Roanoke: The Secrets of the Lost ColonyC1 

It is a wonder at times how the United States ever came to be. Given the trouble that colonies had with those pesky natives not wanting to give up the land of their forefathers, unfamiliar weather conditions, and, of course, when whole colonies would just up and vanish. The latter happened less often than the others, but it was still enough that any sane person would think twice before deciding to board that ship from Merry Old England to the unfamiliar, savage-ridden, colony-eating land known as the Americas. Must have been the promise of owning your own land, gold, silver and all the savage scalpings and corn that was the selling point. Still, just how could anyone decide to brave the seas after what happened to the Roanoke colony?

The tale of Roanoke is not really a happy one and it would appear that the colony was doomed from the start. Several times the spot, that was then in the Virginia territory but would later become North Carolina, failed to be colonized only for the very last attempt to be the losing of a colony that made up over a hundred people, including the very first English child born in America. Some could argue that it was poor planning on behalf of those who set out to make the settlement. Roanoke was to be a colony established in the name of the Queen and the country of England by Sir Walter Raleigh. He owned the rights to set up a colony in that area though he, like more rich people, hired others to go about doing that for him. The colony had dark intentions from the start with the plans of making it a launching point with which the English could attack and raid the Spanish colonies and ships. Negative thoughts and intentions seemed to have been the cause of possible bad karma, for the mission suffered a mishap before they could even make it to shore. Hitting a shoal on the outer banks and losing a good size of their stored foods, the seventy-five battle-tried and tested men were already off to a great start. Perhaps sending a group of veterans to establish a colony, even if it was going to be used for military purposes was not the best idea. Here are these war-trained individuals, being taken out of the war that was currently going on so that they could play house and work on some unknown land for the possibility of hitting it big. Sounds like an equation for disaster, and as it turns out, it was – well, to some degree.

So when one of the local Native American tribes supposedly ‘stole’ a cup made of silver, what should have been a rather civil matter turned into a blood bath. The whole village was burned to the ground, its supplies taken and their chief burned alive. So here were the English once again off to a great start in making the people of America love them. Following this incident, the men returned back home to England when the promised help never came – only, it did come after they bartered some passage on another ship back home. Just one of the reasons we can be grateful for the invention of cell phones, because stuff like this would not happen. People would not just ‘miss’ one another - dropping a line to let people know they were on their way would have kept them from leaving and possibly changed the end result for the colonies to follow.

Following that debacle, a second group was sent out to try, yet again, to settle this piece of stubborn land in the name of the Queen and England. This one seemed to be off to a better start when the leader John White re-initiated a partnership with the Croatan tribes and even tried to make nice with some tribes that his predecessor had attacked. The latter did not go over so well, and a man was even killed by that tribe while out looking for crabs by himself. Scared now and wanting some support from their homeland, John White returned home at the urging of the others to try and get some assistance. It would be another three years before he saw his family again as it seemed that fate wished to keep him there in England and away from his family in the Americas.

When he finally returned home, it was to a completely empty settlement, not one person left and a veritable ghost town standing there untouched. No one is exactly sure what became of them and several speculations and theories have been formulated. The most common is that the people were near death when the Croatans took them in, feeling sorry for them, and the colonists were basically assimilated into that tribe. Some say that they died at sea trying to get back home. Research using modern technology and DNA mapping are trying to prove the former of the two, given its likelihood because of other historical accounts. To this day, Roanoke is a favorite ghost story and a piece of American history that will live on for generations to come.