What happened to the original colony at Roanoke Virginia?

i guess what i find interesting is that if the original settlers did survive and they joined neighboring tribes then why when the leader returned 3yrs later from england did they not come forward and let them know they were alive??

i can see joining a tribe but i would have thought if they were around when he returned some how they would have gotten word to him that they were alive and safe.

just my thoughts.

angie

My feeling is that once these people had been assimilated into the Indian tribal culture, there was some feeling that further intermingling with the whites would be disastrous. From what I've read, I gather that the Indian tribes by and large didn't bother too much with the white men until the Europeans started showing up in sufficient numbers to pose a threat. Perhaps there was concern that the surviving colonists might make contact with the English and inadvertantly begin a major European invasion as the English set out to "rescue" their former citizens.

Originally posted by gwhint

Originally posted by Zabilgy
More from that site provided by Lady V:

History: The Lumbee don't entirely understand why people persist in calling the Roanoke colony the "Lost Colony," since they left an explicit note telling where they were going (Croatan, an island belonging to some friendly Indians) and since the descendents of the Croatoan Cheraw were found some 50 years later speaking English, practicing Christianity, and sporting about 75% of the last names the colonists had brought with them. By all accounts, though, those descendents--who called themselves "Lumbee" Indians, after the river running through their traditional lands--were mixed-race, so mixed-race they were not sent to Oklahoma with the other Native Americans of North Carolina in the 1820's and 30's. North Carolina was not the most pleasant place to live in the 19th century if your skin was dark, though, and increasing violence against Lumbees and free mulattos set the stage for the Lumbee folk hero Henry Berry Lowrie in the 1860's. Called the "Indian Robin Hood" by some, Lowrie, enraged by the assault and murder of his family, spent the next decade wreaking vigilante justice on those who harassed Indians and stealing supplies to give to the disenfranchised. He was never caught, and his legend--brave, proud, dangerous when provoked, and above all else free--remains a powerful tribal metaphor.

Good info!

Being from North Carolina and part Native American I always figured that they joined a friendly tribe. The 'Trail of Tears' as it is called by the Cherokee was the relocation the Native peoples to Oklahoma. Many thousands died along the way. I find any info of this kind extremely interesting. My grandmother was removed from her tribe in the late 1800's and placed in a bordening school. She was forbidden to speak her language, wear her native clothing or take part in any native culture. She was stripped of everything that resembled her past and forced to look, talk and act white. She married an Irish farmer, my grandfather. Sadly she could not recall from what tribe she originated. There is no paper trail to follow. I would love to know who my ancestors are.

keep in mind other explanations for eoropean heritage mixed in with indian blood. remember the norse made it to north america long before other europeans. therefore there may well be some mixing from them as well. that would also be consistant with the norse method of blending into other cultures, just as they did all over europe. and no one realy knows how far south they had made it.
why it was ever said columbus discovered america anyway he had maps.

Maybe the adult colonists were killed, while the children were adopted by natives. I don't know if such adoptions were prakticized by east coast tribes, the comanches used them for example. It would explain why those people never met with the british rescue expedition. IMO the kids who remained forgot they were british.

Threatened by the intrusion of white men into the region, Powhatan claimed to have attacked the colonists and murdered most of them. As proof of his claim, he showed Smith "a musket barrell and a brass mortar, and certain pieces of iron that had been theirs."
They are now trying to start excavations in the park.To try to solve the mystery

Originally posted by Zabilgy
... John sailed to Croatoan to search for his family and fellow Englishmen. No trace could be found.

I remembered this story from one of my books I read a long time ago. It's geared at a rather young age, but it does have the facts straight, although it presents them rather simplistically.

Is it possible the colonists moved to nearby Croatan Island? White asked himself. And he immediately planned to sail there and search it. But once more luck was against him, and bad weather made a voyage to Croatan Island too dangerous. Instead, White returned to England

So according to that, John White never actually made it to Croatan Island to see if the colony had gone there. The book has a few theories worth considering.
1) The colony ran out of food, went into the wilderness to look for more, and died of starvation.
2) Indians killed them or took them as captives
3) They moved to Croatan Island and if White had made it there he would have found them.

I don't agree with #1 or #2. It isn't likely that everyone would have wandered off looking for food, and even if they had, skeletons should have been lying around somewhere. Also, they left all their stuff behind. Also, if Indians had killed them, bodies would have been found, and they weren't. If they had been taken as captives, they would have put up a fight, and, again, bodies would have been left behind on both sides. They weren't, and there weren't signs of a fight, either; White would have noticed them. #3 could be true but there's no evidence either way, although if the colony did move, again, why was all their stuff left behind?

In the 1930s, forty stone tablets were found at Roanoke that chronicled the history of the colony following White's departure. They mention many deaths due to disease and Indian attacks, and that the survivors migrated to present-day Georgia. However, the authenticity of the tablets has been questioned. (www.infoplease.com...) That website also mentions that scientists in 1998 determined that by analyzing tree rings that there was a horrible drought around the time White left the colony.
Another quote from this book:

But what remains unexplained is the fact that today there is a large group of Indians living in North Carolina, entirely different from any other Indian tribe in North America. They speak a peculiar kind of English containing many phrases that have not been heard since the 1500s. They have light skin, blue or gray eyes, and English names. The tribe's name? Croatan.

From www.native-languages.org... (Thanks LadyV!)

The Lumbee don't entirely understand why people persist in calling the Roanoke colony the "Lost Colony," since they left an explicit note telling where they were going (Croatan, an island belonging to some friendly Indians) and since the descendents of the Croatoan Cheraw were found some 50 years later speaking English, practicing Christianity, and sporting about 75% of the last names the colonists had brought with them

I don't think we'll ever know for sure, but it seems very probable that the 'lost colony' simply ended up being assimilated by local natives. It's pretty hard to explain away the English, Christianity, and surnames of the colonists, otherwise. That's what I think though. Who knows, maybe John White is LadyV's great-great...great grandfather or something, lol. (Incidentally, thanks for the Lumbee links, LadyV, I'd never heard of that people before)

Originally posted by LadyV
I am half Cherokee/Lumbee.......you may find hte links below of interest to you....

www.native-languages.org...

www.lumbee.org...

www.lumbeetribe.com...

I'm from charlotte, North Carolina, and I've always been told that the word croatan was simply a reference to who they went to live with. We were also told and it is true that if you look at the last names of the lumbee and North Carolina tuscurora(spelling) and hiliwa saponi nations, that you will find the last names of alot of the people that were supposedly lost.
You have to understand that here, in this state,alot of intertribal marraige has taken place for centuries.

Only 1 problem with the colonists assimilation theory: Why did they leave all of their belongings? You would think that they would take some, if not most, of the stuff with them.

Originally posted by Cutwolf
Only 1 problem with the colonists assimilation theory: Why did they leave all of their belongings? You would think that they would take some, if not most, of the stuff with them.

Read my post above. I think the adults were killed by natives and only the childrens were adopted.

They didn't leave everything behind. The homes and everything else had been "taken down" by the colonists as if they had been moving. The only thing left standing was the fence or ramparts surrounding the colony which is where they found CROATOAN carved at the entrance.

The place where they had "hidden" their things had been scavenged and the things that could be used or that were practical had been taken. White says that he found his armor there but that it had almost been rusted through. They would not have taken his stuff with them.

The reason that the colonists didn't make contact with him is probably the same reason he did not make contact with them...the weather. He literally did not spend a lot of time on their side of the island but instead wasted a lot of time investigating a column of smoke in the opposite direction that turned out to be the remnants of a forest fire.