Huey: One of history’s most famous mysteries solved

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This story had puzzled historians for centuries, and we all know that a good mystery sparks people’s curiosity. And for us local folks there’s also the shared name of Roanoke.

If you’re not familiar with this story, there were 115 men, women, and children who vanished from Roanoke Island 435 years ago, leaving clues of “Cro” carved into the bark of a Laurel Oak, and “Croatoan” on a fencepost, marking the mystery of Roanoke Island as one of our most exasperating secrets.

It was midsummer 1587, and underneath the sweltering heat that was practically boiling the Atlantic Ocean, a trio of English ships docked in the shallow waters along the moors of Roanoke Island, a tousled plot of land that’s nestled along the jagged coast of North Carolina. Two earlier English voyages had already failed there.

This trip would be different though, led by John White and coupled by a newborn symbol of hope named Virginia Dare, his granddaughter AND the first English child born on American soil. Her birth was celebrated because now those newcomers knew for sure that England could plant itself in this country and thrive.

The settlers worked themselves to exhaustion each day under the treetop canopy in the stifling heat, but stood determined to make it, erecting a makeshift fort, planting crops, and trying their best to get along with the natives. The land was wild and beautiful, but unforgiving on a petrifying scale. Folks were cautious, knowing that if they made the same mistakes their predecessors made, they would likely garner the same results.

Not long after they arrived, John White realized that he must return to England for more supplies, expecting to be gone only a few months. There was a bloody war going on in Europe that he didn’t know about though, and when he arrived he found his countrymen locked in that deadly conflict. The queen had conscripted every man and ship for the fight against The Spanish Armada, thus stranding John White in London for the next three years.

When he was finally able to return to the colony in 1590, he found almost nothing. There were no people and no crops. The houses had been torn apart, the remnants overgrown with natural vegetation, and the fort they’d built was toppled, but the absence of his kinsmen was terrifying. The air stood silent as John White perused the abandoned area.

Historians wondered for centuries what happened to those settlers because they were never seen again. Puzzled as the investigators had been though, renewed hope began to surge in the early 1990s with breakthroughs in science and modern forensic techniques having revealed the long-kept secret to this most perplexing mystery.

After uncovering evidence at Cape Hatteras, scientists know now that this IS where the colonists moved to and the reason they seemed to have disappeared. Items located there are highly revealing because John White’s expedition was the only one that brought women, and the things they found were unmistakably European female artifacts.

The settlers DID move south near the Croatoan natives, and so it seems that the mysterious clue of “Croatoan” carved into that tree isn’t so mysterious anymore. It directed John White toward that island but because of rough seas he couldn’t finish the excursion and was forced to go back to England.

White was never able to return to Roanoke Island but for years he kept the people’s location secret for fear the Spanish Conquistadors were still attacking English settlements in that area, which they were. And that’s what caused the move to become such a mystery. White knew where they were all the time but didn’t dare tell anybody.

The Croatoan civilization has long since faded into history and broken up into two separate tribes, mainly because some of them wanted the Europeans to stay, but some didn’t. However, we now know for an absolute incontrovertible fact that the people of Roanoke Island DID move to Cape Hatteras and integrate into the Croatoan civilization, that being the reason they seemed to have vanished.

They didn’t really vanish though. They were merely absorbed, being far outnumbered by the Croatoan people. Modern DNA has proven it, since many of the tribesmen of the remaining group were shown to have European ancestry while the separatist tribe showed NO such ancestry. This had been a deep dark mystery for centuries, but investigators are now certain that modern forensics and archeology have finally solved the mystery of Roanoke Island.