As the tragic legend goes, British colonists who were settled on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island in 1587 disappeared at some time over the next three years and were lost to history.
Starvation and massacre have long been theories to explain their disappearance, but Mark Horton, an archaeology professor at Royal Agricultural University in England, said nothing so dire took place, according to Fox News.
Horton said that material found from what would have been the rubbish piles of the Croatoan tribe of Native Americans living on Croatoan Island, which is now called Hatteras Island, supports the conclusion that the colonists moved to Hatteras Island and lived among the Native Americans there.
The mystery of Roanoke Island began in 1590 when John White, the colony’s governor, returned to the island after a three-year absence in 1590 to find it deserted and the word “Croatoan” carved into a palisade. Among those lost to history was Virginia Dare, his granddaughter, who had been the first English person born in the New World in 1587.
“We think that they assimilated into the Native American community and their descendants, their sons, their granddaughters, their grandsons carried on living on Hatteras Island until the early 18th century,” he said.
“We have one little snippet of historical evidence from the 1700s, which describes people with blue or gray eyes who could remember people who used to be able to read from books,” he said. “Also, they said there was this ghost ship that was sent out by a man called Raleigh.”
When asked if he’s officially solved the mystery, Horton said that though the archaeological evidence is definitive, the legend will probably still endure.
Horton said among the debris of the trash heap were small bits of iron called hammerscale that come from forging iron — something the Native Americans could not have done at the time.
He said the iron bits were found “underneath layers that we know date to the late 16th or early 17th century.”
Did the Roanoke colonists integrate with local Native American tribes?
“So we know that this dates to the period when the lost colonists would have come to Hatteras Island,” he explained.
“It’s a combination of both its archaeological position but also the fact that it’s evidence of people actually using an English technology,” he said, noting that guns, nautical fittings, small cannonballs, an engraved slate, and a stylus were also found.
“Have we solved the mystery? Well, you know, it’s pretty good evidence, but there’s always more work to be done,” he said.
Scott Dawson, president of the Croatoan Archaeological Society, said there’s no doubt the Roanoke Colony settlers survived.
“The Lost Colony went to Croatoan. I know they teach in school that no one knows what this word (Croatoan) means, but that’s a lie. The colony had Croatoan men on the ship with them. There were several voyages before the colony from England to Croatoan, which is Hatteras Island,” Dawson said, according to WTKR.
The trash heap revealed “everything you could possibly find: tools, guns, their pottery, the red wear, the border wear, all that stuff. It’s all there, and it’s all mixed in with Croatoan material at a level that’s pure 16th century that’s dated every possible way that you can,” Dawson continued.
Further documenting the fate of the Lost Colony would mean more research, according to Kathleen DuVal, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
“Whatever happened to that pretty small number of colonists, it had to do with with Native Americans, with their politics, their warfare, their trade, their economies. No answer is possible without learning more about Native history in North Carolina. And I think that’s that should be the biggest message,” she said.
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