April 22, 2025 • 48 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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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh man, guys, folks, friends and neighbors. In these crazy times,
I think we all love taking a little bit of
a break from the headlines and go it into you know,
conspiracies of yesteryear, hidden history, paranormal stuff, things like that,
right Krakatoa, Yeah, yeah, stuff that.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Can't hurt of Oh my bad creatine. But agree like
stuff that can't hurt us right now, right, It's it's mysterious.
There's a mystery to be solved, but not going to
affect us as we walk around drinking all this coffee.
It's true.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
We yes, I do drink a lot of coffee too.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Finally finished, I need more.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, it's happening as soon as we roll the tape
on what really happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
My name is Matt, they call me Ben, and we
are joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Control Deck, 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 hidden history recently, Matt.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yes, we have, and it's some of our favorite topics
that 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 gears turning and I can feel mine turning. And uh,
this one is certainly no exception. This is a topic
(02:02):
that I'm really surprised we haven't covered before in the past.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
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 subject of conversation. Did you see that?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh my gosh, No, I didn't even look.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yes, here's where it gets crazy our Facebook community page. Hello,
Maddie B. Maddie recently said, have they meaning us? Matt
done a good episode about Roanoke and I like that.
Maddie said, good, good, Yes, you qualify a.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Good one about that yet well, and then John H
came through and said, like Croatian Roanoke.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So so I responded there and said we have not,
but stay tuned for an upcoming episode. Hopefully it will
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 investigate the strange story of the
(03:03):
Lost Colony of Roanoke. So everybody growing up in the US,
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.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah. Well, 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 going through you know, it's interesting stuff. It really is.
When you think about the hardships, the genocide. There's like
all kinds of crazy stuff that was happening at the time.
(03:40):
But the mystery really hits when you start talking about Roanoke.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yes, a story that, depending on who you ask, has
not been resolved even in these our modern days. So
here are the facts. This tale really begins in fifteen
when a gentleman named Sir Walter Raleigh makes a deal
with Queen Elizabeth, the first to establish an English colony
(04:08):
in you know, in North America.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Right, And he was given a timeframe. It wasn't like
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
(04:32):
his people as well as it would be shared with
him and the Crown essentially.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
And yeah, make no mistake, he's kind of working on commission.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah right, because that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
If they don't find anything, then all of that money, time,
all his resources will have been for not And that
would sound like a very risky endeavor unless we consider
the other ulterior motive for the establishment of colonies in
this part of the world, which was, of course it
(05:05):
was a military application.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
There we go, because England and Great Britain they were
fighting Spain as they were, you know, fighting other world
powers a lot during those times.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And this would give 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.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
As we know, that would be a that is a
treacherous journey.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
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 there randomly, came
out of nowhere, made some bad decisions, and disappeared. Yeah,
here's what happens. There's a lot that leads up to this.
(06:04):
There is a initial exploratory expedition. They sail in fifteen
eighty four. They're not attempting to establish a permanent base
of operations. They're not attempting to start a colony with families.
These are due who are kind of scouting out a
suitable location.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, they're literally location scouts. And that's what this whole
first expedition was about.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
And they were successful. They found a small island they
decided to call it Roanoke. It's located inside what are
known as the Outer Banks. The Outer Banks are a
long stream of these narrow islands that shelter half the
coast of North Carolina, or what we call North Carolina today.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
If you look at a map from above, it looks
as though it would just be the entire land mass
edge basically, and that got flooded. That's what it looks
like from a map.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And Roanoke itself is pretty attractive to these dudes because
as fertile soil, it has easily defensible positions. It's it's
well wooded, there's also wildlife. The geography of the island
is such that ships can anchor there safely, which is
(07:23):
a huge deal, and be easily protected.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
But as 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 peoples there. They charged members of one of
(07:48):
the local tribes or one of the communities there, they
charged them with 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.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
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, so that's a
terrible first impression. Sir Francis Drake happened to be pirating
along the area and he found this exploratory group and
(08:31):
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 The first expedition
says we found a good place and the geography is fine.
And then you know, the British say well, how's the neighborhood,
and they go, it's a little intense. Not gonna lie,
a little intense.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
You know, we had a hand in the tensions for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And ahead and ahead and the tensions. So what they
didn't know, 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 that first crew, with that first crew, there is
a second ship that is sailing to what they called
(09:19):
the New World. These two ships pass one another in
the Atlantic. The new group on that second ship, it's
about one 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
(09:41):
about fifteen men on Rowano to keep the seat warm,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, well, and to 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 the indigenous peoples were going.
(10:09):
So they, you know, unfortunately, also continued being uh pills.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Let's say, Yeah, there were real pills.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
They're being real pills, real jerks themselves. And it should
come as no surprise that these guys, the second group
of people that went over to Roanoke, disappeared. They were
never seen or heard from again.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Fast forward fifteen eighty seven, around one hundred and seventeen
one and fifteen one hundred and seventeen men, women and
children arrive on the third expedition. They settle on Roanoke
Island and what would later be called North Carolina. They
found the skeletal remains of one of the fifteen soldiers
(10:55):
from 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 supplies too. They were led by a Roanoke veteran,
(11:16):
a cartographer and artist named John White. This is also
the first group to include substantial amount of women and children, so.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
A real chance of settling down and expanding the population
right reproducing.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And they attempted to reconcile with the native communities. They
had mixed results because there was just too much bad blood.
They managed to repair relations with one nearby tribe, Powatans
living on nearby Croatan Island, but the other tribes in
the area saot a hostile aloof distance. We hear you
(11:52):
burn villages, You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
The colonists were vastly outnumbered despite the size of their call,
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.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, so you know, what does he do. Let's go
ask the guy who was in charge here at least officially,
Sir Walter Raleigh. 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
(12:36):
fears and the stakes that are involved. Rather than sending
a message somehow across the sea.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You could also at this time avoid errors in communication.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yes, right, that would be. That's a huge factor here.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
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 and talk to him
at that time, we have to remember being able to
have that conversation in instantly field answers to questions, because
of course they're going to be follow up questions. Yeah,
that's probably the most efficient thing to do.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It is almost inconceivable at this point with communication, you know,
in the past hundreds of years being so immediate.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Right, 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 while I'm gone, while I'm gaining favor and organizing
(13:47):
a rescue mission. Essentially, so 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
call in a will understand. He said, if you do
move in my absence, carve your destination on this tree.
You point out a specific tree, and if you're in trouble,
(14:08):
also carve a Maltese cross. So he gets to England.
He's got a good plan, and he finds that surprise, surprise,
time and distance have made the Empire's goals a little bit,
you know, they they've diverged. The Empire and the colonies
(14:29):
have different goals. Now. The people in the colonies trying
to survive, yes, people in the Empire try to win
this war with Spain, and.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
So in the strategic position of you know, potentially Roanoak
isn't a high priority anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Right, So John White shows up and says, hey, we
need help and across the ocean and they say, all right,
well we're 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 ab story right now. And
this means that he doesn't return to Roanoke for three years. Yeah,
(15:10):
three years, 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.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yes late, but it's arriving. And we'll tell you what
happened right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So let's paint the picture. 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 child, his son in law,
his grandchild had all lived there and it's been three years.
(16:01):
But the air is eerily quiet. There are no sounds
of you know, someone clanging iron on a.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Forge, wood being chopped somewhere in the distance.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
There's none of that, just the sounds of nature, the
ocean and the empty wind. The houses were gone, they
had been taken down. There was one thing he noticed,
which was a roughly built fort surrounding the former settlement.
And when we say, roughly built. It looked like it
had been made in a hurry, Yeah, as a reaction
(16:33):
to something. And then on a post he found one
of two clues what was it?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
They were carvings, first the word crow a toin so
croa t a n. And then on another tree he
found the carving croo and it was not in the
places where he was expecting it to be, right.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I believe. So the cannons and boats were supposed to
be at the bay nearby, they were gone. White had
buried a couple of chests 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,
(17:25):
found no evidence, one way or another to show what
had happened to the colonists, other than of course that fortress,
the fort they had built around themselves. So it appears
that sometime between fifteen eighty seven and fifteen ninety one
hundred and seventeen souls of the Roanoke Colony had simply disappeared.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And our big question today is what happened to them?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Here's where it gets crazy. So when we explored this
top we find that there are some people who are
convinced it's been solved. The problem is that not everybody agrees.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's why technically this still remains a mystery today with
no shortage of what we might call conspiracy theories from
in your 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.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, but the fortress thing alone would lead you to
believe that they were trying to protect themselves somehow and quickly. Right.
But because you don't have the evidence of bones or
you know, anything that would show like a body somewhere,
doesn't show that they were leaving under someone either forcing
(18:52):
them with physical action, right.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Or I would say, equally importantly, the Maltese cross is nice.
That was supposed to be as a signal of trouble.
And now we have to ask ourselves we've been thrown
around the words. So they carved out the word croatoin, right,
Sometimes I say crootin, but I think it's just a
mnemonic plot twist that's happened to me along the way
(19:16):
when I was learning this.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure my brain read Croatin.
Earlier when we were discussing the Here's where it gets
Crazy thing, it saw Croatan, but it read Croatian. So
apologies for that. Everybody has been like raising their fists
in the air this entire episode.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I'm aware now this is plot twisted. There's going to
be a second Here's where it gets crazy, and it's
all about how they went to Croatia. Yeah, I think
about it. People, No, So the here here's what you
need to know. So Croaton is a barrier island, another
island on these outer banks that you described earlier, Matt.
(19:59):
Now it's called Hatteras Island. It's about thirty five miles
south of Roanoke, the thirty five nautical miles. It's called
Croton because it's home of the Crootan people, the native community,
and they this is important, they were friendly to English colonists.
(20:21):
So based on that, it seems logical to say if
the colonists had run out of food on Roanoke, or
if there had 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,
(20:44):
And John White knew that. That's the thing about history.
Every time we relate these tales and these narratives, we
have to remember that people born in living hundreds and
hundreds of years ago were 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,
(21:05):
They just had different tools.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
So and we're not dumb either, we just have different tools.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Juries up for debate, you know. I think it's up
to future historians. 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,
(21:30):
even though his family had disappeared.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And for minor issues. Right, the weather 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 because they've got all these barrier islands
(21:54):
across this whole section. You've got pieces of land that
are up high enough to where or 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.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And you have to be able to land or send
You have to be able to keep chiefly harbor. Yeah,
even to send out a launch boat. So John White
is not able to investigate, and he hasked to return
to England. There are later expeditions that claim to search
for the lost colony. They are either incredibly unsuccessful, they
(22:33):
profoundly fail, or they are undertaken with an ulterior motive.
There were people who said they were searching for this
lost colony, but really 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 sixteen oh
(22:55):
seven that there were actual, semi successful, good searches to
discover the fate of the lost colonists in Roanoke. Here's
the other thing. Now, not only we were talking about
the colonists, right, and the tragedy, the unanswered questions that
(23:16):
are left in the wake of their disappearance. But we
have to remember the colony itself disappeared.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
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 save for that fortress, right.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And White and other members of the leadership of the
colony were not super great at keeping records. Oh yeah,
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. There were numerous
(24:02):
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 is with this is that
(24:23):
the primary sources, the contemporaneous accounts, contradict one another. 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 was an affidavit
(24:44):
from a Spanish sailor in fifteen eighty nine that said
the settlement was actually near the center of the island,
where they had stationed some cannons.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, and it would make sense for there to be
small you know, small not in camp cons but basically
cells of the settlement would be, you know, in various
places depending on what you're going to use them for.
If you're going to be fishing, you're going to have
some stuff that's closer to the water. If you're you know,
(25:15):
protecting something, it would make sense to put it towards
the center of the island. That all makes sense. The
problem is if you're going to do an historic dig,
you kind of have to do the whole island then
at this point to really like figure it out. So
there were a couple other things that were found. There
was an old well and one small cannon that was
(25:36):
found near the bay area, not San Francisco in this case,
the Roanoke Bay area, and that was basically in support
of the deposition that was given by that Spanish salor.
But then some some historians now believe that the what
was it The fifteen eighty seven settlement actually is underwater.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Right right, that centuries of have submerged the settlement, and
that we should be looking under the waves for it
instead of under the ground. Ultimately, right now, no one
is sure what happened to the Roanoke colonists. Through again,
no one agrees on their theory about what happens. When
(26:18):
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 just quickly go to
the initial theory. What did Governor John White think? So
he is the first person who officially discovered the colonists
have disappeared. He reports everything he sees in a letter.
(26:40):
He says, there are no bones like those that they
found in the fifteen eighty five 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,
they had not been burned. They have been disassembled in
theory to be reassembled somewhere who knows. Who knows?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
That would be the only thing that makes sense to me.
But let's continue.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
In White's opinion, they moved and 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 this idea for numerous reasons over the years. But
(27:22):
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
a word from our sponsor and then we'll return with
more theories after the break, and.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
We're back now. Just let's I want to have a
quick comment on there about this concept to the perhaps
the colonists moved inward towards the main The only thing
I would put forward here is that food had always
been an issue in this settlement. And if you are moving,
you know, to the mainland and not an island that's
(28:12):
so separated from probably populations of certain mammals that are
walking around and birds and other things, it would make
sense that they would move inland to have a better
food source. 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.
(28:34):
But well, let's get into all this stuff, because it
really is conceivable overall that the colonists met a much
less violent fate. Then maybe 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.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Right. The Jamestown colonists when they when they conducted that
search sixteen hundreds, they surnounted a couple of different parties
to hunt down 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 may contact.
(29:19):
It was one of the things they always asked them about,
you know what I mean, how's the weather? You know,
how is the fishing good? Have you seen any people
who look like us? And if so, what's what's their deal?
So we're paraphrasing some of the people that these colonists
(29:42):
talked to said, there are settlements further down the coast
with people who look like you, and they have two
story thatched roof houses that look like and you know
from the descriptions Europeans would think, well, that sounds like
the kind of stuff we would build, And then other
(30:02):
groups told of nearby tribes that could read English and
dressed in a similar method manner to Europeans. The most
I think the most dramatic report in the record is
the story that someone cited a child who is dressed
in the manner of a native group, and this child
(30:25):
had blonde hair and was fair skinned. So they thought
maybe maybe something terrible happens, like maybe a disease or
some sort of natural disaster, and that due to that,
the surviving members of the colony were adopted or assimilated
into a native population. I do want to pause while
(30:48):
we're talking native populations. So the island is crootoin the
community is Croatan Croatan. Yeah, yeah, okay, So that's that.
If you hear if you hear us of doing some
word juggling, if you hear me doing that, it's just
my mind's playing tricks on me.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
And if you if you hear me say Croatian, is
just because I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
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, doubtlessly had
a ring of familiarity to some of our fellow listeners,
and if you're from the area, if you're from North Carolina,
(31:33):
then you're very familiar with what we're about to say,
which is, of course the story of the Lumbe l
U m b E. These reports from the from the
early days of the Jamestown investigations to the modern day
is to corroborate one of the most popular theories about
what became of these colonists, that they assimilated into these tribes,
(31:58):
and the idea is that over the core of multiple generations,
intermarriage between these groups would produce a different, distinct group
that had elements from both communities, and this group is
called the Lumbee tribe by people who believe this theory.
(32:19):
The Lumbee 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 degrees of credibility. But they have
an oral.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
History, right yeah own. That oral history actually links them
to Roanoak settlers, or at least two aspects of those settlers,
so that oral tradition is supported by some of the
surnames within the tribe, which is really interesting, and it
was the tribe itself was unique because several of the members,
(33:00):
a lot of the members could speak English. And then
if you again we're talking about the surnames, you look
at the family names of some of the Roanoke Colonists,
You've got people like Hyatt Taylor Dial. The Lumbee tribe
members or at least members of the Lumbee tribe shared
these names as early as the seventeen hundreds. I think
(33:21):
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 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
(33:43):
there was even It's really interesting because even if you're
if you're talking to members within the group, or if
you have reports from members within the Lumbee tribe, they
cannot come to a full conclusion on whether or not
there was a true link to the Roanoke Colonists.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Right, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, it's come to be called a thing. It's been
called the Lumbye connection.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Which is I love that as the title of something,
you know, the Lumby connection, the sequel to the French connection.
I'm not sure. Yeah, it remains intriguing because if that is,
if it is true, if there's sands to this theory,
then the Roanoke colonists aren't lost. Their genes are still
around today in Robeson County, North Carolina. And if you
(34:30):
are listening, you are a member of a group like
this Lumby 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 dramatically changed the
conversation around the origin of the Malunging community. There's another
(34:55):
set of theories 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 there
(35:16):
were English colonists around. They weren't happy about it, but they.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Knew, yeah, exactly. And there's actually a tale here that
was told by Darby Gland, GLA and Dee. This was
a Roanoake settler. He left the fifteen eighty seven expedition
after it set ashore in Puerto Rico to take on supply.
(35:40):
So they were going to stop in Puerto Rico pick
up supplies, right. He later reported that he told Spanish
officials there when he was making this transaction in Puerto
Rico about the Roanoake settlement exactly where it was, almost
as in, I don't know, an act of espionage.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So that's the thing, right when we talk about when
we talk about the bad record keeping a student, listeners
will notice that we also pointed out John White was
a professional cartographer. Yeah, so why would a professional map
maker do such a pissport job of you know, mapping things.
(36:19):
It probably was not because of incompetence. It was more
likely that this vagueness was a matter of state security, hmm,
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
(36:44):
across the ocean.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
It really does make you game out the 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.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
That's good. I like it.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Oh man, dude, that's so crazy because what if it
was never located there ever, Oh, right on that island.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, or you know, also, I want to say, the
idea of a a renegade cartographer is fantastic, mister white
renegade cartographer. Yes, it's con rogue. There are other theories
that the colonists were innocent bystanders in a entering in
(37:36):
media arrests 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 of the
balance of power amongst the tribes that lived inland because
Roanoke is geographically located in the crux of what was
(38:00):
at 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 Chowanooke, who controlled
the waterways that were nearby. And again, you know, not
Native speakers, so we're not intentionally mispronouncing the names natives
(38:24):
that 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. They
took over the area, they gained more control. So before
the Jamestown colonists arrived, or maybe right around the same time,
(38:45):
either around the same time or right before the Poetan
had attacked and destroyed the Chesapeake.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Hmm, waits then that tribe, is it the Powatan Polatan?
That's how familiar to me?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, it should that is where that is where the
famous Pocahontas is from. Oh yeah, it's not all paint
with painting with all the colors of the wind.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
They they very much wanted to kill the Chesapeake. So
relationships between the English colonists and the Paletan were let's
say cold, sure. But even then, even with that, the
English forces were able to get a little bit of
information about what happened to the Roanoke colony, or they
(39:38):
were able to learn something. Who knows if it was true.
If the Roanoke 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.
And if they had been captured as slaves, they would
have been traded along established roots that span the US
(40:02):
coast from Virginia to Georgia. And this is important because
if we look at the timeline, the idea would be
that the somewhere in that intervening three years, the Roanoke
colonists assimilate to another tribe. But then that tribe is attacked,
(40:23):
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 rules of war at that point.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Jeez. Well, so those are some of the big theories, right,
And with as those theories were being generated, and as
they continued, you know, for decades and centuries, people in
the more modern day we have been trying to, you know,
(40:55):
prove that one of these is true, right, or at
least disprove a few of these. We're scientific methoding this thing,
you guys. And 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
(41:18):
that would show us this picture here, we have really
found nothing right now.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
In the nineteen nineties, archaeologists working for the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation in Virginia found what they're pretty sure is a
workshop from the fifteen eighty five expedition. That's why a
guy named Joaquim Gans had tested rocks for precious metals.
Other people at the workshop studied plants to figure out
(41:49):
their properties. They studied tobacco, things like that, how can
we make money off this? What can be used for
gons is interesting because he was a Bohemian expert. Is
the first recorded Jewish person in colonial America, and he's
also the first Bohemian in colonial America. This workshop looked
(42:14):
a lot like an alchemist out you know, outfit or establishment.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Oh sure, they found crucibles, you know crucibles right.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, classic classic alchemical paraphernalia.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, exactly, 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
(42:50):
those of sixteenth century woodcuts that we that we have
of these German alchemical workshops that were kind of describing
here where it looks as though, if you know, you
took one of these woodcuts, if you could, if you
could enter it somehow and be inside the area of
the woodcut, and then just destroyed all the stuff that
(43:11):
you saw, yeah, and let it sit there for a
long time. That's what they think they found.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I see. So now, officially, as of the nineteen nineties,
experts have only found the remains of that workshop and
an earthen fort that may have been built at a
later day and time. Diggs conducted near this earthwork. The
fort we just mentioned in the eighteen nineties and nineteen
forties didn't really give us a bunch of stuff to
(43:38):
go on. They don't really change our understanding or help
it evolve. Excavations continue in the modern day. In twenty eighteen,
an archaeologist named Eric Klingelhoffer and as vice president for
research at the nonprofit First Colony Foundation in Durham, said,
I firmly believe that our program of re excavation will
(43:59):
provide answers to the vexing questions that past field work
has left us. I love 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 and technology will help us, will help us
(44:20):
find things we missed the first time.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
That's the returning to the moon kind.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Of speak, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to
the mooners.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, all these vexing questions about the dark side of
the Moon.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
The other problem 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 JP Walsh from the University of North Carolina says
that recent studies suggests shifting currents and rising waters inundated
(44:58):
the site in the past couple of cent trees. He
estimates the island's north end again one of the locations.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Are purported locations.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
From John White. He estimates to the north end of
the islands lost about seven hundred and fifty meters in
the past four hundred years, and their currents and hurricanes
could bury any artifacts. But not everybody buys this explanation.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
No, there's a guy who has a wonderful name named
Guy Prentice. It just feels right, feel it feels like
a play on Apprentice, But it's Guy Apprentice. He's his
archaeologist from NPS's Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee. And we've
got a quote from him here. He says, if you
(45:41):
look at the maps from the seventeen hundreds, the island's
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 at seven and fifty meters. It's it's
a lot. That's a lot of that would just be gone.
And I understand why Guy Prnus would say, yeah, I
(46:07):
don't buy it. However, it becomes a matter of kind
of who you believe and bearing out the science, because
you'd have to figure out exactly how much you know,
how do you even if you've got two experts that
are competing in that way on belief about where the
(46:28):
water has gone on this island and how much water
has actually approached the you know, the center of the
island itself, and how far 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.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's strange because according to a couple of
different tests for various theories, the Lumbye DNA may not
be itself native American, maybe European and African. This genetic
testing can always always runs the risk of leaving people
(47:09):
with more questions than answers. And now we're 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
(47:33):
disappearance of the colonists at Roano. And that's our classic
episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
It's right, let us know what you think. You can reach.
You to the handl Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok or Conspiracy
(47:57):
Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
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Speaker 2 (48:45):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Oh man, guys, folks, friends and neighbors. In these crazy times,
I think we all love taking a little bit of
a break from the headlines and go it into you know,
conspiracies of yesteryear, hidden history, paranormal stuff, things like that,
right Krakatoa, Yeah, yeah, stuff that.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Can't hurt of Oh my bad creatine. But agree like
stuff that can't hurt us right now, right, It's it's mysterious.
There's a mystery to be solved, but not going to
affect us as we walk around drinking all this coffee.
It's true.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
We yes, I do drink a lot of coffee too.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Finally finished, I need more.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah, it's happening as soon as we roll the tape
on what really happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
My name is Matt, they call me Ben, and we
are joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Control Deck, 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 hidden history recently, Matt.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yes, we have, and it's some of our favorite topics
that 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 gears turning and I can feel mine turning. And uh,
this one is certainly no exception. This is a topic
(02:02):
that I'm really surprised we haven't covered before in the past.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
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 subject of conversation. Did you see that?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh my gosh, No, I didn't even look.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yes, here's where it gets crazy our Facebook community page. Hello,
Maddie B. Maddie recently said, have they meaning us? Matt
done a good episode about Roanoke and I like that.
Maddie said, good, good, Yes, you qualify a.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Good one about that yet well, and then John H
came through and said, like Croatian Roanoke.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So so I responded there and said we have not,
but stay tuned for an upcoming episode. Hopefully it will
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 investigate the strange story of the
(03:03):
Lost Colony of Roanoke. So everybody growing up in the US,
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.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah. Well, 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 going through you know, it's interesting stuff. It really is.
When you think about the hardships, the genocide. There's like
all kinds of crazy stuff that was happening at the time.
(03:40):
But the mystery really hits when you start talking about Roanoke.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yes, a story that, depending on who you ask, has
not been resolved even in these our modern days. So
here are the facts. This tale really begins in fifteen
when a gentleman named Sir Walter Raleigh makes a deal
with Queen Elizabeth, the first to establish an English colony
(04:08):
in you know, in North America.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Right, And he was given a timeframe. It wasn't like
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
(04:32):
his people as well as it would be shared with
him and the Crown essentially.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
And yeah, make no mistake, he's kind of working on commission.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah right, because that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
If they don't find anything, then all of that money, time,
all his resources will have been for not And that
would sound like a very risky endeavor unless we consider
the other ulterior motive for the establishment of colonies in
this part of the world, which was, of course it
(05:05):
was a military application.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
There we go, because England and Great Britain they were
fighting Spain as they were, you know, fighting other world
powers a lot during those times.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And this would give 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.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
As we know, that would be a that is a
treacherous journey.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
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 there randomly, came
out of nowhere, made some bad decisions, and disappeared. Yeah,
here's what happens. There's a lot that leads up to this.
(06:04):
There is a initial exploratory expedition. They sail in fifteen
eighty four. They're not attempting to establish a permanent base
of operations. They're not attempting to start a colony with families.
These are due who are kind of scouting out a
suitable location.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, they're literally location scouts. And that's what this whole
first expedition was about.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
And they were successful. They found a small island they
decided to call it Roanoke. It's located inside what are
known as the Outer Banks. The Outer Banks are a
long stream of these narrow islands that shelter half the
coast of North Carolina, or what we call North Carolina today.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
If you look at a map from above, it looks
as though it would just be the entire land mass
edge basically, and that got flooded. That's what it looks
like from a map.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And Roanoke itself is pretty attractive to these dudes because
as fertile soil, it has easily defensible positions. It's it's
well wooded, there's also wildlife. The geography of the island
is such that ships can anchor there safely, which is
(07:23):
a huge deal, and be easily protected.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
But as 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 peoples there. They charged members of one of
(07:48):
the local tribes or one of the communities there, they
charged them with 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.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
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, so that's a
terrible first impression. Sir Francis Drake happened to be pirating
along the area and he found this exploratory group and
(08:31):
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 The first expedition
says we found a good place and the geography is fine.
And then you know, the British say well, how's the neighborhood,
and they go, it's a little intense. Not gonna lie,
a little intense.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
You know, we had a hand in the tensions for sure.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And ahead and ahead and the tensions. So what they
didn't know, 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 that first crew, with that first crew, there is
a second ship that is sailing to what they called
(09:19):
the New World. These two ships pass one another in
the Atlantic. The new group on that second ship, it's
about one 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
(09:41):
about fifteen men on Rowano to keep the seat warm,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, well, and to 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 the indigenous peoples were going.
(10:09):
So they, you know, unfortunately, also continued being uh pills.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Let's say, Yeah, there were real pills.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
They're being real pills, real jerks themselves. And it should
come as no surprise that these guys, the second group
of people that went over to Roanoke, disappeared. They were
never seen or heard from again.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Fast forward fifteen eighty seven, around one hundred and seventeen
one and fifteen one hundred and seventeen men, women and
children arrive on the third expedition. They settle on Roanoke
Island and what would later be called North Carolina. They
found the skeletal remains of one of the fifteen soldiers
(10:55):
from 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 supplies too. They were led by a Roanoke veteran,
(11:16):
a cartographer and artist named John White. This is also
the first group to include substantial amount of women and children, so.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
A real chance of settling down and expanding the population
right reproducing.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And they attempted to reconcile with the native communities. They
had mixed results because there was just too much bad blood.
They managed to repair relations with one nearby tribe, Powatans
living on nearby Croatan Island, but the other tribes in
the area saot a hostile aloof distance. We hear you
(11:52):
burn villages, You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
The colonists were vastly outnumbered despite the size of their call,
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.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, so you know, what does he do. Let's go
ask the guy who was in charge here at least officially,
Sir Walter Raleigh. 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
(12:36):
fears and the stakes that are involved. Rather than sending
a message somehow across the sea.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You could also at this time avoid errors in communication.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yes, right, that would be. That's a huge factor here.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
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 and talk to him
at that time, we have to remember being able to
have that conversation in instantly field answers to questions, because
of course they're going to be follow up questions. Yeah,
that's probably the most efficient thing to do.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It is almost inconceivable at this point with communication, you know,
in the past hundreds of years being so immediate.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Right, 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 while I'm gone, while I'm gaining favor and organizing
(13:47):
a rescue mission. Essentially, so 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
call in a will understand. He said, if you do
move in my absence, carve your destination on this tree.
You point out a specific tree, and if you're in trouble,
(14:08):
also carve a Maltese cross. So he gets to England.
He's got a good plan, and he finds that surprise, surprise,
time and distance have made the Empire's goals a little bit,
you know, they they've diverged. The Empire and the colonies
(14:29):
have different goals. Now. The people in the colonies trying
to survive, yes, people in the Empire try to win
this war with Spain, and.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
So in the strategic position of you know, potentially Roanoak
isn't a high priority anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Right, So John White shows up and says, hey, we
need help and across the ocean and they say, all right,
well we're 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 ab story right now. And
this means that he doesn't return to Roanoke for three years. Yeah,
(15:10):
three years, 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.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Yes late, but it's arriving. And we'll tell you what
happened right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
So let's paint the picture. 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 child, his son in law,
his grandchild had all lived there and it's been three years.
(16:01):
But the air is eerily quiet. There are no sounds
of you know, someone clanging iron on a.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Forge, wood being chopped somewhere in the distance.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
There's none of that, just the sounds of nature, the
ocean and the empty wind. The houses were gone, they
had been taken down. There was one thing he noticed,
which was a roughly built fort surrounding the former settlement.
And when we say, roughly built. It looked like it
had been made in a hurry, Yeah, as a reaction
(16:33):
to something. And then on a post he found one
of two clues what was it?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
They were carvings, first the word crow a toin so
croa t a n. And then on another tree he
found the carving croo and it was not in the
places where he was expecting it to be, right.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I believe. So the cannons and boats were supposed to
be at the bay nearby, they were gone. White had
buried a couple of chests 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,
(17:25):
found no evidence, one way or another to show what
had happened to the colonists, other than of course that fortress,
the fort they had built around themselves. So it appears
that sometime between fifteen eighty seven and fifteen ninety one
hundred and seventeen souls of the Roanoke Colony had simply disappeared.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And our big question today is what happened to them?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Here's where it gets crazy. So when we explored this
top we find that there are some people who are
convinced it's been solved. The problem is that not everybody agrees.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's why technically this still remains a mystery today with
no shortage of what we might call conspiracy theories from
in your 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.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, but the fortress thing alone would lead you to
believe that they were trying to protect themselves somehow and quickly. Right.
But because you don't have the evidence of bones or
you know, anything that would show like a body somewhere,
doesn't show that they were leaving under someone either forcing
(18:52):
them with physical action, right.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Or I would say, equally importantly, the Maltese cross is nice.
That was supposed to be as a signal of trouble.
And now we have to ask ourselves we've been thrown
around the words. So they carved out the word croatoin, right,
Sometimes I say crootin, but I think it's just a
mnemonic plot twist that's happened to me along the way
(19:16):
when I was learning this.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure my brain read Croatin.
Earlier when we were discussing the Here's where it gets
Crazy thing, it saw Croatan, but it read Croatian. So
apologies for that. Everybody has been like raising their fists
in the air this entire episode.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I'm aware now this is plot twisted. There's going to
be a second Here's where it gets crazy, and it's
all about how they went to Croatia. Yeah, I think
about it. People, No, So the here here's what you
need to know. So Croaton is a barrier island, another
island on these outer banks that you described earlier, Matt.
(19:59):
Now it's called Hatteras Island. It's about thirty five miles
south of Roanoke, the thirty five nautical miles. It's called
Croton because it's home of the Crootan people, the native community,
and they this is important, they were friendly to English colonists.
(20:21):
So based on that, it seems logical to say if
the colonists had run out of food on Roanoke, or
if there had 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,
(20:44):
And John White knew that. That's the thing about history.
Every time we relate these tales and these narratives, we
have to remember that people born in living hundreds and
hundreds of years ago were 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,
(21:05):
They just had different tools.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
So and we're not dumb either, we just have different tools.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Juries up for debate, you know. I think it's up
to future historians. 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,
(21:30):
even though his family had disappeared.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And for minor issues. Right, the weather 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 because they've got all these barrier islands
(21:54):
across this whole section. You've got pieces of land that
are up high enough to where or 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.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
And you have to be able to land or send
You have to be able to keep chiefly harbor. Yeah,
even to send out a launch boat. So John White
is not able to investigate, and he hasked to return
to England. There are later expeditions that claim to search
for the lost colony. They are either incredibly unsuccessful, they
(22:33):
profoundly fail, or they are undertaken with an ulterior motive.
There were people who said they were searching for this
lost colony, but really 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 sixteen oh
(22:55):
seven that there were actual, semi successful, good searches to
discover the fate of the lost colonists in Roanoke. Here's
the other thing. Now, not only we were talking about
the colonists, right, and the tragedy, the unanswered questions that
(23:16):
are left in the wake of their disappearance. But we
have to remember the colony itself disappeared.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
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 save for that fortress, right.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
And White and other members of the leadership of the
colony were not super great at keeping records. Oh yeah,
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. There were numerous
(24:02):
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 is with this is that
(24:23):
the primary sources, the contemporaneous accounts, contradict one another. 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 was an affidavit
(24:44):
from a Spanish sailor in fifteen eighty nine that said
the settlement was actually near the center of the island,
where they had stationed some cannons.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, and it would make sense for there to be
small you know, small not in camp cons but basically
cells of the settlement would be, you know, in various
places depending on what you're going to use them for.
If you're going to be fishing, you're going to have
some stuff that's closer to the water. If you're you know,
(25:15):
protecting something, it would make sense to put it towards
the center of the island. That all makes sense. The
problem is if you're going to do an historic dig,
you kind of have to do the whole island then
at this point to really like figure it out. So
there were a couple other things that were found. There
was an old well and one small cannon that was
(25:36):
found near the bay area, not San Francisco in this case,
the Roanoke Bay area, and that was basically in support
of the deposition that was given by that Spanish salor.
But then some some historians now believe that the what
was it The fifteen eighty seven settlement actually is underwater.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Right right, that centuries of have submerged the settlement, and
that we should be looking under the waves for it
instead of under the ground. Ultimately, right now, no one
is sure what happened to the Roanoke colonists. Through again,
no one agrees on their theory about what happens. When
(26:18):
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 just quickly go to
the initial theory. What did Governor John White think? So
he is the first person who officially discovered the colonists
have disappeared. He reports everything he sees in a letter.
(26:40):
He says, there are no bones like those that they
found in the fifteen eighty five 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,
they had not been burned. They have been disassembled in
theory to be reassembled somewhere who knows. Who knows?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
That would be the only thing that makes sense to me.
But let's continue.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
In White's opinion, they moved and 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 this idea for numerous reasons over the years. But
(27:22):
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
a word from our sponsor and then we'll return with
more theories after the break, and.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
We're back now. Just let's I want to have a
quick comment on there about this concept to the perhaps
the colonists moved inward towards the main The only thing
I would put forward here is that food had always
been an issue in this settlement. And if you are moving,
you know, to the mainland and not an island that's
(28:12):
so separated from probably populations of certain mammals that are
walking around and birds and other things, it would make
sense that they would move inland to have a better
food source. 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.
(28:34):
But well, let's get into all this stuff, because it
really is conceivable overall that the colonists met a much
less violent fate. Then maybe 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.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Right. The Jamestown colonists when they when they conducted that
search sixteen hundreds, they surnounted a couple of different parties
to hunt down 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 may contact.
(29:19):
It was one of the things they always asked them about,
you know what I mean, how's the weather? You know,
how is the fishing good? Have you seen any people
who look like us? And if so, what's what's their deal?
So we're paraphrasing some of the people that these colonists
(29:42):
talked to said, there are settlements further down the coast
with people who look like you, and they have two
story thatched roof houses that look like and you know
from the descriptions Europeans would think, well, that sounds like
the kind of stuff we would build, And then other
(30:02):
groups told of nearby tribes that could read English and
dressed in a similar method manner to Europeans. The most
I think the most dramatic report in the record is
the story that someone cited a child who is dressed
in the manner of a native group, and this child
(30:25):
had blonde hair and was fair skinned. So they thought
maybe maybe something terrible happens, like maybe a disease or
some sort of natural disaster, and that due to that,
the surviving members of the colony were adopted or assimilated
into a native population. I do want to pause while
(30:48):
we're talking native populations. So the island is crootoin the
community is Croatan Croatan. Yeah, yeah, okay, So that's that.
If you hear if you hear us of doing some
word juggling, if you hear me doing that, it's just
my mind's playing tricks on me.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
And if you if you hear me say Croatian, is
just because I'm wrong.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
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, doubtlessly had
a ring of familiarity to some of our fellow listeners,
and if you're from the area, if you're from North Carolina,
(31:33):
then you're very familiar with what we're about to say,
which is, of course the story of the Lumbe l
U m b E. These reports from the from the
early days of the Jamestown investigations to the modern day
is to corroborate one of the most popular theories about
what became of these colonists, that they assimilated into these tribes,
(31:58):
and the idea is that over the core of multiple generations,
intermarriage between these groups would produce a different, distinct group
that had elements from both communities, and this group is
called the Lumbee tribe by people who believe this theory.
(32:19):
The Lumbee 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 degrees of credibility. But they have
an oral.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
History, right yeah own. That oral history actually links them
to Roanoak settlers, or at least two aspects of those settlers,
so that oral tradition is supported by some of the
surnames within the tribe, which is really interesting, and it
was the tribe itself was unique because several of the members,
(33:00):
a lot of the members could speak English. And then
if you again we're talking about the surnames, you look
at the family names of some of the Roanoke Colonists,
You've got people like Hyatt Taylor Dial. The Lumbee tribe
members or at least members of the Lumbee tribe shared
these names as early as the seventeen hundreds. I think
(33:21):
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 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
(33:43):
there was even It's really interesting because even if you're
if you're talking to members within the group, or if
you have reports from members within the Lumbee tribe, they
cannot come to a full conclusion on whether or not
there was a true link to the Roanoke Colonists.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Right, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yeah, it's come to be called a thing. It's been
called the Lumbye connection.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Which is I love that as the title of something,
you know, the Lumby connection, the sequel to the French connection.
I'm not sure. Yeah, it remains intriguing because if that is,
if it is true, if there's sands to this theory,
then the Roanoke colonists aren't lost. Their genes are still
around today in Robeson County, North Carolina. And if you
(34:30):
are listening, you are a member of a group like
this Lumby 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 dramatically changed the
conversation around the origin of the Malunging community. There's another
(34:55):
set of theories 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 there
(35:16):
were English colonists around. They weren't happy about it, but they.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Knew, yeah, exactly. And there's actually a tale here that
was told by Darby Gland, GLA and Dee. This was
a Roanoake settler. He left the fifteen eighty seven expedition
after it set ashore in Puerto Rico to take on supply.
(35:40):
So they were going to stop in Puerto Rico pick
up supplies, right. He later reported that he told Spanish
officials there when he was making this transaction in Puerto
Rico about the Roanoake settlement exactly where it was, almost
as in, I don't know, an act of espionage.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
So that's the thing, right when we talk about when
we talk about the bad record keeping a student, listeners
will notice that we also pointed out John White was
a professional cartographer. Yeah, so why would a professional map
maker do such a pissport job of you know, mapping things.
(36:19):
It probably was not because of incompetence. It was more
likely that this vagueness was a matter of state security, hmm,
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
(36:44):
across the ocean.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
It really does make you game out the 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.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
That's good. I like it.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Oh man, dude, that's so crazy because what if it
was never located there ever, Oh, right on that island.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Yeah, or you know, also, I want to say, the
idea of a a renegade cartographer is fantastic, mister white
renegade cartographer. Yes, it's con rogue. There are other theories
that the colonists were innocent bystanders in a entering in
(37:36):
media arrests 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 of the
balance of power amongst the tribes that lived inland because
Roanoke is geographically located in the crux of what was
(38:00):
at 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 Chowanooke, who controlled
the waterways that were nearby. And again, you know, not
Native speakers, so we're not intentionally mispronouncing the names natives
(38:24):
that 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. They
took over the area, they gained more control. So before
the Jamestown colonists arrived, or maybe right around the same time,
(38:45):
either around the same time or right before the Poetan
had attacked and destroyed the Chesapeake.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Hmm, waits then that tribe, is it the Powatan Polatan?
That's how familiar to me?
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, it should that is where that is where the
famous Pocahontas is from. Oh yeah, it's not all paint
with painting with all the colors of the wind.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
They they very much wanted to kill the Chesapeake. So
relationships between the English colonists and the Paletan were let's
say cold, sure. But even then, even with that, the
English forces were able to get a little bit of
information about what happened to the Roanoke colony, or they
(39:38):
were able to learn something. Who knows if it was true.
If the Roanoke 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.
And if they had been captured as slaves, they would
have been traded along established roots that span the US
(40:02):
coast from Virginia to Georgia. And this is important because
if we look at the timeline, the idea would be
that the somewhere in that intervening three years, the Roanoke
colonists assimilate to another tribe. But then that tribe is attacked,
(40:23):
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 rules of war at that point.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Jeez. Well, so those are some of the big theories, right,
And with as those theories were being generated, and as
they continued, you know, for decades and centuries, people in
the more modern day we have been trying to, you know,
(40:55):
prove that one of these is true, right, or at
least disprove a few of these. We're scientific methoding this thing,
you guys. And 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
(41:18):
that would show us this picture here, we have really
found nothing right now.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
In the nineteen nineties, archaeologists working for the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation in Virginia found what they're pretty sure is a
workshop from the fifteen eighty five expedition. That's why a
guy named Joaquim Gans had tested rocks for precious metals.
Other people at the workshop studied plants to figure out
(41:49):
their properties. They studied tobacco, things like that, how can
we make money off this? What can be used for
gons is interesting because he was a Bohemian expert. Is
the first recorded Jewish person in colonial America, and he's
also the first Bohemian in colonial America. This workshop looked
(42:14):
a lot like an alchemist out you know, outfit or establishment.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Oh sure, they found crucibles, you know crucibles right.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, classic classic alchemical paraphernalia.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, exactly, 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
(42:50):
those of sixteenth century woodcuts that we that we have
of these German alchemical workshops that were kind of describing
here where it looks as though, if you know, you
took one of these woodcuts, if you could, if you
could enter it somehow and be inside the area of
the woodcut, and then just destroyed all the stuff that
(43:11):
you saw, yeah, and let it sit there for a
long time. That's what they think they found.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I see. So now, officially, as of the nineteen nineties,
experts have only found the remains of that workshop and
an earthen fort that may have been built at a
later day and time. Diggs conducted near this earthwork. The
fort we just mentioned in the eighteen nineties and nineteen
forties didn't really give us a bunch of stuff to
(43:38):
go on. They don't really change our understanding or help
it evolve. Excavations continue in the modern day. In twenty eighteen,
an archaeologist named Eric Klingelhoffer and as vice president for
research at the nonprofit First Colony Foundation in Durham, said,
I firmly believe that our program of re excavation will
(43:59):
provide answers to the vexing questions that past field work
has left us. I love 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 and technology will help us, will help us
(44:20):
find things we missed the first time.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
That's the returning to the moon kind.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Of speak, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to
the mooners.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, all these vexing questions about the dark side of
the Moon.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
The other problem 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 JP Walsh from the University of North Carolina says
that recent studies suggests shifting currents and rising waters inundated
(44:58):
the site in the past couple of cent trees. He
estimates the island's north end again one of the locations.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Are purported locations.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
From John White. He estimates to the north end of
the islands lost about seven hundred and fifty meters in
the past four hundred years, and their currents and hurricanes
could bury any artifacts. But not everybody buys this explanation.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
No, there's a guy who has a wonderful name named
Guy Prentice. It just feels right, feel it feels like
a play on Apprentice, But it's Guy Apprentice. He's his
archaeologist from NPS's Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee. And we've
got a quote from him here. He says, if you
(45:41):
look at the maps from the seventeen hundreds, the island's
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 at seven and fifty meters. It's it's
a lot. That's a lot of that would just be gone.
And I understand why Guy Prnus would say, yeah, I
(46:07):
don't buy it. However, it becomes a matter of kind
of who you believe and bearing out the science, because
you'd have to figure out exactly how much you know,
how do you even if you've got two experts that
are competing in that way on belief about where the
(46:28):
water has gone on this island and how much water
has actually approached the you know, the center of the
island itself, and how far 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.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's strange because according to a couple of
different tests for various theories, the Lumbye DNA may not
be itself native American, maybe European and African. This genetic
testing can always always runs the risk of leaving people
(47:09):
with more questions than answers. And now we're 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
(47:33):
disappearance of the colonists at Roano. And that's our classic
episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
It's right, let us know what you think. You can reach.
You to the handl Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
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(47:57):
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Speaker 2 (47:57):
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