January 8, 2020 • 52 mins
It's one of the most enduring enigmas in American history -- how did an entire colony disappear from Roanoke island? Join the guys as they explore the facts, fiction and speculation surrounding the mysterious fate of the colonists, the clues they may have left behind and the search that continues in the modern day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They call
me Bed, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission controlled dec and most importantly, you
are you. You are here and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know this. This is a
weird one. We've been doing some some hidden history recently, Matt, Yes,
we have, and it's some of our favorite topics that
(00:47):
we ever cover on the show. I think personally for
the two of us, am I speaking for you too
much here? I feel like I feel like when we
hit a historical mystery like this, I can see your
gear is turning and I can feel mind turning. And uh,
this one is certainly no exception. This is a topic
that I'm really surprised we haven't covered before in the past.
(01:09):
I was surprised too. And it's funny because on our
Facebook page, here's where it gets crazy. Today's topic was
actually a subjective conversation. Did you see that? Oh? My gosh, no,
I didn't even look. Yes, here's where it gets crazy.
Our Facebook community page, Hello, Maddie B. Maddie recently said,
(01:30):
have they meaning us, Matt done a good episode about
Roanoke and I like that. Maddie said, good, good, yes,
qualified a good one about that yet well and then
John H came through and said like Croatian Roanoke. So
uh so I responded there and said, we have not,
but stay tuned for an upcoming episode. Hopefully it will
(01:52):
be a good one. And this is that episode. We
were working on it. We didn't want to spoil the surprise.
We're not sure when this comes out, but we are
finally doing an episode investigating the strange story of the
lost colony of Roanoke. So, everybody growing up in the US,
(02:12):
here's some version of this story, typically in middle school, right, Yes,
it's like a middle school story that's spooky enough to
get the attention of even the class clown. Yeah. Well
it's and it's as you're learning your first learning about
the British colonies within you know, in North America, and
you start learning about a lot of these and you're
(02:33):
going through you know, it's interesting stuff. It really is
when when you think about the hardships, the genocide, there's
like all kinds of crazy stuff that was happening at
the time, but the mystery really hits when you start
talking about Roanoke. Yes, a story that, depending on who
you ask, has not been resolved even in these our
(02:56):
modern days. So here are the facts. This tale really
begins in fifteen eighty when a gentleman named Sir Walter
Raleigh makes a deal with Queen Elizabeth, the first to
establish an English colony in you know, in North America, right,
And he was given a time frame. It wasn't like
(03:18):
just okay, you have carte blanche, go out there and
just make a colony. He was given ten years to
do it. And the whole concept here was that whatever
is recovered, whatever's found once, you know, as this colony
is being established, would be shared between Sir Walter and
his people as well as it would be shared with
(03:38):
him and the crown essentially. And yeah, make no mistake,
he's kind of working on commission, right, because exactly what
it is. If they don't find anything, then all of
that money, time, all those resources will have been for
not And that would sound like a very risky endeavor
(03:59):
and less we consider the other ulterior motive for the
establishment of colonies in this part of the world, which was,
of course it was a military application. There we go,
because England and Great Britain they were fighting Spain as
as they were, you know, fighting other world powers a
(04:21):
lot during those times. And this would give a this
would give sort of a beachhead, sort of a home
away from home for English military and naval operations to
be based at. And Raleigh himself did not personally travel
across the Atlantic to establish the colony. Let me know,
(04:41):
that would be that is a treacherous journey. Oh yes, yeah.
And one of the myths that we have to bust,
a misperception that a lot of people share about the
so called lost Colony of Roanoke is the idea that
these people just landed their ran lee, came out of nowhere,
made some bad decisions, and disappeared. Here's here's what happens.
(05:06):
There's a lot that leads up to this. There is
a initial exploratory expedition they sail in fifty four. They're
not attempting to establish a permanent base of operations. They're
not attempting to start a colony with families. These are
dudes who are kind of scouting out suitable location. Yeah,
(05:28):
they're literally location scouts. And that's what this whole first
expedition was about. And they were successful. They found a
small island and they decided to call it Roanoke. It's
located inside what are known as the Outer Banks. The
Outer Banks are a long string of these narrow islands
(05:49):
that shelter half the coast of North Carolina or what
we call North Carolina today. If you look at a
map from above, it looks as though it would just
be the entire land and a mass edge basically, and
that got flooded. That's what it looks like from a
from a map. And Roanoke itself is pretty attractive to
(06:11):
these dudes because as fertile soil, it has easily defensible positions.
It's it's well wooded. There's also wildlife it. The geography
of the island is such that ships can't anchor their safely,
which is a huge deal, and be easily protected. But
(06:33):
as it was a common situation back in those times,
as settlers from Eastern Lands came over to this area,
these guys started making all kinds of enemies, especially with
the indigenous people's there. They charged members of one of
the local tribes or one of the communities there, they
(06:55):
charge them of theft, and they beheaded the chief of
one of these groups, and they burned a village to
the ground. And that's you know, not not an initial
way you make friends, right, not a good look. No,
And keep in mind they were doing this while they
were also becoming increasingly reliant on the native population for food. Yeah,
(07:20):
so that's a terrible first impression. Sir Francis Drake happened
to be pirating along the area and he found this
exploratory group and he says, you know what, I'll give
you a lift back to England. So that is the
end of that first exploratory thing. They say we found
(07:42):
The first expedition says we found a good place and
the geography is fine. And then then you know, the
British say well, how's the neighborhood, and they go it's
a little intense. I'm not gonna lie, a little intense.
You know, we had a hand in the tensions for sure,
and ahead and ahead and attentions. So what they didn't know,
(08:05):
you know, the phrase ships in the night right, we've
all heard that in English. What they didn't know is
that they were in a literal ships in the night situation.
Because while Drake is sailing back to Europe with the
first crew, with that first crew, there is a second
ship that is sailing to what they called the New World.
These two ships passed one another in the Atlantic. The
(08:28):
new group on that second ship, it's it's about a
hundred men and they they find this abandoned settlement. They
live on the island for ten months, and at the
end of the ten months, most of them returned to England,
but they left a small garrison and probably about fifteen
men on row and note to keep the seat warm,
(08:48):
you know what I mean? Well and too essentially, I
guess as a as a last defense of the area
that they're currently controlling right now. This next group of
fellows who ended up showing up on the island, they
had no idea just how bad of a situation they
were entering. As far as you know, diplomatic relations with
(09:11):
the indigenous people's were going. So they you know, unfortunately,
also continued being pills. Let's say, yeah, they were real pills.
They're being real pills, real jerks. Themselves. And it should
come as no surprise that these guys, the second group
(09:31):
of people that went over to Roanoke, disappeared. They were
never seen or heard from again. Fast forward seven, around
one hundred and seventeen, one seventeen men, women and children
arrive on the third expedition. They settled on Ruinoke Island
and what would later be called North Carolina. They found
(09:56):
the skeletal remains of one of the fifteen soldiers the
earlier expedition, and that's it. We don't know what happened
to the other fourteen. This third expedition had the best
shot of the three. It was larger in terms of
population and in terms of supplies, and they have better
(10:16):
supplies too. They were led by a rod of veteran,
a cartographer and artist named John White. This is also
the first group to include uh substantial amount of women
and children to a real chance of settling down and
expanding the population right reproducing, and they attempted to reconcile
(10:37):
with the native communities. They have mixed results because there
was just too much bad blood. They managed to repair
relations with one nearby tribe, Powatan's living on nearby Croatan island,
but the other tribes in the area is thought of
hostile aloof distance, we hear you burn villages, you know
(10:58):
what I mean? Yeah, exactly. The colonists were vastly outnumbered
despite the size of their colony, and they were terrified
that the next small skirmish with any member of the
native population could escalate, it could grow into an all
out battle, and that battle would inevitably, just based on
the numbers, be a massacre. Yeah, so you know, what
(11:20):
does he do? Um, let's go ask the guy who
was in charge here, at least officially, um, Sir Walter Rawleigh.
So he gets in a ship and heads back to
England to talk to Raleigh in person. Because you know,
if you have that kind of meeting in person, you
could maybe convey a little better the the fears and
(11:41):
the stakes that are involved, rather than sending a message
somehow across the sea. You could also at this time
avoid errors in communication. Yes, right, that would be. That's
a huge factor here. So as weird as it sounds
nowadays to say the guys sailed back across the Atlantic
to just get in a room with Sir Walter Raleigh
(12:02):
and talk to him. At that time, we have to
remember being able to have that conversation and instantly field
answers to questions, because of course they're going to be
follow up questions. That's probably the most efficient thing to do.
It is um almost inconceivable at this point with communication,
you know, in the past hundreds of years being so immediate, right,
(12:27):
And he had to plan ahead. So John White said, look,
we know things are not terrible yet, but they're not
in the best position. You might have to relocate to
survive if while while I'm gone, while I'm I'm gaining
(12:48):
favor and organizing a rescue mission essentially, So let's let's
figure out symbols that we will leave, signs so that
we will return and if anything goes wrong, it'll be
something that just we colonists will understand. He said, if
you do move in my absence, carve your destination on
(13:09):
this tree, you point out a specific tree, and if
you're in trouble, also carve a Maltese cross. So he
gets to England. He's got a good plan, and he
finds that uh, surprise, surprise, time and distance have made
the Empire's goals a little bit. Uh you know, they've
(13:30):
they've diverged. The Empire and the colonies have different goals now,
the people in the colonies trying to survive, people in
the Empire trying to win this war with Spain, and
so the in the strategic position of you know, potentially
Roanoke isn't a high priority anymore. Right, So John White
shows up and says, hey, we need help and across
(13:54):
the ocean and they say, all right, well, we're really
we're doing this Spain thing. Now, that's what this episode
of Our Our Empire is about. We're spent. You're very
much a b story right now. And this means that
he doesn't return to Roanoke for three years. Three years,
(14:15):
it's a long pause. But when he does return to Roanoke,
he's got armed soldiers, he's got the supplies they need,
he is ready. The cavalry, as they say, has arrived late,
but it's arriving. And we'll tell you what happened right
after a word from our sponsor. So let's paint the picture.
(14:44):
Let's speculate a little bit about what John White encountered
when he disembarked. Imagine how strange it must have been
for him to return to the settlement. His wife is sild,
his sudden laws, grandchild had all lived there, and it's
(15:04):
been three years. But the air is erally quiet. There
no sounds of, you know, someone clinging iron on a forge,
wood being chopped somewhere in the distance. There's none of that,
just the sounds of nature, the ocean and the empty wind.
The houses were gone, they have been taken down. There
(15:26):
was one thing he noticed, which was a roughly built
fort surrounding the former settlement. And when he we say
roughly built, it looked like it had been made in
a hurry, as a reaction to something. And then on
a post he found one of two clues what was it.
(15:47):
They were carvings, first the word crow a toWin so
c r O a t O a N. And then
on another tree he found the carving c r O.
And it was not in the places where he was
expecting it to be, right, I believe so. The cannons
(16:08):
and boats that were supposed to be at the bay nearby,
they were gone. White had buried a couple of chess earlier,
with drawings, maps and books. He found these, but they
were torn apart. They had been ruined at some point
over the past three years by the weather. He found
no bones, he found no corpses, found no evidence one
(16:31):
way or another to show what had happened to the colonists,
other than of course, that fortress, the fourth they have
built around themselves. So it appears that sometime between five
and fifty seventeen, souls of the Roano Colony had simply disappeared.
(16:54):
And our big question today is what happened to them?
Here's where it gets crazy. So when we explore this topic,
we find that there are some people who were convinced
it's been solved. The problem is that not everybody agrees. Yes.
That's why technically this still remains a mystery today with
(17:17):
no shortage of what we might call conspiracy theories from
an earlier age, from before the term conspiracy theory existed.
So if we ask ourselves what could have happened, we
have to note it looks like they didn't leave under duress. Yeah,
but the fortress thing alone would lead you to believe
(17:40):
that they were trying to protect themselves somehow and quickly. Right.
But because you don't have the evidence of bones or
you know, any anything that would show like a body somewhere,
doesn't show that they were leaving under someone either forcing
them with physical action, right, or I would say, equally importantly,
(18:01):
the Maltese cross that was supposed to be carved as
a signal of trouble. And now we have to ask ourselves.
We've been thrown around the word. So they carved out
the word crow Atin, right, Sometimes I say Croaton, but
I think it's just a mnemonic plot twist that's happened
to me along the way when I was learning this.
(18:21):
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure my brain read Crowatin
earlier when we were discussing the Here's where it gets
crazy thing, it saw Crowton, but it read Croatian. So um,
apologies for that. Everybody who's been like raising their fists
in the air this entire episode. Um, I'm aware now
(18:43):
this is plot twist. There's going to be a second
Here's where it gets crazy, and it's all about how
they went to Croatia. Think about it. People know so
the here here's what you need to know. So Crowton
is a barrier eye. And another island on these outer
banks that you described earlier met now it's called Hatteras Island.
(19:06):
It's about thirty five miles south of Roanoke thirty five
nautical miles. It's called Croton because it's home of the
Croatan people, the native community, and they this is important.
They were friendly to English colonists. So based on that,
(19:27):
it seems logical to say, if the colonists had run
out of food on Roanoke, or if there have been
some maybe a problem with sanitation or disease or something
that made it unlivable, it would make sense for them
to go to the friendly communities, right. And John White
(19:49):
knew that. That's the thing about history. Every time we
relate these tales, in these narratives, we have to remember
that people born in living hundreds and hundreds of years ago,
we're just as intelligent as the people you meet today.
That is both a compliment and a criticism, you know
what I mean. They weren't dumb, They just had different tools.
(20:11):
So and we're not dumb either, we just have different tools.
Juries up for debate, you know. I think it's up
to future stories. But but John White. I say all
that about intelligence because John White and his crew and
the captain he had hired understood that the next logical
move would be to go to the other islands. Yet
they never searched that island. John White never searched that island,
(20:34):
even though his family had disappeared for minor issues. Right
there was whether whether it was a factor preventing them
from going over to that island. And they also lost
an anchor at some point in one of their ships,
and it made it, you know, at least in their
minds and in reality, almost impossible to safely get over there,
(20:55):
because they've got all these barrier islands across the this
whole section. You've got pieces of land that are high
enough to where if you don't know where those islands are,
you're going to run your ship on something, probably capsize,
if you know, not completely destroy your ship. And you
have to be able to land or send You have
to be able to keep your staful the harbor, even
(21:18):
to send out a launch boat. So John White is
not able to investigate, and he has to return to England.
There are later expeditions that claim to search for the
lost colony. They are either incredibly unsuccessful, they profoundly fail,
(21:39):
or they are undertaken with an ulterior motive. There were
people who said they were searching for this lost colony,
but really they were They were conducting acts of piracy
or they were trying to you know, move some product
of one sort or another. In fact, it wasn't until
the Jamestown Colony was established way later in six seven
(22:00):
that they were actual, semi successful, good faith searches to
discover the fate of the lost colonist Roanoke. Here's the
other thing, now, not only we were talking about the colonists,
right uh, and the tragedy the unanswered questions that are
(22:21):
left in the wake of their disappearance, but we have
to remember the colony itself disappeared. Yeah, the buildings, Like
how crazy is that? The buildings were taken down, So
you know, if you're heading if you were to head
out to that island, even if you're John White, and
you know essentially where everything is, the evidence is gone
(22:42):
save for that fortress, right and White and other members
of the leadership of the colony were not super great
at keeping records. And there's there are a couple of
reasons for this, so we'll get into in a moment.
But they were so bad at keeping records that people
never knew the exact location or whereabouts of that colony.
(23:05):
There were numerous digs in the intervening centuries that have
failed to produce evidence of the lost colony. Someone discovered
remnants of that settlement we mentioned from fifteen eighty five,
but there's no evidence of the lost colony that's ever
been found. And one of the big problems with this
(23:26):
is that the primary sources, the contemporaneous accounts, contradict one another.
They don't they don't agree. So according to John White,
the second settlement, the one that's lost, should have been
located near the north end of the island, but there
(23:47):
was an affid davit from a Spanish sailor in Fight
nine that said the settlement was actually near the center
of the island, where they had stationed some cannons. And
it would make sense for there to be small you know,
small not encampments, but um basically cells of the of
(24:09):
the settlement would be, you know, in various places, depending
on what you're going to use them for. If you're
gonna be fishing, you're gonna have some stuff that's closer
to the water. If you're you know, protecting something, it
would make sense to put it towards the center of
the island. Um that all makes sense. The problem is
if you're gonna do an historic dig, you kind of
(24:30):
have to do the whole island then at this point
to really like figure it out. So there there were
a couple other things that were found. There was an
old well and one small cannon that was found near
the bay area, not San Francisco in this case, the
Roanoke Bay area, and that was basically in support of
the the deposition that was given by that Spanish sailor.
(24:51):
But then some some historians now believe that the what
was it the seven Settlement actually is underwater right right,
that centuries of erosion have submerged the settlement, and that
we should be looking under the waves for it instead
(25:11):
of under the ground. Ultimately, right now, no one is
sure what happened to the Rowanoe colonists, or again, no
one agrees on their theory about what happens. When it
comes to the story of the lost colony. We have
a lot of theories, we just don't have a ton
of hard evidence. So let's let's just quickly go to
the initial theory. What did Governor John White think? So
(25:38):
he is the first person who officially discovered the colonists
have disappeared. He reports everything he sees in a letter.
He says, there are no bones like those that they
found in the colony where they found the remnants of
that one soldier and Governor White said, the houses have
been taken down. They had not been destroyed and not
been burned. They have been disassembled in theory to be
(26:00):
reassembled somewhere who knows. Who knows? That would be the
only thing that makes sense to me. But let's continue.
In White's opinion, they moved we have the quote here
fifty miles into the main, meaning that they have moved
inland into the forest of North Carolina. Proper historians like
(26:20):
this idea for numerous reasons over the years. But when
they get to when you get to the part of
the narrative where you say, why did they move inland?
What happened to them afterwards, that's when you see more
and more and more debate. We're going to pause for
(26:41):
a word from our sponsor, and then we'll return with
more theories after the break, and we're back now. Just
let's I want to have a quick comment on there
about this uncept to the perhaps the colonists moved inward
(27:03):
towards the main. The only thing I would put forward
here is that food had always been an issue well
in this settlement, and if you're moving, you know, to
the main land and not an island that's so separated
from probably populations of certain mammals that are walking around,
um and birds and other things, it would make sense
(27:25):
that they would move inland to have a better food source.
That there are a lot of problems here. The main
one would be that the indigenous populations may not like
that very much that they're encroaching in that way. But well,
let's get into all this stuff, because it really is
conceivable overall that the colonists met a much less violent
(27:47):
fate than maybe you would you would think, you know,
having all of their stuff gone and just disappearing, because
the first thing at least I think of is, oh, something,
most foul occurred here. But perhaps that's not the case. Right.
The Jamestown colonists when they when they conducted that search
(28:07):
sixteen hundreds, they sent out a couple of different parties
to hunt out members of the lost colony, and it
became a common thing, standard operating procedure for them to
question any members of native communities when they make contact.
It was one of the things they always asked them
about you know what I mean, how's the weather? Uh?
(28:29):
You know, the fishing good? Have you seen any people
who look like us? Uh? And if so, what, what's
what's their deal? So we're paraphrasing. Some of the people
that these colonists talked to said, there are settlements further
(28:51):
down the coast with people who look like you, and
they have two story thatched roof houses that look like uh,
you know from the descriptions. Europeans would think, well, that
sounds like the kind of stuff we would build. And
then other groups told of nearby tribes that could read
English and dressed in a similar method manner to Europeans.
(29:16):
The most I think the most dramatic report in the
record is the story that someone cited a child who
was dressed in the manner of a native group, and
this child had blonde hair and was fair skinned. So
they thought maybe maybe something terrible it happens, like maybe
(29:38):
a disease or some sort of natural disaster, and that
do due to that, the surviving members of the colony
were adopted or assimilated into a native population. I do
want to pause while we're talking native populations. So the
island is Crowato and the community is Croatan. Yeah, yeah, okay,
(30:01):
so that's that. If you hear if you hear us
doing some word juggling, if you hear me doing that,
it's just my my mind's playing tricks on me. And
if you if you hear me say Croatian, it's just
because I'm wrong. Still, we don't know. We have to
hold out for that theory. So this, this mention of
assimilation from European survivors into a Native American community has doubtlessly,
(30:29):
uh doubtlessly had a ring of familiarity to some of
our fellow listeners. And if you're from the area, from
North Carolina, then you're very familiar with what we're about
to say, which is of course the story of the
Lumbi l U M B E E. These reports from
(30:49):
the from the early days of the Jamestown investigations to
the modern day us to corroborate one of the most
popular theories about what became of these colonists that they
emilated into these tribes, and the idea is that over
the course of multiple generations, intermarriage between these groups would
produce a different, distinct group that had elements from both communities,
(31:16):
and this group is called the Lumbi tribe by people
who believe this this theory, the Lumbi tribe is native
to North Carolina, but according to the stories, no one
can really pin down their origin, and you can see
a number of different theories about their origin with varying
(31:39):
degrees of credibility. But they have an oral history, right, Yeah.
In that oral history actually links them to Roanoke settlers,
or at least two aspects of those settlers. So, uh,
that oral tradition is supported by some of the surnames
within the tribe, which is really interesting and it's it
(32:01):
was the tribe itself was unique because several of the members,
a lot of the members could speak English. And uh.
And then if you again we're talking about the surnames,
we look at the family names of some of the
Roman colonists. You've got people like Hyatt Taylor Dial. The
Lumbi tribe members or at least members of the Lumbi
tribe shared these names as early as the seventeen hundreds.
(32:25):
I think seventeen nineteen is the first date that we're
aware of there and other settlers who would come through
make their way, you know, and and interact with these tribes.
They would, you know, they would be pretty astonished that
these groups of people had gray eyes. Several times they
would speak English and there was even um It's really
(32:49):
interesting because even if you're if you're talking to members
within the group, if you have reports from members within
the Lumbi tribe, they they cannot come to a full
conclusion on there or not there was a true link
to the Roano colonists, right, that's correct. Yeah, it's a
it's come to be called this thing. It's been called
the Lumby connection. Which is I love that as the
(33:12):
title of something, you know, the Lumby connection, the sequel
to the French connection. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's It
remains intriguing because if that is, if it is true,
if there's sand to this theory, then the Roano Colonists
aren't lost. Their genes are still around today in Robison County,
North Carolina. And if you are listening you are a
(33:35):
member of a group like this Lumbi or or related
communities of which there are several. We would love to
know your take on this, especially with the advent of
DNA testing, which UH dramatically changed the conversation around the
origin of the Malunging community. There's another set at the
(34:00):
race which says that the Roanoke settlers fell victim not
to a Native American community, but to the Spanish Empire,
because the Spanish had a settlement just down the coast
in Florida, right, And we know that the Spanish forces
in the West Indies were aware that they were English
(34:20):
colonists around. They weren't happy about it, but they knew that, yeah, exactly.
And there's actually a tale here that was told by
Darby Gland g L A n d E. This was
a Roanoke settler. He left the expedition after it set
ashore in Puerto Rico to take on supply. So they
(34:44):
were going to stop in Puerto Rico pick up supplies, right.
He later reported um that he told Spanish officials there
when he was making this transaction in Puerto Rico about
the Roanoke settlement exactly where it was, almost as in,
I don't know, an act of espionage. So that's the thing,
right when we talk about when we talk about the
(35:06):
bad record keeping, astute listeners will notice that we also
pointed out John White was a professional cartographer, so why
would a professional map maker do such a pissuport job
of uh, you know, mapping things. It probably was not
because of incompetence. It was more likely that this uh,
(35:30):
this vagueness was a matter of state security, so so
that the Empire couldn't find out, you know, the Spanish
Empire forces couldn't find out about the colony and then
attack it before the British could send someone over across
the ocean. It really does make you game out the
(35:52):
whole scenario when you think about it in that light. Yeah,
as as a counter intelligence act of cartography, counterintelligence cartography,
that's a new thing. That's good. I like it. Oh man, dude,
that's so crazy because what if what if it was
never located there ever, right on that island? Yeah, or
(36:17):
you know, also, I want to say the the idea
of a renegade cartographer is fantastic. Mr White, renegade cartographer. Yes,
it's con rogue. There are other theories that the colonists
were innocent bystanders in a entering in media rests uh
(36:41):
into a greater conflict between rival native communities. There's an
anthropologist John Hopkins University named Lee Miller who says the
colonists wandered into a violent shift um of the balance
of power amongst the tribes that lived inland, because Roanoke
is geographically located in the crux of what was at
(37:04):
the time intense socio political friction between two groups. There
was the Secotan, who were you know, who had dominion
over Roanoke. There's another group, the Chawanoke, who controlled the
waterways that were nearby. And again, you know, not native speakers,
so we're not intentionally mispronouncing the names. Uh. Natives that
(37:29):
the colonists were friendly with began to lose control over
the area, and native communities that were hostile to the settlers,
again with pretty good reason to be, uh, they took
over the area, they gained more control. So before the
Jamestown colonists arrived, or maybe right around the same time,
(37:49):
either around the same time or right before the Poetan
had attacked and destroyed the Chesapeake Way. That's then that tribe,
is it the Powatan That sounds familiar to me, Yeah,
it should. That is where that is where the famous
Pocahontas is from. Oh yeah, it's it's not all paint
(38:14):
with painting with all the colors of the wind. Yeah.
They they very much wanted to kill the Chesapeake. So
relationships between the English colonists and the poets and were
let's say cold. But even then, even with that, the
English forces were able to get a little bit of
(38:37):
information about what happened to the Roano colony, or they
were able to learn something. Who knows if it was true.
If the Roano colonists had gone inland in the midst
of this conflict, then the men would have been killed,
the women and children probably would have been captured as slaves.
(38:59):
And if they have been captured as slaves, they would
have been traded along some established routes that spanned the U.
S Coast from Virginia to Georgia. And this this is
important because if we look at the timeline, the idea
would be that the somewhere in the intervening three years,
(39:21):
the Roanoke colonists assimilate to another tribe, but then that
tribe is attacked, and when that tribe is attacked, the
attacking tribe doesn't care if the people look kind of different,
you know what I mean, It's it's rules of war
at that point. Jeus. Well, so those are some of
the big theories, right and with as those theories were
(39:46):
being generated and um as they continued, you know, for
decades and centuries. People in the more modern day we
have been trying to you know, that one of these
is true, right, or at least disprove a few of
these were scientific method ng this thing, you guys. And
(40:08):
you know, despite over a century of going on that island,
digging all over the place, trying to find some remnant
of the colony that would show us, like some tiny clue,
a little flashlight in the dark that would show us
this picture here, we have really found nothing. Right now.
(40:30):
In the nine nineties, archaeologists working for the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation in Virginia found what they're pretty sure is a
workshop from the five Expedition. That's what a guy named
Joachim Ghans had tested rocks for precious metals. Other people
(40:50):
at the workshop studied plants uh to figure out their properties.
They studied tobacco, things like that, how can we make
money off this what can be used for? Is interesting
because he was a Bohemian mining expert. Is the first
recorded Jewish person in colonial America, and he's also the
(41:12):
first Bohemian in colonial America. This this workshop looked a
lot like an alchemist out you know, outfit or establishment. Oh. Sure,
they found crucibles, you know crucibles, right, classic classical alchemical paraphernalia, Yeah, exactly,
(41:32):
pharmaceutical let's call them jars. Glassware was littered all across
the floor. There were bricks that were probably used or
seemed to be have been used in a special furnace
situation for you know, manipulating and some of the ingredients
we're talking about here. The layout itself resembled those of
(41:54):
sixteenth century wood cuts that we that we have of
these uh German alchemical workshops that were kind of describing
here where it looks as though, if you know, you
took one of these wood cuts, if you could, if
you could enter it somehow and be inside the area
of the wood cut, and then just destroyed all the
stuff that you saw and let it sit there for
(42:17):
a long time. That's what they think they found. I see.
So now, officially, as of the nineteen nineties, experts have
only found the remains of that workshop and uh an
earthen fort that may have been built at a later
day in time. Diggs conducted near the this earthwork, the
fort we just mentioned in the eight nineties and nineteen
(42:39):
forties didn't really give us a bunch of stuff to
go on. They didn't really change our understanding or help
it evolve. Excavations continue in the modern day. In two
thousand eighteen, an archaeologist named Eric Klingelhoffer and was vice
president for research at the nonprofit First Colony Foundation in Durham, said, I,
(42:59):
for emly believe that our program of re excavation will
provide answers to the vexing questions that past field work
has left us. That quote, so, I mean it's good.
You know, they're pretty open about the fact that they
are going to return to some previous excavations. Maybe improvements
(43:20):
in technology will help us, uh will help us find
things we missed the first time. That's the that's the
returning to the Moon kind of speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
shout out to the mooners. Yeah, all these vexing questions
about the dark side of the Moon. The other problem
(43:42):
is that it may be too late. There may be
an expiration date on discovering the settlement, and that expiration
date may have passed. Some geologists believe it is vanished
under the waves. Like you said earlier, Matt J. P.
Walsh from the University of North Carolina says that recent
studies suggests shifting currents and rising waters inundated the site
(44:02):
in the past couple of centuries. He estimates the island's
north end again when the locations are purported rocations from
John White. He estimates to the north end of the
islands lost about seven fifty meters in the past four
hundred years, and their currents and hurricanes could bury any artifacts.
(44:22):
But not everybody buys this explanation. No, there's a guy,
it was a wonderful name named Guy Apprentice. It just
feels right, it feels it feels like a play on Apprentice.
But it's Guy Parentice. Um. He's an archaeologist from nps
is Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee. And you've got a
(44:43):
quote from him here. He says, if you look at
the maps from the seventeen hundreds, the islands geography has
not changed much. I just don't buy that a couple
of thousand yards are gone. So he's estimating, you know, again,
similar fiftys It's it's a lot that's that's a lot
of shore that would just be gone. And um, I
(45:08):
understand why Guy Prentiss would say, yeah, I don't buy it. However,
it becomes a matter of kind of who you believe
and uh and bearing out the science because you'd have
to figure out exactly how much you know, how how
do you even if you've got two experts that are
competing in that way on belief about where the water
(45:32):
has gone on this island and how much water has
actually approached the you know, the center of the island itself,
and how far um you realize that, oh, something is
wrong here. We don't have enough data or something, because
we should be able to have an exact answer to
that question. Yeah. Yeah, it's strange because according to a
(45:56):
couple of the different tests for various theories, the Lumbi
DNA may not be itself native American, maybe European and African.
This genetic testing can always always runs the risk of
leaving people with more questions than answers. And now we're
(46:18):
looking at the use of things like magnetometers, ground penetrating radar,
things that people just didn't have earlier, and of course
their investigations. So it is completely possible that we may
be able to reconstruct the order of events that led
to the disappearance of the colonists at Roanoke. What do
(46:43):
you think about this story, folks? Do you think it's
a Are you one of the people who think that
the truth has already been found and that people are
just you know, barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. Yeah,
that tree that had the word croatoin catched onto it,
and like it's that easy, We figured it out. It's done.
(47:05):
That's that's the history that's over lumby all day, good night,
um Or do you think something else is at play?
It's definitely one of those stories where your imagination can
really run wild when you think about that time and
the technology that was available in the fear that existed
of something as simple as the darkness where if you
(47:29):
don't have a fire going, you cannot see anything at
night save the moonlight. And what's you know, depending on
the moon's situation going on up there, you may be
in almost pitch black darkness, and with all of the
wildlife that exists in the area, with tribes of indigenous
people that your grandfather, you know, beheaded with their cousin
(47:51):
and now you got a deal, uh, And and it
makes you just think about all the terrible things that
could have happened to um um. And then you get
into things like the wind to go or you know,
spiritual force which craft hoaxes like the dare Stones, allegations
(48:13):
of cannibalism which simony stand, and of course the strange
Grallan Poe Ambrose Beers connection, which yeah, like it's like
this urban legend where right before he dies, allegedly one
of the last things that Graland poet says is uh croatoin.
(48:38):
Well it's not. I don't think it's true, but his
officially cause of death is unknown. Yeah. Well, like I said,
it's it's one of those things that it makes It
makes me personally think about all kinds of different possibilities,
and I think some of those possibilities are quite frankly
more fun to imagine, even though it's tear rble to to,
(49:02):
you know, have these thoughts about the fates of a
hundred and seventeen some people who were real human beings
with lives that maybe we're lost or maybe we're just um,
you know, integrated into another society. Yeah, that's that's the question, right.
(49:24):
And also, while the disappeared colonists get the most attention, uh,
there there's so many other mysterious stories anytime you're in
an age of expansion. And I think about this often
because in our lifetimes everyone listening to this. If the
species doesn't completely burn everything to the ground, we maybe
(49:49):
we may well see the return of the age of expansion,
and this time it will be to the stars. And
it's an exciting time to live somewhere where no one
really knows what happens towards the edges of the map,
you know, I think about I think about how often
history rhymes if it does not totally repeat, and I
(50:12):
wonder about the colonists of the future. We're going to
be out there in the ink, you know what I mean? Yeah, definitely.
And I'm waxing philosophical here, waxing science fictional, we should say.
But it's very much a fact that people are still
searching for answers to the story of the lost Colony
of Roanoke. If you have the answer, you know what,
(50:33):
we'd love to hear it, and we're not alone. A
lot of people want to hear it. You can let
us know on Facebook, you can let us know on Instagram,
you can let us know on Twitter. You can find
us on Instagram at Conspiracy Stuff Show, you can find
our phone number if you want to use that, it's
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(50:57):
s t d w y t K. That's just stuff
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(51:18):
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still you can email us. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't want you to
(51:58):
Know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They call
me Bed, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission controlled dec and most importantly, you
are you. You are here and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know this. This is a
weird one. We've been doing some some hidden history recently, Matt, Yes,
we have, and it's some of our favorite topics that
(00:47):
we ever cover on the show. I think personally for
the two of us, am I speaking for you too
much here? I feel like I feel like when we
hit a historical mystery like this, I can see your
gear is turning and I can feel mind turning. And uh,
this one is certainly no exception. This is a topic
that I'm really surprised we haven't covered before in the past.
(01:09):
I was surprised too. And it's funny because on our
Facebook page, here's where it gets crazy. Today's topic was
actually a subjective conversation. Did you see that? Oh? My gosh, no,
I didn't even look. Yes, here's where it gets crazy.
Our Facebook community page, Hello, Maddie B. Maddie recently said,
(01:30):
have they meaning us, Matt done a good episode about
Roanoke and I like that. Maddie said, good, good, yes,
qualified a good one about that yet well and then
John H came through and said like Croatian Roanoke. So
uh so I responded there and said, we have not,
but stay tuned for an upcoming episode. Hopefully it will
(01:52):
be a good one. And this is that episode. We
were working on it. We didn't want to spoil the surprise.
We're not sure when this comes out, but we are
finally doing an episode investigating the strange story of the
lost colony of Roanoke. So, everybody growing up in the US,
(02:12):
here's some version of this story, typically in middle school, right, Yes,
it's like a middle school story that's spooky enough to
get the attention of even the class clown. Yeah. Well
it's and it's as you're learning your first learning about
the British colonies within you know, in North America, and
you start learning about a lot of these and you're
(02:33):
going through you know, it's interesting stuff. It really is
when when you think about the hardships, the genocide, there's
like all kinds of crazy stuff that was happening at
the time, but the mystery really hits when you start
talking about Roanoke. Yes, a story that, depending on who
you ask, has not been resolved even in these our
(02:56):
modern days. So here are the facts. This tale really
begins in fifteen eighty when a gentleman named Sir Walter
Raleigh makes a deal with Queen Elizabeth, the first to
establish an English colony in you know, in North America, right,
And he was given a time frame. It wasn't like
(03:18):
just okay, you have carte blanche, go out there and
just make a colony. He was given ten years to
do it. And the whole concept here was that whatever
is recovered, whatever's found once, you know, as this colony
is being established, would be shared between Sir Walter and
his people as well as it would be shared with
(03:38):
him and the crown essentially. And yeah, make no mistake,
he's kind of working on commission, right, because exactly what
it is. If they don't find anything, then all of
that money, time, all those resources will have been for
not And that would sound like a very risky endeavor
(03:59):
and less we consider the other ulterior motive for the
establishment of colonies in this part of the world, which was,
of course it was a military application. There we go,
because England and Great Britain they were fighting Spain as
as they were, you know, fighting other world powers a
(04:21):
lot during those times. And this would give a this
would give sort of a beachhead, sort of a home
away from home for English military and naval operations to
be based at. And Raleigh himself did not personally travel
across the Atlantic to establish the colony. Let me know,
(04:41):
that would be that is a treacherous journey. Oh yes, yeah.
And one of the myths that we have to bust,
a misperception that a lot of people share about the
so called lost Colony of Roanoke is the idea that
these people just landed their ran lee, came out of nowhere,
made some bad decisions, and disappeared. Here's here's what happens.
(05:06):
There's a lot that leads up to this. There is
a initial exploratory expedition they sail in fifty four. They're
not attempting to establish a permanent base of operations. They're
not attempting to start a colony with families. These are
dudes who are kind of scouting out suitable location. Yeah,
(05:28):
they're literally location scouts. And that's what this whole first
expedition was about. And they were successful. They found a
small island and they decided to call it Roanoke. It's
located inside what are known as the Outer Banks. The
Outer Banks are a long string of these narrow islands
(05:49):
that shelter half the coast of North Carolina or what
we call North Carolina today. If you look at a
map from above, it looks as though it would just
be the entire land and a mass edge basically, and
that got flooded. That's what it looks like from a
from a map. And Roanoke itself is pretty attractive to
(06:11):
these dudes because as fertile soil, it has easily defensible positions.
It's it's well wooded. There's also wildlife it. The geography
of the island is such that ships can't anchor their safely,
which is a huge deal, and be easily protected. But
(06:33):
as it was a common situation back in those times,
as settlers from Eastern Lands came over to this area,
these guys started making all kinds of enemies, especially with
the indigenous people's there. They charged members of one of
the local tribes or one of the communities there, they
(06:55):
charge them of theft, and they beheaded the chief of
one of these groups, and they burned a village to
the ground. And that's you know, not not an initial
way you make friends, right, not a good look. No,
And keep in mind they were doing this while they
were also becoming increasingly reliant on the native population for food. Yeah,
(07:20):
so that's a terrible first impression. Sir Francis Drake happened
to be pirating along the area and he found this
exploratory group and he says, you know what, I'll give
you a lift back to England. So that is the
end of that first exploratory thing. They say we found
(07:42):
The first expedition says we found a good place and
the geography is fine. And then then you know, the
British say well, how's the neighborhood, and they go it's
a little intense. I'm not gonna lie, a little intense.
You know, we had a hand in the tensions for sure,
and ahead and ahead and attentions. So what they didn't know,
(08:05):
you know, the phrase ships in the night right, we've
all heard that in English. What they didn't know is
that they were in a literal ships in the night situation.
Because while Drake is sailing back to Europe with the
first crew, with that first crew, there is a second
ship that is sailing to what they called the New World.
These two ships passed one another in the Atlantic. The
(08:28):
new group on that second ship, it's it's about a
hundred men and they they find this abandoned settlement. They
live on the island for ten months, and at the
end of the ten months, most of them returned to England,
but they left a small garrison and probably about fifteen
men on row and note to keep the seat warm,
(08:48):
you know what I mean? Well and too essentially, I
guess as a as a last defense of the area
that they're currently controlling right now. This next group of
fellows who ended up showing up on the island, they
had no idea just how bad of a situation they
were entering. As far as you know, diplomatic relations with
(09:11):
the indigenous people's were going. So they you know, unfortunately,
also continued being pills. Let's say, yeah, they were real pills.
They're being real pills, real jerks. Themselves. And it should
come as no surprise that these guys, the second group
(09:31):
of people that went over to Roanoke, disappeared. They were
never seen or heard from again. Fast forward seven, around
one hundred and seventeen, one seventeen men, women and children
arrive on the third expedition. They settled on Ruinoke Island
and what would later be called North Carolina. They found
(09:56):
the skeletal remains of one of the fifteen soldiers the
earlier expedition, and that's it. We don't know what happened
to the other fourteen. This third expedition had the best
shot of the three. It was larger in terms of
population and in terms of supplies, and they have better
(10:16):
supplies too. They were led by a rod of veteran,
a cartographer and artist named John White. This is also
the first group to include uh substantial amount of women
and children to a real chance of settling down and
expanding the population right reproducing, and they attempted to reconcile
(10:37):
with the native communities. They have mixed results because there
was just too much bad blood. They managed to repair
relations with one nearby tribe, Powatan's living on nearby Croatan island,
but the other tribes in the area is thought of
hostile aloof distance, we hear you burn villages, you know
(10:58):
what I mean? Yeah, exactly. The colonists were vastly outnumbered
despite the size of their colony, and they were terrified
that the next small skirmish with any member of the
native population could escalate, it could grow into an all
out battle, and that battle would inevitably, just based on
the numbers, be a massacre. Yeah, so you know, what
(11:20):
does he do? Um, let's go ask the guy who
was in charge here, at least officially, um, Sir Walter Rawleigh.
So he gets in a ship and heads back to
England to talk to Raleigh in person. Because you know,
if you have that kind of meeting in person, you
could maybe convey a little better the the fears and
(11:41):
the stakes that are involved, rather than sending a message
somehow across the sea. You could also at this time
avoid errors in communication. Yes, right, that would be. That's
a huge factor here. So as weird as it sounds
nowadays to say the guys sailed back across the Atlantic
to just get in a room with Sir Walter Raleigh
(12:02):
and talk to him. At that time, we have to
remember being able to have that conversation and instantly field
answers to questions, because of course they're going to be
follow up questions. That's probably the most efficient thing to do.
It is um almost inconceivable at this point with communication,
you know, in the past hundreds of years being so immediate, right,
(12:27):
And he had to plan ahead. So John White said, look,
we know things are not terrible yet, but they're not
in the best position. You might have to relocate to
survive if while while I'm gone, while I'm I'm gaining
(12:48):
favor and organizing a rescue mission essentially, So let's let's
figure out symbols that we will leave, signs so that
we will return and if anything goes wrong, it'll be
something that just we colonists will understand. He said, if
you do move in my absence, carve your destination on
(13:09):
this tree, you point out a specific tree, and if
you're in trouble, also carve a Maltese cross. So he
gets to England. He's got a good plan, and he
finds that uh, surprise, surprise, time and distance have made
the Empire's goals a little bit. Uh you know, they've
(13:30):
they've diverged. The Empire and the colonies have different goals now,
the people in the colonies trying to survive, people in
the Empire trying to win this war with Spain, and
so the in the strategic position of you know, potentially
Roanoke isn't a high priority anymore. Right, So John White
shows up and says, hey, we need help and across
(13:54):
the ocean and they say, all right, well, we're really
we're doing this Spain thing. Now, that's what this episode
of Our Our Empire is about. We're spent. You're very
much a b story right now. And this means that
he doesn't return to Roanoke for three years. Three years,
(14:15):
it's a long pause. But when he does return to Roanoke,
he's got armed soldiers, he's got the supplies they need,
he is ready. The cavalry, as they say, has arrived late,
but it's arriving. And we'll tell you what happened right
after a word from our sponsor. So let's paint the picture.
(14:44):
Let's speculate a little bit about what John White encountered
when he disembarked. Imagine how strange it must have been
for him to return to the settlement. His wife is sild,
his sudden laws, grandchild had all lived there, and it's
(15:04):
been three years. But the air is erally quiet. There
no sounds of, you know, someone clinging iron on a forge,
wood being chopped somewhere in the distance. There's none of that,
just the sounds of nature, the ocean and the empty wind.
The houses were gone, they have been taken down. There
(15:26):
was one thing he noticed, which was a roughly built
fort surrounding the former settlement. And when he we say
roughly built, it looked like it had been made in
a hurry, as a reaction to something. And then on
a post he found one of two clues what was it.
(15:47):
They were carvings, first the word crow a toWin so
c r O a t O a N. And then
on another tree he found the carving c r O.
And it was not in the places where he was
expecting it to be, right, I believe so. The cannons
(16:08):
and boats that were supposed to be at the bay nearby,
they were gone. White had buried a couple of chess earlier,
with drawings, maps and books. He found these, but they
were torn apart. They had been ruined at some point
over the past three years by the weather. He found
no bones, he found no corpses, found no evidence one
(16:31):
way or another to show what had happened to the colonists,
other than of course, that fortress, the fourth they have
built around themselves. So it appears that sometime between five
and fifty seventeen, souls of the Roano Colony had simply disappeared.
(16:54):
And our big question today is what happened to them?
Here's where it gets crazy. So when we explore this topic,
we find that there are some people who were convinced
it's been solved. The problem is that not everybody agrees. Yes.
That's why technically this still remains a mystery today with
(17:17):
no shortage of what we might call conspiracy theories from
an earlier age, from before the term conspiracy theory existed.
So if we ask ourselves what could have happened, we
have to note it looks like they didn't leave under duress. Yeah,
but the fortress thing alone would lead you to believe
(17:40):
that they were trying to protect themselves somehow and quickly. Right.
But because you don't have the evidence of bones or
you know, any anything that would show like a body somewhere,
doesn't show that they were leaving under someone either forcing
them with physical action, right, or I would say, equally importantly,
(18:01):
the Maltese cross that was supposed to be carved as
a signal of trouble. And now we have to ask ourselves.
We've been thrown around the word. So they carved out
the word crow Atin, right, Sometimes I say Croaton, but
I think it's just a mnemonic plot twist that's happened
to me along the way when I was learning this.
(18:21):
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure my brain read Crowatin
earlier when we were discussing the Here's where it gets
crazy thing, it saw Crowton, but it read Croatian. So um,
apologies for that. Everybody who's been like raising their fists
in the air this entire episode. Um, I'm aware now
(18:43):
this is plot twist. There's going to be a second
Here's where it gets crazy, and it's all about how
they went to Croatia. Think about it. People know so
the here here's what you need to know. So Crowton
is a barrier eye. And another island on these outer
banks that you described earlier met now it's called Hatteras Island.
(19:06):
It's about thirty five miles south of Roanoke thirty five
nautical miles. It's called Croton because it's home of the
Croatan people, the native community, and they this is important.
They were friendly to English colonists. So based on that,
(19:27):
it seems logical to say, if the colonists had run
out of food on Roanoke, or if there have been
some maybe a problem with sanitation or disease or something
that made it unlivable, it would make sense for them
to go to the friendly communities, right. And John White
(19:49):
knew that. That's the thing about history. Every time we
relate these tales, in these narratives, we have to remember
that people born in living hundreds and hundreds of years ago,
we're just as intelligent as the people you meet today.
That is both a compliment and a criticism, you know
what I mean. They weren't dumb, They just had different tools.
(20:11):
So and we're not dumb either, we just have different tools.
Juries up for debate, you know. I think it's up
to future stories. But but John White. I say all
that about intelligence because John White and his crew and
the captain he had hired understood that the next logical
move would be to go to the other islands. Yet
they never searched that island. John White never searched that island,
(20:34):
even though his family had disappeared for minor issues. Right
there was whether whether it was a factor preventing them
from going over to that island. And they also lost
an anchor at some point in one of their ships,
and it made it, you know, at least in their
minds and in reality, almost impossible to safely get over there,
(20:55):
because they've got all these barrier islands across the this
whole section. You've got pieces of land that are high
enough to where if you don't know where those islands are,
you're going to run your ship on something, probably capsize,
if you know, not completely destroy your ship. And you
have to be able to land or send You have
to be able to keep your staful the harbor, even
(21:18):
to send out a launch boat. So John White is
not able to investigate, and he has to return to England.
There are later expeditions that claim to search for the
lost colony. They are either incredibly unsuccessful, they profoundly fail,
(21:39):
or they are undertaken with an ulterior motive. There were
people who said they were searching for this lost colony,
but really they were They were conducting acts of piracy
or they were trying to you know, move some product
of one sort or another. In fact, it wasn't until
the Jamestown Colony was established way later in six seven
(22:00):
that they were actual, semi successful, good faith searches to
discover the fate of the lost colonist Roanoke. Here's the
other thing, now, not only we were talking about the colonists,
right uh, and the tragedy the unanswered questions that are
(22:21):
left in the wake of their disappearance, but we have
to remember the colony itself disappeared. Yeah, the buildings, Like
how crazy is that? The buildings were taken down, So
you know, if you're heading if you were to head
out to that island, even if you're John White, and
you know essentially where everything is, the evidence is gone
(22:42):
save for that fortress, right and White and other members
of the leadership of the colony were not super great
at keeping records. And there's there are a couple of
reasons for this, so we'll get into in a moment.
But they were so bad at keeping records that people
never knew the exact location or whereabouts of that colony.
(23:05):
There were numerous digs in the intervening centuries that have
failed to produce evidence of the lost colony. Someone discovered
remnants of that settlement we mentioned from fifteen eighty five,
but there's no evidence of the lost colony that's ever
been found. And one of the big problems with this
(23:26):
is that the primary sources, the contemporaneous accounts, contradict one another.
They don't they don't agree. So according to John White,
the second settlement, the one that's lost, should have been
located near the north end of the island, but there
(23:47):
was an affid davit from a Spanish sailor in Fight
nine that said the settlement was actually near the center
of the island, where they had stationed some cannons. And
it would make sense for there to be small you know,
small not encampments, but um basically cells of the of
(24:09):
the settlement would be, you know, in various places, depending
on what you're going to use them for. If you're
gonna be fishing, you're gonna have some stuff that's closer
to the water. If you're you know, protecting something, it
would make sense to put it towards the center of
the island. Um that all makes sense. The problem is
if you're gonna do an historic dig, you kind of
(24:30):
have to do the whole island then at this point
to really like figure it out. So there there were
a couple other things that were found. There was an
old well and one small cannon that was found near
the bay area, not San Francisco in this case, the
Roanoke Bay area, and that was basically in support of
the the deposition that was given by that Spanish sailor.
(24:51):
But then some some historians now believe that the what
was it the seven Settlement actually is underwater right right,
that centuries of erosion have submerged the settlement, and that
we should be looking under the waves for it instead
(25:11):
of under the ground. Ultimately, right now, no one is
sure what happened to the Rowanoe colonists, or again, no
one agrees on their theory about what happens. When it
comes to the story of the lost colony. We have
a lot of theories, we just don't have a ton
of hard evidence. So let's let's just quickly go to
the initial theory. What did Governor John White think? So
(25:38):
he is the first person who officially discovered the colonists
have disappeared. He reports everything he sees in a letter.
He says, there are no bones like those that they
found in the colony where they found the remnants of
that one soldier and Governor White said, the houses have
been taken down. They had not been destroyed and not
been burned. They have been disassembled in theory to be
(26:00):
reassembled somewhere who knows. Who knows? That would be the
only thing that makes sense to me. But let's continue.
In White's opinion, they moved we have the quote here
fifty miles into the main, meaning that they have moved
inland into the forest of North Carolina. Proper historians like
(26:20):
this idea for numerous reasons over the years. But when
they get to when you get to the part of
the narrative where you say, why did they move inland?
What happened to them afterwards, that's when you see more
and more and more debate. We're going to pause for
(26:41):
a word from our sponsor, and then we'll return with
more theories after the break, and we're back now. Just
let's I want to have a quick comment on there
about this uncept to the perhaps the colonists moved inward
(27:03):
towards the main. The only thing I would put forward
here is that food had always been an issue well
in this settlement, and if you're moving, you know, to
the main land and not an island that's so separated
from probably populations of certain mammals that are walking around,
um and birds and other things, it would make sense
(27:25):
that they would move inland to have a better food source.
That there are a lot of problems here. The main
one would be that the indigenous populations may not like
that very much that they're encroaching in that way. But well,
let's get into all this stuff, because it really is
conceivable overall that the colonists met a much less violent
(27:47):
fate than maybe you would you would think, you know,
having all of their stuff gone and just disappearing, because
the first thing at least I think of is, oh, something,
most foul occurred here. But perhaps that's not the case. Right.
The Jamestown colonists when they when they conducted that search
(28:07):
sixteen hundreds, they sent out a couple of different parties
to hunt out members of the lost colony, and it
became a common thing, standard operating procedure for them to
question any members of native communities when they make contact.
It was one of the things they always asked them
about you know what I mean, how's the weather? Uh?
(28:29):
You know, the fishing good? Have you seen any people
who look like us? Uh? And if so, what, what's
what's their deal? So we're paraphrasing. Some of the people
that these colonists talked to said, there are settlements further
(28:51):
down the coast with people who look like you, and
they have two story thatched roof houses that look like uh,
you know from the descriptions. Europeans would think, well, that
sounds like the kind of stuff we would build. And
then other groups told of nearby tribes that could read
English and dressed in a similar method manner to Europeans.
(29:16):
The most I think the most dramatic report in the
record is the story that someone cited a child who
was dressed in the manner of a native group, and
this child had blonde hair and was fair skinned. So
they thought maybe maybe something terrible it happens, like maybe
(29:38):
a disease or some sort of natural disaster, and that
do due to that, the surviving members of the colony
were adopted or assimilated into a native population. I do
want to pause while we're talking native populations. So the
island is Crowato and the community is Croatan. Yeah, yeah, okay,
(30:01):
so that's that. If you hear if you hear us
doing some word juggling, if you hear me doing that,
it's just my my mind's playing tricks on me. And
if you if you hear me say Croatian, it's just
because I'm wrong. Still, we don't know. We have to
hold out for that theory. So this, this mention of
assimilation from European survivors into a Native American community has doubtlessly,
(30:29):
uh doubtlessly had a ring of familiarity to some of
our fellow listeners. And if you're from the area, from
North Carolina, then you're very familiar with what we're about
to say, which is of course the story of the
Lumbi l U M B E E. These reports from
(30:49):
the from the early days of the Jamestown investigations to
the modern day us to corroborate one of the most
popular theories about what became of these colonists that they
emilated into these tribes, and the idea is that over
the course of multiple generations, intermarriage between these groups would
produce a different, distinct group that had elements from both communities,
(31:16):
and this group is called the Lumbi tribe by people
who believe this this theory, the Lumbi tribe is native
to North Carolina, but according to the stories, no one
can really pin down their origin, and you can see
a number of different theories about their origin with varying
(31:39):
degrees of credibility. But they have an oral history, right, Yeah.
In that oral history actually links them to Roanoke settlers,
or at least two aspects of those settlers. So, uh,
that oral tradition is supported by some of the surnames
within the tribe, which is really interesting and it's it
(32:01):
was the tribe itself was unique because several of the members,
a lot of the members could speak English. And uh.
And then if you again we're talking about the surnames,
we look at the family names of some of the
Roman colonists. You've got people like Hyatt Taylor Dial. The
Lumbi tribe members or at least members of the Lumbi
tribe shared these names as early as the seventeen hundreds.
(32:25):
I think seventeen nineteen is the first date that we're
aware of there and other settlers who would come through
make their way, you know, and and interact with these tribes.
They would, you know, they would be pretty astonished that
these groups of people had gray eyes. Several times they
would speak English and there was even um It's really
(32:49):
interesting because even if you're if you're talking to members
within the group, if you have reports from members within
the Lumbi tribe, they they cannot come to a full
conclusion on there or not there was a true link
to the Roano colonists, right, that's correct. Yeah, it's a
it's come to be called this thing. It's been called
the Lumby connection. Which is I love that as the
(33:12):
title of something, you know, the Lumby connection, the sequel
to the French connection. I'm not sure. Yeah, it's It
remains intriguing because if that is, if it is true,
if there's sand to this theory, then the Roano Colonists
aren't lost. Their genes are still around today in Robison County,
North Carolina. And if you are listening you are a
(33:35):
member of a group like this Lumbi or or related
communities of which there are several. We would love to
know your take on this, especially with the advent of
DNA testing, which UH dramatically changed the conversation around the
origin of the Malunging community. There's another set at the
(34:00):
race which says that the Roanoke settlers fell victim not
to a Native American community, but to the Spanish Empire,
because the Spanish had a settlement just down the coast
in Florida, right, And we know that the Spanish forces
in the West Indies were aware that they were English
(34:20):
colonists around. They weren't happy about it, but they knew that, yeah, exactly.
And there's actually a tale here that was told by
Darby Gland g L A n d E. This was
a Roanoke settler. He left the expedition after it set
ashore in Puerto Rico to take on supply. So they
(34:44):
were going to stop in Puerto Rico pick up supplies, right.
He later reported um that he told Spanish officials there
when he was making this transaction in Puerto Rico about
the Roanoke settlement exactly where it was, almost as in,
I don't know, an act of espionage. So that's the thing,
right when we talk about when we talk about the
(35:06):
bad record keeping, astute listeners will notice that we also
pointed out John White was a professional cartographer, so why
would a professional map maker do such a pissuport job
of uh, you know, mapping things. It probably was not
because of incompetence. It was more likely that this uh,
(35:30):
this vagueness was a matter of state security, so so
that the Empire couldn't find out, you know, the Spanish
Empire forces couldn't find out about the colony and then
attack it before the British could send someone over across
the ocean. It really does make you game out the
(35:52):
whole scenario when you think about it in that light. Yeah,
as as a counter intelligence act of cartography, counterintelligence cartography,
that's a new thing. That's good. I like it. Oh man, dude,
that's so crazy because what if what if it was
never located there ever, right on that island? Yeah, or
(36:17):
you know, also, I want to say the the idea
of a renegade cartographer is fantastic. Mr White, renegade cartographer. Yes,
it's con rogue. There are other theories that the colonists
were innocent bystanders in a entering in media rests uh
(36:41):
into a greater conflict between rival native communities. There's an
anthropologist John Hopkins University named Lee Miller who says the
colonists wandered into a violent shift um of the balance
of power amongst the tribes that lived inland, because Roanoke
is geographically located in the crux of what was at
(37:04):
the time intense socio political friction between two groups. There
was the Secotan, who were you know, who had dominion
over Roanoke. There's another group, the Chawanoke, who controlled the
waterways that were nearby. And again, you know, not native speakers,
so we're not intentionally mispronouncing the names. Uh. Natives that
(37:29):
the colonists were friendly with began to lose control over
the area, and native communities that were hostile to the settlers,
again with pretty good reason to be, uh, they took
over the area, they gained more control. So before the
Jamestown colonists arrived, or maybe right around the same time,
(37:49):
either around the same time or right before the Poetan
had attacked and destroyed the Chesapeake Way. That's then that tribe,
is it the Powatan That sounds familiar to me, Yeah,
it should. That is where that is where the famous
Pocahontas is from. Oh yeah, it's it's not all paint
(38:14):
with painting with all the colors of the wind. Yeah.
They they very much wanted to kill the Chesapeake. So
relationships between the English colonists and the poets and were
let's say cold. But even then, even with that, the
English forces were able to get a little bit of
(38:37):
information about what happened to the Roano colony, or they
were able to learn something. Who knows if it was true.
If the Roano colonists had gone inland in the midst
of this conflict, then the men would have been killed,
the women and children probably would have been captured as slaves.
(38:59):
And if they have been captured as slaves, they would
have been traded along some established routes that spanned the U.
S Coast from Virginia to Georgia. And this this is
important because if we look at the timeline, the idea
would be that the somewhere in the intervening three years,
(39:21):
the Roanoke colonists assimilate to another tribe, but then that
tribe is attacked, and when that tribe is attacked, the
attacking tribe doesn't care if the people look kind of different,
you know what I mean, It's it's rules of war
at that point. Jeus. Well, so those are some of
the big theories, right and with as those theories were
(39:46):
being generated and um as they continued, you know, for
decades and centuries. People in the more modern day we
have been trying to you know, that one of these
is true, right, or at least disprove a few of
these were scientific method ng this thing, you guys. And
(40:08):
you know, despite over a century of going on that island,
digging all over the place, trying to find some remnant
of the colony that would show us, like some tiny clue,
a little flashlight in the dark that would show us
this picture here, we have really found nothing. Right now.
(40:30):
In the nine nineties, archaeologists working for the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation in Virginia found what they're pretty sure is a
workshop from the five Expedition. That's what a guy named
Joachim Ghans had tested rocks for precious metals. Other people
(40:50):
at the workshop studied plants uh to figure out their properties.
They studied tobacco, things like that, how can we make
money off this what can be used for? Is interesting
because he was a Bohemian mining expert. Is the first
recorded Jewish person in colonial America, and he's also the
(41:12):
first Bohemian in colonial America. This this workshop looked a
lot like an alchemist out you know, outfit or establishment. Oh. Sure,
they found crucibles, you know crucibles, right, classic classical alchemical paraphernalia, Yeah, exactly,
(41:32):
pharmaceutical let's call them jars. Glassware was littered all across
the floor. There were bricks that were probably used or
seemed to be have been used in a special furnace
situation for you know, manipulating and some of the ingredients
we're talking about here. The layout itself resembled those of
(41:54):
sixteenth century wood cuts that we that we have of
these uh German alchemical workshops that were kind of describing
here where it looks as though, if you know, you
took one of these wood cuts, if you could, if
you could enter it somehow and be inside the area
of the wood cut, and then just destroyed all the
stuff that you saw and let it sit there for
(42:17):
a long time. That's what they think they found. I see.
So now, officially, as of the nineteen nineties, experts have
only found the remains of that workshop and uh an
earthen fort that may have been built at a later
day in time. Diggs conducted near the this earthwork, the
fort we just mentioned in the eight nineties and nineteen
(42:39):
forties didn't really give us a bunch of stuff to
go on. They didn't really change our understanding or help
it evolve. Excavations continue in the modern day. In two
thousand eighteen, an archaeologist named Eric Klingelhoffer and was vice
president for research at the nonprofit First Colony Foundation in Durham, said, I,
(42:59):
for emly believe that our program of re excavation will
provide answers to the vexing questions that past field work
has left us. That quote, so, I mean it's good.
You know, they're pretty open about the fact that they
are going to return to some previous excavations. Maybe improvements
(43:20):
in technology will help us, uh will help us find
things we missed the first time. That's the that's the
returning to the Moon kind of speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
shout out to the mooners. Yeah, all these vexing questions
about the dark side of the Moon. The other problem
(43:42):
is that it may be too late. There may be
an expiration date on discovering the settlement, and that expiration
date may have passed. Some geologists believe it is vanished
under the waves. Like you said earlier, Matt J. P.
Walsh from the University of North Carolina says that recent
studies suggests shifting currents and rising waters inundated the site
(44:02):
in the past couple of centuries. He estimates the island's
north end again when the locations are purported rocations from
John White. He estimates to the north end of the
islands lost about seven fifty meters in the past four
hundred years, and their currents and hurricanes could bury any artifacts.
(44:22):
But not everybody buys this explanation. No, there's a guy,
it was a wonderful name named Guy Apprentice. It just
feels right, it feels it feels like a play on Apprentice.
But it's Guy Parentice. Um. He's an archaeologist from nps
is Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee. And you've got a
(44:43):
quote from him here. He says, if you look at
the maps from the seventeen hundreds, the islands geography has
not changed much. I just don't buy that a couple
of thousand yards are gone. So he's estimating, you know, again,
similar fiftys It's it's a lot that's that's a lot
of shore that would just be gone. And um, I
(45:08):
understand why Guy Prentiss would say, yeah, I don't buy it. However,
it becomes a matter of kind of who you believe
and uh and bearing out the science because you'd have
to figure out exactly how much you know, how how
do you even if you've got two experts that are
competing in that way on belief about where the water
(45:32):
has gone on this island and how much water has
actually approached the you know, the center of the island itself,
and how far um you realize that, oh, something is
wrong here. We don't have enough data or something, because
we should be able to have an exact answer to
that question. Yeah. Yeah, it's strange because according to a
(45:56):
couple of the different tests for various theories, the Lumbi
DNA may not be itself native American, maybe European and African.
This genetic testing can always always runs the risk of
leaving people with more questions than answers. And now we're
(46:18):
looking at the use of things like magnetometers, ground penetrating radar,
things that people just didn't have earlier, and of course
their investigations. So it is completely possible that we may
be able to reconstruct the order of events that led
to the disappearance of the colonists at Roanoke. What do
(46:43):
you think about this story, folks? Do you think it's
a Are you one of the people who think that
the truth has already been found and that people are
just you know, barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. Yeah,
that tree that had the word croatoin catched onto it,
and like it's that easy, We figured it out. It's done.
(47:05):
That's that's the history that's over lumby all day, good night,
um Or do you think something else is at play?
It's definitely one of those stories where your imagination can
really run wild when you think about that time and
the technology that was available in the fear that existed
of something as simple as the darkness where if you
(47:29):
don't have a fire going, you cannot see anything at
night save the moonlight. And what's you know, depending on
the moon's situation going on up there, you may be
in almost pitch black darkness, and with all of the
wildlife that exists in the area, with tribes of indigenous
people that your grandfather, you know, beheaded with their cousin
(47:51):
and now you got a deal, uh, And and it
makes you just think about all the terrible things that
could have happened to um um. And then you get
into things like the wind to go or you know,
spiritual force which craft hoaxes like the dare Stones, allegations
(48:13):
of cannibalism which simony stand, and of course the strange
Grallan Poe Ambrose Beers connection, which yeah, like it's like
this urban legend where right before he dies, allegedly one
of the last things that Graland poet says is uh croatoin.
(48:38):
Well it's not. I don't think it's true, but his
officially cause of death is unknown. Yeah. Well, like I said,
it's it's one of those things that it makes It
makes me personally think about all kinds of different possibilities,
and I think some of those possibilities are quite frankly
more fun to imagine, even though it's tear rble to to,
(49:02):
you know, have these thoughts about the fates of a
hundred and seventeen some people who were real human beings
with lives that maybe we're lost or maybe we're just um,
you know, integrated into another society. Yeah, that's that's the question, right.
(49:24):
And also, while the disappeared colonists get the most attention, uh,
there there's so many other mysterious stories anytime you're in
an age of expansion. And I think about this often
because in our lifetimes everyone listening to this. If the
species doesn't completely burn everything to the ground, we maybe
(49:49):
we may well see the return of the age of expansion,
and this time it will be to the stars. And
it's an exciting time to live somewhere where no one
really knows what happens towards the edges of the map,
you know, I think about I think about how often
history rhymes if it does not totally repeat, and I
(50:12):
wonder about the colonists of the future. We're going to
be out there in the ink, you know what I mean? Yeah, definitely.
And I'm waxing philosophical here, waxing science fictional, we should say.
But it's very much a fact that people are still
searching for answers to the story of the lost Colony
of Roanoke. If you have the answer, you know what,
(50:33):
we'd love to hear it, and we're not alone. A
lot of people want to hear it. You can let
us know on Facebook, you can let us know on Instagram,
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(50:57):
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(51:18):
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