Speaker 1: Oh man, guys, folks, friends and neighbors. In these crazy times,
Speaker 1: I think we all love taking a little bit of
Speaker 1: a break from the headlines and go it into you know,
Speaker 1: conspiracies of yesteryear, hidden history, paranormal stuff, things like that,
Speaker 1: right Krakatoa, Yeah, yeah, stuff that.
Speaker 2: Can't hurt of Oh my bad creatine. But agree like
Speaker 2: stuff that can't hurt us right now, right, It's it's mysterious.
Speaker 2: There's a mystery to be solved, but not going to
Speaker 2: affect us as we walk around drinking all this coffee.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: We yes, I do drink a lot of coffee too.
Speaker 2: Finally finished, I need more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's happening as soon as we roll the tape
Speaker 1: on what really happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, they call me Ben, and we
Speaker 1: are joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission
Speaker 1: Control Deck, and most importantly, you are you you are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff. They don't want you to
Speaker 1: know this. This is a weird one. We've been doing
Speaker 1: some hidden history recently, Matt.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have, and it's some of our favorite topics
Speaker 2: that we ever cover on the show. I think, personally
Speaker 2: for the two of us, am I speaking for you
Speaker 2: too much here? I feel like I feel like when
Speaker 2: we hit a historical mystery like this, I can see
Speaker 2: your gears turning and I can feel mine turning. And uh,
Speaker 2: this one is certainly no exception. This is a topic
Speaker 2: that I'm really surprised we haven't covered before in the past.
Speaker 1: I was surprised too. And it's funny because on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page, here's where it gets crazy. Today's topic was
Speaker 1: actually a subject of conversation. Did you see that?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, No, I didn't even look.
Speaker 1: Yes, here's where it gets crazy our Facebook community page. Hello,
Speaker 1: Maddie B. Maddie recently said, have they meaning us? Matt
Speaker 1: done a good episode about Roanoke and I like that.
Speaker 1: Maddie said, good, good, Yes, you qualify a.
Speaker 2: Good one about that yet well, and then John H
Speaker 2: came through and said, like Croatian Roanoke.
Speaker 1: So so I responded there and said we have not,
Speaker 1: but stay tuned for an upcoming episode. Hopefully it will
Speaker 1: be a good one. And this is that episode. We
Speaker 1: were working on it. We didn't want to spoil the surprise.
Speaker 1: We're not sure when this comes out, but we are
Speaker 1: finally doing an episode investigate the strange story of the
Speaker 1: Lost Colony of Roanoke. So everybody growing up in the US,
Speaker 1: here's some version of this story, typically in middle school, right. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like a middle school story that's spooky enough to
Speaker 1: get the attention of even the class clown.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and it's as you're learning your first learning
Speaker 2: about the British colonies within you know, in North America,
Speaker 2: and you start learning about a lot of these and
Speaker 2: you're going through you know, it's interesting stuff. It really is.
Speaker 2: When you think about the hardships, the genocide. There's like
Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy stuff that was happening at the time.
Speaker 2: But the mystery really hits when you start talking about Roanoke.
Speaker 1: Yes, a story that, depending on who you ask, has
Speaker 1: not been resolved even in these our modern days. So
Speaker 1: here are the facts. This tale really begins in fifteen
Speaker 1: when a gentleman named Sir Walter Raleigh makes a deal
Speaker 1: with Queen Elizabeth, the first to establish an English colony
Speaker 1: in you know, in North America.
Speaker 2: Right, And he was given a timeframe. It wasn't like
Speaker 2: just okay, you have carte blanche, go out there and
Speaker 2: just make a colony. He was given ten years to
Speaker 2: do it. And the whole concept here was that whatever
Speaker 2: is recovered, whatever's found once, you know, as this colony
Speaker 2: is being established, would be shared between Sir Walter and
Speaker 2: his people as well as it would be shared with
Speaker 2: him and the Crown essentially.
Speaker 1: And yeah, make no mistake, he's kind of working on commission.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, because that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: If they don't find anything, then all of that money, time,
Speaker 1: all his resources will have been for not And that
Speaker 1: would sound like a very risky endeavor unless we consider
Speaker 1: the other ulterior motive for the establishment of colonies in
Speaker 1: this part of the world, which was, of course it
Speaker 1: was a military application.
Speaker 2: There we go, because England and Great Britain they were
Speaker 2: fighting Spain as they were, you know, fighting other world
Speaker 2: powers a lot during those times.
Speaker 1: And this would give this would give sort of a beachhead,
Speaker 1: sort of a home away from home for English military
Speaker 1: and naval operations to be based at and Raleigh himself
Speaker 1: did not personally travel across the Atlantic to establish the colony.
Speaker 2: As we know, that would be a that is a
Speaker 2: treacherous journey.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, Yeah. And one of the myths that we
Speaker 1: have to bust, a misperception that a lot of people
Speaker 1: share about the so called lost Colony of Roanoke is
Speaker 1: the idea that these people just landed there randomly, came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, made some bad decisions, and disappeared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's what happens. There's a lot that leads up to this.
Speaker 1: There is a initial exploratory expedition. They sail in fifteen
Speaker 1: eighty four. They're not attempting to establish a permanent base
Speaker 1: of operations. They're not attempting to start a colony with families.
Speaker 1: These are due who are kind of scouting out a
Speaker 1: suitable location.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're literally location scouts. And that's what this whole
Speaker 2: first expedition was about.
Speaker 1: And they were successful. They found a small island they
Speaker 1: decided to call it Roanoke. It's located inside what are
Speaker 1: known as the Outer Banks. The Outer Banks are a
Speaker 1: long stream of these narrow islands that shelter half the
Speaker 1: coast of North Carolina, or what we call North Carolina today.
Speaker 2: If you look at a map from above, it looks
Speaker 2: as though it would just be the entire land mass
Speaker 2: edge basically, and that got flooded. That's what it looks
Speaker 2: like from a map.
Speaker 1: And Roanoke itself is pretty attractive to these dudes because
Speaker 1: as fertile soil, it has easily defensible positions. It's it's
Speaker 1: well wooded, there's also wildlife. The geography of the island
Speaker 1: is such that ships can anchor there safely, which is
Speaker 1: a huge deal, and be easily protected.
Speaker 2: But as was a common situation back in those times,
Speaker 2: as settlers from Eastern Lands came over to this area,
Speaker 2: these guys started making all kinds of enemies, especially with
Speaker 2: the indigenous peoples there. They charged members of one of
Speaker 2: the local tribes or one of the communities there, they
Speaker 2: charged them with theft, and they beheaded the chief of
Speaker 2: one of these groups, and they burned a village to
Speaker 2: the ground. And that's, you know, not not an initial
Speaker 2: way you make friends, right.
Speaker 1: Not a good look. No, And keep in mind they
Speaker 1: were doing this while they were also becoming increasingly reliant
Speaker 1: on the native population for food, yeah, so that's a
Speaker 1: terrible first impression. Sir Francis Drake happened to be pirating
Speaker 1: along the area and he found this exploratory group and
Speaker 1: he says, you know what, I'll give you a lift
Speaker 1: back to England. So that is the end of that
Speaker 1: first exploratory thing. They say we found The first expedition
Speaker 1: says we found a good place and the geography is fine.
Speaker 1: And then you know, the British say well, how's the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and they go, it's a little intense. Not gonna lie,
Speaker 1: a little intense.
Speaker 2: You know, we had a hand in the tensions for sure.
Speaker 1: And ahead and ahead and the tensions. So what they
Speaker 1: didn't know, you know, the phrase ships in the night right,
Speaker 1: we've all heard that in English. What they didn't know
Speaker 1: is that they were in a literal ships in the
Speaker 1: night situation. Because while Drake is sailing back to Europe
Speaker 1: with that first crew, with that first crew, there is
Speaker 1: a second ship that is sailing to what they called
Speaker 1: the New World. These two ships pass one another in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. The new group on that second ship, it's
Speaker 1: about one hundred men, and they they find this abandoned settlement.
Speaker 1: They live on the island for ten months, and at
Speaker 1: the end of the ten months, most of them returned
Speaker 1: to England, but they left a small garrison and probably
Speaker 1: about fifteen men on Rowano to keep the seat warm,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and to essentially, I guess, as a as
Speaker 2: a last defense of the area that they're currently controlling
Speaker 2: right now. This next group of fellows who ended up
Speaker 2: showing up on the island, they had no idea just
Speaker 2: how bad of a situation they were entering as far
Speaker 2: as you know, diplomatic relations with the indigenous peoples were going.
Speaker 2: So they, you know, unfortunately, also continued being uh pills.
Speaker 1: Let's say, Yeah, there were real pills.
Speaker 2: They're being real pills, real jerks themselves. And it should
Speaker 2: come as no surprise that these guys, the second group
Speaker 2: of people that went over to Roanoke, disappeared. They were
Speaker 2: never seen or heard from again.
Speaker 1: Fast forward fifteen eighty seven, around one hundred and seventeen
Speaker 1: one and fifteen one hundred and seventeen men, women and
Speaker 1: children arrive on the third expedition. They settle on Roanoke
Speaker 1: Island and what would later be called North Carolina. They
Speaker 1: found the skeletal remains of one of the fifteen soldiers
Speaker 1: from the earlier expedition, and that's it. We don't know
Speaker 1: what happened to the other fourteen. This third expedition had
Speaker 1: the best shot of the three. It was larger in
Speaker 1: terms of population and in terms of supplies, and they
Speaker 1: have better supplies too. They were led by a Roanoke veteran,
Speaker 1: a cartographer and artist named John White. This is also
Speaker 1: the first group to include substantial amount of women and children, so.
Speaker 2: A real chance of settling down and expanding the population
Speaker 2: right reproducing.
Speaker 1: And they attempted to reconcile with the native communities. They
Speaker 1: had mixed results because there was just too much bad blood.
Speaker 1: They managed to repair relations with one nearby tribe, Powatans
Speaker 1: living on nearby Croatan Island, but the other tribes in
Speaker 1: the area saot a hostile aloof distance. We hear you
Speaker 1: burn villages, You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The colonists were vastly outnumbered despite the size of their call,
Speaker 1: and they were terrified that the next small skirmish with
Speaker 1: any member of the native population could escalate, It could
Speaker 1: grow into an all out battle, and that battle would
Speaker 1: inevitably just based on the numbers be a massacre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, what does he do. Let's go
Speaker 2: ask the guy who was in charge here at least officially,
Speaker 2: Sir Walter Raleigh. So he gets in a ship and
Speaker 2: heads back to England to talk to Raleigh in person,
Speaker 2: because you know, if you have that kind of meeting
Speaker 2: in person, you could maybe convey a little better the
Speaker 2: fears and the stakes that are involved. Rather than sending
Speaker 2: a message somehow across the sea.
Speaker 1: You could also at this time avoid errors in communication.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, that would be. That's a huge factor here.
Speaker 1: So as weird as it sounds nowadays to say the
Speaker 1: guys sailed back across the Atlantic to just get in
Speaker 1: a room with Sir Walter Raleigh and talk to him
Speaker 1: at that time, we have to remember being able to
Speaker 1: have that conversation in instantly field answers to questions, because
Speaker 1: of course they're going to be follow up questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably the most efficient thing to do.
Speaker 2: It is almost inconceivable at this point with communication, you know,
Speaker 2: in the past hundreds of years being so immediate.
Speaker 1: Right, And he had to plan ahead. So John White said, look,
Speaker 1: we know things are not terrible yet, but they're not
Speaker 1: in the best position. You might have to relocate to
Speaker 1: survive while I'm gone, while I'm gaining favor and organizing
Speaker 1: a rescue mission. Essentially, so let's figure out symbols that
Speaker 1: we will leave, signs so that we will return, and
Speaker 1: if anything goes wrong, it'll be something that just we
Speaker 1: call in a will understand. He said, if you do
Speaker 1: move in my absence, carve your destination on this tree.
Speaker 1: You point out a specific tree, and if you're in trouble,
Speaker 1: also carve a Maltese cross. So he gets to England.
Speaker 1: He's got a good plan, and he finds that surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: time and distance have made the Empire's goals a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, they they've diverged. The Empire and the colonies
Speaker 1: have different goals. Now. The people in the colonies trying
Speaker 1: to survive, yes, people in the Empire try to win
Speaker 1: this war with Spain, and.
Speaker 2: So in the strategic position of you know, potentially Roanoak
Speaker 2: isn't a high priority anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, So John White shows up and says, hey, we
Speaker 1: need help and across the ocean and they say, all right,
Speaker 1: well we're we're really we're doing this Spain thing. Now,
Speaker 1: that's what this episode of our Our Empire is about
Speaker 1: we're spent. You're very much ab story right now. And
Speaker 1: this means that he doesn't return to Roanoke for three years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: three years, it's a long pause. But when he does
Speaker 1: return to Roanoke, he's got armed soldiers, he's got the
Speaker 1: supplies they need. He is ready. The cavalry, as they say,
Speaker 1: has arrived.
Speaker 2: Yes late, but it's arriving. And we'll tell you what
Speaker 2: happened right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So let's paint the picture. Let's speculate a little bit
Speaker 1: about what John White encountered when he disembarked. Imagine how
Speaker 1: strange it must have been for him to return to
Speaker 1: the settlement. His wife, is child, his son in law,
Speaker 1: his grandchild had all lived there and it's been three years.
Speaker 1: But the air is eerily quiet. There are no sounds
Speaker 1: of you know, someone clanging iron on a.
Speaker 2: Forge, wood being chopped somewhere in the distance.
Speaker 1: There's none of that, just the sounds of nature, the
Speaker 1: ocean and the empty wind. The houses were gone, they
Speaker 1: had been taken down. There was one thing he noticed,
Speaker 1: which was a roughly built fort surrounding the former settlement.
Speaker 1: And when we say, roughly built. It looked like it
Speaker 1: had been made in a hurry, Yeah, as a reaction
Speaker 1: to something. And then on a post he found one
Speaker 1: of two clues what was it?
Speaker 2: They were carvings, first the word crow a toin so
Speaker 2: croa t a n. And then on another tree he
Speaker 2: found the carving croo and it was not in the
Speaker 2: places where he was expecting it to be, right.
Speaker 1: I believe. So the cannons and boats were supposed to
Speaker 1: be at the bay nearby, they were gone. White had
Speaker 1: buried a couple of chests earlier with drawings, maps, and books.
Speaker 1: He found these, but they were torn apart. They had
Speaker 1: been ruined at some point over the past three years
Speaker 1: by the weather. He found no bones, he found no corpses,
Speaker 1: found no evidence, one way or another to show what
Speaker 1: had happened to the colonists, other than of course that fortress,
Speaker 1: the fort they had built around themselves. So it appears
Speaker 1: that sometime between fifteen eighty seven and fifteen ninety one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen souls of the Roanoke Colony had simply disappeared.
Speaker 2: And our big question today is what happened to them?
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. So when we explored this
Speaker 1: top we find that there are some people who are
Speaker 1: convinced it's been solved. The problem is that not everybody agrees.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: That's why technically this still remains a mystery today with
Speaker 1: no shortage of what we might call conspiracy theories from
Speaker 1: in your earlier age, from before the term conspiracy theory existed.
Speaker 1: So if we ask ourselves what could have happened, we
Speaker 1: have to note it looks like they didn't leave under duress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the fortress thing alone would lead you to
Speaker 2: believe that they were trying to protect themselves somehow and quickly. Right.
Speaker 2: But because you don't have the evidence of bones or
Speaker 2: you know, anything that would show like a body somewhere,
Speaker 2: doesn't show that they were leaving under someone either forcing
Speaker 2: them with physical action, right.
Speaker 1: Or I would say, equally importantly, the Maltese cross is nice.
Speaker 1: That was supposed to be as a signal of trouble.
Speaker 1: And now we have to ask ourselves we've been thrown
Speaker 1: around the words. So they carved out the word croatoin, right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes I say crootin, but I think it's just a
Speaker 1: mnemonic plot twist that's happened to me along the way
Speaker 1: when I was learning this.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure my brain read Croatin.
Speaker 2: Earlier when we were discussing the Here's where it gets
Speaker 2: Crazy thing, it saw Croatan, but it read Croatian. So
Speaker 2: apologies for that. Everybody has been like raising their fists
Speaker 2: in the air this entire episode.
Speaker 1: I'm aware now this is plot twisted. There's going to
Speaker 1: be a second Here's where it gets crazy, and it's
Speaker 1: all about how they went to Croatia. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: about it. People, No, So the here here's what you
Speaker 1: need to know. So Croaton is a barrier island, another
Speaker 1: island on these outer banks that you described earlier, Matt.
Speaker 1: Now it's called Hatteras Island. It's about thirty five miles
Speaker 1: south of Roanoke, the thirty five nautical miles. It's called
Speaker 1: Croton because it's home of the Crootan people, the native community,
Speaker 1: and they this is important, they were friendly to English colonists.
Speaker 1: So based on that, it seems logical to say if
Speaker 1: the colonists had run out of food on Roanoke, or
Speaker 1: if there had been some maybe a problem with sanitation
Speaker 1: or disease or something that made it unlivable, it would
Speaker 1: make sense for them to go to the friendly communities, right,
Speaker 1: And John White knew that. That's the thing about history.
Speaker 1: Every time we relate these tales and these narratives, we
Speaker 1: have to remember that people born in living hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of years ago were just as intelligent as the
Speaker 1: people you meet today. That is both a compliment and
Speaker 1: a criticism, you know what I mean. They weren't dumb,
Speaker 1: They just had different tools.
Speaker 2: So and we're not dumb either, we just have different tools.
Speaker 1: Juries up for debate, you know. I think it's up
Speaker 1: to future historians. But John White. I say all that
Speaker 1: about intelligence because John White and his crew and the
Speaker 1: captain he had hired understood that the next logical move
Speaker 1: would be to go to the other islands. Yet they
Speaker 1: never searched that island. John White never searched that island,
Speaker 1: even though his family had disappeared.
Speaker 2: And for minor issues. Right, the weather was a factor
Speaker 2: preventing them from going over to that island. And they
Speaker 2: also lost an anchor at some point in one of
Speaker 2: their ships, and it made it, you know, at least
Speaker 2: in their minds and in reality, almost impossible to safely
Speaker 2: get over there because they've got all these barrier islands
Speaker 2: across this whole section. You've got pieces of land that
Speaker 2: are up high enough to where or if you don't
Speaker 2: know where those islands are, you're going to run your
Speaker 2: ship on something, probably capsize, if you know, not completely
Speaker 2: destroy your ship.
Speaker 1: And you have to be able to land or send
Speaker 1: You have to be able to keep chiefly harbor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even to send out a launch boat. So John White
Speaker 1: is not able to investigate, and he hasked to return
Speaker 1: to England. There are later expeditions that claim to search
Speaker 1: for the lost colony. They are either incredibly unsuccessful, they
Speaker 1: profoundly fail, or they are undertaken with an ulterior motive.
Speaker 1: There were people who said they were searching for this
Speaker 1: lost colony, but really they were conducting acts of piracy,
Speaker 1: or they were trying to, you know, move some product
Speaker 1: of one sort or another. In fact, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: the Jamestown Colony was established way later in sixteen oh
Speaker 1: seven that there were actual, semi successful, good searches to
Speaker 1: discover the fate of the lost colonists in Roanoke. Here's
Speaker 1: the other thing. Now, not only we were talking about
Speaker 1: the colonists, right, and the tragedy, the unanswered questions that
Speaker 1: are left in the wake of their disappearance. But we
Speaker 1: have to remember the colony itself disappeared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the buildings, Like how crazy is that the buildings
Speaker 2: were taken down, So you know, if you're heading if
Speaker 2: you were to head out to that island, even if
Speaker 2: you're John White and you know essentially where everything is,
Speaker 2: the evidence is gone save for that fortress, right.
Speaker 1: And White and other members of the leadership of the
Speaker 1: colony were not super great at keeping records. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's there are a couple of reasons for this,
Speaker 1: so we'll get into in a moment. But they were
Speaker 1: so bad at keeping records that people never knew the
Speaker 1: exact location or whereabouts of that colony. There were numerous
Speaker 1: digs in the intervening centuries that have failed to produce
Speaker 1: evidence of the lost colony. Someone discovered remnants of that
Speaker 1: settlement we mentioned from fifteen eighty five, but there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of the lost colony that's ever been found. And
Speaker 1: one of the big problems is with this is that
Speaker 1: the primary sources, the contemporaneous accounts, contradict one another. They
Speaker 1: don't agree. So according to John White, the second settlement,
Speaker 1: the one that's lost, should have been located near the
Speaker 1: north end of the island, but there was an affidavit
Speaker 1: from a Spanish sailor in fifteen eighty nine that said
Speaker 1: the settlement was actually near the center of the island,
Speaker 1: where they had stationed some cannons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it would make sense for there to be
Speaker 2: small you know, small not in camp cons but basically
Speaker 2: cells of the settlement would be, you know, in various
Speaker 2: places depending on what you're going to use them for.
Speaker 2: If you're going to be fishing, you're going to have
Speaker 2: some stuff that's closer to the water. If you're you know,
Speaker 2: protecting something, it would make sense to put it towards
Speaker 2: the center of the island. That all makes sense. The
Speaker 2: problem is if you're going to do an historic dig,
Speaker 2: you kind of have to do the whole island then
Speaker 2: at this point to really like figure it out. So
Speaker 2: there were a couple other things that were found. There
Speaker 2: was an old well and one small cannon that was
Speaker 2: found near the bay area, not San Francisco in this case,
Speaker 2: the Roanoke Bay area, and that was basically in support
Speaker 2: of the deposition that was given by that Spanish salor.
Speaker 2: But then some some historians now believe that the what
Speaker 2: was it The fifteen eighty seven settlement actually is underwater.
Speaker 1: Right right, that centuries of have submerged the settlement, and
Speaker 1: that we should be looking under the waves for it
Speaker 1: instead of under the ground. Ultimately, right now, no one
Speaker 1: is sure what happened to the Roanoke colonists. Through again,
Speaker 1: no one agrees on their theory about what happens. When
Speaker 1: it comes to the story of the lost colony. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of theories, we just don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of hard evidence. So let's just quickly go to
Speaker 1: the initial theory. What did Governor John White think? So
Speaker 1: he is the first person who officially discovered the colonists
Speaker 1: have disappeared. He reports everything he sees in a letter.
Speaker 1: He says, there are no bones like those that they
Speaker 1: found in the fifteen eighty five colony where they found
Speaker 1: the remnants of that one soldier. And Governor White said,
Speaker 1: the houses have been taken down. They had not been destroyed,
Speaker 1: they had not been burned. They have been disassembled in
Speaker 1: theory to be reassembled somewhere who knows. Who knows?
Speaker 2: That would be the only thing that makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: But let's continue.
Speaker 1: In White's opinion, they moved and we have the quote
Speaker 1: here fifty miles into the main meaning that they have
Speaker 1: moved inland into the forest of North Carolina. Proper. Historians
Speaker 1: like this idea for numerous reasons over the years. But
Speaker 1: when they get to when you get to the part
Speaker 1: of the narrative where you say why did they move inland?
Speaker 1: What happened to them afterwards, that's when you see more
Speaker 1: and more and more debate. We're going to pause for
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor and then we'll return with
Speaker 1: more theories after the break, and.
Speaker 2: We're back now. Just let's I want to have a
Speaker 2: quick comment on there about this concept to the perhaps
Speaker 2: the colonists moved inward towards the main The only thing
Speaker 2: I would put forward here is that food had always
Speaker 2: been an issue in this settlement. And if you are moving,
Speaker 2: you know, to the mainland and not an island that's
Speaker 2: so separated from probably populations of certain mammals that are
Speaker 2: walking around and birds and other things, it would make
Speaker 2: sense that they would move inland to have a better
Speaker 2: food source. There are a lot of problems here. The
Speaker 2: main one would be that the indigenous populations may not
Speaker 2: like that very much. That they're encroaching in that way.
Speaker 2: But well, let's get into all this stuff, because it
Speaker 2: really is conceivable overall that the colonists met a much
Speaker 2: less violent fate. Then maybe you would think, you know,
Speaker 2: having all of their stuff gone and just disappearing, because
Speaker 2: the first thing, at least I think of, is, oh, something,
Speaker 2: most foul occurred here. But perhaps that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Right. The Jamestown colonists when they when they conducted that
Speaker 1: search sixteen hundreds, they surnounted a couple of different parties
Speaker 1: to hunt down members of the lost Colony, and it
Speaker 1: became a common thing, standard operating procedure for them to
Speaker 1: question any members of native communities when they may contact.
Speaker 1: It was one of the things they always asked them about,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, how's the weather? You know,
Speaker 1: how is the fishing good? Have you seen any people
Speaker 1: who look like us? And if so, what's what's their deal?
Speaker 1: So we're paraphrasing some of the people that these colonists
Speaker 1: talked to said, there are settlements further down the coast
Speaker 1: with people who look like you, and they have two
Speaker 1: story thatched roof houses that look like and you know
Speaker 1: from the descriptions Europeans would think, well, that sounds like
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff we would build, And then other
Speaker 1: groups told of nearby tribes that could read English and
Speaker 1: dressed in a similar method manner to Europeans. The most
Speaker 1: I think the most dramatic report in the record is
Speaker 1: the story that someone cited a child who is dressed
Speaker 1: in the manner of a native group, and this child
Speaker 1: had blonde hair and was fair skinned. So they thought
Speaker 1: maybe maybe something terrible happens, like maybe a disease or
Speaker 1: some sort of natural disaster, and that due to that,
Speaker 1: the surviving members of the colony were adopted or assimilated
Speaker 1: into a native population. I do want to pause while
Speaker 1: we're talking native populations. So the island is crootoin the
Speaker 1: community is Croatan Croatan. Yeah, yeah, okay, So that's that.
Speaker 1: If you hear if you hear us of doing some
Speaker 1: word juggling, if you hear me doing that, it's just
Speaker 1: my mind's playing tricks on me.
Speaker 2: And if you if you hear me say Croatian, is
Speaker 2: just because I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Still, we don't know. We have to hold out for
Speaker 1: that theory. So this this mention of assimilation from European
Speaker 1: survivors into a native American community has doubtlessly, doubtlessly had
Speaker 1: a ring of familiarity to some of our fellow listeners,
Speaker 1: and if you're from the area, if you're from North Carolina,
Speaker 1: then you're very familiar with what we're about to say,
Speaker 1: which is, of course the story of the Lumbe l
Speaker 1: U m b E. These reports from the from the
Speaker 1: early days of the Jamestown investigations to the modern day
Speaker 1: is to corroborate one of the most popular theories about
Speaker 1: what became of these colonists, that they assimilated into these tribes,
Speaker 1: and the idea is that over the core of multiple generations,
Speaker 1: intermarriage between these groups would produce a different, distinct group
Speaker 1: that had elements from both communities, and this group is
Speaker 1: called the Lumbee tribe by people who believe this theory.
Speaker 1: The Lumbee tribe is native to North Carolina, but according
Speaker 1: to the stories, no one can really pin down their origin,
Speaker 1: and you can see a number of different theories about
Speaker 1: their origin with varying degrees of credibility. But they have
Speaker 1: an oral.
Speaker 2: History, right yeah own. That oral history actually links them
Speaker 2: to Roanoak settlers, or at least two aspects of those settlers,
Speaker 2: so that oral tradition is supported by some of the
Speaker 2: surnames within the tribe, which is really interesting, and it
Speaker 2: was the tribe itself was unique because several of the members,
Speaker 2: a lot of the members could speak English. And then
Speaker 2: if you again we're talking about the surnames, you look
Speaker 2: at the family names of some of the Roanoke Colonists,
Speaker 2: You've got people like Hyatt Taylor Dial. The Lumbee tribe
Speaker 2: members or at least members of the Lumbee tribe shared
Speaker 2: these names as early as the seventeen hundreds. I think
Speaker 2: seventeen nineteen is the first date that we're aware of
Speaker 2: there and other settlers who would come through make their way,
Speaker 2: you know, and interact with these tribes, they would, you know,
Speaker 2: they would be pretty astonished that these groups of people
Speaker 2: had gray eyes. Several times they would speak English, and
Speaker 2: there was even It's really interesting because even if you're
Speaker 2: if you're talking to members within the group, or if
Speaker 2: you have reports from members within the Lumbee tribe, they
Speaker 2: cannot come to a full conclusion on whether or not
Speaker 2: there was a true link to the Roanoke Colonists.
Speaker 1: Right, that's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's come to be called a thing. It's been
Speaker 2: called the Lumbye connection.
Speaker 1: Which is I love that as the title of something,
Speaker 1: you know, the Lumby connection, the sequel to the French connection.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yeah, it remains intriguing because if that is,
Speaker 1: if it is true, if there's sands to this theory,
Speaker 1: then the Roanoke colonists aren't lost. Their genes are still
Speaker 1: around today in Robeson County, North Carolina. And if you
Speaker 1: are listening, you are a member of a group like
Speaker 1: this Lumby or related communities of which there are several.
Speaker 1: We would love to know your take on this, especially
Speaker 1: with the advent of DNA testing, which dramatically changed the
Speaker 1: conversation around the origin of the Malunging community. There's another
Speaker 1: set of theories which says that the Roanoke settlers fell
Speaker 1: victim not to a Native American community, but to the
Speaker 1: Spanish Empire, because the Spanish had a settlement just down
Speaker 1: the coast in Florida, right, And we know that the
Speaker 1: Spanish forces in the West Indies were aware that there
Speaker 1: were English colonists around. They weren't happy about it, but they.
Speaker 2: Knew, yeah, exactly. And there's actually a tale here that
Speaker 2: was told by Darby Gland, GLA and Dee. This was
Speaker 2: a Roanoake settler. He left the fifteen eighty seven expedition
Speaker 2: after it set ashore in Puerto Rico to take on supply.
Speaker 2: So they were going to stop in Puerto Rico pick
Speaker 2: up supplies, right. He later reported that he told Spanish
Speaker 2: officials there when he was making this transaction in Puerto
Speaker 2: Rico about the Roanoake settlement exactly where it was, almost
Speaker 2: as in, I don't know, an act of espionage.
Speaker 1: So that's the thing, right when we talk about when
Speaker 1: we talk about the bad record keeping a student, listeners
Speaker 1: will notice that we also pointed out John White was
Speaker 1: a professional cartographer. Yeah, so why would a professional map
Speaker 1: maker do such a pissport job of you know, mapping things.
Speaker 1: It probably was not because of incompetence. It was more
Speaker 1: likely that this vagueness was a matter of state security, hmm,
Speaker 1: So that the Empire couldn't find out, you know, the
Speaker 1: Spanish Empire forces couldn't find out about the colony and
Speaker 1: then attack it before the British could send someone over
Speaker 1: across the ocean.
Speaker 2: It really does make you game out the whole scenario
Speaker 2: when you think about it in that light. Yeah, as
Speaker 2: as a counter intelligence act of cartography. Counterintelligence cartography. That's
Speaker 2: a new thing.
Speaker 1: That's good. I like it.
Speaker 2: Oh man, dude, that's so crazy because what if it
Speaker 2: was never located there ever, Oh, right on that island.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you know, also, I want to say, the
Speaker 1: idea of a a renegade cartographer is fantastic, mister white
Speaker 1: renegade cartographer. Yes, it's con rogue. There are other theories
Speaker 1: that the colonists were innocent bystanders in a entering in
Speaker 1: media arrests into a greater conflict between rival native communities.
Speaker 1: There's an anthropologist John Hopkins University named Lee Miller who
Speaker 1: says the colonists wandered into a violent shift of the
Speaker 1: balance of power amongst the tribes that lived inland because
Speaker 1: Roanoke is geographically located in the crux of what was
Speaker 1: at the time intense socio political friction between two groups.
Speaker 1: There was the Secotan, who were you know, who had
Speaker 1: dominion over Roanoke. There's another group, the Chowanooke, who controlled
Speaker 1: the waterways that were nearby. And again, you know, not
Speaker 1: Native speakers, so we're not intentionally mispronouncing the names natives
Speaker 1: that the colonists were friendly with began to lose control
Speaker 1: over the area and native communities that were hostile to
Speaker 1: the settlers, again with pretty good reason to be. They
Speaker 1: took over the area, they gained more control. So before
Speaker 1: the Jamestown colonists arrived, or maybe right around the same time,
Speaker 1: either around the same time or right before the Poetan
Speaker 1: had attacked and destroyed the Chesapeake.
Speaker 2: Hmm, waits then that tribe, is it the Powatan Polatan?
Speaker 2: That's how familiar to me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it should that is where that is where the
Speaker 1: famous Pocahontas is from. Oh yeah, it's not all paint
Speaker 1: with painting with all the colors of the wind.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They they very much wanted to kill the Chesapeake. So
Speaker 1: relationships between the English colonists and the Paletan were let's
Speaker 1: say cold, sure. But even then, even with that, the
Speaker 1: English forces were able to get a little bit of
Speaker 1: information about what happened to the Roanoke colony, or they
Speaker 1: were able to learn something. Who knows if it was true.
Speaker 1: If the Roanoke colonists had gone inland in the midst
Speaker 1: of this conflict, then the men would have been killed,
Speaker 1: the women and children probably would have been captured as slaves.
Speaker 1: And if they had been captured as slaves, they would
Speaker 1: have been traded along established roots that span the US
Speaker 1: coast from Virginia to Georgia. And this is important because
Speaker 1: if we look at the timeline, the idea would be
Speaker 1: that the somewhere in that intervening three years, the Roanoke
Speaker 1: colonists assimilate to another tribe. But then that tribe is attacked,
Speaker 1: and when that tribe is attacked, the attacking tribe doesn't
Speaker 1: care if the people look kind of different, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, It's rules of war at that point.
Speaker 2: Jeez. Well, so those are some of the big theories, right,
Speaker 2: And with as those theories were being generated, and as
Speaker 2: they continued, you know, for decades and centuries, people in
Speaker 2: the more modern day we have been trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: prove that one of these is true, right, or at
Speaker 2: least disprove a few of these. We're scientific methoding this thing,
Speaker 2: you guys. And you know, despite over a century of
Speaker 2: going on that island, digging all over the place, trying
Speaker 2: to find some remnant of the colony that would show us,
Speaker 2: like some tiny clue, a little flashlight in the dark
Speaker 2: that would show us this picture here, we have really
Speaker 2: found nothing right now.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, archaeologists working for the Colonial Williamsburg
Speaker 1: Foundation in Virginia found what they're pretty sure is a
Speaker 1: workshop from the fifteen eighty five expedition. That's why a
Speaker 1: guy named Joaquim Gans had tested rocks for precious metals.
Speaker 1: Other people at the workshop studied plants to figure out
Speaker 1: their properties. They studied tobacco, things like that, how can
Speaker 1: we make money off this? What can be used for
Speaker 1: gons is interesting because he was a Bohemian expert. Is
Speaker 1: the first recorded Jewish person in colonial America, and he's
Speaker 1: also the first Bohemian in colonial America. This workshop looked
Speaker 1: a lot like an alchemist out you know, outfit or establishment.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, they found crucibles, you know crucibles right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, classic classic alchemical paraphernalia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, pharmaceutical let's call them jars. Glassware was littered
Speaker 2: all across the floor. There were bricks that were probably
Speaker 2: used or seemed to be have been used in a
Speaker 2: special furnace situation for you know, manipulating and some of
Speaker 2: the ingredients we're talking about here. The layout itself resembled
Speaker 2: those of sixteenth century woodcuts that we that we have
Speaker 2: of these German alchemical workshops that were kind of describing
Speaker 2: here where it looks as though, if you know, you
Speaker 2: took one of these woodcuts, if you could, if you
Speaker 2: could enter it somehow and be inside the area of
Speaker 2: the woodcut, and then just destroyed all the stuff that
Speaker 2: you saw, yeah, and let it sit there for a
Speaker 2: long time. That's what they think they found.
Speaker 1: I see. So now, officially, as of the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: experts have only found the remains of that workshop and
Speaker 1: an earthen fort that may have been built at a
Speaker 1: later day and time. Diggs conducted near this earthwork. The
Speaker 1: fort we just mentioned in the eighteen nineties and nineteen
Speaker 1: forties didn't really give us a bunch of stuff to
Speaker 1: go on. They don't really change our understanding or help
Speaker 1: it evolve. Excavations continue in the modern day. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: an archaeologist named Eric Klingelhoffer and as vice president for
Speaker 1: research at the nonprofit First Colony Foundation in Durham, said,
Speaker 1: I firmly believe that our program of re excavation will
Speaker 1: provide answers to the vexing questions that past field work
Speaker 1: has left us. I love that quote, so, I mean
Speaker 1: it's good. You know, they're pretty open about the fact
Speaker 1: that they are going to return to some previous excavations.
Speaker 1: Maybe improvements and technology will help us, will help us
Speaker 1: find things we missed the first time.
Speaker 2: That's the returning to the moon kind.
Speaker 1: Of speak, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to
Speaker 1: the mooners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all these vexing questions about the dark side of
Speaker 2: the Moon.
Speaker 1: The other problem is that it may be too late.
Speaker 1: There may be an expiration date on discovering the settlement,
Speaker 1: and that expiration date may have passed. Some geologists believe
Speaker 1: it is vanished under the waves. Like you said earlier.
Speaker 1: Matt JP Walsh from the University of North Carolina says
Speaker 1: that recent studies suggests shifting currents and rising waters inundated
Speaker 1: the site in the past couple of cent trees. He
Speaker 1: estimates the island's north end again one of the locations.
Speaker 2: Are purported locations.
Speaker 1: From John White. He estimates to the north end of
Speaker 1: the islands lost about seven hundred and fifty meters in
Speaker 1: the past four hundred years, and their currents and hurricanes
Speaker 1: could bury any artifacts. But not everybody buys this explanation.
Speaker 2: No, there's a guy who has a wonderful name named
Speaker 2: Guy Prentice. It just feels right, feel it feels like
Speaker 2: a play on Apprentice, But it's Guy Apprentice. He's his
Speaker 2: archaeologist from NPS's Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee. And we've
Speaker 2: got a quote from him here. He says, if you
Speaker 2: look at the maps from the seventeen hundreds, the island's
Speaker 2: geography has not changed much. I just don't buy that
Speaker 2: a couple of thousand yards are gone. So he's estimating,
Speaker 2: you know, again at seven and fifty meters. It's it's
Speaker 2: a lot. That's a lot of that would just be gone.
Speaker 2: And I understand why Guy Prnus would say, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't buy it. However, it becomes a matter of kind
Speaker 2: of who you believe and bearing out the science, because
Speaker 2: you'd have to figure out exactly how much you know,
Speaker 2: how do you even if you've got two experts that
Speaker 2: are competing in that way on belief about where the
Speaker 2: water has gone on this island and how much water
Speaker 2: has actually approached the you know, the center of the
Speaker 2: island itself, and how far you realize that, oh, something
Speaker 2: is wrong here. We don't have enough data or something,
Speaker 2: because we should be able to have an exact answer
Speaker 2: to that question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's strange because according to a couple of
Speaker 1: different tests for various theories, the Lumbye DNA may not
Speaker 1: be itself native American, maybe European and African. This genetic
Speaker 1: testing can always always runs the risk of leaving people
Speaker 1: with more questions than answers. And now we're looking at
Speaker 1: the use of things like magnetometers, ground penetrating radar, things
Speaker 1: that people just didn't have earlier, and of course their investigations.
Speaker 1: So it is completely possible that we may be able
Speaker 1: to reconstruct the order of events that led to the
Speaker 1: disappearance of the colonists at Roano. And that's our classic
Speaker 1: episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
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