned. The whole story wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. On August 8, 1587 John White’s daughter gave birth to his grandchild that they named Virginia Dare.

After returning to their fort it was soon agreed upon that they were ill-prepared and White decided to return to England for supplies. They came to the agreement that if they had to relocate that a clue would be left by settlers as to where they had gone so that White could find them. Imagine how difficult it must have been to leave the ill-equipped settlement and your grandchild in a strange world where relations with the natives was never great. The journey to England and back should have only taken a few months, but when White arrived back in England, the Queen would not allow him to leave because she wanted all able vessels to remain so that they could defend England against the Spanish armada. 

He was delayed for three years by the Anglo-Spanish War and other difficulties that arose. Conditions were already deteriorating when White left Roanoke so there’s no way he fully expected to return to anything great at the settlement. However, in 1590 he was able to return to the location where he had left the people so many years ago. 

This journey wasn’t like anything we could imagine. Rough seas and the continual possibility of being attacked made the journey quite hazardous. When White arrived at the fort he found it still mostly intact and a strange message of “CROATOAN” carved into a post on the palisade. A quick search of the area led to the discovery that most of the usable possessions had been removed and this led White and his crew to believe that the settlers had gone to be with the Croatoan.   

  A lot can happen in three years, and centuries later we still don’t know what happened to the colony. Theories that have been tossed around include disease or a Spanish attack but no bones were found from death and the fort was largely intact when White returned. Others have suggested that perhaps a tropical storm could have led to their demise but again the fort was not entirely destroyed. Perhaps the most plausible answer would be that the settlers moved to be with the Croatoan in a place which is now called Hatteras Island. Their relationship with the natives could have been mended and they moved to the area, but still there was no hard evidence of such a move.

Now, fast-forward to 2026 and a new report from a group of archaeologists has yielded what they believe to be the answer to the mystery of the Lost Colony. After years of research and excavation there were small flakes of rusted metal discovered on Hatteras Island. The group concluded that the natives would not have had access to such metal and it proved that the so-called “lost colony” and its colonists were never lost. They just moved and were absorbed into the native tribe.

Mystery solved? Well, I guess that depends on what you want to believe. Nonetheless, the story of the “Lost Colony” still lives on as one of the many building blocks that created the foundation for this great nation that we call home.