New research linking the Lost Colony and the Croatoan

The Lost Colony may now be found

A Hatteras Island native named Scott Dawson has devoted himself to uncovering the mystery of the "Lost Colony", who's research, and found artifacts from, Buxton and Hatteras Island have led to greater involvement by professional archeologists from the University of Bristol, who sent a team to conduct test digs in areas he identified as former Indian villages.

Legend has it that the English settlers were killed by Indians, but Dawson has his own theory.

He had studied old maps and read the first-person accounts of men like White, whose post-1590 writings indicate a sense of relief that the colony was safe in the company of Native American friends.

“Croatoan is not some mysterious word on a tree,” Dawson says, pointing to his own hand-drawn representation of the colony’s single clue. “Croatoan is a known place.”

Today, that place is called Buxton and the villages that border it to the south on Hatteras. Home to the Croatoan tribe for more than a thousand years, it’s a place Dawson knows well.

Dawson’s research has revealed an important fact that he thinks other historians have overlooked or dismissed as insignificant: Two tribes inhabited the land near the Lost Colony’s settlement – two distinct tribes with their own dialects, cultures and social hierarchies. Two rival tribes with polarized opinions of white settlers.

His research, combined with his intimate knowledge of Hatteras Island, has led Dawson to conclude that the Lost Colony must have abandoned its settlement on Roanoke Island, traveled south and eventually assimilated into the Croatoan tribe – all in an effort to escape the threat of the Secotan.

Hostility from the Secotan then may have caused the colonists to abandon their colony on Roanoke for protection with the Croatoan tribe, with whom they had friendly relations.

Currently the digs have revealed early English artifacts among the site of Croatoan villages but it's not certain these weren't from military expeditions and not the colonists themselves, which included women and children.

Very interesting article, give it a read!

Thank you for the info...this is why I come to ATS. As a native of NC, I have often considered all the theories of what happened to the Lost Colony...this is certainly a reasonable deduction and certainly worth consideration.

If this is what happened, wonder how the Lumbee indians got the DNA of English/Native Americans and what will happen to their claims they are the descendants of Dare and Co?

Thanks again...I need to find this and read.

They mention also members of the Croatoan having "grey" eyes and "talking with books", but the same can be said of native Americans north of Roanoke (at least with the blue eyes). There were several military expeditions before the failed colonization attempt, and military expeditions into early cultures tend to leave behind DNA evidence.

Well, if you look at the whole story, they weren't exactly lost. Abandoned and forsaken yes. lol

White didn't come back for years after he was sent away to get supplies. It probably didn't bother the settlers in the least as he was not very diplomatic with the natives. When he did make it around to returning you have to understand he was on a privateer's ship. He was allowed to go ashore, but he was not allowed any time to properly search for them. They were going to go north up to Chesapeake Bay to search for them, but storms kept them from doing it that night, and the captain was eager to get back to making profit, so White never got to search for them at all.

My theory is that they simply chose to exist. To do that they had to move on, away from the natives who they had already attacked. The big thing here, is the fact that they HAD ships to use for exploration and mobility. The settlement had been carefully and non violently dismantled.

There was never any real effort to find them. That to me is the bottom line. There was no interest in finding them for years upon years later, by that time the colonist had either died off or interbred with the natives. There were only 17 woman to start with and 90 men. Do the math, there was 100% some mixing of genes that went on.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer
Hiya BM. I've nothing interesting to add other than thanks for linking the article. It's a lengthy and interesting piece that manages to remain quite balanced. Rare indeed given the subject.

Whenever I see the girl's name 'Virginia Dare,' I imagine someone like Neil Gaiman writing a graphic novel or short story. It's an evocative name and her situation would be ripe for an adventurous account of her life as a heroine.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Last year I saw some documentary about the subject, and in it the researchers had identified one of the colonists as likely having a very rare gentic disorder/trait. Then when they tracked down the guys living descendants they found this genetic marker in their genome. And when they sampled a local NA tribe they found this same marker in the population.