The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-16
Croasan Indians of North Carolina Now Deelared to Re The True Descend- ant. of Sir walter RaIeigh's Mys- teriousIy Missing settlers.

Chicago Record Herald.
 For more than 300 years the world has talked about the Lost Colony, the third which Sir Walter Raleigh. greatest among knights and promoters of exploration in the golden days Of Queen Elizabeth, sent to Roanoke ls- land as settlers. and which, deserted by Mother England for three long years. disappeared. When relief came 1t found only the one word "croatan. cut deep in a live oak at the seaward side of the island and quite near the fort which the colonists. under the direction of their governor, John White, had built.
 They were to give some word or sign In token of where they had gone, but this was all, and when the English men came. went around the island and upon 1t found the fort, with open en- trance. cannon lying about and rusted armor. they seemed not to have had the usual English coolness and pluck. but made very short search and sailed away for home. It was not until years later that John Smith made his sue cessful settlement at Jamestown. In Virginia, 15o miles to the northward
 There have been varying views as to what became of those white colon ists, those lost ones. Did the Indians, some their friends and some their enemies, when White, their governor, sailed away home and left them. kill them or amalgamate with them3
 Trace Of Leng-Lost Ones.
 Those who hold to the view that they were slain say that hey had been tn- structed to go to the mainland. if need be, and that they must have done this and gone to the northwestward, and there being caught by the Indians, largely the dreaded Tuscaroras, were massacred. or perhaps in some cases made slaves, end those who hold this view say that Strachey, the historian of John Smiths colony. told of news which Indians brought from the south ward of white people held captive there and building stone houses.
 In this case there was again, strange to say. English timidity. for instead of risking all and going southward to find the truth of these stories but little was done and the search really amounted to nothing.
 Those who hold the view that the Indians and whites left the Island as friends and amafgamated say that they went to Croatan. which Is on the main land remaining there some time, and that then they removed. by this time mated and intermingled. into a section south of Raleigh and immediately along the South Carolina border, and there made their final settlement
 The State of North carelina has taken this view, and almost three hun- dred years after the conclusion had grown upon England that the colony was truly lost has set her seal upon the croatans in Robeson County as the true and veritable descendants of the sLost Colony of Roanoke"
 Strange to say, this was the work of one man, Hamilton McMillan, when n member of the Legislature in 1887. The writer had himself told the first story about these Groatans and their probable status as the descendants of the lost colony,l this being in 1885, rescue race and fix It's status for ever. The law declaring the Croatans to be these peculiar people forbids their intermarriage with whites or blacks and dignifies and sets them apart
 Tn April had been to old Fort Raleigh, on Roanoke Island, and had read the inscription on the granite me moriai in its center setting forth that Virginia Dare, the first white child of English parents born in what is now the United States, saw the light there for the first time and was baptized.
 It was strange to walk about and see how perfect were the outlines of the old starshaped earthworks which had been palisaded by the colonists. Near it's center I cut cane of holly for particular purpose, namely for presentation to Mir. McMillan, who lives near the heart of the croatan settle ment and has made life study of these people
 With this cane in hand I went to one of the sand hills and standinsa there, between two wind-tossed live oaks, looked out across the yellow waters of the narrow sound at the banks beyond. which separate the sound from the sea, and looking fur fher eastward saw the ocean stretch ing thousands of miles away toward that England for which the deserted, lonely and terror-stricken third colony of Raleigh must have yearned so long and so hopelessly in the closing years of that fateful last experiment at set