July 11, 2012 • 26 mins
Of all the mysteries we've covered, the lost colony at Roanoke is one of the strangest. In this classic episode, former hosts Candace and Josh recount Roanoke's story -- and there's a new development, one that may finally reveal the fate of the colonists.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a Chuck Rewarding and I'm fair at
OUTI and we always say that one of the most
interesting things about history is that it's not static. It
(00:21):
seems to be to a lot of people. I mean,
it's something that happened in the past, printed and published,
it's done. But what we know about the past often
continues to evolve through research and exploration and exciting new discoveries.
So that's not actually the case. It can be frustrating,
I guess if you have just published a book or
something and then the new information about the topic you're
(00:42):
researching comes out. But we actually always find it exciting
to explore new possibilities regarding established historical counts or those
different takes on stories or mysteries that we've covered before.
We do this sometimes with those year end episodes that
we do. And I think we've mentioned this before too,
but we you always hear from you guys whenever there's
sort of a new the update to a story we've
(01:04):
covered in the past. So we're gonna be updating one
of those stories today and I think of all of
the historical mysteries that have been covered on this podcast,
arguably one of the most befuddling is the one surrounding
the lost colony at Roanoke. And Candice and Josh covered
this this mystery on the podcast back in two thousand
and eight, and as you'll find out in just a
(01:26):
few minutes, they leave off still kind of scratching their
heads as to what really happened, because the truth is,
nobody knows for sure even to this day this updated podcast.
But for those of you who haven't heard their podcast
and don't know about the mystery, Roanoke was basically one
of the first attempts by the English to establish a
colony in North America in the late sixteenth century. We're
(01:48):
talking pre James Town here, so we won't give away
all the details since you're about to hear Candice and
Josh's take on it. But essentially, a hundred and eighteen
colonists led by a man named John Why, show up
on Roanoke Island in the outer Banks of present day
North Carolina in seven White goes back to England to
get supplies and returns in fifteen ninety and when he
(02:11):
shows up, all of the colonists, their homes, the fort's cannon,
the whole shebang. They're all gone, as if they've just
vanished into thin air. And one thing Candis and Josh
go into is how at the time nobody really got
a chance to search for these lost colonists. It wasn't
until years later that investigations into the disappearance and the
(02:32):
colonists ultimate whereabouts really began and they continue to this day.
So that brings us up to the present time. And
just recently in May, the combined efforts of historians and
researchers both in the United States and across the Pond
uncovered a clue in this mystery that might lead to
a major breakthrough and figuring out what really happened to
(02:53):
all of these people. So it started last year when
you and the economics professor Brent Lane was steady the
Virginia Parts, which is a map of coastal Virginia and
North Carolina that John White, the guy to Bolina, was
just talking about created back in the sixteenth century. And
the Lane is a member of the First Colony Foundation,
which is a Durham based group devoted to studying these really,
(03:16):
really early colonial expedition. As Lane is studying this map,
his goal is to examine Native American villages, but he
starts to get really intrigued by these two small patches
of paper that have been pasted on top of two
parts of map. We should say that using patches like
this wasn't really unusual at the time. If you wanted
(03:37):
to make changes to a map, you put a patch
over the part that you wanted to change and then
drew over the patch. That was just how you did it.
But Lane started to get really curious about what was
underneath those patches. The rest of the map to him,
just seemed so meticulous that those patches seemed out of place.
So Lane decided to ask the British Museum in London,
(03:58):
where the original mapp has lived since, if anybody there
had ever tried to figure out what was under the patch,
and they hadn't, so they put the map on a
light table, which revealed the new, somewhat startling clue that
may finally reveal what happened to the lost colony at Roanoak.
But before we tell you much more about that clue
(04:21):
and its implications, we're gonna take a listen to Candice
and Josh's episode, which will give you all the background
on the Roanoke Colony and some of the prevailing theories
about what might have happened. Hello, and welcome to podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Josh Clark.
(04:44):
A throw back to Our Lady Could Dive a podcast.
You know, it's almost as quaint as acute little eleventh
century Anglo Saxon village. What colonial villages? Just I like
thinking of all the buckles on the little thatched roofs
and and the tea and you know, like the high
spirits of networking kind of sweet, or you know, the
(05:07):
whole puritanical outlook, the encouraging citizens to spy on all
their neighbors and tattle and all that kind of thing
hangings at the stake, that kind of thing. Valid point. Yeah,
I kind of view colonial life is fairly grim. But
I'm pretty glad they stuck it out because I'm pretty
happy today. And that's funny, because colonial life, You're right,
(05:30):
it was really grim, and it took a really strong
person to volunteer to come over on a boat to
a land that they hadn't seen before and stick out
of life here it's about survival and about finding an
appropriate power hierarchy and creating new life and new traditions.
And so you look at a place like clonial Williamsburg,
(05:50):
for instance, which is pretty I agree, have you been.
I have. They've got that super cool like a museum tour,
and every once in a while there's like a wax
fig you're in there. Especially the Insane Asylum is particularly disturbing.
They show, um they have like a wax figure and
I think a straight jacket with a metal cage over
his head, and it really kind of drives home, you know,
(06:14):
it was a good thing not to be insane in
colonial America. And Okay, so that aside. Colonial Williamsburg is
a pretty quaint place, but it's it's sort of ever
shadowed by the mystery of I guess colonial Roanoke. Yeah, well,
Williamsburg is, you know, very recent compared to Roanoke, which
(06:34):
is the first first settled in five um. There there
was a group of like a hundred people, a hundred
men actually, I should say, mainly military guys. There was
a scientist who came along and an artist named John White,
who later became governor of the next row. Note colony
and uh, it didn't stick. It didn't work out all
(06:57):
that while they lasted ten months I think, and people
had come before even this group. There was an expedition
and they scouted the area, you know, did some surveillance,
found where the best place to be for the settlement,
things like this, normal things to do. Um. And after
the reconnaissance mission came these settlers and they couldn't get
along with the Native Americans. And well, let me interject here,
(07:18):
it wasn't really the natives fault. No. No, there was
a policy of kidnapping anytime they wanted information, food, anything,
the tribal leaders for ransom and then you know, let
them go or maybe not. Um. There was another incident
right after that colony was established. Um they found a
(07:41):
silver cup was missing, so they burned down an Indian village. No.
And the worst part is, especially with the Powhattan's. Um.
They were pretty friendly with the English settlers from the
moment they arrived. And um, the the first wave of settlers,
the first hundred men that came, really they did a
lot to chip away at those you know, warm feelings
(08:03):
pretty quick they did. And you know it's ironic because
they were depending on, as they called them, these savages
for food and resources, and no thanks were given, essentially
like you've explained. And finally they were under such a
heavy threat of attack from the Native Americans that the
men had to pick up and leave, and they didn't
have any more supplies, and so they cut it out
(08:25):
a row note and ironically, I think about two weeks
later the next group came. Well, the the the people
from this group, the hundred men that had left for
England to go get supplies. They arrived about two weeks
after Sir Walter Rawley showed up and took the hundred
men back to England. Um. So this the supply ship
comes two weeks later, finds no one there, and you know,
(08:48):
they don't want to give up their steak in the
New World. So they the the guy Glenville, I believe
in Grenville. Sorry, Um, he leaves fifteen soldiers behind the
kind of manned the settlement until more call and this
can be you know, rounded up and brought back to
the New World. And while that may have been a
wise decision when it comes to holding onto your land,
(09:08):
there was a very poor decision in terms of relations
with the Native Americans because here were a really fired
up group of people who were mad at all things European.
And these new men come and maybe they have some
idea of the precedent that their fellow Europeans is said,
but maybe not. I would think not. And so even
if they tried to establish relations with the locals, it
(09:29):
was all shot to poo because they were essentially killed
off really fast. Yeah, we don't know exactly when they
were killed off, but when the second wave of colonists
arrive in seven about twelve months later, Um, there was
nothing but one set of bones of one of the soldiers,
so you know clearly that he had been killed, you know,
long enough a ghost, so that all that was left
(09:50):
was bones. There was no rotting flesh or anything like that.
And I think that there was like a skeleton of
some sort of house or hut or something near by.
It was all pretty delapain. It was trash. Yeah, it
was trash. And in this new group of settlers it
was men, women and children. Yeah, this is this is
a settlement that that much resembled later colonies. There were
(10:15):
there was ways to reproduce and have new kids, and
it was clearly a colony that was intended to plant.
And actually the male colonists of this colony were called planters. Um,
So they wanted to kind of plant this English seed
in the New World and let it grow right. Um.
And actually the first English baby was born in the
(10:37):
New World, that Virginia Dare, right, Virginia Dare. And she
was actually the granddaughter of John White, who was the
artist who had been on that expedition, and he was
back and as the governor's right, he's the governor now.
And they set up a nice little village for themselves.
I think they have two story little houses with thatch roofs,
and things seemed to be going pretty well. But again
(10:59):
no surprise he A. Tensions exist between the Americans and
these people, and not between all the Native American tribes.
Some are actually a little bit friendly. Well yeah, they
the Powhattans. They managed to get back in their good
graces again, But there are plenty of other tribes that
had been hostile from the start or had grown hostile
from the expedition that either kept their distance. Um. I
(11:21):
don't think that there were any attacks on the Second Row,
no colony that we know of that were documented, but
at the very least they weren't helping these people out.
So basically they had the Powhattans to rely on um
and supplies from England, which is I think thirty six
miles away from the outer banks of North Carolina, which
is where Roano kids. They're in a precarious position they were,
(11:43):
and White actually had to leave to get back to
England too after And here is where things get hysterics.
Here's here's the fact or fiction part. Um. You know,
most people think Rowano Gloss colony. Um. They assumed that
the Indians, you know, there was an an Indian attack
and the colonists the colony was wiped out. So let's
(12:05):
make that the factor of fiction. You want to tell
him is that factor of fiction? We don't really know.
I'm gonna go with faction my default answer. And when
White came back, everyone was gone, just gone gone. And
it wasn't you know, bones here and there like the
fifteen soldiers from before. It wasn't dilapidated hut like they
(12:26):
wrote that. He wrote later that they've been taken down.
They didn't indicate that they've been destroyed or burned or
anything like that, just that they weren't there any longer. Exactly,
and he looked for a Maltese cross, which is essentially
as symbol that they agreed to use to indicate distress. None,
And there was one clue. There were two, well one
(12:47):
and a half really right, yeah, yeah, the word crow
a toine right was carved into this um impromptu fort. Basically,
the colonists had built a wall around where the settlement
had been um and on one of the post post
of this um this fort was carved the word crow
(13:11):
tone tow In was an island nearby where friendly Powhattan's lived. Right.
And because there was no I'm sorry, because there was
no Multese cross carved in, Governor White assumed that the
colonists had uped and moved to crow Town for protection,
(13:31):
food resources, something like that. The other half of that
clue was that on another post or a tree was
the word crow, like someone had started out of space
or something like that, and then they went back and
did it, you know, the full thing. That's the only
clue that's it, And you know, it kind of makes
(13:52):
you want to beat your head against the wall. Because
no one bothered really investigating the disappearance. And I think
that England launched a few fleet ships to go over,
but people sort of used it to their own glory
and overtook these missions as mercenary trips really to go
and exploit different parts of the land instead of investigating
(14:13):
what happened. A rowan out and you have to wonder
why John White didn't do it. I mean, you think
about it. His his daughter's son in law and granddaughter
were among the missing. And he here he is on
Roanoke Island and Crow toWin is a hop, skip and
a jump away. The problem is when he went to
go get supplies, uh, there was an attack on England
by the Spanish armada, so he was delayed basically three
(14:36):
years before he could get back to Roanoke. And by
the time he could get back, the only way to
get there, he didn't even have supplies. Um, he was
basically a guest on this passenger ship, so we had
no saying when, what the ship did or where it went.
So the UH, I believe the the ship's captain decided
that they were going to go up for a little piracy,
and before they could the I think the season changed
(14:57):
and they headed back for England. So he was so
close to Crow atone and possibly the answer to what
happened to this colony and he had to leave, how frustrating.
And if you read firsthand accounts of what he observed,
he wrote that they moved inland. I think he already
mentioned fifty miles into the main and I have to
wonder was that a way of consoling himself. Maybe he
(15:20):
thought it was just as mysterious and upsetting, and perhaps
he convinced himself that that's what happened. He couldn't prove
any further. He didn't have the resources or time, and
so that's just how it was. They just moved inland,
and that would have been a reassuring answer. It would
have been. But but don't you find it curious that
he specified a distance fifty miles into the main and
also into the main has come into contention. The thing
(15:43):
I buy into was fifty miles inland into the main land.
Other people have said that White meant fifty miles north.
I don't know how you get into the main or
north from into the main, but that would place the
settlers in about the Chess Peak area, which was where
they were originally supposed to be going. They were just
stopping at Roanoke to make contact with those fifteen soldiers
(16:04):
found him dead, and apparently the pilot of the ship
who was going to take them to the Chesapeake Colony,
refused to take him any further, so they were stuck
in Roanoke. So there's like mystery upon mystery shrouding this thing.
There's an anthropologist named Lee Miller and uh, I think
she's out of Vanderbilt University. Maybe I can't remember, Sorry,
(16:24):
Ms Miller, but she she suspects that the whole thing
was sabotaged by people who are out to undermine um
Sir Walter Rawleigh, who had an exclusive patent on the
New World, and that that pilot refusing him to take it,
take take the colonist any further, was part of this
this plot to thwart the colonists success. So it may
(16:47):
have been a conspiracy, or at least some people would think.
And it wasn't until seven when the Jamestown Colony came
into play that there was time and there were resources
to dedicate to the disappearance of the road up colonists.
And it's funny is that when people got to Roanoke,
they couldn't even agree really where the settlement would have been,
you know, which part of the island was it where
the cannons were, was it you know, further inland now
(17:10):
the cannons were located in the sound, in a little
inlet basically um and that that's where the cannons where,
That's where boat should have been. John White found no
evidence of any of these um and the original settlement
had a fort, Fort Rawleigh, and that's where people have
been digging pretty much since. I think the nineteen forties
is when serious scientific digs began to be undertaken um
(17:32):
and they found no evidence of the second settlement. So
not only were the colonists lost, the colony itself is
literally lost. We have no idea where it is, where
it went. And because Roonogo is an island, people do
suspect that erosion may have washed some evidence away and
parts of Roanoke could be underwater now. And the mystery
(17:52):
thickens even more because supposedly there was a man who
either inadvertently or you know, just the labined around somehow
told the Spanish where Roanoke wise and that he was
on route there and this is what England was doing
with the land. And the English in the Spanish were
none too friendly so people think that the Spaniards may
have come in and caused some mischief, or that there
(18:14):
was a shift in power among other Native American tribes.
And even if the Rono colonists were friendly with one
of the tribes, they would have been their match against
a big tribal I guess, yeah, exactly. And that's that's
one of anthropologists Miller's theories, is that there was a
shift in power from the Powhattans who were friendly with
(18:37):
the Roano colonists, that they lost their control over the area,
and to fill that power vacuum, other tribes who were
hostiles to the colonists rose up took power. Had if
that happened in the Roanokes, or the Roanoke colonists had
moved fifty miles into the main right, then they would
have been walking into just this a tribal war and
they would have been slaughtered. The men would have been
(18:58):
and the men, I'm sorry, they win, men and children
would have been sold as slaves, right yeah. And and
there was apparently a trading network from Virginia to Augusta, Georgia,
all up and down the coast, so that any evidence
of them would have been lost even if they had
been subsumed into um any tribe, that that that purchased
them basically, which is another theory, right, And there is
(19:20):
one more possibility, at least one more, and it's a
little bit more peaceful and a little bit of a
happier ending, and that is that the colonists move inland
and they assimilated into a Native American tribe and things
were hunky dory. They intermarried and produced an entirely new
subside of people, the Lumby, the Lumby, and this theory
(19:41):
is called the Lumby connection, and a lot of people
who made it over to the area later said that
they would see people who had European dress or European
manners and speech associating with the Native Americans, or that
even there were some people who looked like they were
neither in Native America can entirely, nor European entirely. Maybe
(20:02):
they had darker skin, but they also had lighter colored
eyes like Europeans. There were some I think French or
English settlers um who were hunting and trapping in the
North Carolina area who made the first documented contact with
the Lumbi tribe. So you imagine you're You're meeting this
tribe who aren't supposed to have come in contact with
(20:23):
any any whites. And they can read and write and
speak English. And some of them have gray eyes, which
is an anomaly among Native Americans. And their houses look
a lot like the houses you see back in England.
That gives a lot of support to this this Lumbi
connection theory. And the Lumbi themselves a lot of them. Uh,
(20:43):
it's part of their oral tradition that the Roanoke colonists
were assumed into their tribe and they formed the Lumbi.
But that's also in dispute. Um. There's a especially back
during the I guess the anglicization of Native Americans the
nineteenth century. This is a big kind of um. There
(21:04):
is an identity crisis among tribes, and a lot of
the Lumby, as far as I understand, kind of they
don't really like to talk about that white heritage because
it may make them perceived as less than Native American. Well,
for my money, I am thinking that they were assimilated
into the Native American I'm bedding on the Lumby connections.
(21:26):
I mean, if there were houses in the area that
looks similar to what the roan colonists had on Roanoke,
and if John White observed that these houses had been
I guess disassembled for lack of a better term, I
think they probably just took all their supplies, all the
resources they had stored on roman Ic and just moved
it all in land. Okay, So, factor, fiction, what's your
(21:48):
what's your final verdict on the Indian attack? Oh? God,
you'd say fiction? I guess, well, oh gosh, I don't
even know what can I take? Faction? Sure? So there
you have it. Their verdict is faction or not even faction,
not even faction? Who knows. Candis and Josh had their
(22:09):
own theories about which theory about the fate of the
lost colony is correct, but they couldn't say for sure,
and truthfully that's still the case. As we said. Yeah,
but as we mentioned in the intro, this new discovery
made jointly at the First Colony Foundation in the British
Museum might get us one step closer to finally solving
the mystery. And what researchers found when they checked out
(22:31):
those patches on the Virginia parts map over the light
box was that there was a little squarish symbol of
the type that was used during this time to depict
fourth But what was even more interesting than that was
what they found on top of the patch when they
used an ultra violet light to examine it. They found
that these really faint markings that seemed to depict the
(22:53):
fort with other little markings around it which appeared to
indicate plans for a town or even a city around there.
The researchers haven't yet figured out how these marks were made,
but they suspect it might be some sort of invisible
inc based on an organic material like lemon juice or
even urine. So why would they want to hide plans
(23:13):
for a development after all these maps, this map in particular,
was basically what they wanted to use to woo potential
investors in the new colonies. Well Lane said it's possible
that they were afraid Spanish spies in Elizabeth's Court might
get hold of that info and that could lead to
a Spanish attack on the settlement, So they may have
done it to protect the colonists attack their interests a
(23:35):
little bit. So. James Horne, who's the vice president of
Research and historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and
author of a book about the Lost colony, says that
they believe this clue provides some kind of proof that
the colonists moved west towards the confluence of the Chihuan
and Roanoke Rivers in modern day Birdie County in northeastern
(23:59):
North Carolina. And this even supports white statement about moving
fifty miles inland, which Josh was talking about, how there's
some debate over that, Well, this is right in that
sort of proximity, so that could maybe solve that aspect
of the mystery as well. So the majority of the
settlers might have gone there and eventually intermarried with a
(24:19):
nearby Indian tribe, as Candice and Josh discussed. But to
really find out whether there's any merit to the idea
of a possible settlement in the area, archaeologists are most
likely going to have to do some testing in the area,
and they're still figuring out a timeline for that. Of course,
though a lot of time has gone by since then,
and a lot of the site is now the location
(24:40):
of a residential community in a golf course, and so
if there's digging involved, that will probably be an issue,
you know, tearing up the third hole or whatever. So
exciting for us, maybe not so much for the golfers
unless they're also history buffs. But hopefully there will still
be more to come with this one. Yeah, maybe something
we will get to use on one of those years
end episodes that we enjoy so much. Yeah, So we'll
(25:02):
we'll see, and we'll be waiting and expecting all of
your emails telling us when there's new news about this
so um. In the meantime, if you want to share
any of your theories, you can find us at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter, We're
also on Facebook, and we've Yeah, we'd love to hear
any kind of Roanoke mystery ideas you have, or if
(25:24):
you've visited this area too, and and and have any
ideas of your own, And if you want to learn
a little bit more about this topic, maybe you want
to pass it on to your friends or something. We
have an article on our website called what Happened to
the Lost Colony at Roanoke and you can find it
by searching on our homepage at www dot how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(25:50):
other topics. Because it how stuff Works dot com named
Bull to bully me.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a Chuck Rewarding and I'm fair at
OUTI and we always say that one of the most
interesting things about history is that it's not static. It
(00:21):
seems to be to a lot of people. I mean,
it's something that happened in the past, printed and published,
it's done. But what we know about the past often
continues to evolve through research and exploration and exciting new discoveries.
So that's not actually the case. It can be frustrating,
I guess if you have just published a book or
something and then the new information about the topic you're
(00:42):
researching comes out. But we actually always find it exciting
to explore new possibilities regarding established historical counts or those
different takes on stories or mysteries that we've covered before.
We do this sometimes with those year end episodes that
we do. And I think we've mentioned this before too,
but we you always hear from you guys whenever there's
sort of a new the update to a story we've
(01:04):
covered in the past. So we're gonna be updating one
of those stories today and I think of all of
the historical mysteries that have been covered on this podcast,
arguably one of the most befuddling is the one surrounding
the lost colony at Roanoke. And Candice and Josh covered
this this mystery on the podcast back in two thousand
and eight, and as you'll find out in just a
(01:26):
few minutes, they leave off still kind of scratching their
heads as to what really happened, because the truth is,
nobody knows for sure even to this day this updated podcast.
But for those of you who haven't heard their podcast
and don't know about the mystery, Roanoke was basically one
of the first attempts by the English to establish a
colony in North America in the late sixteenth century. We're
(01:48):
talking pre James Town here, so we won't give away
all the details since you're about to hear Candice and
Josh's take on it. But essentially, a hundred and eighteen
colonists led by a man named John Why, show up
on Roanoke Island in the outer Banks of present day
North Carolina in seven White goes back to England to
get supplies and returns in fifteen ninety and when he
(02:11):
shows up, all of the colonists, their homes, the fort's cannon,
the whole shebang. They're all gone, as if they've just
vanished into thin air. And one thing Candis and Josh
go into is how at the time nobody really got
a chance to search for these lost colonists. It wasn't
until years later that investigations into the disappearance and the
(02:32):
colonists ultimate whereabouts really began and they continue to this day.
So that brings us up to the present time. And
just recently in May, the combined efforts of historians and
researchers both in the United States and across the Pond
uncovered a clue in this mystery that might lead to
a major breakthrough and figuring out what really happened to
(02:53):
all of these people. So it started last year when
you and the economics professor Brent Lane was steady the
Virginia Parts, which is a map of coastal Virginia and
North Carolina that John White, the guy to Bolina, was
just talking about created back in the sixteenth century. And
the Lane is a member of the First Colony Foundation,
which is a Durham based group devoted to studying these really,
(03:16):
really early colonial expedition. As Lane is studying this map,
his goal is to examine Native American villages, but he
starts to get really intrigued by these two small patches
of paper that have been pasted on top of two
parts of map. We should say that using patches like
this wasn't really unusual at the time. If you wanted
(03:37):
to make changes to a map, you put a patch
over the part that you wanted to change and then
drew over the patch. That was just how you did it.
But Lane started to get really curious about what was
underneath those patches. The rest of the map to him,
just seemed so meticulous that those patches seemed out of place.
So Lane decided to ask the British Museum in London,
(03:58):
where the original mapp has lived since, if anybody there
had ever tried to figure out what was under the patch,
and they hadn't, so they put the map on a
light table, which revealed the new, somewhat startling clue that
may finally reveal what happened to the lost colony at Roanoak.
But before we tell you much more about that clue
(04:21):
and its implications, we're gonna take a listen to Candice
and Josh's episode, which will give you all the background
on the Roanoke Colony and some of the prevailing theories
about what might have happened. Hello, and welcome to podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Josh Clark.
(04:44):
A throw back to Our Lady Could Dive a podcast.
You know, it's almost as quaint as acute little eleventh
century Anglo Saxon village. What colonial villages? Just I like
thinking of all the buckles on the little thatched roofs
and and the tea and you know, like the high
spirits of networking kind of sweet, or you know, the
(05:07):
whole puritanical outlook, the encouraging citizens to spy on all
their neighbors and tattle and all that kind of thing
hangings at the stake, that kind of thing. Valid point. Yeah,
I kind of view colonial life is fairly grim. But
I'm pretty glad they stuck it out because I'm pretty
happy today. And that's funny, because colonial life, You're right,
(05:30):
it was really grim, and it took a really strong
person to volunteer to come over on a boat to
a land that they hadn't seen before and stick out
of life here it's about survival and about finding an
appropriate power hierarchy and creating new life and new traditions.
And so you look at a place like clonial Williamsburg,
(05:50):
for instance, which is pretty I agree, have you been.
I have. They've got that super cool like a museum tour,
and every once in a while there's like a wax
fig you're in there. Especially the Insane Asylum is particularly disturbing.
They show, um they have like a wax figure and
I think a straight jacket with a metal cage over
his head, and it really kind of drives home, you know,
(06:14):
it was a good thing not to be insane in
colonial America. And Okay, so that aside. Colonial Williamsburg is
a pretty quaint place, but it's it's sort of ever
shadowed by the mystery of I guess colonial Roanoke. Yeah, well,
Williamsburg is, you know, very recent compared to Roanoke, which
(06:34):
is the first first settled in five um. There there
was a group of like a hundred people, a hundred
men actually, I should say, mainly military guys. There was
a scientist who came along and an artist named John White,
who later became governor of the next row. Note colony
and uh, it didn't stick. It didn't work out all
(06:57):
that while they lasted ten months I think, and people
had come before even this group. There was an expedition
and they scouted the area, you know, did some surveillance,
found where the best place to be for the settlement,
things like this, normal things to do. Um. And after
the reconnaissance mission came these settlers and they couldn't get
along with the Native Americans. And well, let me interject here,
(07:18):
it wasn't really the natives fault. No. No, there was
a policy of kidnapping anytime they wanted information, food, anything,
the tribal leaders for ransom and then you know, let
them go or maybe not. Um. There was another incident
right after that colony was established. Um they found a
(07:41):
silver cup was missing, so they burned down an Indian village. No.
And the worst part is, especially with the Powhattan's. Um.
They were pretty friendly with the English settlers from the
moment they arrived. And um, the the first wave of settlers,
the first hundred men that came, really they did a
lot to chip away at those you know, warm feelings
(08:03):
pretty quick they did. And you know it's ironic because
they were depending on, as they called them, these savages
for food and resources, and no thanks were given, essentially
like you've explained. And finally they were under such a
heavy threat of attack from the Native Americans that the
men had to pick up and leave, and they didn't
have any more supplies, and so they cut it out
(08:25):
a row note and ironically, I think about two weeks
later the next group came. Well, the the the people
from this group, the hundred men that had left for
England to go get supplies. They arrived about two weeks
after Sir Walter Rawley showed up and took the hundred
men back to England. Um. So this the supply ship
comes two weeks later, finds no one there, and you know,
(08:48):
they don't want to give up their steak in the
New World. So they the the guy Glenville, I believe
in Grenville. Sorry, Um, he leaves fifteen soldiers behind the
kind of manned the settlement until more call and this
can be you know, rounded up and brought back to
the New World. And while that may have been a
wise decision when it comes to holding onto your land,
(09:08):
there was a very poor decision in terms of relations
with the Native Americans because here were a really fired
up group of people who were mad at all things European.
And these new men come and maybe they have some
idea of the precedent that their fellow Europeans is said,
but maybe not. I would think not. And so even
if they tried to establish relations with the locals, it
(09:29):
was all shot to poo because they were essentially killed
off really fast. Yeah, we don't know exactly when they
were killed off, but when the second wave of colonists
arrive in seven about twelve months later, Um, there was
nothing but one set of bones of one of the soldiers,
so you know clearly that he had been killed, you know,
long enough a ghost, so that all that was left
(09:50):
was bones. There was no rotting flesh or anything like that.
And I think that there was like a skeleton of
some sort of house or hut or something near by.
It was all pretty delapain. It was trash. Yeah, it
was trash. And in this new group of settlers it
was men, women and children. Yeah, this is this is
a settlement that that much resembled later colonies. There were
(10:15):
there was ways to reproduce and have new kids, and
it was clearly a colony that was intended to plant.
And actually the male colonists of this colony were called planters. Um,
So they wanted to kind of plant this English seed
in the New World and let it grow right. Um.
And actually the first English baby was born in the
(10:37):
New World, that Virginia Dare, right, Virginia Dare. And she
was actually the granddaughter of John White, who was the
artist who had been on that expedition, and he was
back and as the governor's right, he's the governor now.
And they set up a nice little village for themselves.
I think they have two story little houses with thatch roofs,
and things seemed to be going pretty well. But again
(10:59):
no surprise he A. Tensions exist between the Americans and
these people, and not between all the Native American tribes.
Some are actually a little bit friendly. Well yeah, they
the Powhattans. They managed to get back in their good
graces again, But there are plenty of other tribes that
had been hostile from the start or had grown hostile
from the expedition that either kept their distance. Um. I
(11:21):
don't think that there were any attacks on the Second Row,
no colony that we know of that were documented, but
at the very least they weren't helping these people out.
So basically they had the Powhattans to rely on um
and supplies from England, which is I think thirty six
miles away from the outer banks of North Carolina, which
is where Roano kids. They're in a precarious position they were,
(11:43):
and White actually had to leave to get back to
England too after And here is where things get hysterics.
Here's here's the fact or fiction part. Um. You know,
most people think Rowano Gloss colony. Um. They assumed that
the Indians, you know, there was an an Indian attack
and the colonists the colony was wiped out. So let's
(12:05):
make that the factor of fiction. You want to tell
him is that factor of fiction? We don't really know.
I'm gonna go with faction my default answer. And when
White came back, everyone was gone, just gone gone. And
it wasn't you know, bones here and there like the
fifteen soldiers from before. It wasn't dilapidated hut like they
(12:26):
wrote that. He wrote later that they've been taken down.
They didn't indicate that they've been destroyed or burned or
anything like that, just that they weren't there any longer. Exactly,
and he looked for a Maltese cross, which is essentially
as symbol that they agreed to use to indicate distress. None,
And there was one clue. There were two, well one
(12:47):
and a half really right, yeah, yeah, the word crow
a toine right was carved into this um impromptu fort. Basically,
the colonists had built a wall around where the settlement
had been um and on one of the post post
of this um this fort was carved the word crow
(13:11):
tone tow In was an island nearby where friendly Powhattan's lived. Right.
And because there was no I'm sorry, because there was
no Multese cross carved in, Governor White assumed that the
colonists had uped and moved to crow Town for protection,
(13:31):
food resources, something like that. The other half of that
clue was that on another post or a tree was
the word crow, like someone had started out of space
or something like that, and then they went back and
did it, you know, the full thing. That's the only
clue that's it, And you know, it kind of makes
(13:52):
you want to beat your head against the wall. Because
no one bothered really investigating the disappearance. And I think
that England launched a few fleet ships to go over,
but people sort of used it to their own glory
and overtook these missions as mercenary trips really to go
and exploit different parts of the land instead of investigating
(14:13):
what happened. A rowan out and you have to wonder
why John White didn't do it. I mean, you think
about it. His his daughter's son in law and granddaughter
were among the missing. And he here he is on
Roanoke Island and Crow toWin is a hop, skip and
a jump away. The problem is when he went to
go get supplies, uh, there was an attack on England
by the Spanish armada, so he was delayed basically three
(14:36):
years before he could get back to Roanoke. And by
the time he could get back, the only way to
get there, he didn't even have supplies. Um, he was
basically a guest on this passenger ship, so we had
no saying when, what the ship did or where it went.
So the UH, I believe the the ship's captain decided
that they were going to go up for a little piracy,
and before they could the I think the season changed
(14:57):
and they headed back for England. So he was so
close to Crow atone and possibly the answer to what
happened to this colony and he had to leave, how frustrating.
And if you read firsthand accounts of what he observed,
he wrote that they moved inland. I think he already
mentioned fifty miles into the main and I have to
wonder was that a way of consoling himself. Maybe he
(15:20):
thought it was just as mysterious and upsetting, and perhaps
he convinced himself that that's what happened. He couldn't prove
any further. He didn't have the resources or time, and
so that's just how it was. They just moved inland,
and that would have been a reassuring answer. It would
have been. But but don't you find it curious that
he specified a distance fifty miles into the main and
also into the main has come into contention. The thing
(15:43):
I buy into was fifty miles inland into the main land.
Other people have said that White meant fifty miles north.
I don't know how you get into the main or
north from into the main, but that would place the
settlers in about the Chess Peak area, which was where
they were originally supposed to be going. They were just
stopping at Roanoke to make contact with those fifteen soldiers
(16:04):
found him dead, and apparently the pilot of the ship
who was going to take them to the Chesapeake Colony,
refused to take him any further, so they were stuck
in Roanoke. So there's like mystery upon mystery shrouding this thing.
There's an anthropologist named Lee Miller and uh, I think
she's out of Vanderbilt University. Maybe I can't remember, Sorry,
(16:24):
Ms Miller, but she she suspects that the whole thing
was sabotaged by people who are out to undermine um
Sir Walter Rawleigh, who had an exclusive patent on the
New World, and that that pilot refusing him to take it,
take take the colonist any further, was part of this
this plot to thwart the colonists success. So it may
(16:47):
have been a conspiracy, or at least some people would think.
And it wasn't until seven when the Jamestown Colony came
into play that there was time and there were resources
to dedicate to the disappearance of the road up colonists.
And it's funny is that when people got to Roanoke,
they couldn't even agree really where the settlement would have been,
you know, which part of the island was it where
the cannons were, was it you know, further inland now
(17:10):
the cannons were located in the sound, in a little
inlet basically um and that that's where the cannons where,
That's where boat should have been. John White found no
evidence of any of these um and the original settlement
had a fort, Fort Rawleigh, and that's where people have
been digging pretty much since. I think the nineteen forties
is when serious scientific digs began to be undertaken um
(17:32):
and they found no evidence of the second settlement. So
not only were the colonists lost, the colony itself is
literally lost. We have no idea where it is, where
it went. And because Roonogo is an island, people do
suspect that erosion may have washed some evidence away and
parts of Roanoke could be underwater now. And the mystery
(17:52):
thickens even more because supposedly there was a man who
either inadvertently or you know, just the labined around somehow
told the Spanish where Roanoke wise and that he was
on route there and this is what England was doing
with the land. And the English in the Spanish were
none too friendly so people think that the Spaniards may
have come in and caused some mischief, or that there
(18:14):
was a shift in power among other Native American tribes.
And even if the Rono colonists were friendly with one
of the tribes, they would have been their match against
a big tribal I guess, yeah, exactly. And that's that's
one of anthropologists Miller's theories, is that there was a
shift in power from the Powhattans who were friendly with
(18:37):
the Roano colonists, that they lost their control over the area,
and to fill that power vacuum, other tribes who were
hostiles to the colonists rose up took power. Had if
that happened in the Roanokes, or the Roanoke colonists had
moved fifty miles into the main right, then they would
have been walking into just this a tribal war and
they would have been slaughtered. The men would have been
(18:58):
and the men, I'm sorry, they win, men and children
would have been sold as slaves, right yeah. And and
there was apparently a trading network from Virginia to Augusta, Georgia,
all up and down the coast, so that any evidence
of them would have been lost even if they had
been subsumed into um any tribe, that that that purchased
them basically, which is another theory, right, And there is
(19:20):
one more possibility, at least one more, and it's a
little bit more peaceful and a little bit of a
happier ending, and that is that the colonists move inland
and they assimilated into a Native American tribe and things
were hunky dory. They intermarried and produced an entirely new
subside of people, the Lumby, the Lumby, and this theory
(19:41):
is called the Lumby connection, and a lot of people
who made it over to the area later said that
they would see people who had European dress or European
manners and speech associating with the Native Americans, or that
even there were some people who looked like they were
neither in Native America can entirely, nor European entirely. Maybe
(20:02):
they had darker skin, but they also had lighter colored
eyes like Europeans. There were some I think French or
English settlers um who were hunting and trapping in the
North Carolina area who made the first documented contact with
the Lumbi tribe. So you imagine you're You're meeting this
tribe who aren't supposed to have come in contact with
(20:23):
any any whites. And they can read and write and
speak English. And some of them have gray eyes, which
is an anomaly among Native Americans. And their houses look
a lot like the houses you see back in England.
That gives a lot of support to this this Lumbi
connection theory. And the Lumbi themselves a lot of them. Uh,
(20:43):
it's part of their oral tradition that the Roanoke colonists
were assumed into their tribe and they formed the Lumbi.
But that's also in dispute. Um. There's a especially back
during the I guess the anglicization of Native Americans the
nineteenth century. This is a big kind of um. There
(21:04):
is an identity crisis among tribes, and a lot of
the Lumby, as far as I understand, kind of they
don't really like to talk about that white heritage because
it may make them perceived as less than Native American. Well,
for my money, I am thinking that they were assimilated
into the Native American I'm bedding on the Lumby connections.
(21:26):
I mean, if there were houses in the area that
looks similar to what the roan colonists had on Roanoke,
and if John White observed that these houses had been
I guess disassembled for lack of a better term, I
think they probably just took all their supplies, all the
resources they had stored on roman Ic and just moved
it all in land. Okay, So, factor, fiction, what's your
(21:48):
what's your final verdict on the Indian attack? Oh? God,
you'd say fiction? I guess, well, oh gosh, I don't
even know what can I take? Faction? Sure? So there
you have it. Their verdict is faction or not even faction,
not even faction? Who knows. Candis and Josh had their
(22:09):
own theories about which theory about the fate of the
lost colony is correct, but they couldn't say for sure,
and truthfully that's still the case. As we said. Yeah,
but as we mentioned in the intro, this new discovery
made jointly at the First Colony Foundation in the British
Museum might get us one step closer to finally solving
the mystery. And what researchers found when they checked out
(22:31):
those patches on the Virginia parts map over the light
box was that there was a little squarish symbol of
the type that was used during this time to depict
fourth But what was even more interesting than that was
what they found on top of the patch when they
used an ultra violet light to examine it. They found
that these really faint markings that seemed to depict the
(22:53):
fort with other little markings around it which appeared to
indicate plans for a town or even a city around there.
The researchers haven't yet figured out how these marks were made,
but they suspect it might be some sort of invisible
inc based on an organic material like lemon juice or
even urine. So why would they want to hide plans
(23:13):
for a development after all these maps, this map in particular,
was basically what they wanted to use to woo potential
investors in the new colonies. Well Lane said it's possible
that they were afraid Spanish spies in Elizabeth's Court might
get hold of that info and that could lead to
a Spanish attack on the settlement, So they may have
done it to protect the colonists attack their interests a
(23:35):
little bit. So. James Horne, who's the vice president of
Research and historical Interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and
author of a book about the Lost colony, says that
they believe this clue provides some kind of proof that
the colonists moved west towards the confluence of the Chihuan
and Roanoke Rivers in modern day Birdie County in northeastern
(23:59):
North Carolina. And this even supports white statement about moving
fifty miles inland, which Josh was talking about, how there's
some debate over that, Well, this is right in that
sort of proximity, so that could maybe solve that aspect
of the mystery as well. So the majority of the
settlers might have gone there and eventually intermarried with a
(24:19):
nearby Indian tribe, as Candice and Josh discussed. But to
really find out whether there's any merit to the idea
of a possible settlement in the area, archaeologists are most
likely going to have to do some testing in the area,
and they're still figuring out a timeline for that. Of course,
though a lot of time has gone by since then,
and a lot of the site is now the location
(24:40):
of a residential community in a golf course, and so
if there's digging involved, that will probably be an issue,
you know, tearing up the third hole or whatever. So
exciting for us, maybe not so much for the golfers
unless they're also history buffs. But hopefully there will still
be more to come with this one. Yeah, maybe something
we will get to use on one of those years
end episodes that we enjoy so much. Yeah, So we'll
(25:02):
we'll see, and we'll be waiting and expecting all of
your emails telling us when there's new news about this
so um. In the meantime, if you want to share
any of your theories, you can find us at History
Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter, We're
also on Facebook, and we've Yeah, we'd love to hear
any kind of Roanoke mystery ideas you have, or if
(25:24):
you've visited this area too, and and and have any
ideas of your own, And if you want to learn
a little bit more about this topic, maybe you want
to pass it on to your friends or something. We
have an article on our website called what Happened to
the Lost Colony at Roanoke and you can find it
by searching on our homepage at www dot how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(25:50):
other topics. Because it how stuff Works dot com named
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