American History Hit - Roanoke: The Lost English Colony

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

When it was founded in 1585, Roanoke was intended to be the first permanent English outpost in America. So how did it become the 'lost colony'?In this episode, Don is joined by Professor Mark Horton, archaeologist from the Royal Agricultural University in the UK. Together they delve into the mystery.Why did John White take three years to return to the colony? What clues were left by the one hundred people missing from the island? And why did those who found the island abandoned not follow these clues to find their countrymen?Produced by Sophie Gee. Editing and sound design by Siobhan Dale. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you’d like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - follow today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Your name is John White, and you are desperately worried. Three years ago, back in 87, you left your fellow colonists behind, along with your family, to head back across the Atlantic Ocean to recruit new colonists and gather fresh supplies. But while back home, tensions with England's great rival Spain reached a boiling point. The ships that would have ferried you back to the colony were commandeered by the crown to join in defending the realm against a great Spanish armada. Those events are behind you. Now, after weeks at sea, you finally returned, spying plumes of smoke rising above the trees on Roanoke across Pamlico Sound. For days, though, foul weather.

thwarted a landing. When the weather calmed, you approached in rowboats, sounding a trumpet call. There was no reply. Again, nothing. You landed, at last, solid ground beneath your feet, making your way to the source of the smoke. In the sand, you see fresh footprints. It is August 18, 1590, but no one is there to greet you. The entire colony, more than 100 souls,

seems to have vanished. All is quiet. All is still. Only smoldering trees and grass are evidence of settlement. That and the one clue you found. A word carved into a wooden post. Croytoan. Hello there. I'm Don Wildman and this is American History Hit. Thanks for being with us. The Roanoke Colony, the Lost Colony, is by far America's most iconic mystery. Right up there with the Salem witch trials and whatever happened to Amelia Earhart. There's a theater on Roanoke Island in North Carolina that's been running a drama called The Lost Colony every summer for 85 years since 1937. This is a well-trod tale.

But like so much history, until you push through the shallows and swim in deeper water, you don't really understand why the story sustains, why people, even academics today, are still so fascinated by the questions at hand. What happened to more than 100 souls left on those shores? Were they murdered? Did they starve? Were they kidnapped? Did they escape? Did they assimilate into Native American tribes?

The mystery's never been solved. The known record of the Roanoke Colony is a window into early English attempts to find purchase in the new world, long after the Spanish had been enriching themselves to the south with purloined gold by the shiploads. It was this sort of abundance the English would seek out by establishing a new colony at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, long considered a portal deep into the new continent

and perhaps even a passage further west. And thus the venture was undertaken at a particularly tenuous time in the world with tensions running high on the high seas. Maybe not the ideal moment to come ashore on a remote island to found a new settlement in the wilderness. Guiding us into the wilderness today is Mark Horton, a professor of archaeology and cultural heritage at the Royal Agricultural University in England in the sunny Cotswolds.

Greetings, Mark. Hi, how are you? Thanks for joining us. One of my favorite subjects, we've both been there. It's on an island just in the outer banks of North Carolina for anyone who's not familiar with it. It's a beautiful place to go and still a great mystery. Roanoke is commonly known as the brainchild of Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Queen

Elizabeth I, who had notions of basing his privateering closer to the gold-laden galleons of the Spanish. But this colony wasn't his vision at first, was it? No, the story goes back to his cousin, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a seafarer and a fantasist living in southwest England, the era of Devon, who had this great idea that there was a passage, a northwest passage around the northern tip of North America, and there was going to be a much quicker way of getting to cafe, to China. And he published a series of fantastical maps that showed that this passage might indeed exist. And he went to Queen Elizabeth and said, I want a license to establish a colony in the New World in order to promote this passageway. And off he went. He actually

got as far as Newfoundland and he planted a flag on the island of Newfoundland. Much the amusement is the local Basque fishermen who were already there. He said, this is part of England. He then made for his ship and sailed back to England. Unfortunately, he decided to sail back in one of the smaller vessels and was overwhelmed in the mid-Atlantic storm, apparently at the helm reading Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia. A rally saw this as the opportunity.

So he went to Queen Elizabeth and said, can I have the patent that my cousin had to establish a colony in the new world? Let's put this in the context of the age of discovery. I mean, the Spanish, Columbus, of course, 1492, first comes to Hispaniola. Cortez lands in Veracruz, about 1519. So they are way ahead by decades. At this point, the English are eager to catch up. Is that a motivation here? Well, I think you could go back to English.

exploration in the late 15th century with John Cabot, who sailed from Bristol across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. And he was actually the first person, he was Genoese, but on English ship, to actually land on the mainland of North America, as opposed to the islands. So, you know, there was a track record in English mariners and obviously an interest in the northern part of North America. So for some reason that it's never been properly explained, the times of Henry the 8th and so forth, that interest in colonization kind of fell away until really the middle part of the 16th century, when it was often linked to discoveries to try and find seaways to China, both the northeast and the northwest passages. Exactly. This all takes place. You mentioned

the original expedition 1578. That's when Sir Humphrey Gilbert is given the first charter to go over there. All of that happens. He's lost. that patent then switches over to two people. And we're talking now his brother, Adrian Gilbert, and Adrian Gilbert's cousin, Sir Walter Raleigh, or half-brother, right? Yes, that's correct, yes. Okay. So why two men?

This is interesting to me. Well, I think that Raleys, as it were, has rise at court at this point wasn't substantial. So the patent initially was retained within the immediate Gilbert family, but then subsequently, effectively, Adrian Gilbert fell away and Raleigh's influence that caught massively increased. He was the great polymath.

He was a great scientist. Durham House. He had lots of people working for him. Perhaps one of the most notable was a man called Thomas Harriet. Subsequently has an extraordinary scientific career and who indeed goes on probably the first, certainly the second expedition to North America.

He's quite a man, Raleigh. I just want to describe him for, especially the American audience, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, a handsome dashing man. He's quite a brilliant individual. That's right. A great polymath from actually quite humble backgrounds. And this was often the pattern in the Elizabethan court that people could make their way, despite the fact they weren't jukes and earls. And, you know, Raleigh was one of the most spectacular examples of somebody who'd extremely well.

and Elizabeth rewarded him with the mastership of the tanneries, which effectively gave him a very secure income on the mineral exploitation of southwest Britain. Britain is already trying to make their way to India, and they think they can find a passageway. No wonder the Chesapeake is inviting. It's a massive waterway that looks like it's just going to go forever when you enter into it.

So this becomes their focus. The Spanish are already down at the south. There's only so much of the New World East Coast that's available, and half of it goes to the other guy up north. So Raleigh really gets this land that eventually becomes where Jamestown is and all the rest of it. And this is where his exploits will take place. What about the privateering? What was the motivation there?

Well, there's been quite a bit of debate about this, whether really the motivation was colonization or privateering. I mean, this was a great period of Drake, of course, who had a long track record of attacking the Spanish, another great Devon seaman. there was a real ambivalence with Spain at this period. And Raleigh must have seen the opportunities for privateering. And indeed, his earlier collaborator, Richard Grenville, so Richard Grenville, another Devonian, was actively involved in privateering himself

and led one of the expeditions to Roanoke. So absolutely, privateering must have been higher on their agenda. I think I should explain about the Atlantic Circle, that ships that are sailing to the Caribbean, go down through the Atlantic Islands, the Azores, Madera, Canaries, Cape Verde, to the Caribbean. But the currents then bring them back up the coast of North America. So they inevitably have to sail past the outer banks, and particularly Cape Hatteras, a very dangerous piece of land.

And so the attractions of establishing a foothold at Cape Hatteras where Raleigh could send his ships out to Harry the Spanish, would have been very attractive. Interesting. So I think that's why they ended up down there rather than necessarily straight to the Chesapeake. Raleigh's charter is issued on March 25, 1584, very specific there. But there's a deadline to it, which is to say he has to get this colony started by 1591. He has a very brief window or he loses his right. So that's kind of the pressure of the situation.

Let's talk about his efforts to create this expedition. Who are his partners on this? Raleigh had two sea captains as he recruited to lead the expedition, a man called Amadus and a man called Barlow. And they recruited a number of people. We know quite a lot about what they found. We unfortunately know less about who was on board that expedition. The suggestion has been that Thomas Harriet, the great polymatic scientist, was possibly on that. He was at that point a young man, as well as John White, who I'm sure we'll hear about later.

They just spent a few months. They probably landed on Quoteur and Ireland or thereabouts. They talked to the local Native Americans, brought two of them back, one cheese, and Manio, who then brought back to London to be interrogated and for their languages to be learned for the next phrase, the expedition. This first foray is a huge group of people. I mean, there's more than 600 men sent in that voyage. Is that right? That's right. And it was a massively, as it were, a scientific expedition. They, in many ways, the accounts that we have left from that First Voyage are extremely detailed and extremely sympathetic to Native American culture and society.

They didn't go in there and, you know, through their weight around, but were genuinely appreciative and delicate in their dealings with Native Americans. Before we get too far in this, I want to really map it out for people. who aren't familiar with this geography. You have in North Carolina, if you look at the map, a whole string of barrier islands. They're called the Outer Banks. The island we're talking about is Roanoke. Another one is Crohn-Oak is to the south of that,

and so forth and so on. This is a whole string of beautiful places to go these days. And then it's a sail northwest from there to get to the opening of the Chesapeake Bay. But relatively speaking, they're all pretty close in there. So if you set up a colony in Roanoke Island, you are at the top of the outer banks. and therefore you could make a shot straight northwest into the Chesapeake Bay.

So you could also land there more easily from the ocean because it's right there. So it's a very strategically smartly chosen locale for a colony if it's going to work out. We know things don't work out very well for them. But that first expedition was to set up this colony. Why did they leave? What went wrong on that first try? Well, no, they didn't leave. It wasn't really a colony established.

It was a reconnaissance expedition. I see. To find out where to land and to provide, essentially, information about this wonderful place, North America, for prospectors and investors to come and join, to drum up support for the next great expedition. I see. Don, I should add briefly two aspects about Roanoke. The first is that it's adjacent to the AlbaMal Sound, which is this relatively shallow but very long waterway that goes way into North Carolina, that provided, again, an access route,

and I think they must have believed that that might have provided them an alternative route into the Chesapeake. Right. The second is that actually these barrier islands are actually very dangerous. And if you can get through the sounds, the inlets, you're okay, but the area is relatively shallow

and would have been even more shallow than it is today. But many of the ships and the problems with their ships is that many had to anchor out in the Atlantic Ocean. because the ships are too big to come in through these inlets. So it wasn't the most ideal place to try and plant a colony. So Mark, I know that there's a lot of history that predates the lost colony, a series of expeditions that set out to establish this area and figure out what they're going to do with this possession, right?

That's right. So the first expedition in 84 was very much a reconnaissance expedition by Amidus and Barlow. Two ships went out with probably a small number of scientists on board. The account that they've had, it's very positive towards both the place they landed, which is probably Criteran Island, as well as the friendliness of the local Native Americans. And they come back and say, what a wonderful place it is in 1585. That then, as it were, enables rally to drum up support for a much more substantial expedition. That sets out, later that same year,

under initially Sir Richard Grenville, another Devonian, and a cousin, a relative of Raleigh himself. And they set out to essentially establish a permanent colony. The permanent colony which involved soldiers. There are no women involved. There are no children involved. This is a military expedition. And on that expedition, there are two key figures.

The first is Thomas Harriet, the scientists who, plotted probably the navigation to the new world for Rally. And he is an extraordinary Renaissance scientists, an ethnographer, a linguist, and a cartographer. And he describes in great detail the activities of Native Americans and their lives, and also compiled some extraordinary maps, which are more accurate that has been produced in North America for the next 300 years. This is a very large expedition. There's some 600 members of this military. It may be something of that order.

It's very substantial. And they also are bringing metalligists along, German metalligists, because they're looking for gold. They hear ideas about gold and particularly copper as well. And these metallurgists undertake experiments, chemical experiments, to assay the rocks that are found. And part of that has actually been discovered on Roanoke, the actual laboratory that they were working on. But they were also accompanied by an artist called John White, who was probably a miniaturist working in the court of Queen Elizabeth, the contemporary of Nicholas Hilliard, and he went out as an artist to draw the life that he found out there. And these watercolours

are some of those miraculous and often repeatedly used images of the new world in the 16th century. And at this time, the second expedition is on Roanoke or is it at Crotum? No, they go to Roanoke and they establish a fort. Unfortunately, the Richard Grenville, who comes on a ship called the tiger, is actually partly shipwrecked, trying to get through one of those inlets on Oak Creek Oak Island, one of the barrier islands. And he spends only a short time, two months there before returning home, deciding this is all the bit of disaster, but leaves the colon in the hands of a rather brusque soldier called Ralph Lane, who's had previous dealings with. the Irish and certainly considers the Native Americans to not really be worthy of much attention and undertake a serious of conflicts with them that ultimately ensures that the colony runs out of food and resources, relations with the locals collapse, and they all have to be rescued by Francis Drake, who's actually coming back from the Caribbean, and he stops off there and he sees this colony in disastrous states and he puts them on board his ship and brings them on board his ship and

brings them back to England. He leaves 15 men, as I understand. That's correct, who are never, ever seen of again. So that's the first lost colony. I see. Interesting. Who were the Native American tribes there? Who are they dealing with? Well, there's basically the Alonquians who are still there, living there today. There's probably a slightly different tribe to those living on the Chesapeake. There's lots of argument about that. They call themselves the Crowateran and almost a they're the sub-tribal, the clan with which the Elizabethans had dealings with. And generally those were fairly peaceful relations until things got bad. Yes, absolutely, until Ralph Lane decided to kill the local Native American

and everything then fell apart from there on in. And they effectively ran out of food. I'll be right back with more from Professor Mark Horton after this short break. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we set out to sort of mysteries of the Middle Ages. So many of these travellers who went out looking for press to John, what did they think they were hearing? We explore cutting-edge research. Genetic signatures found in present-day Jewish population was shared by the genetic ancestries we found. From everyday life to dynasty-shattering events. It's a time when all

the major Viking raids have started, which as Christians they think of as vengeance from heaven. And reveal the answers to centuries-old riddles. I stand up straight in a bed, I'm hairy at my base, and I make the ladies cry. The solution is an onion. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis. Every Tuesday on Saturday will explore some of the biggest stories,

the greatest mysteries, and latest research. Listen and follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Persistent as ever, those English start off again in May 8, 1587, with the next expedition

headed by John White, a man you mentioned. Yeah, that's right. So Harris and White and the scientists all come back with Drake. Harry writes this extraordinary account called a brief description, which got published actually a little bit after this, which was like a prospectus for investors, that is a really detailed account of life on the outer banks in this period. Raleigh managed to drum up more people to come, but this time we think he kind of learned his lessons that selling a bunch of soldiers out there probably wasn't a good idea.

So instead, he set up a civilian colony, which involved men and women. for a variety of trades and backgrounds, many drawn from London and East Anglia, including some youngsters as well. And so they were picked not because they were soldiers, but they were picked because they had something to contribute to the colony. And that included his own daughter and son-in-law. And they're aware, of course, these middle-class Londoners, they're aware of the fact that this has been tried and is a struggle and it's a risky venture. Yeah, but ever-optimistically, they keep going. I think they must. to be sold, a massive enthusiasm, particularly from Harriet, who by this point was back and saying

what a fabulous place this was. And he described the vines, the grapes that grew and all the fertility of the land and so forth. So they saw, as with all these colonial expeditions, a great enthusiasm that make a new life in this miraculous Garden of Eden. At some point, their leader decides to go back and get new supplies. Explain that dilemma. What had happened? How long had they been there? Okay, so if I just take you back a second, the thought is that the last expedition was probably aiming for the Chesapeake, but they didn't. And for some unaccountable reason, probably because of the stumb and the sea captains that were bringing them there, they were dumped on Roanoke Island again. They managed to find a way through these really dangerous inlets, which realized that the basically of the ships sort of hang around for a bit. And they were there and they established what they call the city of Raleigh. on Roanoke Island. We don't know whether that was the same place as Ralph Lane's fort or not, probably in a separate place. And when the ships were ready to go home, they sent them, there's no food here.

And they entreated, or this is the account that we have, John White, who was appointed as the governor of the colony. In the previous expedition, he was just the artist, to go back with the ships to get further food supplies so that the colony could be sustained through the winter. But they are left with certain amount of vessels, right? They have some kind of transportation off this island. Not really. No, no. All they have, they probably only have is one small pinnace. Otherwise, they're just left literally dumped on Roanoke Island. They have very little ways of getting around.

Their expectation is that within the foreseeable future, John White will be returning with these supplies. But he does not. And why is that? Okay, so he goes back in 1587. There's any true to historian, no, these were very troubled times. War had broken out or peace have failed between England and Spain, largely through the activities of people like Drake and their raging activities, piratical activities, privateering activities, however you want to put it.

And Philip II of Spain essentially had enough and decided to mount a great Amada to invade England to depose the Tudor dynasty under Elizabeth and to restore England back to a Catholic country and part of the Spanish Empire, most likely. So White arrived back and preparations were being made. It was known this great Armada was going to come and attack England the following year. And so there was a complete ban of any ships leaving England. After all, there wasn't really a formal Elizabethan Navy at this point.

The ships were basically merchant ships dragooned into service rather than a whole series of warships. And so Elizabethan's had to get any ships possible, which will then press in to try and defeat this extraordinary, existential threat to the very existence of England. It's such a fascinating sort of dichotomy. This world-famous iconic event is happening back in England, in the channel of England.

And yet these little, you know, 100 or so people are on this little island off of North Carolina, and their fate is in the hands of forces beyond their belief. How long does it take for John White to manage to get back to Roanoke? Well, he makes one attempt in 1589. That sets out for the port of Biddeford in North Devon, but only gets so far into the Atlantic Ocean. The ship starts leaking.

He starts hitting storms and then has to return back to Biddeford. So that expedition of 1589 is really aborted. I think probably it's also a little. likely that Rale himself had lost interest in his colonists. He'd moved on. And one result was that he really wasn't willing to invest in a whole new expedition to try and rescue his lost colonists. So John White was left to try and find his daughter and indeed his granddaughter and son-in-law and the other colonists. So he had to hitch a lift on any privateer that was going to try and relieve the colony.

When he arrives, what does he find? Okay, so he first of all sails up the coast of North America and sails past the outer banks. He spends the night, and this is a rather tragic moment, on Croton Island. He takes soundings. We have some figures for the actual amount. He checks the water off the Cape Hatteras. And then next day goes up to the inlets, the ship moors offshore. and he takes a pinnis into the inlet and lands on Roanoke Island.

Mark, what is a pinniss exactly? So a pinniss is a small boat, almost like a rowing boat that's just 10 metres long, something like that. It's not of any great size. It's like a medium-sized yacht, and they were used for moving around, and they had a very shallow draft so they could go in and out of the inlets of the Barrier Islands. Gotcha. And he doesn't know quite where to go. He tries to find the colony, but is landed too far north on the island.

He then walks around the tip of the island. He sees fire and that thinks, well, that must be where the colonists are. But when he gets there, they find the fire is all, as it were, burned out. And he eventually returns south to where he think the colony was, where he discovers the site completely abandoned. The hut's empty, the doors hanging on their hinges, and he even finds his armour, his chest dug up and his arm and positions all scattered around the ground.

So I'm imagining the scene that White is there. I guess he has a few individuals with him, but what a lonely, desperate moment. I mean, he had expected to find some hundred people or so, hopefully surviving. He finds no one at all. I mean, that in itself is drama. of this tragedy, the fact that there is just zero human beings there, let alone the fact that

it's a chaotic scene, potentially of violence, it looks that way anyway. His mind must have been spinning with possibilities. What were the theories at first? He knew that they disappeared, but he found two clues. First, before he actually found the abandoned colony, he found carved into a tree, the letters CRO. And then we got to the colony, carved in the colony, to one of the palisade timbers is the word Croatoran. And it's always been assumed that CRO also stands for Croatoran. He observed that this was a sign that the colonists had agreed that if they had to leave the island and go somewhere else, they would carve on a tree where they were actually going. And he added that if they went in distress, they would carve across underneath the word.

but if they just left the word by itself, then the pre-agreed sign was that they had voluntarily gone to the island of the place that's been named. So this was a system that they had in place already. Yes, absolutely. And carving messages on trees was quite a normal thing to do because of course the trees last a long time and it's a good way of that information to be transmitted. And the Native Americans almost certainly would not have been speaking English or would not understand what the message meant. So he has his answer. I assume they go right to Croatina to find his friends. No, they don't. Well, first of all, there wasn't a cross underneath the Croatian at all, so they must have left voluntarily. But he didn't go and find his friends for the very sad reason that the captain wanted to go of privateering. He believed there was a great storm coming. And so when White returned in his penis to confront the captain, the captain said, no, we're going home.

the winds are blowing in the wrong direction, we can't go back to the island of Croixen to find the colonists. The awful irony of the whole thing is only two days earlier. He'd actually sailed past the island of Croaturn. And if he'd stopped and investigated, you almost certainly would have found the colonists there. But instead, he sailed on past and then wasn't able to return to the island. So that must have been the most awful regret for him that he was so near, but so far. is the going theory that these Roanoke colonists did go down to Croaton, did settle there, and then dispersed? What happened to them? Well, maybe that's the going theory, but historians

will always make, as it were, a complexity if there's a simple solution. First of all, to say, what we know about this last expedition was White then returned to Ireland and wrote a letter to Richard Hackler, which he described these events. And he was never able to get back. And he was never able to get back. to the outer banks again. And after that letter, we hear no more John White. We don't know how much longer he lived for. And until a few years later, there was no further expeditions looking for them at all. Indeed, nobody ever has found ever traces of them subsequently. There are many theories about what might have happened. I suppose one theory relates to the fact that they didn't go to Croixoteur, even though the evidence says on the tree, but instead

sailed up the Albemarle, looking for the Chesapeake, where they were originally intending to settle and might have set up a colony up there, or at least maybe some of the colonists went there. Another theory is that actually only very few of them went to Croaturn. Most of them were died for starvation, very cold winters, we know, that was happening there. or the lack of food. Some people suggest that the Albemarle lot actually survived as late as 1607 because there was a record when John Smith and the Virginia Company go to Jamestown, they have a record of the local chief killing Elizabethans or English people that he's described as that might have been living

nearby. So there's a possibility that one group went inland, while another group went to. to Croatown Island. It could have been any one of those possibilities or some combination thereof, which is more likely than anything, right? Well, yes or no. I mean, in fact, for the Albemarle theory, inevitably we have virtually no historical evidence for this.

And there's some interesting archaeological evidence, but it's not totally convincing. On Croatone Island, we've got some pretty convincing archaeological evidence that they actually went there. As an archaeologist, do you find it surprising that it's still such a mystery? Wouldn't you have thought clues would have been found by now? Well, yes and no. I mean, first of all, apart from the, as it were, chemical, the metallurgical workshop on Roanoke Island, neither White City of Raleigh or Ralph Lane's fort has ever been found.

So despite the fact that this is a well-populated island with lots of development and so forth, not one piece of evidence has been found for either of those places, which is a well-populated island. which is intriguing. And the Fort Raleigh, which is past the National Park, massive controversy surrounds whether that's part of the Elizabethan activities or more likely an 18th century fought from the French Indian War. Uh-huh. Interesting. Was the evidence that he found on Roanoke preserved in any way, or is that lost?

On Roanoke Island, there's very, very little archaeological evidence for the presence of any of these rally expeditions. The most persuasive evidence is that of the metallurgical, the chemical workshop, which is quite close to Fort Raleigh in the National Park there, which was discovered in the 50s and then more recently in the 80s. And that is convincingly from the Ralph Lane expedition of 1586. But however, Ralph Laine's fort and John White's city of Raleigh have never been found. No, not one piece of archaeological evidence has yet been found to tie their location down, despite the fact that Roanoke's a well-developed island. Yeah, it seems so extraordinary to me that something would have come up.

And no one ever at that time went back to Croatina to track them down. So all of this sort of disappears into the ether, it seems, of time and fate. What was the story back in England? When did this become kind of the mystery that we know it of? Well, I'm not sure what it really ever happened. We know, English history is full of failed expedition of one type or another. And the lost colony's notoriety, I suppose, largely dates from the play that you referred to in your introduction. It then became very much an American mystery rather than English mystery.

And I suppose it's ironic that I'm an Englishman investigating America's oldest mystery to try and bring a bit of sanity to the whole thing. I had to remind myself of that before I started reading up on this again because it is such a claimed piece of history by Americans. It is, of course, American history in a way, but it was really an English story. I mean, from beginning to end,

even Jamestown is after that, you know? Yes, I mean, can I just say, so what we found on Crotin Island is a remarkable story that perhaps I should tell you a bit about that what we found, first of all is we've gone to the Native American sites that belong to the late 16th and into the 17th centuries. And these are very obvious sites. They represent huge middens. There's a huge rubbish pits full of Native American material, culture, lots of things like pottery, lots of animal bone, lots of seashells for the food they're living in, deer bone, beads, all sorts of things. from the basically material culture of the Native American population.

And these we can tie in directly to Thomas Harriot's description of what Native American life was like. The pot shows we can reconstruct into vessels are identical to the drawings of the vessels that John White actually describes and draws in his paintings. So that's fascinating. But mixed in with that, we have a low quantity of Elizabethan material culture. And it comes from two sides, one of which is, 16th century and includes a copper, copper ingot, for example, a token which was made in Nuremberg, which is identical to ones of the tokens found on Roanoke Island, as well as a small amount of pottery.

But on the adjacent site, we found a huge quantity of Elizabethan material culture mixed in there, including, for example, part of a musket mechanism, part of a rapier fragment, lots of Elizabethan glass, which had been reworked into points. Now, the problem with this particular assemblage is that most of it dates to the early to mid-17th century rather than the 16th century. So we have a slight problem here, but I would argue that much of this is heirloom material that was discarded when it was no longer useful. What theory do you favor, Mark? After all these years, where do you come down? So I come down, I'm just a simple soul, really. And the colonist wrote CRO, on a tree and that's where they went.

And I mean, some might have gone off somewhere else, but I think the bulk of the colonists ended up there. And the Kirtone were the most friendly tribe to them. And they literally assimilated into the local tribe. Clearly, there might have been two stages. They might have arrived first, a set of a survival camp. And then when they realized they weren't being rescued with all these things. And if you look at Shepreck narratives,

you realize that order for, down and you can imagine these pretty Indian women and so forth and, you know, and they all move out into the local Indian villages. And I would imagine the lost colonists would have literally moved in and scattered into all the Cro-turned villages on the island and, you know, in a few generations, would have become assimilated. But what's interesting for our archaeological excavation is that they carry on a European identity in this process. So they're still wearing European dress, for example. They're still using firearms. They're still having beads and so forth. And they're trading probably with the Jamestown colonists, you know, into the mid-parts the 17th century.

The last notice that we have of this assimilated society is John Lawson in 1700, who describes people, he probably visits them, describes blue-eyed people who can read and write, who are living and wearing European clothes that are still living on Croixoteau Island, 120 years later. Right. The Stockholm syndrome begins. I'm guessing that that is not the story being told in the famous play that was started back in the 30s. You have a chance to write a sequel, I suppose.

Well, I think it's really interesting because we're talking about a period in American history in which mixed marriages were illegal and the idea that the first English, English would have assimilated into Native American culture is something that really from the 30s onwards would have been unacceptable for White America. Right. I have not actually read it up on whether they've adapted that story to modern times or not. A little bit. A very famous name is Virginia Dare in this story.

The first English girl born in America, right? Of course, John White's daughter was called Virginia, Virginia Dare. and a huge amount of mystery has surrounded her and her identity. And even today, Virginia Dare is often used as a symbol of white purity. In right-wing websites, for example, her name is utilized as a symbol of white supremacism. It's an incredible story that has had repercussions down the ages. Very famously, William Shakespeare writes The Tempest about this kind of general idea of this land in the new world. I mean, it really does resonate. Of course, then comes Jamestown, not a few years later,

an equally difficult struggle to start a colony in that same part of the world. It is extraordinary how to determine these Europeans were to plant their feet in this land. It was one of vision. I think that probably only about 10% of these colonies ever survived. To give you another example of a site that I've also worked on, which is an attempt to create a Scottish colony in Panama. in 1698, which failed there. Many thousands of people went there and many then subsequently died. The majority died in Panama and the result of that colony bankrupted Scotland and forced Scotland into the active union with England in 1707. So, you know, these colonies are not just footnotes of history, but were really important in terms of the emergence of nation states.

It's a fascinating subject, Mark Corton. Thank you so much. much for joining us on American History Hit. Well, it's a great privilege to be with you. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time.