The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1957-07-19

women, and IL children who set
foot there from England, nor OF
Baby Virginia Dare who was born
and christened on Roanoke on
August 10, the first American
+ When John White got back to
England, he found the country
desperately preparing to meet the
Spanish Armada. Not for three
whole years was White able to sail
from England, to a scene of tragic
mystery.
He came to this island at night
in August 1890. There was great
fire in the woods, and White and
his men rowed near the shore. 1t
was too dark to land, so, he tells
us, 1--WE let fall our rapneI neere
the shore and sounded with a
trumpet call and afterwards, many
familiar English tunes of songs
and called to them friendly" Only
the woods echoed these pathetic
overtures.
At day break when they landed
they found the fire to be only
burning grass. There were foot
prints of two or three barefooted
Indians. Where the colonists had
lived was now a wilderness. The
houses had been taken down. In
side the pallisaded fort were only
bars of iron, cannon and shot
overgrown with weeds, and the
rusty remains of Whites chests
which had apparently been buried
and dug up again by someone.
Not a word or sign of the col
onists' fate? Yes just one, an
eternal puzzle. White found it
carved in post of the fort-just
the word CROATOAN. He says:
Zone of the chiefe trees or
posts at the right side of the
entrance had the barke taken off
and foote from the ground in
fayre Capital letters was raven
Croatoan without any crosses or
sine of distresse.".
In his letters, White says that
when he left the colony in 1883,
they had been thinking of moving
so miles into the mainland, and
had agreed to carve the name of
their destination on a tree or post,
and with it cross if they were
in distress. There was no cross
with this CROATOAN but
why had the carver not finished
his work on a tree near the shore
where the mute letters stood
GRO =?
Had the colonists really moved
peacefully and gone to live with
Manteo's Croatoan Indians on
Croatoan Island to the South
(Now Ocracoke). White thought
so but we do not know. A severe
storm arose that August in 1887
and the captain insisted on leav-
ing Roanoke. White never visited
Croatoan; nor did any other Eng
fish voyager for many a year. The
lost colony was left to it's fate.
There are other possibilities.
Perhaps the colonists were killed
by Indians on the beach as the
carver carved a parting CROA-
TOAN. Perhaps they were taken
off to the galleys by marauding
Spaniard. Perhaps they were all
drowned in trying to reach Croa-
toan in small boats. Or did they
really move to live with the Croa-
toan Indians soon after White
left?
Historians have found the
earthworks Of that old fort be-
meath the pine needles of Roanoke
Island. You can now look to the
Sound from the parapet where
Whites men kept watch for the
ships that came too late. But the
diggings have revealed no skele-
tons, no sign of massacre. Nor
have they revealed any trace of
the village tit may very well be
covered now by a motel across the
road from the excavated fort &. }
So perhaps, then, the Lost Col
onists did leave Roanoke in peace
and merge with the Croatoan In
dams. Twenty years after the col
ony disappeared new settlers in
Virginia heard stories of strange
Indians who could write, were
clothed and lived in houses like
Englishmen.
And today in North Carolina,
not far from Croatoan Island, as
it then was, there is mysterious
Indian tribe whose origin no one
can explain but who bear many