October 23, 2008 • 18 mins
In 1587, English colonists in Roanoke mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a few cryptic clues behind. For centuries since, researchers have wondered what became of the lost colonists. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to podcast. I'm editor.
Came to Gibson Joint by staff writer Josh Clark. Call
me God, give you a throwback to our Lady could
(00:21):
dive a podcast. You know, it's almost as quaint as
a cute little eleventh century Anglo Saxon village. What colonial villages?
Just I like thinking of all the buckles on the
little thatched roofs and the tea and you know, like
the high spirits of networking. Yeah, or you know, the
(00:43):
whole puritanical outlook, the encouraging citizens to spy on all
their neighbors and tattle and all that kind of thing,
The hangings at the stake, that kind of thing. Valid point. Yeah,
I kind of view colonial life is fairly grim. But
I'm pretty glad they stuck it out because I'm pretty
happy today. And that's funny, because colonial life, You're right,
(01:06):
it was really grim, and it took a really strong
person to volunteer to come over on a boat to
a land that they hadn't seen before and stick out
of life. Here it's about survival and about finding an
appropriate power hierarchy and creating new life and new traditions.
And so you look at a place like clonial Williamsburg,
(01:26):
for instance, which is pretty I agree. Have you been.
I have. They've got that super cool like a museum tour,
and every once in a while there's like a wax
figure in there. Especially the Insane Asylum is particularly disturbing.
We haven't been there. They show, um they have like
a wax figure and I think a straight jacket with
a metal cage over his head, and it really kind
(01:47):
of drives home, you know, it was a good thing
not to be insane in colonial America. And Okay, so
that aside, Clonia Williamsburg is a pretty quaint place, but
it's sort of ever shadowed by the mystery of I
guess colonial Roanoke. Yeah, well, Williamsburg is, you know, very
recent compared to Roanoke, which is the first first settled
(02:11):
in five um. There there was a group of like
a hundred people, a hundred men actually, I should say,
mainly military guys. There was a scientist who came along
and an artist named John White, who later became governor
of the next rowan Note colony. And uh, it didn't stick.
It didn't work out all that while they lasted ten
(02:34):
months I think, and people had come before even this group.
There was an expedition and they scouted the area, you know,
did some surveillance, found where the best place to be
for the settlement, things like this, normal things to do. Um.
And after the reconnaissance mission came these settlers and they
couldn't get along with the Native Americans. And well, let
me interject here, it wasn't really the natives fault. No, no, no.
(02:57):
There was a policy of kidnapping and time they wanted information, food, anything, right,
they would hold the tribal leaders for ransom and then
you know, let them go or what maybe not. Um.
There was another incident right after that colony was established.
Um they found a silver cup was missing, so they
(03:18):
burned down an Indian village. And the worst part is
is especially with the Powhattan's Um. They were pretty friendly
with the English settlers from the moment they arrived. And UM,
the the first way of settlers, the first hundred men
that came really did a lot to chip away at
those you know, warm feelings pretty quick they did. And
(03:41):
you know it's ironic because they were depending on as
they called them the savages for food and resources, and
no thanks were given, essentially like you've explained. And finally
they were under such a heavy threat of attack from
the Native Americans that the men had to pick up
and leave and they didn't have any more supplies, and
so they cut it out of Rowan Oak. And ironically,
(04:02):
I think about two weeks later the next group came. Well,
the the the people from this group, the hundred men
that had left for England to go get supplies. They
arrived about two weeks after Sir Walter Rawley showed up
and took the hundred men back to England. Um. So
this the supply ship comes two weeks later, finds no
one there, and you know, they don't want to give
(04:24):
up their steak in the New World. So they the
the guy Glenville, I believe in Grenville. Sorry. Um, he
leaves fifteen soldiers behind the kind of man the settlement
until more colonists can be you know, rounded up and
brought back to the New World. And while that may
have been a wise decision when it comes to holding
onto your land, it was a very poor decision in
(04:45):
terms of relations with the Native Americans, because here were
really fired up group of people who are mad at
all things European. And these new men come and maybe
they have some idea of the precedent that their fellow
Europeans is set, but maybe not. I would think not.
And so even if they tried to establish relations with
the locals, it was all shot to poo because they
(05:07):
were essentially killed off really fast. Yeah, we don't know
exactly when they were killed off, but when the second
wave of colonists arrived in seven about twelve months later, um,
there was nothing but one set of bones of one
of the soldiers, So you know clearly that he had
been killed, you know, long enough agost so that all
that was left was bones. There was no rotting flesh
(05:28):
or anything like that. And I think that there was
like a skeleton of some sort of house or hut
or something nearby. It was all pretty. It was trash. Yeah,
it was trash. And in this new group of settlers
it was men, women and children. Yeah, this is this
is a settlement that that much resembled later colonies. There
(05:50):
were there was ways to reproduce and have new kids,
and it was clearly a colony that was intended to plant.
And actually the male colon of this colony were called planters. Um,
so they wanted to kind of plant this English seed
in the New World and let it grow right. Um.
And actually the first English baby was born in the
(06:12):
New World, Virginia Dare, right, Virginia Dare. And she was
actually the granddaughter of John White, who was the artist
who had been on that five expedition, and he was
back and as the governor's right, he's the governor now.
And they set up a nice little village for themselves.
I think they have two story little houses with thatch roofs,
and things seemed to be going pretty well. But again
(06:35):
no surprise here, tensions exist between the end of Americans
and these people, and not between all the Native American tribes.
Some are actually a little bit friendly. Well, yeah, they
the Powhattan's they managed to get back in their good
graces again, But there are plenty of other tribes that
had been hostile from the start or had grown hostile
from the five expedition that either kept their distance. Um.
(06:56):
I don't think that there were any attacks on the
second Rowe colony that we know of that were documented,
but at the very least they weren't helping these people out.
So basically they had the Powhattan's to rely on um
and supplies from England, which is I think thirty miles
away from the outer banks of North Carolina, which is
where roan no kids. They're in a precarious position. They were,
(07:19):
and White actually had to leave too after And here
is where things get hystericus. Here's here's the factor fiction
part um. You know, most people think Roanoe Gloss colony. Um.
They assumed that the Indians, there was an Indian attack
and the colonists the colony was wiped out. So let's
(07:41):
make that the factor of fiction. You want to tell
them is that factor of fiction? We don't really know.
I'm gonna go with faction my default answer. And when
White came back, everyone was gone, just gone gone. And
it wasn't you know, bones here and there like the
fifteen soldiers from before. It wasn't dilapidated huts like they
(08:02):
wrote that. He wrote later that they've been taken down.
They didn't indicate that they've been destroyed or burned or
anything like that, just that they weren't there any longer exactly.
And he looked for a Maltese cross, which is essentially
a symbol that they agreed to use to indicate distress.
None And there was one clue. There were two, well
(08:23):
one and a half really right, yeah, yeah, the word
crow Town right was carved into this um impromptu fort. Basically,
the colonists had built a wall around where the settlement
had been um and on one of the post post
of of this um this fort was carved the word
(08:46):
crow Tone. Towen was an island nearby where friendly Powhattan's lived. Right,
And because there was no one I'm sorry, because there
was no Maltese cross carved in, Governor White assumed that
the colonists had up and moved to crow Toe for protection,
(09:07):
food resources, something like that. The other half of that
clue was that on another post or a tree was
the word crow like someone had started or something like
that and they went back and did it, you know,
the full thing. That's the only clue that's it, And
you know it kind of makes you want to beat
(09:28):
your head against the wall because no one bothered really
investigating the disappearance. And I think that England launched a
few fleets ships to get over, but people sort of
used it to their own glory and overtook these missions
as mercenary trips, you really to go and exploit different
parts of the land instead of investigating what happened and
(09:49):
rowing out you have to wonder what John White didn't
do it. I mean, you think about it. His his
daughter's son in law and granddaughter were among the missing.
And he here he is on Roanoke Island and Crow
tow in is a hop, skip and a jump away.
The problem is when he went to go get supplies, um,
there was an attack on England by the Spanish armada.
(10:10):
So he was delayed basically three years before he could
get back to Roanoke. And by the time he could
get back, the only way to get there, he didn't
even have supplies. Um. He was basically a guest on
this passenger ship, so we had no saying when, what
the ship did or where it went. So the I
believe the the ship's captain decided that they were going
to go up for a little piracy, and before they
(10:31):
could the I think the season changed and they headed
back for England. So he was so close to Crow,
a tone and possibly the answer to what happened to
this colony and he had to leave. How frustrating and
if you read firsthand accounts of what he observed. He
wrote that they moved inland. I think you already mentioned
into the main and I have to wonder was that
(10:53):
a way of consoling himself. Maybe he thought it was
just as mysterious and upsetting, and perhaps he convinced himself
that that's what happened. He couldn't prove any further. He
didn't have the resources her time, and so that's just
how it was. They just moved inland, and that would
have been a reassuring answer. It would have been. But
but don't you find it curious that he specified a
distance fifty miles into the main and also into the
(11:16):
main has come into contention. The thing I buy into
is fifty miles inland into the main land. Other people
have said that White meant fifty miles north. I don't
know how you get into the main or north from
into the main, but that would place the settlers in
about the Chess Peak area, which was where they were
originally supposed to be going. They were just stopping at
(11:37):
Roanoke to make contact with those fifteen soldiers found him dead,
and apparently the pilot of the ship who was going
to take them to the Chesspeake Colony refused to take
him any further, so they were stuck in Roanoke. So
there's like mystery upon mystery shrouding this thing. There's an
anthropologist named Lee Miller and uh, I think she's out
(11:57):
of Vanderbilt University. Maybe I can't remember, Sorry, Ms Miller,
but she she suspects that the whole thing was sabotaged
by people who are out to undermine um Sir Walter Rawleigh,
who had an exclusive patent on the New World, and
that that pilot refusing him to take it, take take
the colonists any further was part of this this plot
(12:20):
to thwart the colonists success. So it may have been
a conspiracy, or at least some people would think. And
it wasn't until sixteen o seven when the Jamestown Colony
came into play. There was time and there were resources
to dedicate to the disappearance of the roan Colonists. And
what's funny is that when people got to Roanoke, they
couldn't even agree really where the settlement would have done.
(12:41):
You know, which part of the island was it, Where
the cannons were was it? You know, further inland now.
The cannons were located in the sound, in a little
inlet basically um and that that's where the cannons where,
that's where boats should have been. John White found no
evidence of any of these um and the original settlement
had a fort, Fort Rawleigh, and that's where people have
been digging pretty much since. I think the nineteen forties
(13:03):
is when serious scientific digs began to be undertaken Um
and they found no evidence of the second settlement. So
not only were the colonists lost, the colony itself is
literally lost. We have no idea where it is, where
it went. And because Roonogo is an island, people do
suspect that erosion may have washed some evidence away and
(13:24):
parts of Rono could be underwater now. And the mystery
thickened even more because supposedly there was a man who,
either inadvertently or you know, just labin and around somehow
told the Spanish where Roanoke was and that he was
on route there and this is what England was doing
with the land, and the English in the Spanish were
(13:44):
none too friendly. So people think that the Spaniards may
have come in and caused some mischief, or that there
was a shift in power among other Native American tribes.
And even if the Rono colonists were friendly with one
of the tribes, they would have been their match against
a big tribal I guess, yeah, exactly, And that's that's
(14:05):
one of anthropologists Miller's theories is that there was a
shift in power from the Powhattan's who were friendly with
the Roanot colonists, that they lost their control over the area,
and to fill that power vacuum, other tribes who are
hostiles of the colonists rose up took power. Had if
that happened in the Roanokes or the Roanoke colonists had
(14:26):
moved fifty miles into the main right, then they would
have been walking into just this a tribal war and
they would have been slaughtered. The men would have been
and the men and I'm sorry, the women and children
would have been sold as slaves, right yeah. And and
there was apparently a trading network from Virginia to Augusta, Georgia,
all up and down the coast, so they any evidence
of them would have been lost even if they had
(14:48):
been subsumed into um any tribe that that that purchased
them basically, which is another theory, right, and there is
one more possibility, at least one more and it's a
little bit more peace fallen, a little bit of us
happier ending, and that is that the colonists move inland
and they assimilated into a Native American tribe and things
(15:10):
were hunky dory. They intermarried and produced an entirely new
subset of people, the lumby the Lumba, and this theory
is called the Lumbi connection. And a lot of people
who made it over to the area later said that
they would see people who had European dress or European
manners and speech associating with the Native Americans, or that
(15:32):
even there were some people who looked like they were
neither a Native American entirely nor European entirely. Maybe they
had darker skin, but they also had lighter colored eyes
like Europeans. There were some I think French or English
settlers um who were hunting and trapping in the North
Carolina area who made the first documented contact with the
(15:53):
Lumbi tribe. So you imagine you you're meeting this tribe
who aren't supposed to have come in contact with any
any whites, and they can read and write and speak English,
and some of them have gray eyes, which is an
anomaly among Native Americans. And their houses look a lot
like the houses you see back in England. That gives
(16:13):
a lot of support to this this Lumby connection theory.
And the Lumbie themselves, a lot of them. Uh, it's
part of their oral tradition that the Roano colonists were
assumed into their tribe and they formed the Lumbi. But
that's also in dispute. Um. There's a especially back during
the I guess the anglicization of Native Americans in the
(16:35):
nineteenth century. This is a big kind of um. There
is an identity crisis among tribes, and a lot of
the Lumbi, as far as I understand, kind of they
don't really like to talk about that white heritage because
it may make them perceived as less than Native American. Well,
for my my name, I am thinking that they were
(16:58):
assimilated into the name there. I'm betting on connections. I mean,
if there were houses in the area that looks similar
to what the Roan colonists had on Roanoak, and if
John White observed that these houses had been I Guess disassembled.
For lack of a better term, I think they probably
just took all their supplies, all the resources that they
had sort on Roanoak and just moved it all in land. Yeah, okay,
(17:22):
so factor fiction, what's your what's your final verdict on
the Indian attack? Oh god, you'd say fiction on Guess? Well,
oh god, I don't even know. Can I say faction?
That's such a cheap compount by now faction? Maybe this
is actually no, I'm not going to give it anyone.
I'm not going to say it's bad fiction or faction. Yeah,
(17:43):
it belongs to the ages. It's a real mystery and
if you want more details about it, you can read
what Happened at the Lost Colony at Roanoke on a
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podcast at how stuff works dot com. M
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to podcast. I'm editor.
Came to Gibson Joint by staff writer Josh Clark. Call
me God, give you a throwback to our Lady could
(00:21):
dive a podcast. You know, it's almost as quaint as
a cute little eleventh century Anglo Saxon village. What colonial villages?
Just I like thinking of all the buckles on the
little thatched roofs and the tea and you know, like
the high spirits of networking. Yeah, or you know, the
(00:43):
whole puritanical outlook, the encouraging citizens to spy on all
their neighbors and tattle and all that kind of thing,
The hangings at the stake, that kind of thing. Valid point. Yeah,
I kind of view colonial life is fairly grim. But
I'm pretty glad they stuck it out because I'm pretty
happy today. And that's funny, because colonial life, You're right,
(01:06):
it was really grim, and it took a really strong
person to volunteer to come over on a boat to
a land that they hadn't seen before and stick out
of life. Here it's about survival and about finding an
appropriate power hierarchy and creating new life and new traditions.
And so you look at a place like clonial Williamsburg,
(01:26):
for instance, which is pretty I agree. Have you been.
I have. They've got that super cool like a museum tour,
and every once in a while there's like a wax
figure in there. Especially the Insane Asylum is particularly disturbing.
We haven't been there. They show, um they have like
a wax figure and I think a straight jacket with
a metal cage over his head, and it really kind
(01:47):
of drives home, you know, it was a good thing
not to be insane in colonial America. And Okay, so
that aside, Clonia Williamsburg is a pretty quaint place, but
it's sort of ever shadowed by the mystery of I
guess colonial Roanoke. Yeah, well, Williamsburg is, you know, very
recent compared to Roanoke, which is the first first settled
(02:11):
in five um. There there was a group of like
a hundred people, a hundred men actually, I should say,
mainly military guys. There was a scientist who came along
and an artist named John White, who later became governor
of the next rowan Note colony. And uh, it didn't stick.
It didn't work out all that while they lasted ten
(02:34):
months I think, and people had come before even this group.
There was an expedition and they scouted the area, you know,
did some surveillance, found where the best place to be
for the settlement, things like this, normal things to do. Um.
And after the reconnaissance mission came these settlers and they
couldn't get along with the Native Americans. And well, let
me interject here, it wasn't really the natives fault. No, no, no.
(02:57):
There was a policy of kidnapping and time they wanted information, food, anything, right,
they would hold the tribal leaders for ransom and then
you know, let them go or what maybe not. Um.
There was another incident right after that colony was established.
Um they found a silver cup was missing, so they
(03:18):
burned down an Indian village. And the worst part is
is especially with the Powhattan's Um. They were pretty friendly
with the English settlers from the moment they arrived. And UM,
the the first way of settlers, the first hundred men
that came really did a lot to chip away at
those you know, warm feelings pretty quick they did. And
(03:41):
you know it's ironic because they were depending on as
they called them the savages for food and resources, and
no thanks were given, essentially like you've explained. And finally
they were under such a heavy threat of attack from
the Native Americans that the men had to pick up
and leave and they didn't have any more supplies, and
so they cut it out of Rowan Oak. And ironically,
(04:02):
I think about two weeks later the next group came. Well,
the the the people from this group, the hundred men
that had left for England to go get supplies. They
arrived about two weeks after Sir Walter Rawley showed up
and took the hundred men back to England. Um. So
this the supply ship comes two weeks later, finds no
one there, and you know, they don't want to give
(04:24):
up their steak in the New World. So they the
the guy Glenville, I believe in Grenville. Sorry. Um, he
leaves fifteen soldiers behind the kind of man the settlement
until more colonists can be you know, rounded up and
brought back to the New World. And while that may
have been a wise decision when it comes to holding
onto your land, it was a very poor decision in
(04:45):
terms of relations with the Native Americans, because here were
really fired up group of people who are mad at
all things European. And these new men come and maybe
they have some idea of the precedent that their fellow
Europeans is set, but maybe not. I would think not.
And so even if they tried to establish relations with
the locals, it was all shot to poo because they
(05:07):
were essentially killed off really fast. Yeah, we don't know
exactly when they were killed off, but when the second
wave of colonists arrived in seven about twelve months later, um,
there was nothing but one set of bones of one
of the soldiers, So you know clearly that he had
been killed, you know, long enough agost so that all
that was left was bones. There was no rotting flesh
(05:28):
or anything like that. And I think that there was
like a skeleton of some sort of house or hut
or something nearby. It was all pretty. It was trash. Yeah,
it was trash. And in this new group of settlers
it was men, women and children. Yeah, this is this
is a settlement that that much resembled later colonies. There
(05:50):
were there was ways to reproduce and have new kids,
and it was clearly a colony that was intended to plant.
And actually the male colon of this colony were called planters. Um,
so they wanted to kind of plant this English seed
in the New World and let it grow right. Um.
And actually the first English baby was born in the
(06:12):
New World, Virginia Dare, right, Virginia Dare. And she was
actually the granddaughter of John White, who was the artist
who had been on that five expedition, and he was
back and as the governor's right, he's the governor now.
And they set up a nice little village for themselves.
I think they have two story little houses with thatch roofs,
and things seemed to be going pretty well. But again
(06:35):
no surprise here, tensions exist between the end of Americans
and these people, and not between all the Native American tribes.
Some are actually a little bit friendly. Well, yeah, they
the Powhattan's they managed to get back in their good
graces again, But there are plenty of other tribes that
had been hostile from the start or had grown hostile
from the five expedition that either kept their distance. Um.
(06:56):
I don't think that there were any attacks on the
second Rowe colony that we know of that were documented,
but at the very least they weren't helping these people out.
So basically they had the Powhattan's to rely on um
and supplies from England, which is I think thirty miles
away from the outer banks of North Carolina, which is
where roan no kids. They're in a precarious position. They were,
(07:19):
and White actually had to leave too after And here
is where things get hystericus. Here's here's the factor fiction
part um. You know, most people think Roanoe Gloss colony. Um.
They assumed that the Indians, there was an Indian attack
and the colonists the colony was wiped out. So let's
(07:41):
make that the factor of fiction. You want to tell
them is that factor of fiction? We don't really know.
I'm gonna go with faction my default answer. And when
White came back, everyone was gone, just gone gone. And
it wasn't you know, bones here and there like the
fifteen soldiers from before. It wasn't dilapidated huts like they
(08:02):
wrote that. He wrote later that they've been taken down.
They didn't indicate that they've been destroyed or burned or
anything like that, just that they weren't there any longer exactly.
And he looked for a Maltese cross, which is essentially
a symbol that they agreed to use to indicate distress.
None And there was one clue. There were two, well
(08:23):
one and a half really right, yeah, yeah, the word
crow Town right was carved into this um impromptu fort. Basically,
the colonists had built a wall around where the settlement
had been um and on one of the post post
of of this um this fort was carved the word
(08:46):
crow Tone. Towen was an island nearby where friendly Powhattan's lived. Right,
And because there was no one I'm sorry, because there
was no Maltese cross carved in, Governor White assumed that
the colonists had up and moved to crow Toe for protection,
(09:07):
food resources, something like that. The other half of that
clue was that on another post or a tree was
the word crow like someone had started or something like
that and they went back and did it, you know,
the full thing. That's the only clue that's it, And
you know it kind of makes you want to beat
(09:28):
your head against the wall because no one bothered really
investigating the disappearance. And I think that England launched a
few fleets ships to get over, but people sort of
used it to their own glory and overtook these missions
as mercenary trips, you really to go and exploit different
parts of the land instead of investigating what happened and
(09:49):
rowing out you have to wonder what John White didn't
do it. I mean, you think about it. His his
daughter's son in law and granddaughter were among the missing.
And he here he is on Roanoke Island and Crow
tow in is a hop, skip and a jump away.
The problem is when he went to go get supplies, um,
there was an attack on England by the Spanish armada.
(10:10):
So he was delayed basically three years before he could
get back to Roanoke. And by the time he could
get back, the only way to get there, he didn't
even have supplies. Um. He was basically a guest on
this passenger ship, so we had no saying when, what
the ship did or where it went. So the I
believe the the ship's captain decided that they were going
to go up for a little piracy, and before they
(10:31):
could the I think the season changed and they headed
back for England. So he was so close to Crow,
a tone and possibly the answer to what happened to
this colony and he had to leave. How frustrating and
if you read firsthand accounts of what he observed. He
wrote that they moved inland. I think you already mentioned
into the main and I have to wonder was that
(10:53):
a way of consoling himself. Maybe he thought it was
just as mysterious and upsetting, and perhaps he convinced himself
that that's what happened. He couldn't prove any further. He
didn't have the resources her time, and so that's just
how it was. They just moved inland, and that would
have been a reassuring answer. It would have been. But
but don't you find it curious that he specified a
distance fifty miles into the main and also into the
(11:16):
main has come into contention. The thing I buy into
is fifty miles inland into the main land. Other people
have said that White meant fifty miles north. I don't
know how you get into the main or north from
into the main, but that would place the settlers in
about the Chess Peak area, which was where they were
originally supposed to be going. They were just stopping at
(11:37):
Roanoke to make contact with those fifteen soldiers found him dead,
and apparently the pilot of the ship who was going
to take them to the Chesspeake Colony refused to take
him any further, so they were stuck in Roanoke. So
there's like mystery upon mystery shrouding this thing. There's an
anthropologist named Lee Miller and uh, I think she's out
(11:57):
of Vanderbilt University. Maybe I can't remember, Sorry, Ms Miller,
but she she suspects that the whole thing was sabotaged
by people who are out to undermine um Sir Walter Rawleigh,
who had an exclusive patent on the New World, and
that that pilot refusing him to take it, take take
the colonists any further was part of this this plot
(12:20):
to thwart the colonists success. So it may have been
a conspiracy, or at least some people would think. And
it wasn't until sixteen o seven when the Jamestown Colony
came into play. There was time and there were resources
to dedicate to the disappearance of the roan Colonists. And
what's funny is that when people got to Roanoke, they
couldn't even agree really where the settlement would have done.
(12:41):
You know, which part of the island was it, Where
the cannons were was it? You know, further inland now.
The cannons were located in the sound, in a little
inlet basically um and that that's where the cannons where,
that's where boats should have been. John White found no
evidence of any of these um and the original settlement
had a fort, Fort Rawleigh, and that's where people have
been digging pretty much since. I think the nineteen forties
(13:03):
is when serious scientific digs began to be undertaken Um
and they found no evidence of the second settlement. So
not only were the colonists lost, the colony itself is
literally lost. We have no idea where it is, where
it went. And because Roonogo is an island, people do
suspect that erosion may have washed some evidence away and
(13:24):
parts of Rono could be underwater now. And the mystery
thickened even more because supposedly there was a man who,
either inadvertently or you know, just labin and around somehow
told the Spanish where Roanoke was and that he was
on route there and this is what England was doing
with the land, and the English in the Spanish were
(13:44):
none too friendly. So people think that the Spaniards may
have come in and caused some mischief, or that there
was a shift in power among other Native American tribes.
And even if the Rono colonists were friendly with one
of the tribes, they would have been their match against
a big tribal I guess, yeah, exactly, And that's that's
(14:05):
one of anthropologists Miller's theories is that there was a
shift in power from the Powhattan's who were friendly with
the Roanot colonists, that they lost their control over the area,
and to fill that power vacuum, other tribes who are
hostiles of the colonists rose up took power. Had if
that happened in the Roanokes or the Roanoke colonists had
(14:26):
moved fifty miles into the main right, then they would
have been walking into just this a tribal war and
they would have been slaughtered. The men would have been
and the men and I'm sorry, the women and children
would have been sold as slaves, right yeah. And and
there was apparently a trading network from Virginia to Augusta, Georgia,
all up and down the coast, so they any evidence
of them would have been lost even if they had
(14:48):
been subsumed into um any tribe that that that purchased
them basically, which is another theory, right, and there is
one more possibility, at least one more and it's a
little bit more peace fallen, a little bit of us
happier ending, and that is that the colonists move inland
and they assimilated into a Native American tribe and things
(15:10):
were hunky dory. They intermarried and produced an entirely new
subset of people, the lumby the Lumba, and this theory
is called the Lumbi connection. And a lot of people
who made it over to the area later said that
they would see people who had European dress or European
manners and speech associating with the Native Americans, or that
(15:32):
even there were some people who looked like they were
neither a Native American entirely nor European entirely. Maybe they
had darker skin, but they also had lighter colored eyes
like Europeans. There were some I think French or English
settlers um who were hunting and trapping in the North
Carolina area who made the first documented contact with the
(15:53):
Lumbi tribe. So you imagine you you're meeting this tribe
who aren't supposed to have come in contact with any
any whites, and they can read and write and speak English,
and some of them have gray eyes, which is an
anomaly among Native Americans. And their houses look a lot
like the houses you see back in England. That gives
(16:13):
a lot of support to this this Lumby connection theory.
And the Lumbie themselves, a lot of them. Uh, it's
part of their oral tradition that the Roano colonists were
assumed into their tribe and they formed the Lumbi. But
that's also in dispute. Um. There's a especially back during
the I guess the anglicization of Native Americans in the
(16:35):
nineteenth century. This is a big kind of um. There
is an identity crisis among tribes, and a lot of
the Lumbi, as far as I understand, kind of they
don't really like to talk about that white heritage because
it may make them perceived as less than Native American. Well,
for my my name, I am thinking that they were
(16:58):
assimilated into the name there. I'm betting on connections. I mean,
if there were houses in the area that looks similar
to what the Roan colonists had on Roanoak, and if
John White observed that these houses had been I Guess disassembled.
For lack of a better term, I think they probably
just took all their supplies, all the resources that they
had sort on Roanoak and just moved it all in land. Yeah, okay,
(17:22):
so factor fiction, what's your what's your final verdict on
the Indian attack? Oh god, you'd say fiction on Guess? Well,
oh god, I don't even know. Can I say faction?
That's such a cheap compount by now faction? Maybe this
is actually no, I'm not going to give it anyone.
I'm not going to say it's bad fiction or faction. Yeah,
(17:43):
it belongs to the ages. It's a real mystery and
if you want more details about it, you can read
what Happened at the Lost Colony at Roanoke on a
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com?
What is? Know? What you think? Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com. M
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