A SECRET was hiding in plain sight | The lost colony of Roanoke

I don't know about you, but I'm much more interested in mysteries that have occurred in the relatively recent past. I think it's easier to relate to the people involved because they've probably lived their lives similar to how you live. Now it's different but similar, you know? And you also like information. If you're looking at a case that happened 50 years ago or less, it's easier to verify that information and there's probably more information about that case, whereas if you're looking at something that happened, say, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, although there are certainly people involved and as a human being I can relate to them in that sense, but the way they live is very different from the way we live now, so it's very difficult to know.

I put myself in your perspective because my experience living on Earth is very different and of course the information, even if it was diligently transcribed at the time, has taken hundreds of years to reach me now, so the opportunity to obtain information. changing or being accurately conveyed or just being an embellishment is much higher, so the accuracy of the information in older cases is a bit at stake, which is why I tend to be interested in more recent mysteries, but there is one. In fact, it is the oldest unsolved mystery in American history that has fascinated me since I heard about it in grade school and the reason I talk about it now in this video not only did I find it fascinating but Ha There have been some recent discoveries, as recent as 2011, that totally changed theories about what could have happened in this particular case and the reference case is the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

The version of the story I didn't read for a long time is when England first tried it. To colonize America, they established a

colony

on Roanoke Island, which is just off the coast of North Carolina, and when things were not going very well during the early settlers, they needed more supplies, they sent their leader back to England to get more supplies, but when he returned, the

colony

was gone, the 115 people were gone without a trace and all that was left were two strange messages, one was on a tree and the other on a fence post right where the colony and for centuries, historians and fans.

Detectives alike have debated what those messages mean, but a recent discovery in 2011 completely changes people's interpretation of what happened in Roanoke before it began. If you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious presented in story format, well, you've come to the right thing. channel because that's literally all I'm going to do and I post three or four times a week, so if that appeals to you, please gently hit the like button and then turn on all notifications so you don't miss any. From these interesting stories, well, let's delve into the late 16th century, England wanted to colonize the United States, and in the early 1580s, an Englishman named Sir Walter Raleigh was basically given a permit to go colonize the United States, basically. he said, "Okay, you know, 1580" and you have until 1591 to colonize somewhere in America, if you can't do it by then you'll lose your permit, he starts getting funds together, he starts, you know, looking on a map to determine where is a good place to land and 1584 is ready to launch its first reconnaissance mission to America, so in 1584 two ships head to North America and land somewhere on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, they land and They quickly make friends with the local Native Americans who are there and, in fact, they invite these English people to come to their village which was on Roanoke Island, also in North Carolina, not far from the Outer Banks, so they These first English settlers are brought to this village and are actually able to coexist with the Native Americans. wonderfully, they are sharing trade

secret

s, they are learning to hunt, they are learning to do all the things you would need if you were to live in this new land, and they are being embraced by the local population. which was huge, so after a month of this reconnaissance mission, the group of early settlers are really excited about the possibilities of settling in America, so they return to England and share their findings with Sir Walter Raleigh and Preparations for the launch immediately begin. an actual colonization effort at Roanoke, so a year after this initial reconnaissance mission, Sir Walter Raleigh is ready to launch this full effort to colonize America and he sends seven ships with 600 men and supplies that were designed to last that long. group of people for a whole year, so everything is going very well, they are sailing towards America and when they reach the Outer Banks, their flagship, the biggest and best ship they had, was carrying most of their supplies, their food , its sweet water. ran aground and many of their supplies fell into the ocean and spoiled so this is a devastating blow and they know right away that not everyone in this fleet can actually land here so they sent 500 men back to England and only They landed a hundred of the original 600 in Roanoke now, as soon as this, the second round of settlers, these 100 men landed in Roanoke, they went and talked to the local Native Americans, good relationships had already been built from that first mission of recognition and these settlers received permission from the local natives built their colony in Roanoke to begin building their colony and everything goes smoothly.

In fact, the Native Americans were incredibly generous, working closely with the settlers and doing everything they could to support them however they could now. The colonists still needed more supplies. They didn't have this solid supply that they were planning to have because much of it was destroyed in that shipwreck when they initially arrived, so they had been promised that by the 500 returning crew members that they were going to send. supplies for the following winter, so they are anticipating this shipment of new supplies and as winter approaches, the hundred settlers that are there are running incredibly low on supplies to the point where they basically run out, and so they had They had to rely on the generosity of local Native Americans just to stay alive when the shipment that was supposed to be there in the winter didn't show up and had in fact been cancelled.

They didn't know this had been canceled by Queen Elizabeth. who basically said that was not important, we will concentrate on the things that are happening in England when that does not show the tensions between these hundred settlers and the local natives, the tension was growing because now there is a huge overdependence that The tension grew to the point. point at which the leader of the settlers and the leader of the local Native Americans began to not trust each other and in fact the local natives, instead of being violent, decided that they would simply abandon Roanoke Ann and leave to the continent. give Roanoke Island to the settlers and that would solve all the problems, but the English settlers took their withdrawal as a sign that they were actually going to go to the mainland of North Carolina, these Native Americans and we are going to form alliances with other tribes and then they were going to come back and kill off the hundred colonists, we don't know if that's true because what happens next is that the English colonists, in a kind of paranoid attack, preemptively cross the water and reach the continent and attack the natives Americans who had previously been helping and keeping them alive and actually annihilated them.

These English settlers return to Roanoke Island and now the paranoia is even greater because they now have no supplies. they don't know how to live there, they basically started a war and it turns out that an English bound fleet was passing through the area on their way back to England and when they stopped at the colony the colonists were basically panicking, I mean in this period, recently, you know, they wiped out the state of the American tribe, they're free, get out of what's going to happen to them and they were in such a hurry to leave the colony and evacuate that only 97 of them made it. on the boats and they left, they literally left three people there, they said: well, they are not here for the evacuation, so we are leaving here and sure enough, that fleet took the 97 settlers and they left, leaving those 3 settlers to their fate.

Ironically, just a few days after this evacuation, Sir Walter Raleigh had sent additional ships with resupplies and reinforcements to Roanoke and they literally arrived like a couple of days after this mass evacuation, but when they arrived, the colony was abandoned and they didn't. find those three men left there so Sir Walter Raleigh's reinforcements just left and then a couple of weeks later another English fleet bound passed through Roanoke and stopped to check on the colony and they found it abandoned because they had so many people in this. This passing fleet decided to leave 15 crew members in the colony because they felt it was an English colony, it's not in total disrepair at the moment and maybe you know this will be useful to the crown or we can use it. somehow they left 15 crew members to basically protect the outpost while they return to England and figure out what's going to happen next, so it would be months before anyone returned to Roanoke, so those 15 crew members of the crew were kind of hanging out for a bit, but a man called John White who had been part of that initial failed colony at Roanoke that had been evacuated back to England, was still eager to colonize America and so he convinced Sir Walter Raleigh to launch a new expedition back to America to try to recolonize not in Roanoke but a little north in the Chesapeake Bay, which was simply considered a more fertile and more advantageous position and then in 1587 they sent three ships back to America to attempt this colonization effort everywhere.

Again, it is important to know that unlike the first effort, which was much more militaristic, it was literally 600 men who were sent to the United States, this time it was going to be a more civilian approach in which men, women and children would be sent . to America to colonize, so with John White as captain of these three ships, they head towards America and again their plan was to go north to the Chesapeake Bay area, but they intended to pass through Roanoke on purpose because he knew about those 15 crew members who stayed there, you know, almost a year before, so they intended to stop in Roanoke and basically have a meeting with those crew members, give them the supplies they needed and then head up to In the Chesapeake Bay, however, something strange happens where the chief navigator, a man named Simón Fernández, who had sailed during the initial reconnaissance mission on the first voyage to America, also sailed on the second voyage to America when they brought the 600 men now sailing to On this third voyage with John White, he had the charisma of a true leader and, frankly, was highly respected.

He is an incredible sailor and although John White was technically the captain, it was actually Fernandez who really had the respect of all the people. on this trip to the United States and for some reason Fernandez decided that he just didn't want them to go to the Chesapeake Bay and instead, when they arrived in Roanoke to have this meeting with the 15 crew members, he basically told everyone to they will go down Like we're not going north, everyone who's here to colonize go ahead and get off because we're out of here and John White didn't resist. I think he recognized that the pole this guy had was going to be too much. and the crew and everyone there just accepted it and even though it was a total diversion, they just started colonizing Roanoke, although again that was never planned, so while they're literally descending on Roanoke, they're preparing. to meet up with these 15 crew members that they really hope are still alive, but there's no sign of them, there's no sign of the crew that was left behind and all they find is like a little pile of bones and John White speculated that already You know. perhaps this is a sign that the crew members were attacked by Native Americans seeking revenge because they had been eliminated from that initial group that had been here, the first English settlers.

John White's suspicions would actually prove true. when just a few days after the group of over a hundred settlers began setting up camp and Roanoke, a man named George Howe wandered a little way from the colony and a group of Native Americans surrounded him. and shot 16 arrows at it, so it was like a message to the settlers that they are not welcome here, they know their predecessors who wiped out an entire tribe, yeah, we haven't forgotten that, so they are not allowed to do it. Being here was not a good start for John White and his new colony feels like the colony was doomed from the start, the colonists actually told John White, hey, yeahThis is how it's starting, we need more people here, we need more supplies. like this wasn't a good start, we weren't set up for success here, you have to go back to England and get more supplies and bring them back here because without that we're doomed and it just so happened that Fernandez, the guy who was kind enough of abandoning them, he hadn't left the Outer Banks yet, he had anchored in the Outer Banks and was basically still available to take people back, so John John White was initially against the idea because he didn't want to be seen as someone . that was like leaving the colony when he came back to England and John White's daughter who was pregnant was there she was one of the first settlers she was there in Roanoke and he didn't want to bandhanar her but in the end he says okay I'll go and he gets on Fernandez's ship and they return to Now, unfortunately, when he returned to England, England was in the middle of a war with Spain, so the Queen had ordered that any ship, any English ship, basically couldn't leave England because he needed to be able to defend himself against the Spanish Armada and so he could not leave England to return to Roanoke, whether he had supplies or not, for three years, and so three years passed and finally, with the help of Sir Walter Raleigh, he was able to be placed in a convoy of ships. that is to return to America with the necessary supplies, so he is heading, so it is 1590, three years since John White left Roanoke, left his daughter and to return to get supplies, now he returned and he has the supplies and they arrive to the Outer Banks. and they get on their little boats to make their little trip to the north side of Roanoke so they can get to the island and go see what's going on in Roanoke and when they land on the north side of Roanoke they start yelling at him.

They try to get someone's attention, there is no response as they walk towards the forest, they notice that there are some fresh footprints right on the beach and then in the forest itself, but again no one comes to greet them, which is a bad omen because if there are new tracks, it is an English settler and with a chase they would be eager to come see them, they would run out to meet them or it is a Native American which could mean they don't trust the English. The settlers are right, they don't want to show themselves or be seen, which is also a bit sinister.

They begin to move to where the Roanoke colony was and see three letters on a tree that they only claim to see. our Oh in a tree as they are heading to the colony and again they are screaming all the time trying to get someone's attention and no one is screaming there are no signs of life anywhere so they see CRO in the tree and then they keep approaching and now they escape from the colony and the colony when they left had not been heavily fortified now it was heavily fortified with large pikes, you know, basically like wooden pikes lining the outside of this, this basically looked at Fort and in one of the wooden posts that fortified the outside of Roanoke where the word Croatoan was.

Not only is there no one inside this heavily fortified colony that is sort of a fort, so to speak, it seemed like no one had been there in years. the grass was overgrown, you know, basically anything of value had been effectively looted, the only things left were like really heavy objects that would have been difficult to move, but there was no sign of a struggle either, was there any sign of a struggle? it was not so? There was no human left anywhere, there was no clear sign of fighting. I mean, obviously, it's this well-fortified area that leads you to believe that they were at least anticipating some kind of attack, but there were no signs of fighting, they just left.

John White would write about this experience when he arrived and discovered that the colonies disappeared, one hundred and fifteen people simply left. Actually, he wasn't worried because the writing he saw on the tree and the wooden post really meant something to him. Before he left to go back to England to get the supplies, he had talked to the people who were going to stay there and said, look, if you need to leave Roanoke for any reason, we need to have an elaborate system for where to go. and you are gone I need to know what happened and then you need to leave me a clue you need to write a clue somewhere where is your destination if you are going by choice just write the destination if you are forced to write the destination with a cross and that to me will mean that you left in a hurry and when he sees Croatoan and sings in the tree for him, that just means oh well yeah, they must have moved to Croatoan's island, which was fifty miles away. heading south, he would detail in his notes that before he left Roanoke in 1587 to go get those supplies, he said that the settlers had been talking about abandoning Roanoke, oh no, and moving fifty miles north to the mainland, not fifty miles south to an island. the concern was that the island was isolated and not a good place to have a colony, so they were talking about leaving it and he just casually mentions in his notes, well, you know, they were thinking about leaving to go 50 miles to the mainland, so that could be the reason they're on Croatoan Island, but that doesn't really make any sense because you're just abandoning one problem for another, like you want to leave an island.

The prime island has unique problems, why would you? To go to another island, you would go to the mainland, so that was a bit problematic, so John White thinks that they just up and moved to Croatoan Island, so he quickly grabs his men and goes back to the ship and they start to spin. and they set their course to go south 250 miles to Croatoan Island, but as fate would have it, the anchor line broke as they attempted to head south toward Croatoan Island and the weather became worse and worse and they began to drift. north and north until finally the captain of the crew simply said: look, we can't go to Croatoan Island, it's not really possible and that's why they had to return to England.

John White would never return to the United States, so he would end up dying without having the slightest idea. what happened to the colony and in fact no one really knew what happened to the colony it was just a huge cliffhanger they are supposed to have gone to Croatoan Island but no one could prove that they had actually done it literally for centuries the people just speculated like About what may have happened to this colony, I mean, there's an assumption that maybe they just went to Croatoan and eventually assimilated with the Native Americans there and you know they just became part of the culture there.

There were other theories that they were you know, they were wiped out at some point by angry Native Americans, but they were all just guesses until the 1930s, when a man found a little walking stone and turned it into a museum and they looked and it was Written by Eleanor Dare. who was John White's daughter, the pregnant daughter he had, that he had abandoned and never saw again and she detailed what had happened and half the colony was wiped out by the Native Americans who were angry with them and then another percentage was taken captive and then there are a couple of survivors who barely made it and didn't really expect to live long at the time the stone was found.

I mean, everyone knew that the last we heard from the Roanoke. colony was that they had most likely reached Croatoan Island because that was the word written on the post, the CRO on the tree. I mean, that's what made the most sense and so why would there be this stone from John White's daughter, fifty miles north of Rouen, wouldn't it make more sense to have been found in Roanoke or in Croatoan, as if it really didn't add up, so many people speculated that this stone had to simply have been a fake, a hoax, but in 2011 an important discovery was made in the Roanoke case that actually gave a lot of credibility to the stone in which Eleanor apparently Dare had written.

John White was a painter by trade and had created all these maps of the colony. from Virginia to North Carolina, everywhere he went, you know he basically painted it, it was customary when you were at the time when you made a map, if you had small errors on your map, you would actually cut a new piece of canvas and you did it. he would put the corrections into that piece and then slap it in wherever the errors were made, so it wasn't unusual that if you looked at a map you would see little patches all over the map and so literally for centuries there were these maps that John White had created they had several of these little patches on the map and in 2011 someone who was doing research said well why don't we look underneath the patches and just confirm that they really were just these little mistakes that were made. covered up and corrected with a patch and it turned out that on one of the maps there was a patch over a section of land 50 miles north of Roanoke around the area where that stone had been found and under the patch there was a star and the star was set to look like a fort so basically there is an English fort built basically where that stone was found but it had been covered with a patch like the fort was a mistake shouldn't there be a fort there?

I put a patch on it, but upon closer inspection, the patch that had been put over that to denote. a fort and they put it over the obvious symbol of the fort they were covering, one could argue that they wanted to indicate to someone who was perhaps looking for invisible ink, they wanted to indicate that that was where the fort was, but they didn't want someone to intercept the map, for example, the Spanish, because they had just been at war with the Spanish, they didn't want you to know where the location of a fort was, the researchers started calling that place where that patch was.

Site that the colony was planning to move 50 miles north to the mainland because that was a more suitable place to live but of course with the writings on the trees everyone thought, well, they ended up going to Croatoan, well now someplace It's a location. that lines up with what they had originally said they were going to do and you have that stone written by Eleanor Dare in the same place and then the archaeologists went down to the area that was site X and although they have not confirmed that there is a fort or they have not found a fort in the area, they have found metal and pottery that is potentially indicative of an English settlement and in fact, right now they are still doing all kinds of excavations and archaeological investigations to try to determine if that is where The Roanoke Colony was. , but even if that's the answer to the mystery that, in fact, you know it was just this hidden map and the stone that said yes, they went 50 miles north, it doesn't really answer the question of what everyone thinks about When they think about the Roanoke colony, why Croatoan was written on the fence post, why Raven was written on the tree, why they were there and how come with all these eyes and all this interest in this case that It literally dates back to the 16th century, what has it been like?

No one found even one of the remains of the 115 colonists who apparently just vanished into thin air, so it's a fascinating case with recent developments making it even more fascinating and I'd love to hear if you have any theories about what may have happened. . to the settlers to leave it in the comments so we can discuss it, that's how it will be. If you want to stay in touch with me, even contact me on Instagram. My username is John Ballin for 1/6. I also post a lot on tik-tok my name is mr. ball there and that will do it guys, until next time.

I'll talk to you soon.