What happened to the lost colony at Roanoke?

missing people. Vanished people are like what but historians are like, yeah, that's exactly how you say it. I can't wait for this one. Uh, well you're right here, you don't have to wait. Let's experience. No. I was saying that historians are saying that, Okay, yeah yeah, um so Chuck, Yes, have you ever been to Roanoke, Virginia. I've been through there. Yeah, and like a dummy, I thought that might have been where the settlement was. Well it's not just h man.

I wrote this article what happened to the Lost Colony at Roanoke, and I forgot that it wasn't Roanoke, Virginia. What we're talking about is Roanoke, North Carolina, which is an island that's part of the Outer Banks, very lovely, and Virginia was very heavily settled, So it's not like, you know, there wasn't Roanoke, Utah, right, So I'm giving ourselves a break for getting that confused. I bet a

lot of people think it might be Virginia well. Plus, also, the Roanoke Colony was um the first English settlement in the New World, and Roanoke, Virginia is not too far away from it. They moved on to Jamestown to found that that was the first successful English colony. Yeah. Um, so you can you know understand why you or anybody else, including me, would think we're talking about Roanoke, Virginia. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about Roanoke,

North Carolina. And uh it was settled in three waves, and all three of them were at the behest of one guy named Sir Walter Rawley. Sir Walter Rawley had something that a lot of other people wanted. He was born a commoner, that pride um he was damnably proud. I understand a biography um cites him as to decline and eventual beheading, But He was a big favorite of Queen Elizabeth the First and he was a member of her court, and she gave him the patent to any

English settlement in the New World. Like he had it wide open. As long as there weren't other Christians settled on a piece of land, he could have a crack at it and get he would own it. Well. She was very concerned about the native people though, right, No, okay, sorry I had that confused. No, it was specifically other Christians.

So basically she was saying, like, the Spaniards are already there in Florida Stier, clear of those guys, the French there in the beaver Pelts, so they're probably going to be a little north. Maybe you should go to North Carolina. Good, try that, And so Robie did. He he didn't go. He went later on, but um he sent a first wave an expedition, uh in early fifteen eighties something. Yes, I don't have the date there for this one, but the first that was the first real attempt at a settlement.

The first one was just like an expedition like just to go check out good place prefift so fifteen eighty five that was the first attempt to actually settle the island of Rona. And it was just dudes um on this trip. It wasn't like um families and kids and things like that. It was just some dudes, adventurous guys,

a lot of them soldiers. Among them was a guy named John White, who was an artist who ended up making a lot of the well, the first maps of the New World English maps were drawn by John White, and he was really good at it. And I think he was promised five acres in the end, Like, Hey, if you go set this thing up and it takes you can pick out five hundred choice acres for yourself. So he's like a lot of lands. Good deal, let's go. Yeah. John White was a pretty good guy from what I understand. Um,

the problem was he wasn't leading that expedition. He was just a member of it. Uh he The guy who was leading it was a dude named Ralph Lane. And Ralph Lane was a really brutal jerk. Um. Initially, the Indians, the local tribes, the Scdan tribe, right, Yeah, they were friendly to the the first expeditionary group, the first planters,

what they're calling to their detriment of course. Yeah, So Ralph White routinely holds their leaders hostage in exchange for food, kills indiscriminately, even though they were relying on these very people to teach them the ways and how to grow these new crops and things that they had no idea about how to survive there, right, they depended on them and killed them at the same time. Right. Well, eventually, after a while, the Saccodan tribe said, you know what,

to hell with you, buddy, good luck and uh. After that, the hundred I think it was a hundred people right for the expedition, Yes, a hundred men. After ten months they were like, we need food and we're going to die, so let's just go back to England. I should have waited, yeah, because I think like to two weeks later a supply ship came. Yeah, they would have been, but at the same right, at the same time, they were basically at

war with the surrounding like all the surrounding tribes. Not all of them were friendly off the bat, but by the end of the ten months, all of them hated. Uh, this this group of one Englishmen. So they leave, they go back and we're always like, it was a pretty good at ten but I think we can do better. Maybe we need some women, some children, and John White, I like the cut of your jib, So you lead this one. Let's just make a go of it as

like a real settlement, not just adventuring dudes. But let's really try and settle this place as a colony of families and people. Yes. So, Uh, the seven Expedition is what it's called. Was I think a hundred and eighteen people including John White, led by John White who was now the governor. And uh, they came back and they were actually not supposed to stay at Roanoke. It was obvious to everybody this was a bad place to be. The Indians hated everybody. Yeah, well what not? Well, I

guess what sort of obvious? Um it was not. So it wasn't a safe place to be. And I think they originally intended to move a little further up into the Chesapeake, but they ended up in Roanoke Island. I guess to check on some soldiers. Yeah, and we'll get to the little mystery. There's a little mystery there that we'll get too later. Right on why they day there, we should say that there were soldiers on Roanoke because that supply ship that came two weeks later left fifteen

men to keep an English presence in the New World. Yeah, and I think all they found was the bones of one body, right, Yeah, one single body, and the other fourteen were missing, missing and gone. But that was not the lost Colony of Roanoke. Oh no, no, No, that was just some soldiers. No, the hundred and seventeen, I think you said one or not. No, I think it wasn't because White was heard from again, so I think it was one eighteen at least, um, give or take.

Let's say they settled there, they build their little two story cottages. Um, they meet some friendlies. Yeah, they actually turned the tide and made the Sacodan tribe nice again. Yeah, they met some not so friendlies that tended to just sort of leave them alone though, at least at first. Yeah. And they treated also with the Powhattan, who were um on an island called crow Tone, yeah, which is now patteras Um and crow Toe. Like we said, we'll figure

in here in a second. So they were doing pretty well. Um, but they were in for hard times right off the bat. They arrived in July, which is past the planning season, so they had no crops right off the bat Yeah, which is later than they were supposed to arrive, which is part of the mystery that is yet to be revealed. Yes again they um were initially confronted with hostile Indians. They managed to turn the tide. Um. But there were

some delightful things that happened. For example, John White's granddaughter, Virginia Dare, became the first English child born in the New World. Yeah. Delightful for a moment. Um. Tragic in the end. Uh. But Um, even though they did make friends with the pau Hatton's, they were essentially dependent on England still, which is important because without that, John White might have stayed. If they would have been fully self

sufficient at that point, he might have stuck around. And um, although he may have met the same mysterious fate as the other loss or lost folks. Yeah, and I think that that the mystery might not have been quite as mysterious without John White to report it initially. Yeah. Maybe. So he leaves to go back to England, um the same year that the Seven Colony was established, and they say that to get provisions right, they say that he was delayed in getting back because the English and the

Spanish went to war. Yeah, dude, it took him three years, three years. He finally got back in fifteen ninety. Like, I don't know what he expected. Did he expect like them to be thriving? And I guess that's what he was hoping for. I'm sure he was hoping for it, but I'll bet at the very least he was expecting for some evidence of what became of them or something. When he landed and in fifteen ninety back on Roanoke, he was confronted with a mystery that's lasted for four

hundred something years, four hundred and twenty three years. Yes, what he arrived back to was no people, no bones, no bodies, no clothing, no supplies, no buildings, no nothing except for what the remnants of a wall or a fort, a fort that hadn't been there when he left. So they had assembled a fort in that basically a fort meaning just some pikes surrounding the settlement. The problem was the settlement was gone everything like not. There weren't burned

out shells, there weren't tumbled down buildings. He said. His quote was that they've been taken down. Yeah, they disassembled the buildings. Yeah, it wasn't like um any signs of of the war had gone on, and that there was a massacre that had taken place, and that they burned their huts and you know, assaulted the people and killed them and left their bones. It's like they just left, right. So there was no evidence of murder. There was no evidence of um, of a hasty exit. There was no

evidence that they were following fish around the country. Right. Had they settled in Vermont maybe you know PAULI right? Um? And there was no sign of distress. Apparently they had a an agreed upon symbol if John White came back and they were under duress or had been under duress, they were supposed to carve a Maltese cross in the somewhere. Well, they didn't carve a Maltese cross. They carved crow Towing. So they had an opportunity to carve something, and they

didn't carve the distress signal. They carved crow tone. Yeah, which to me, and if I was John White, I would think the same thing. That means, hey, no distress. I guess they went to crow A Towing where the Indians that we were friendly with lived. Yeah, it makes good sense, And I think it was a crow a tone in one tree and then c R O in a post on the fort just crow. Yeah, but it didn't say like crow like they're like no, nothing like that. It was more just like we already carved it once

or maybe those that they had a carving race. Maybe you know Diddy Johnson carved it quickly. Yeah, Virginia Dare is terrible at carving because she was three. Yeah, well let's you should never put a three year old up against an adult, good wife, or never give a three old a knife. Yeah, I think that's the key. So um, So John White is like, okay, well this is really weird. Everybody's vanished and he's probably sad. Yeah, and he goes, okay, I'm going back to England. He had a very um history.

Is not necessarily treated John White well historians, I should say, he's been described it turns as paranoid, which we'll get into. And also it's a little flaky. At the very least. My interpretation of John White is that he didn't stay end up to people like maybe he should have. So the um, the the sailors that he's with that he sailed back with provisions to Roanoke with said hey man, I think a storm's coming, Let's just get out of here. So he never went the crow a tone and to

find out what happened to the colonists. For fifteen twenty one years, there were no expeditions to find out what happened. It wasn't until Jamestown in sixteen o seven that they finally started looking and then making a habit of when they came across Native tribes saying, hey, uh, you see a bunch of white people around here. Yeah, and um, and actually there had been some proposed expeditions that people had carried out, but they never actually went to search

for him. They just used it as an excuse for piracy. Um. But yeah, once Jamestown settled, one of the one of the main things they did was question local Indians, and they actually got some pretty intriguing answers. Yeah. Um, like, well, they also found some pretty intriguing things like in adiends with gray eyes and a boy with blonde hair but in Native American clothing. Yeah, they're like, hey, kid, come over here, and the kid takes off. Yeah. They didn't

get a chance to question them, right right. Um. And these are apparently like eyewitness reports from reliable Jamestown planners um so, and then from the local tribes they found that there were supposedly people who lived in two story stone structures with thatched roofs, totally unique to the English. Um. There were supposedly people who spoke English and like read the Bible who lived you know, further down the coast,

but they never found any of them. Yeah. And part of the problem too, that we should point out is that they aren't exactly sure, because of poor record keeping, exactly exactly where the settlement was to begin with, so

they didn't know where to look. Um White I think had had said it was further north on the island, um, where the original dudes were adventuring, and um, I think a Spanish dude had said, no, it's worked towards the center of the island, and they found evidence of like cannons and things there, so they think it might have been there. Yeah, and they think that possibly, um, the settlement is now underwater, like there's been massive erosion on

the island since the sixteenth century. It's only twelve miles long though, but of course back then that's a bigger search area than they were capable of, you know. Yeah. Well, they also think though that um, that in the last four hundred years, as much as a quarter mile um of the coast of the coast is eroded inland, and that yeah, it's very possible to settlements underwater. Now interesting, I saw a thing on I watched a little YouTube thing on this. It was kind of a silly show.

But this, uh, there was one cool part where this uh tree experts said that you can drill into the core of a tree and study how much rainfall um as that historically that that area has gotten. And they found this you know tree that was like five years old, drilled into the core and found that the biggest drought of the past eight hundred years occurred in right, they walked right into it. So it was just not a good situation. Of course, I didn't prove anything. That was

a nice little footnote. Yeah, what was silly about it? Did they did they break into dance and song? Here? No, the guy on the show, he's like, you know, one of these like history detectives, and he rented a you know, the little pair of gliders to have a fan attached to your back. He's like, I wanted to get an aerial view. So like, dude, you just wanted to ride around on that thing, like you got absolutely nothing from that? Why an aerial Yeah, and afterwards we learned nothing about it.

He was just like boy, and you know, that's just a good way to see the island. So anyway, he was silly, um. And it was not a Discovery network, so I can say that. So so Chuck, Yes, the colonists are lost. The colony is lost, if any idea where it is. And they've even found like parts of the colony. Yeah, they found a guy's ring, right, Yeah. They found the first scientific laboratory um ever created in

the New World, Thomas Harriet. Um. So they found like other stuff, they just can't find the seven one, which is weird. Um. But there are a lot of theories abounding for what happened to the colonists, and I think it's awesome that there are none that fully explain what happened. I love historical mystery. I think that's cool when they're solved, and I like it when they're unsolved. Yeah, this one's like as American as it gets. This is an American mystery,

that's right. Um. One clue that uh, you know, White wrote down a bunch of stuff in a letter obviously, when he went to check things out, and one thing he said that is pretty key was that they moved fifty miles into the main which everyone took to me and into the main part of North Carolina inland into the forest. But now they think maybe he'd met Mike

to the main towards Chesapeake. Ya. Uh that or if um, if you look at the distance between crow tonin and um Roanoke is fifty miles, So they could have just assimilated with a friendly tribe and uh mixed their races and eventually became an altogether new Well. Yeah, and there's actually a tribe that counts Um part of its origin story as the Roanoke settlers. Yeah, the Lumbi tribe of Robeson County, North Carolina. See this sounds really compelling to me.

It does. Um, if you ask the average Lumbie, depending on who you ask, you're gonna get like a yeah, of course or a no that's not the case. Yeah. It just depends the tribes divided as to its the whether or not the Um they they assimilated the Roanoke colonists or not. But there are some there's some pretty tantalizing evidence. For example, Apparently as early as seventeen nineteen, some members of the Lumbie tribe had surnames that were the same as some of the Lost colonists, like Hyatt

Dial Taylor. I think if a Native American walks studio and says, hey, Jim Taylor, nice to meet you in seventeen nineteen, BERMUDI like they could read. They can read, you know that stuff turns brown in the winter. Not a fan. Uh. They spoke English and could like read and write. I think, right, yeah, they were familiar with the Bible. Yeah, so come on, well, here's the thing, um, whether or not that is if, if that happened in

seventeen nineteen, yeah, that's pretty compelling evidence. But there was still a hundred years of exposure that could have happened little by little. You could still account for it, if you ask me. I think the Lumby connection is pretty it's pretty interesting at the very least. And maybe some of them went that way. You know, it's possible. No one has no one, you know, did they have to

stay together? No, not necessarily. But with the tribe, it's kind of like, well, these are our origins or they're not our origins, because they're distinct. They're distinct group. I get that as I understand it. Uh, some folks say that they were killed by the Spanish. Um, they definitely knew that they were there because one of the one of the dudes on the Roanoke expedition when they stopped off in Puerto Rico, said hey, let me get off

here because it's really nice. Right, that's probably what the real intent was. But um, why what did he say? Was gonna say? Darby Gland said that he was going to take on supplies, but by the way, I'm gonna stay here with the supply. Yeah for a while. Either way, he stayed there and told the Spanish, Hey, yeah, like, we're settling right up there on that island there in Roanoke. So they Spanish knew where they were for sure. We know that. And here is why that's weird. They weren't

supposed to settle in Roanoke, that's right. They didn't know that they were going to settle in Roanoke. No, they weren't supposed that. They're supposed to be in Chesapeake. So here in is the first clue to the mystery. So there's a um. John hop Johns Hopkins trained anthropologist name Lee Miller, who came up with this idea that the Roanoke Colony was sabotaged by rivals of Sir Walter Rawley who resented him for his patent and wanted to get

it themselves. And they thought that maybe by proving that he couldn't possibly established in English um colony in the New World, they could they could get the patent. Yeah, and sabotage in the way of their ships. Captain potentially was it Fernandez was paid off? Maybe and uh, he did a lot of mysterious things like took way too much time to do some basic charting and seamanship when

he should have been he super experienced. Well not only that he knew the area and he spent I think thirty six days um off the coast of Cape Fear to get his bearings um and well, like we said that the colonists were delivered to the New World after the planning season, so they couldn't there's no way they could plant during a drought and to an area that was known to be you know, right, rono. Some people got off and said, you know what, everybody get off here.

I'll see you guys later, and he left and they weren't supposed to be there, and he basically stranded him there in a hostile area after planning season and then limited supplies. This other guy tells the Spanish where they are, maybe as a backup to make sure before they ever even went to Rono they were on their way there. So it's definitely hinky. Yeah, and Miller implicates a guy

named Francis walling Sam. I believe um and basically says, this is the guy who was after Sir Walter Rawley and did all this and found that Walling Sam rescued Fernandez the pilot from being hanged. So Fernande is literally owed this other guy his life, so who knows what he would have done. Yeah, possibly one of the first conspiracy uh conspira reces of the New World of among

Europeans in the New World. UM And Miller also goes on to say that he he thinks probably what literally happened to them, despite whether they were set up or not to fail, was that they were caught up in a shift of power among tribes. UM. Basically, from you know the friendlies one away, they not friendlies came in and there was a balance of power shifting, and they were kind of right in the middle of that. Well,

they walked right into it. If they went into North Carolina in the forest, they walked right into the hands of some very hostile tribes who would have, according to Miller, killed all the men and sold all the women and children into slavery um and that they would have been traded up and down this network that spanned from Florida up to Virginia the Chesapeake. And there's actually really cantalizing evidence this other mystery. So there's a mystery on a mystery.

It's have you heard of the Dare Stones? Now, So from ninety seven and nine, forty stones turned up from the North Carolina area all the way down to the Chatahoocha just outside of Atlanta, almost forming a trail, and they were etched granite stones that were written in Elizabethan English and said things like mark the death of Virginia Dare in fifte um, all sorts of different like little messages, but leading from North Carolina to Atlanta and posedly from

the late sixteenth century. Yeah, so a lot of these are considered to be fake, if not all of them. But Burnow University up in Gainesville has all forty of them in their collection, and apparently they're going back and reevaluating them because most people are like those are frauds.

The problem is the people who turned them up had no they don't know Elizabeth in English, they didn't weren't trained in that at all, so it would have been right there, kind of tough to to carry out that hoax because it was no. Well, but they think that some of the last ones were intentionally like used to discredit people who were accusing at Land and Professor's emery of like trying to generate tourism by saying, the lost colonists ended up here, so come down here and run

a cabin, you know. But the anyway, the brand now university professors are going back and looking at each one on its own marriage rather than related to the other thirty nine of them from what I understand. Um, so there's the dare Stone's interesting and it's possible that it kind of supports Lee Miller's hypothesis that they were traded

and lived and left markings behind saying hey, we were here. Well, I know that Miller was frustrated with when it was Miller here, she she she, I thought so when She actually went to Roanoke and was just so frustrated, like because it's you know, like I said, twelve miles by I think three miles And she was just like it's small, Like where is the stuff? Like why can't we find anything? I think it's because they took off it has been taken down. Um. And then did you read this thing

that I sent you? Yeah, I really had a hard time understanding the significance of it. Are they saying that John White is saying here, this is where they were? And I think here's here's the deal. This UM group was established to try and figure this out, of course, uh. And I think they were from England even um. And they took a new look uh that they're called the First Colony Foundation. Now they're from North Carolina. They've been working with the British Museum. Okay, that has that map.

So they found the year old map. They didn't find it. They took a new look at it and found that there were a couple of patches on the map, which basically, back then you couldn't erase something and start over. You would do a little patch section and attach that to the map. One of the patches was UM just a mistake that was being corrected, and the other one didn't appear until they held it in front of a light box.

So that's very mysterious. And they sound evidence that they think concludes that they moved westward up the Albamarla Albemarle Sound to the confluence of the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers. And the evidence is because what was covered up was

believed to be a symbol of a fort. So what they're saying is his intention because this was a very detailed map and it was a very important map and it was drawn by John White, Right, Yeah, drawn by John White, and um it had been you know, covered up for centuries until they found it, saying it's pretty clear that the intention was, Hey, this is where we want to settle. This is where we're going to this fort.

So are they saying that John White drew the map and that was originally where they were going to go before Fernandez stranded them, and so that's probably where the colonists went after they left Roanoke. I think so, Okay, I think that's what they're saying. They didn't specifically say that that was their original intent, but I think at some point while they were before he left to go back to England, he said, let's go to this place established a fort. So he just didn't write down what

he knew well enough, I think so. And um they say they don't know why it was covered covered over with a patch. Um, but they think that they could start looking there for maybe remnants. Yeah, supposedly the it's under a subdivision and a golf course. Yeah it's so good luck with that. Um no excavating whole nine. But um yeah, interesting. They seem I was a little less moved by this, like you. They seemed to be really like,

oh my god, the mystery has been solved. There was a fort that they said that they were going to established, right, and they covered it up with a patch that has a different kind of fort drawing on it. Yeah, it could have been as simple as you know, maybe they wanted to do that, but then they still ended up, you know, getting taken or going somewhere else. So who knows, we'll never know. We probably will never know. It's going to be one of those in during mysteries. I love it.

I love it too, Chuck. You know, yeah, you got anything else? I gonna solve everything. People are crazy for that kind of thing. You know. They love to know everything. It's like chill out, all in good time, all in four and something years. If you want to know more about the Roanoke mystery, type that word into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. That is R O A N O kay e not Virginia, North Carolina, and it will bring up this article by me. And since I said me, it's time for a message break

which begins with me. Okay, so now listener mail. Yeah, all right, I'm gonna call this, uh, maybe the biggest nerd ever to write in dork show. I love this dude. Actually he may not be ready at all. Hi, guys, it has to do with D and D again though. After listening to D and d uh podcast, I wanted to share to you how you inspired the creation of Dungeons and dragonesque role playing adventure. Two weeks before Christmas

vacation last year, I came down with the chicken pots. Uh. That is sort of a medical absurdity um to every doctor, nurse, and colleague came into contact with. It's also really dangerous though, right, I think it's more I don't know about dangerous, but I think it's more complicated for sure, all right, you're a kid. Sorry for enough's um. Two weeks of being stuck at home trying not to scratch allowed my imagination to wander at a day where I listened to the Singularity,

holographic environments, and designing our children's podcast. Also, I watched two documentaries on the band Rush and the movie Blade Runner. This combination of science fiction ideology sparked the idea for a story, but I needed some help writing it, so I created a role playing game. Dungeons and Dragons does not lend itself to futuristic technology, so I decided to

create my own games and rules. I used a university as the dungeon, college majors as character classes, campus stereotypes as races, rushed song lyrics as puzzles, and stuff you should know podcasts for the storyline. One example of what we did with it uh major's technology related field, wizard, nursing, healer, kinesiology, paladin, chemist, rogue, thief, biology, druid music major, bard theology, monk. I'm just I have

no idea. What do you even make of that? You? Yeah, okay, So four college boys set out to save the world from Alex liveson and Getty Lee's genetically engineered Neil Perk and to prevent the Singularity from taking over the campus of Illinois State, go red Birds. Other than the odd looks we received from the guy installing window treatments while we were playing, the game was a great success and I introduced for new people to the stuff you should

know universe. So thanks for inspiring an awesome day and distracting me from the pox. That is from Matt McCulley, math teacher at Woodstock High School in Illinois and the cross country and track coach. A dude, I want to see this game. I want to play this game. I want to figurine of me. You do me and Getty Lee like fighting druids? Yeah, or fighting one another with druids advancing on you. That's a sticky situation. Yeah, so that's that's quite a game, and that is quite an email. Mat. Yeah,

thanks a lot, Matt. You may be right, chuck uh if you want to let us know how nerdy you are or how wonderful your imagination is, I guess it's another way to put up. Yeah, we love nerdy qualities. By the way, because we got an email for like young lady that took exceptions of me Jane nerd and thinking all my little nerd pleases. But it's all good fun.

We love it. Yeah, get a sense of human nerds. Yeah, if you want to let us know how funny you you are, how imaginative you are, how nerd you are, whatever we want to hear it, um, send us a very creative tweet to s y s K podcast. Join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. Send it's an email to stuff podcast that Discovery dot com, and join us on our website. Do it. It's called stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this

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