Editing Roanoke Colony (section)

==Hypotheses about the colony's disappearance==
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{{blockquote|It's the "[[Area 51]]" of colonial history.|author=Adrian Masters (historian, University of Texas){{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=110}}}}

Without evidence of the Lost Colony's relocation or destruction, speculation about their fate has endured since the 1590s.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=110}} The matter has developed a reputation among academics for attracting obsession and [[sensationalism]] with little scholastic benefit.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|pp=8, 263, 270–71, 321–24}}

Conjecture about the Lost Colonists typically begins with the known facts about the case. When White returned to the colony in 1590, there was no sign of battle or withdrawal under duress, although the site was fortified. There were no human remains or graves reported in the area, suggesting that everyone was alive when they left. The "CROATOAN" message is consistent with the agreement with White to indicate where to look for them, suggesting they expected White to look for them and wanted to be found.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|pp=324–326}}

===Powhatan attack at Chesapeake Bay===
[[File:Powhatan john smith map.jpg|thumb|Chief Powhatan, detail of map published by John Smith (1612)]]

[[David Beers Quinn]] concluded that the 1587 colonists sought to relocate to their original destination – Chesapeake Bay – using the pinnace and other small boats to transport themselves and their belongings. A small group would have been stationed at Croatoan, to await White's return and direct him to the transplanted colony. Following White's failure to locate any of the colonists, the main body of the colonists would have quickly assimilated with the [[Chesapeake people|Chesepians]], while the lookouts on Croatoan would have blended into the Croatan tribe.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

Quinn suggested that Samuel Mace's 1602 voyage might have ventured into Chesapeake Bay and kidnapped Powhatans to bring back to England. From there, these abductees would be able to communicate with Thomas Harriot, and might reveal that Europeans were living in the region. Quinn evidently believed circumstances such as these were necessary to explain optimism about the colonists' survival after 1603.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

Although Strachey accused Wahunsenacawh of slaughtering the colonists and Chesepians in separate passages, Quinn decided that these events occurred in a single attack on an integrated community, in April&nbsp;1607. He supposed that Wahunsenacawh could have been seeking revenge for the speculative kidnappings by Mace. In Quinn's estimation, John Smith was the first to learn of the massacre, but for political considerations he quietly reported it directly to King James rather than revealing it in his published writings.{{Sfn|Quinn|1985|pp= 341–377}} Despite Quinn's reputation on the subject, his peers had reservations about his theory, which relies heavily on the accounts of Strachey and Purchas.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=132}}

===Integration with local tribes===
[[File:North carolina algonkin-dorf.jpg|thumb|Watercolor of a Secotan village, by John White]]

The possibility that the missing colonists could have assimilated into nearby Native American tribes has been suggested since at least 1605.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=113}} If this integration was successful, the assimilated colonists would gradually exhaust their European supplies (ammunition, clothing) and discard European culture (language, style of dress, agriculture) as Algonquian lifestyle became more convenient.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=328}} Colonial era Europeans observed that many people removed from European society by Native Americans for substantial periods of time – even if captured or enslaved – were reluctant to return; the reverse was seldom true. Therefore, it is reasonable to postulate that, if the colonists were assimilated, they or their descendants would not seek reintegration with subsequent English settlers.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=331}}

This leaves open the question of which tribe, or tribes, the colonists assimilated into. It is widely accepted that the Croatan were ancestors of the 18th-century Hatteras, although evidence of this is circumstantial.{{Sfn|Brooks|2014|p= 180}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dunbar |first=Gary S. |title=The Hatteras Indians of North Carolina |journal=Ethnohistory |volume=7 |number=4 |date=Autumn 1960 |pages=410–418 |publisher=Duke University Press |jstor=480877 |doi=10.2307/480877}}</ref> The present-day [[Hatteras Indians|Hatteras]] tribe identifies as descendants of both the Croatan and the Lost Colonists by way of the Hatteras.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|pp=339–344}}

Some 17th-century maps use the word "Croatoan" to describe locations on the mainland, across Pamlico Sound from Roanoke and Hatteras. By 1700, these areas were associated with the Machapunga.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=334}} Oral traditions and legends about the migration of the Croatan through the mainland are prevalent in eastern North Carolina.{{Sfn|Kupperman|2007|p= 137}} For example, the "Legend of the [[Coharie]]" in [[Sampson County, North Carolina|Sampson County]] was transcribed by Ernest M. Bullard in 1950.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 102–110}}

More famously, in the 1880s, state legislator Hamilton McMillan proposed that the Native American community in [[Robeson County]] (then considered [[free people of color]]) retained surnames and linguistic characteristics from the 1587 colonists.<ref name="McMillan 1888">{{cite book |last=McMillan |first=Hamilton |title=Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony |quote=An historical sketch of the attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colony in Virginia, with the traditions of an Indian tribe in North Carolina. Indicating the fate of the colony of Englishmen left on Roanoke Island in 1587. |year=1888 |publisher=Advance Presses |location=Wilson, North Carolina |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DFUVAAAAYAAJ |access-date=September 10, 2019 |archive-date=April 17, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230417064546/https://books.google.com/books?id=DFUVAAAAYAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> His efforts convinced the North Carolina legislature to confer tribal recognition to the community in 1885, with the new designation of "Croatan". The tribe petitioned to be renamed in 1911, eventually settling on the name [[Lumbee]] in 1956.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|pp=301–307}}

Other tribes purportedly linked to the Roanoke colonists include the [[Catawba people|Catawba]] and the [[Coree]].{{Sfn|Gabriel-Powell|2016|p= 128}} [[Samuel A'Court Ashe|S. A'C. Ashe]] was convinced that the colonists had relocated westward to the banks of the Chowan River in Bertie County, and [[Conway Whittle Sams]] claimed that after being attacked by Wanchese and Wahunsenacawh, they scattered to multiple locations: The Chowan River, and south to the Pamlico and Neuse Rivers.{{Sfn|Stick|1983|p= 233}}

Reports of encounters with pale-skinned, blond-haired people among various Native American tribes occur as early as 1607. Although this is frequently attributed to assimilated Lost Colonists, it may be more easily explained by dramatically higher rates of [[albinism]] in Native Americans than in people of European descent.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=116}} Dawson (2020)<ref>{{cite book |title=The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island |url=https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467144339 |date=June 2020 |isbn=978-1467144339 |publisher=Arcadia Publishing |access-date=5 September 2020 |archive-date=September 4, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200904011832/https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467144339 |url-status=live }}</ref> proposed that the colonists merged with the Croatoan people; he claims, "They were never lost. It was made up. The mystery is over."<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.pilotonline.com/news/vp-nw-not-lost-20200817-qgmblubzt5dyjm3jrcop25ssoq-story.html |title="The mystery is over": Researchers say they know what happened to 'Lost Colony' |last=Hampton |first=Jeff |newspaper=[[The Virginian-Pilot]] |date=August 17, 2020 |access-date=August 24, 2020 |archive-date=August 23, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200823224818/https://www.pilotonline.com/news/vp-nw-not-lost-20200817-qgmblubzt5dyjm3jrcop25ssoq-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Yuhas |first1=Alan |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/us/Roanoke-lost-colony.html |title=Roanoke's 'Lost Colony' was never lost, new book says |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=September 2020 |access-date=5 September 2020 |archive-date=September 5, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200905233346/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/us/Roanoke-lost-colony.html |url-status=live }}</ref> However, this conclusion has been called into question. Alain Outlaw, an archaeologist and faculty member at [[Christopher Newport University]], called Dawson's conclusion as "storytelling, not evidence-based information", while archaeologist Nick Luccketti wrote "I have not seen any evidence at Croatoan of artifacts that indicate that Englishmen were living there." In addition, the actual text of Dawson's 2020 book ''The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island'' admitted that there was no "[[smoking gun]]" of evidence that the colonists had assimilated with the tribe. The book was also not subject to peer review, leaving the question open in spite of the sensationalist headlines that accompanied its publication.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://stlukesmuseum.org/edu-blog/mystery-of-the-lost-colony-solved-not-so-fast/ |title=Mystery of the Lost Colony Solved? Not So Fast! |last=Ericson |first=John |date=September 24, 2020 |publisher=[[St. Luke's Historic Church & Museum]] |access-date=20 July 2022 |archive-date=December 6, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221206001844/https://stlukesmuseum.org/edu-blog/mystery-of-the-lost-colony-solved-not-so-fast/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

An archaeological dig by Mark Horton, an archaeologist from the University of Bristol, found European artifacts at the site of a Native American village on Hatteras Island, including part of a sword and part of a gun. This may be conclusive proof that the settlers did indeed assimilate with local Native Americans.<ref name="natgeo 2020"/>

===Attempt to return to England===
[[File:Building the Pinnace.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Construction of a pinnace to evacuate Charlesfort]]

The colonists could have decided to rescue themselves by sailing for England in the pinnace, left behind by the 1587 expedition. If such an effort was made, the ship could have been lost with all hands at sea, accounting for the absence of both the ship and any trace of the colonists.{{Sfn|Stick|1983|pp= 235–236}} It is plausible that the colony included sailors qualified to attempt the return voyage. Little is known about the pinnace, but ships of its size were capable of making the trip, although they typically did so alongside other vessels.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 83–84}}

The colonists may have feared that taking a standard route across the Atlantic Ocean, with a stop in the Caribbean, would place them at risk of a Spanish attack; and thus chosen to attempt a direct course to England instead. Making such a voyage was not unfeasible{{snd}}in 1563, French settlers at the failed [[Charlesfort-Santa Elena Site#Charlesfort (1562–1563)|Charlesfort]] colony on what is now [[Parris Island, South Carolina]] built a crude boat and successfully (albeit desperately) returned to Europe.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Purchas |first1=Samuel |title=Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas His Pilgrimes: Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and Others |publisher=James MacLehose and Sons |publication-place=Glasgow |publication-date=1906 |volume=18 |page=182}}</ref> Alternatively, the Roanoke colonists could have sailed north along the coast, in the hopes of making contact with English fishing fleets in the [[Gulf of Maine]].{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 85–89}}

The pinnace would not have been large enough to carry all of the colonists. Additionally, the provisions needed for a transatlantic voyage would further restrict the number of passengers. The colonists may have possessed the resources to construct another seaworthy vessel, using local lumber and spare parts from the pinnace. Considering that ships were later built by survivors of the 1609 ''[[Sea Venture]]'' shipwreck, it is at least possible that the Lost Colonists could produce a second ship that, with the pinnace, could transport most of their party.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 84–90}} Even in these ideal conditions, however, at least some colonists would remain in Virginia, leaving open the question of what became of them.{{Sfn|Stick|1983|p= 244}}

===Conspiracy against Raleigh===
Anthropologist Lee Miller proposed that Sir [[Francis Walsingham]], Simon Fernandes, Edward Strafford, and others participated in a conspiracy to [[marooning|maroon]] the 1587 colonists at Roanoke. The purpose of this plot, she argued, was to undermine Walter Raleigh, whose activities supposedly interfered with Walsingham's covert machinations to make England a Protestant world power, at the expense of Spain and other Catholic nations. This conspiracy would have impeded Raleigh and White from dispatching a relief mission until Walsingham's death in 1590.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 168–204}} Miller also suggested that the colonists may have been [[English Dissenters|separatists]], seeking refuge in America from religious persecution in England. Raleigh expressed sympathy for the separatists, while Walsingham considered them a threat to be eliminated.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 43–50, 316}}

According to Miller, the colonists split up, with a small group relocating to Croatoan while the main body sought shelter with the [[Chowanoke]]. The colonists, however, would have quickly spread European diseases among their hosts, decimating the Chowanoke and thereby destabilizing the balance of power in the region. From there Miller reasoned that the Chowanoke were attacked, with the survivors taken captive, by the "Mandoag", a powerful nation to the west that the Jamestown colonists only knew from the vague accounts of their neighbors.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 227–237}} She concluded that the "Mandoag" were the [[Eno people|Eno]], who traded the captured surviving Lost Colonists as slaves, dispersing them throughout the region.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 255–260}}

Miller's theory has been challenged based on Walsingham's considerable financial support of Raleigh's expeditions, and the willingness of Fernandes to bring John White back to England, instead of abandoning him with the other colonists.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 29–30}}

===Secret operation at Beechland===
Local legends in Dare County refer to an abandoned settlement called "Beechland", located within what is now the [[Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge]]. The area has had reports of small coffins, some with Christian markings, encouraging speculation of a link to the Lost Colony.{{Sfn|Gabriel-Powell|2016|pp= 127–128}} Based on these legends, engineer Phillip McMullan and amateur archaeologist Fred Willard concluded that Walter Raleigh dispatched the 1587 colonists to harvest [[sassafras]] along the Alligator River. All records suggesting the colony's intended destination was Chesapeake Bay, and that England had lost contact with the colony, were supposedly falsified to conceal the operation from Spanish operatives and other potential competitors.<ref name="McMullan 2010">{{cite thesis |type=M.A. in History |last=McMullan |first=Philip S. Jr. |date=October 28, 2010 |title=Beechland and the Lost Colony |publisher=North Carolina State University |url=http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/resolver/1840.16/6486 |access-date=September 5, 2019 |archive-date=April 17, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230417064551/https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/handle/1840.16/6486 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=263}}

According to McMullan,<ref name="McMullan 2010"/> Raleigh quietly re-established contact with the colony by 1597, and his sassafras expeditions were simply picking up the colonists' harvests. In this view, the colony was not truly abandoned until the secret of the colony's location died with Raleigh in 1618. After that point, McMullan argued, the colonists would have begun to assimilate with the Croatan at Beechland.<ref name="McMullan 2010"/>

This hypothesis largely depends upon oral traditions and unsubstantiated reports about Beechland, as well as a 1651 map that depicts a sassafras tree near the Alligator River. A significant problem with the hypothesis is that Raleigh supposedly planned a sassafras farm in 1587, to capitalize on a dramatic increase in crop prices, so that he could quickly compensate for the great expense of the failed 1585 colony.<ref name="McMullan 2010"/> The proposed financial motivation overlooks the fact that Richard Grenville's privateering recovered the cost of the 1585 expedition.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=60}} Additionally, sassafras prices did not skyrocket in value until the late 1590s, well after the establishment of the 1587 colony.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=112}}

===Spanish attack===
[[Paul Green (playwright)|Paul Green]], while collecting material for a [[The Lost Colony (play)|1937 stage play]], noticed that Spanish records from the period contained abundant references to Raleigh and his settlements.{{Sfn|Betts|1938|pp= 63–64}} Spanish forces knew of English plans to establish a new Virginia base in 1587 and were searching for it before White's colonists had even arrived. The Spanish Empire had included most of North America in their Florida claim and did not recognize England's right to colonize Roanoke or Chesapeake Bay. Given the Spanish sack of [[Fort Caroline]] in 1565, the colonists likely recognized the threat they represented.{{efn|[[The Lost Colony (play)|Green's play]] ends with the colonists leaving Roanoke Island to evade an approaching Spanish ship, leaving the audience to wonder if the Spanish found them.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=353}}}}{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 33–34}} However, the Spanish were still searching for the colony in Chesapeake Bay as late as 1600, suggesting that they also were unaware of its fate.{{Sfn|Stick|1983|p= 238}}

===CORA tree===
In 2006, writer Scott Dawson proposed that a [[Quercus virginiana|Southern live oak tree]] on Hatteras Island, which bears the faint inscription "CORA" in its bark, might be connected to the Lost Colony. The CORA tree had already been the subject of local legends, most notably a story about a witch named "Cora" that was popularized in a 1989 book by [[Charles H. Whedbee]]. Nevertheless, Dawson argued that the inscription might represent another message from the colonists, similar to the "CROATOAN" inscription at Roanoke.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 71–72}} If so, "CORA" might indicate that the colonists left Croatoan Island to settle with the [[Coree]] (also known as the Coranine) on the mainland near [[Lake Mattamuskeet]].{{Sfn|Gabriel-Powell|2016|p= 128}}

A 2009 study to determine the age of the CORA tree was inconclusive. Damage to the tree caused by lightning and decay has made it impossible to obtain a valid core sample for tree-ring dating. Even if the tree dates back to the 16th&nbsp;century, establishing the age of the inscription would be another matter.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 72–73}}

===Dare Stones===
{{Main|Dare Stones}}

From 1937 to 1941, a series of [[Virginia Dare#Eleanor Dare stones|inscribed stones]] were discovered that were claimed to have been written by [[Eleanor Dare]], mother of [[Virginia Dare]]. They told of the travelings of the colonists and their ultimate deaths. Most historians today believe that they are a fraud because investigations linked all but one to stonecutter Bill Eberhardt.<ref>{{cite journal |last=la&nbsp;Vere |first=David |title=The 1937 Chowan River "dare stone": A re-evaluation |journal=North Carolina Historical Review |volume=86 |issue=3 |pages=251–281 |date=July 2009 |jstor=23523860 |location=Raleigh, North Carolina |publisher=North Carolina Office of Archives and History}}</ref> The first one is sometimes regarded as different from the rest, based on a linguistic and chemical analysis, and as possibly genuine.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/05/dismissed-as-a-forgery-could-a-mysterious-stone-found-near-roanokes-lost-colony-actually-be-real/?noredirect=on |title=Dismissed as a forgery, could a mysterious stone found near Roanoke's "Lost Colony" be real? |first=Gillian |last=Brockell |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=July 5, 2018 |access-date=September 3, 2019}}</ref>