The Colony of Roanoke’s Mysterious Disappearance | The UnXplained (Season 3)

fort raleigh national historic site north carolina more than 400 years ago this was the site of a

colony

called

roanoke

the first english settlement in north america

roanoke

is known as the lost

colony

because it was

mysterious

ly abandoned in 1590 and the settlers disappeared without a trace The lost colony remains this mystery that is at the very heart of the origin of our nation. People remain fascinated by Roanoke because we know so little about the place. We know what happened at Jamestown. We know what happened in Plymouth. But Roanoke is this mystery because not. I don't know what happened when we think about the founding of the United States of America, we think about it in this pretty linear way where the colonists showed up, they settled, they moved to the American West and it really turns out that there were a series of false starts. on how this country began and one of them was the colony of Roanoke.

This was a group of people who showed up and were ready to settle, but what happened to that colony is one of the great unanswered questions of American history. What perhaps happened to the Roanoke settlers? The answer can be found by examining the events of the late 16th century that led to its fateful demise in the 1580s. England was a very small, poor, struggling island that really wanted to play the game of colonizing America because that is where there was the money. The English were looking at the Spanish ships that were returning loaded with gold and various products of their empire, if you will, in Mexico, South America, Florida and of course that made the Spanish very powerful, essentially it was a case of if not We found ours. source of wealth in this new world, we could be invaded by our enemies.

In 1587, an English cartographer named John White was commissioned to found a new colony on Roanoke Island, which had been claimed by a British expedition to the new world two years ago. before. After an arduous two-month journey across the white Atlantic Ocean and 117 settlers landed on Roanoke Island, the people who chose to accompany us on this ill-fated expedition were middle-class people from London, so they were eager to find new lands. because to have land in England meant everything that gave you status, but they knew that they needed more supplies and more colonists to succeed and prosper, so John White decided to return to England to get the necessary supplies and colonists only on August 25 1587.

Three months after first arriving in Roanoke, John White set sail for England. He planned to return with help in less than six months, but a series of conflicts with the Spanish navy would delay White's return mission for three long years in August. 1590 John White returns to Roanoke Island, they anchor offshore and when they arrive it is dark and it is too late to go ashore but John White is happy because he sees a fire in the distance and assumes that the settlers are there waiting for him, maybe they have even seen it. his ship and lit a bonfire to guide him the next morning, White came ashore expecting to find the settlers there to welcome him, but to his surprise there was no sign of them, the entire settlement was completely abandoned.

John White returns to Roanoke but there's no sign of anyone and he finds that all the houses have been torn down and in their place is a very, very well built defensible fort, so it's a bit of a mystery to have this new fort that wasn't there in the first place. 1587 When he last saw them and the place is deserted, where did they go? Finally, John White found a cryptic clue to the settlers' whereabouts. He found the word cruel tone

mysterious

ly carved on a wooden post. John White told the settlers when he left in 1587 that if they were to leave the settlement and they were to leave a secret token as he called it to know where to find them and this seemed to be the answer here was proatown carved in the post parole period It was what we call today Hatteras, an island about 50 miles south is also the name of the Native American tribe that lived on the island, but when John White prepared to set sail to find the settlers, a storm hit his ship and forced him to return to England.

Unfortunately, John White was never able to return to the new world to search for the lost settlers, but in recent years archaeologists have carried out extensive excavations to try to solve this 400-year-old mystery. Archaeologists have been excavating what was called proatoen at Hatteras and have found some notable evidence. The first most important piece of evidence found was a gold ring that was made in Elizabethan times. This was big news because it seemed to indicate the possibility that at least one of the settlers had been on the island of Croata and then another. The competing team was digging on Hatter's Island and what they found was really intriguing: they actually discovered the hilt of an Elizabethan-era sword that was found in a Native American village.

It now remains to be seen whether or not this is something that belonged to a lost settler. It is possible that some survived long enough to have a family and that there would have been assimilation with the Croatians and yet considering how much archeology has been done, we have no skeletons, where they are, that is a mystery if we had found scattered corpses or signs obvious. of a siege or an attack that would be the response we need we have this Croatian word but did the people really get there? Where did they go? What happened to this group of settlers?

It is the ambiguity that really keeps this legend alive. It's hard to imagine. that an entire colony housing more than 100 people could simply disappear into thin air. Did the Roanoke settlers simply decide to move elsewhere or was there a darker reason behind the

disappearance

?