After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Lost Colony of Roanoke: the Untold Story

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

The lost colonists left behind one clue, the word "Croatoan" carved into a tree. Who were the Croatans? What were their lives like? How can we see this whole story differently if we examine it from their perspective?Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney are joined today by Professor Robbie Richardson, author of The Savage and Modern Self: North American Indians in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture.You can now watch After Dark, including this episode, on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitThis episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Freddy Chick. The senior producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like After Dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And we are returning in this episode to the Lost Colony of Roanoke, but this time we're looking at it from a bit of a different angle. To set the scene, Anthony is going to take us right there.

In 1590, three years after he had left to get help, John White, leader of the colonists of Roanoke, finally returned to Roanoke Island and to the colony he was supposed to be building. Or rather, returned to what was left of it. All the shelters were knocked down, detritus strewn everywhere, no sign of life. His daughter and granddaughter had been among those John White had left there three long years ago, but where were they now? He searched desperately for a message,

a clue to what happened, and he found one. A single word carved into a trunk. C-R-O-A-T-O-A-N. Croatoan. That was all. One word. Now, let's think about this word and what it tells us. People have suggested that the colonists died of hunger or disease or war.

But the word they left behind wasn't starvation or the name of a disease or a mention of bloodshed. No, instead, they write Crotone, which was the name of a people and a place they lived. It is a reminder that at its heart, the lost colony of Roanoke is a story of encounter between English people and indigenous people. If we want to unpack the mystery that surrounds Roanoke, it is this encounter between two completely different ways of imagining the world that we should look. What was life like for these people of Roanoke?

How did the English see them? And how did they see the lost colonists of Roanoke? Hello and welcome back to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. And last episode we were talking to Dr. Misha Ewen about Virginia and Eleanor Dare, who were colonists in Roanoke and who in the century since have had layers of myth added to them for various purposes. This episode, however, we are going to focus on the Algonquin people whose land the colonists were on. Theirs is a story that is fundamental to understanding what happened to Roanoke, but it's a story that's often

stereotyped and skipped over, erased in the archive. Our guest to help us through this history today is Professor Robbie Richardson of the University of Princeton. Robbie studies the interaction between Indigenous and European cultures and he's the author of The Savage and Modern South North American Indians in 18th century British Literature and Culture. Robbie, I have to say, when I was doing my PhD, your book was so exciting. It had just come out and it still sits pride of place on my shelf. So thank you very much for that. And thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. We are really happy to have you. Let's begin with a fundamental but quite simple question of who were the Croatoans? We get this word carved into supposedly one of the posts at Roanoke once the colonists

have disappeared. Can you give us an overview of who they were and where they fit into Native American culture, the landscape, who are they, are they a distinct group? Our sources for accessing who the Croatoans are, you know, fraught, obviously, because all that we really have are English documents. But we can piece together who they were through related groups around. And we can say, obviously, with certainty, that they were an Eastern Algonquian group. Eastern Algonquian peoples run along the eastern seaboard

of North America from the Maritimes down to the Carolinas. All quite distinct groups, but also have a certain shared language base and some shared cultural traditions. The Croatoans would have been one of a number of, I guess we might say, village states that would have been in the area. So, each village would have been kind of autonomously governed, but then there would have been one sort of Weroans or leader

that sort of looked over all of them, like sort of 15 at a time. In terms of what their life was like, they were people that were not nomadic anymore. They had the domesticated plant life. So corn was a very fundamental part of Crotolan life and agriculture. They migrated seasonally between villages. They spoke a language that was verb based. And so that meant that there was a lot of interest in relationships and action between communities. Will Barron That's so interesting, Robbie, because we

are building an idea of this world. But a lot of the idea, now correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe a lot of the ideas that we get about the Algonquins comes from John White himself. We've talked about John White before in the previous episode that we did on Roanoke, but give us an idea of, we didn't really talk about who he was, where he came from, we just mentioned the name. So I'd like to know a little bit more about him. What can you tell us about him?

I think like a lot of men of his time, the first sort of part of his life is a little bit opaque, but John White would become the colonial governor of Roanoke Colony, but more importantly, he was an artist. Well, more importantly, for my interest, I suppose, maybe not necessarily for the interest of those in his life. But he very assiduously documented all of the sort of commodities around the colony, the manners and customs of the people. It's fascinating to me, Robbie, that we don't have that much documentation around the colonists themselves, but equally that what we do have often relates to the indigenous people they were interacting with. And, you know, in this episode and certainly throughout your work, we're interested in pivoting that narrative and that focus off the centre of these European

figures. And I suppose for us here in this conversation, John White is a way in to think about the indigenous people that he is not only interacting with, but you mentioned he's an artist, he is documenting their life. And we can talk about maybe some of the assumptions or layers of meaning and interpretation that he might place on those images. But I want to get to the images first of all and to look at them. So we're going to put these up on, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see them and we'll put them on our socials as well. So I want to start with one of a village.

And I'm going to make Anthony describe it for us in true after dark tradition. And then Robbie, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about it, about where these very completely intricate and amazing, but very, very important images come from today, how we have access to them and how we might interpret them. But first of all, Anthony, tell us what we're looking at, please. So, I have an image that's hand-coloured in front of me. It is of a village, as Maddy kind of described, and it seems that there are dwellings and people coming and going from those dwellings.

It seems like a place of busyness, a place of life. There are people gathered together in different social jobs and different social functions. I think I see some planting on the right-hand side of the image as I look at it. So we're talking about cultivation and we have a nice functioning society that is obviously very organized, has organized itself. Robbie, you were talking about before that they had stopped moving around at this point, and that's quite clear that this is somewhere where they have made their home. Some people seem to be either preparing food, eating food, potentially. Robbie help us with this, because I know you're far more of an expert with this than we are,

but it's an intriguing image at the very least. Yeah, and I mean, what's curious about it too, I think, is that in later productions of what Indigenous life looks like, there's this idea, right, of this sort of nomadic hunter-gatherer existence, but what we see here is a decidedly much more settled life, which as I said is true of the Carolina Algonquian people. They did migrate between villages. So this village would have been one that was kind of seasonal, usually around animal migration. So different fish seasons and whatnot, they would go. But we see White here is trying to capture a kind of a number of things, right? He's trying to capture the sort of the fabric of social existence. We see ceremony, right?

We see cultivation, as you say, there's people hunting on one side. I mean, there's also a kind of propagandist element here too, right? To sort of suggest that, well, you know, they've kind of produced this comfortable settled life. How can we reproduce that and have our own sort of comfortable existence here? And you know, one of the things you really notice that there's a real admiration for indigenous planting. So on the one hand, it is this kind of attempt at knowledge creation. But on the other hand, it is this kind of propagandist element to it as well. There's several follow up questions I have about this, but yeah, I think for me, what's so striking is that this image, whilst it is representing an indigenous group, it has

this sort of visual, I suppose vernacular of European cartography. It looks like a map of some kind, you know, it's sort of almost aerial view of this settlement and all these different elements, activities going on. I'm really interested in the sort of busyness of it. And Robbie, you mentioned that the language of the Algonquins is verb based and that it's all to do with action and interaction. And that's definitely something that we see here. Talk to me a little bit about how these early colonists perceived the indigenous people that they came across and how they were themselves perceived. And if there was animosity and mistrust or indeed

if there was cooperation, because certainly in the conversation that we've had in the previous episode about Eleanor and Virginia Dare, the narrative of those particular figures, particularly in the centuries that follow, is one of a very European centric idea of purity, and particularly purity around women's bodies. But this early depiction suggests, as you say, that there is something in the Algonquian way of life to be admired, to be recycled as propaganda. So what is the relationship between these two groups like in the early years of the colony? This is the kind of the complexity of these images, I suppose, is that in many ways, in fact, they obfuscate the real conflict that was actually happening. You know, the English

had slaughtered a number of leaders at this point already. And, you know, more significantly was the mass death that was occurring amongst the Carolina Algonquians coming from disease. It was so extreme. Harriet talks about seeing it happen, seeing all these people dying and seeing how indigenous people, according to him, perceive them to be gods because they're not dying. So really it's masking what was actually a massive culture of distress that was happening for indigenous communities at that time. At the same time, of course, there are instances of cooperation. You know, we have the instance of Manteo who was a well-known Carolina Algonquin who kind of helped people survive. So, you

know, there was certainly instances of cooperation and certainly the colonists could not have survived were it not for indigenous intervention. But again, I think that there's a way that these images kind of mask the actual conflict. And in fact, just to sort of talk a little bit more about their circulation, you know, these were paintings initially by John White, but then they were added to a text by Thomas Harriot in 1590 by Theodore de Brij. And that text is very different from the one that Harriot originally produced without the images.

The one without the images kind of shows the complexity of colonial entanglement, the complexity of violence and destruction and distrust on both sides. But the later text with the images produces this document of knowledge and control in a sense. And, Maddie, you drew attention to the sort of the perspective of this image. Well, it's a very much all-encompassing perspective. It's not only showing us what to see, but it's showing us how we should see it. And that sort of European gaze, in this instance, this is kind of an early example of what we can call like ethnography, right, and

which is this desire to sort of to know the other, and in a sense to possess and to produce the other. And to categorize it as well, right. And certainly that's how these images are organized. You know, we've got images of group fishing going on. We've got what looks like a death house or an ossuary that is cut in this kind of cross-section way. Everything is categorized into aspects of life. We've got village life, we've got hunting, we've got fishing, we've got death. We've got different kinds of people. I'm looking at one here of what I assume is a mother and child walking together. And as a historian who is interested in, who works on, who looks to recover the histories

of indigenous people, do you find these images useful for talking about the daily lives of these people? Are they helpful documents? Well, I mean, first I'll clarify, I'm not technically a historian, I'm a literary scholar. So I, you know, I will leave that to the proper historians with a fence. But yes, I mean, first I'll clarify, I'm not technically a historian, I'm a literary scholar. So I will leave that to the proper historians of the fence. But yes, I mean, I think they are absolutely useful documents. You know, I think that there's a way that we can read these things both with and against the grain, right? You know, I think there's a lot that we can learn about material culture through looking

at these. Their tattooed bodies are very important and fascinating. You mentioned the image of the woman with the child. That child is holding a European doll, right? So that is itself a fascinating moment of sort of transcultural encounter. You know, what did that child think of that doll? Who made that doll for that child? Yeah, and especially interesting thinking about the potential fate of the European colonists

at Roanoke, right? And their possible integration into these communities afterwards. Totally, totally. Yeah, no. So, I mean, I think on the one hand, I do think that they are representations that are very exemplary of colonial power and control. But at the same time, that's not to say that that's all that they are. I think that they are much more complicated for sure than that. So, we focused an awful lot on the settlers coming to Roanoke, okay?

And what you said is we want to reframe that concentration. And you've already mentioned Manteo. So I'd be really interested to know about the two Algonquians who come to London and what they experienced and what their experiences were when they were there. Can you tell us a little bit more about them? Because it was two, right? Not just Manteo. That's right. Yeah, we have Manteo and Wanchese. They are two high ranking Carolina Algonquian men, not leaders themselves, but related to power. I believe that Manteo's mother actually was quite a powerful leader and Wanchese was close to

I believe that Menteo's mother actually was quite a powerful leader. And one chaise was close to Winguino, one of the other sort of leaders. But yeah, so they went to Europe, to England rather. They stayed in Sir Walter Raleigh's house on the Strand with Thomas Harriot, who himself, I guess we haven't really spoken about Harriot, but Harriot was sort of a member of Raleigh's household. He was, you know, kind of a fascinating figure, quite obscure in some ways, but you know, a mathematician and astronomer, and as it turns out, a linguist. So the reason they sent these two men over was in part to advertise the colony, to say like, look at these wonderful people that live here and to show them to many hundreds and thousands of people in London, which they did. The speculation actually may have met Queen Elizabeth, but I don't think that that's

certain. But in any case, they sat for some time with Thomas Harriot and they sort of taught each other their languages. And Harriot then came up with this sort of orthography, the syllabary, which recorded their Algonquian language. And that's kind of how that story's been told. But actually, both men were quite directly involved in producing that syllabary as well. So it was kind of a mutual effort. And that document itself now is this kind of transcultural surviving document in London that records their language. But what's interesting is that Menteo is very much an Anglophile. And I think that's why he was chosen to go over. You know, he's clearly he was later converted when he returned to the

colonies. And throughout the rest of his life stayed very loyal to England. So when he went over, he kind of saw this incredible power and technology that was potential in sort of the English pursuit of the colonies. And he was kind of, he was with it. He was like, yeah, well, that's something that I can kind of use for my people. Whereas when Chazee saw English power and his reaction, which I suppose history would prove him a bit more correct, was that this is very menacing. This is very alarming. And he kind of became quite disaffected already while in England, according to sources, of

course, sort of again, reading between the lines. And he comes back to the colonies and when Chezy leaves, he's like done with the English and in fact later would lead forces against them. Whereas Manteo sort of remained faithful throughout the rest of his life. That's really surprising to me, actually, the way that you're describing those interactions and those exchanges actually, and the balance of power is not quite what I expect it to be. It's not the same narrative that we get in later centuries and based on very good evidence. In our previous conversation, we talked about the symbolic mirroring of Virginia

Dare on the one hand and Pocahontas on the other and how they are in certainly in the centuries afterwards kind of woven together in terms of their story, but how Virginia Dare becomes this figure in the North American landscape of sort of European purity and Pocahontas then goes to England and that sort of cultural exchange there. We're getting something like that here, but you paint a much more complicated story, Robbie. And do you see that intellectual exchange, the mutual interest on both sides, is that surprising to you? Or is that something that you come across all the time in your studies? Indigenous life in the Americas was something that was, and this is obviously a vast generalization, but something

that was by and large very multicultural. Indigenous people were very cosmopolitan and very interested in encountering others and learning from others. And we see this through adoption practices, through sort of taking on different forms of technology and aesthetics. And that's very much a part of Eastern Algonquian life too. They even have stories of travel, a lot of sort of the cosmic vision of the universe is built around people who have traveled somewhere and brought something back. So I think it's very much a part of their kind of ontology to want to travel, to learn from others and to take that back. And we see sort of two different men that kind of take it in different ways, obviously. But nonetheless, I think there's

a kind of indigenous cosmopolitan that we really see throughout history. So in that ways, obviously. But nonetheless, I think there's a kind of indigenous cosmopolitan we really see throughout history. So in that sense, no, it's not surprising. Jason Vale It's a great phrase. I love that indigenous cosmopolitan. That's new to me. I haven't heard that before and I like what it conjures up. It's a very simple way of bringing together a very nuanced and very exciting history, actually, and maybe a history that many people might have very easily overlooked. But let's talk about when Montaio and Ronchesi come back. What did they bring with them from England, from Europe? What was the impact on them and then their cultures?

Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. I think that we don't know, I guess, is one answer. But definitely, you know, as I said, Matteo sees in European technology, a kind of access to power, which is a kind of underlying system of thought and among the Eastern Algonquians is how does one access a kind of power, a kind of spiritual power. And so he sees them as a kind of means to that. He sees collaboration as a kind of means to that. One Chezy, as I said, comes back with a deep skepticism. We can't know for certain, but you can only imagine the experience of these men going into a city like London, which at

that time already had over 100,000 people in it. I can only imagine it was pretty filthy and smelly compared to what they were used to. So no doubt they would have brought that back as well, which I think again, in Onech Chase's case, probably would have would have chastened him, you know, the fragrant smells of London. So yeah, and I mean, materially, I think at this point, there wasn't so much like in terms of material exchange between the cultures, I don't think that they necessarily took much of that on, but definitely the intellectual experience of it would have been profound. You paint, Robbie, a really complicated and nuanced picture of the political landscape, the cultural landscape that's existing between these two cultures as they interact, both

in England and, of course, in North America. Thinking about the backdrop of violence, of the spreading of disease, but also of this intellectual curiosity on both sides and this attempt at cooperation and recording and all of that. When we come to a story like Roanoke, we have different versions that have passed into myth. One of the most popular, of course, is that the European colonists were potentially attacked and killed by the indigenous people. Other stories suggest that the men from the colony were killed and that the women were integrated in some way into the community. What do you think is a likely reality there? And will we ever be able to access something close to the truth? I mean, I think part of the problem is how we kind of think about this sort of history. There's an Anishinaabe historian named Jean O'Brien and she talks about colonial history as told by sort of European scholars or predominantly

American scholars as firsting and lasting. So in the case of Roanoke, it's this kind of this first instance of European civilization. That's the real true origin of the nation. And lasting means the elimination of the indigenous people that were there. That's the real true origin of the nation. And lasting means the elimination of the indigenous people that were there. That's a narrative that comes out in the 19th century. You know, I look at the story of the Lost Colony and I wonder, why isn't this an indigenous story? Like, why do we talk about those people and not the many, many more people who died and also survive? You know, the land around there was and is indigenous

space. And I think to me, pretty clearly what happens, you know, whether that's material or symbolically is that those people disappear back into indigenous space. My strong suspicion from what I know from Algonquin cultures and indeed other indigenous cultures of the Eastern Seaboard is that most likely those people would have been taken into the communities, married in, adopted in. We see that happening for hundreds of years after that. So, I mean, why not then? But yeah, I think in general, the pursuit of the answer to that is kind of part of the problem when actually we can just think about it differently as an indigenous story and maybe actually slightly differently as well as a rare instance in early encounter of indigenous victory.

It's interesting because we spoke to Dr. Misha Ewan about how the idea of Eleanor and Virginia Dare and this lost colony has shaped the idea of white Americana and how that has been used as a myth-making tool, I suppose, in terms of, and often for very nefarious purposes, to build this idea of what American, in quotes, should be. I'd be interested to know if this encounter and these encounters have in any way shaped Algonquian indigenous Native American cultures? Do they exist in the lore? Do they persist in any of the stories, the cultural impacts that might have happened over generations? Or is this a very one-sided exchange ultimately?

I mean, first of all, most of those cultures were so sort of fragmented and broken up that it's hard to say what survives. But there certainly are still indigenous people around there. But we know that in the 18th century, I believe it was John Lawson, who was a sort of a writer, colonist, explorer type thing. He went to the site of where the settlements were and whatnot and spoke to indigenous people and claimed that there were accounts of stories of sort of white origins or white ancestors and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's no doubt made its way into that which survived. But seems a lot more assimilationist, right? In terms of those cultures where it's almost taken within and you've been saying this too, Maddie, where, you know, it goes within. Whereas in that

kind of idea of a white American, it seems to separate out a little bit more and go, ah, keep those histories separate. Whereas what you're talking about there, Robbie, seems to be far more assimilationist in terms of bringing those histories together. It's interesting. Robbie, in your work that's predominantly on the 18th century, you look at the idea of the modern self, the birth of this modern world and people's understanding not only of their national identity, but of sort of community identity and personal identity and how that sits alongside the concept of the savage. I wonder in terms of the myths around Roanoke that have been built up, I'm thinking particularly of the 19th century really and this separation off of the white colonists

and the indigenous people and the mystery at its heart, that disappearance that you describe so brilliantly as being sort of absorption into indigenous land and space. But in terms of 19th century retellings, it's quite predatory, it's very sinister, and it's often the white women who are seen as victims of that or symbols of the purity to be protected. I wonder if the history and the myth of Roanoke is an early moment when this idea of modernity and savagery of America and who Americans are, is that a turning point? Is it something that people have latched onto or do you see it as being a separate history compared to what comes later in the 18th and 19th centuries?

How does it fit in with your work? I mean, I think you're right that it's definitely the later legacy of it that transforms it into that in the 19th century. As you suggest, white women, particularly in captivity narratives as well, are seen as the sort of the bearers of the crucible of the nation, right? Like the nation emerges out of the seeds that they plant. So in that sense, it's very much a part of that narrative. But before that time,

I don't think that it was necessarily that big of a deal. It seems to have been made narratively more central later. And I think earlier, much like Pocahontas, these stories were just kind of one of many, one of many nascent possibilities for the future. Whereas later they become sort of codified, solidified in the 19th century. Robby, where, because this is so fascinating and so many new ideas have come up for me as well. If people are interested in reading a little bit more on this or reading a little bit more of your work, where would you suggest that they go in the first instance?

Adam So about Roanoke, there's a really good history book called The Head in Edward Nugent's Hands by Michael Leroy Orberg, which sort of talks about the people before the colonists came and then also more importantly, the period just before the founding of the Roanoke Colony, which were very fraught and culminated with a man beheading one of the indigenous leaders and they put his head on a spike outside of this sort of early settlement. So that's the kind of precedent before this kind of lost colony. So that's a really good work. I mean, I have a book called The Savage and Modern Self that is about the role that indigenous people play in the kind of formation of British identity.

And I actually have an article coming out about that. It's a little bit about the John White depiction of the funerary practices of indigenous people. It's about the sort of the origins of the interest in indigenous people as objects, in producing indigenous people as a kind of object to be collected, which of course leads to the literal collection of indigenous human remains in the 18th and 19th centuries. Robby, thank you so much for your insights and your time today. If you've enjoyed this episode of After Dark, you can write in to us at afterdark at historyhit.com. Leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe.