What Do We Know About the Lost Colony of Roanoke? On August 15, 1590, an English ship called the Hopewell dropped its anchor off the coast of an island in the Outer Banks, near what is today North Carolina. The Hopewell had been traveling since March 20, and had finally reached the site of the English colony of Roanoke. John White, who was the governor of the colony, was aboard the Hopewell . Three years earlier, he had sailed from Roanoke Island to bring supplies back from England. Now, after many delays, he had returned. He was eager to see his daughter, Eleanor; his baby granddaughter, Virginia; and the other English colonists again. John could see the land from the deck of the ship and, even better, smoke from a fire. His family would be there, waiting.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be the wrong island. The next morning, John and the sailors loaded into small boats to row to the correct island. But even though Roanoke Island was so close that they could see the trees on shore, this short journey was dangerous. Waves rose and crashed along the shore, and the crew were in open boats. On the short trip, all the gunpowder, food, and bullets in one boat got soaked with water. Another boat turned over, and seven sailors drowned. The rest of the crew was starting to wish they''d never agreed to take John to shore. They wanted to turn back.
But John insisted they take him in. He hadn''t waited three years just to turn back now. On their second attempt that day, the boats finally reached shore, but darkness had already fallen, so John and the sailors anchored their boats, letting them bob on the water until morning. Through the trees, they could see the fire burning. They''d wait until morning to go ashore, they decided. Throughout the night, they blew a trumpet they had with them, sang English songs, and called out, but didn''t get a response. At last, morning came. As soon as it was light, John and a few companions set out.
First, they investigated the fire. Just a natural fire, it turned out, probably started by lightning. No people were around. Then John saw it. On a tree near the deserted shore, someone had carved three letters: CRO . A clue. But who had left it? The village itself was empty, too. All the houses had been taken apart, and the colonists had built a sturdy fence of logs around where the homes had once been.
John could tell by how much brush had grown up around the ruins that no one had lived there for a long time. Then John saw another clue. On one of the fence posts, a word had been carefully carved: CROATOAN . Another sign. And perhaps, an answer. Chapter 1 Life in Coastal Carolina The people who lived in the coastal area of what is now North and South Carolina were part of the Algonquian, a group of Native communities who spoke related languages and shared cultural similarities. Under this large umbrella, smaller groups organized themselves into villages of one to two hundred people up and down the coast and farther into the mainland. These villages included Tramaskecooc, Croatoan, Aquascogoc, Pomeiooc, Cotan, and Secotan.
Groups of villages were governed by leaders called mamanatowick (say: mah--mah-nah--TOW--ik), and within that system, each individual village was then governed by a werowance (say: were--WANTS). For thousands of years before John White and his settlers landed on their shores, the Carolina Algonquian peoples had been living in what is now the eastern part of the mainland coast of North Carolina---loosely from present--day Albemarle Sound south to the Pamlico River. They also lived on the string of barrier islands now called the Outer Banks, including Croatoan Island, which today is called Hatteras Island. The Carolina Algonquians By the late 1500s, anywhere from five to ten thousand people lived in settled villages up and down what is now the North Carolina coast and barrier islands. European colonizers (people who take control of an area of land that is not their own) brought diseases such as smallpox with them when they arrived in the Americas. As disease spread through the Native populations of the Americas, it killed as many as 90 percent of them within a hundred years. The Carolina Algonquians who survived stayed on their own land, however. As the centuries went by, they married and had generations of children.
Some married into the white and Black communities who now lived near them, but they still kept their Algonquian traditions strong. Their culture hasn''t disappeared. The group still holds heritage festivals and social and cultural gatherings called powwows. They fight to keep coastal North Carolina''s land and water clean and protected from development to honor the land they have lived on for so long. The Algonquian peoples of the coastal Carolinas were hunters, fishers, and farmers. The walls and roofs of their houses were built of wood and bark with woven mats that could be rolled and unrolled to let light and air in. Families slept on benches around the walls, and a fire in the middle kept the house warm. In the center of each village was an open space for meetings and religious gatherings, along with human-made ponds to collect freshwater.
The people hunted turkeys, squirrels, rabbits, bear, and deer, and gathered roots and nuts. They worked in their fields, where they grew corn, beans, pumpkins, sunflowers, tobacco, gourds, melons, cucumbers, and peas. On platforms above the field, people would take turns watching for animals who might eat the crops. At night, they cooked their meals over grills on outdoor fires or made stews or corn pudding. Special drinks were brewed from sassafras, ginger, and other herbs. This land was braided with inlets, marshes, and rivers snaking in from the nearby ocean. The people who lived there fished in canoes made of single logs that were burned, scraped, and smoothed out. Some of the canoes could carry as many as twenty people.
They wove fence-like nets that they used to catch fish. During the spring and summer, they made trips to the barrier islands off the coast to fish in the deep ocean water. The Carolina Algonquian grew plenty of food in the rich soil and tended their crops carefully. Their diet was healthy and nutritious. They made beautiful, sturdy clay pots for cooking and storage; wooden dishes; and copper jewelry. They also made swords hardened with fire, willow bows, and reed arrows topped with fishbone arrowheads for hunting. Across the Atlantic Ocean, though, life in England was very different. John White and other Europeans were part of a longtime system of colonialism that existed all over the world.
Europeans at this time were beginning to send exploratory groups to almost every continent on Earth. They were looking for many things: shorter routes to countries with which they wanted to trade, gold and silver, and land for farming. Even though living on these lands were civilizations who already had been there for thousands of years, European colonizers moved onto land that was not theirs to settle. They believed they had the right to establish their own communities--colonies--on any new land they encountered, especially in North and South America and the Caribbean. While some British settlers were looking for freedom to practice their own religion, those from Spain and Portugal were more interested in spreading their religion, Catholicism, throughout the world. Chapter 2 Ships Sail People in London, England, during the late 1500s found themselves in very close quarters. London was extremely crowded. Bubonic plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, and malaria regularly broke out.
The water was not clean enough to drink. Diseases that come from dirty water, like cholera, were common. London was also expensive. And landlords charged high rents. Outside the city, farmland was hard to own if you were young or poor. Queen Elizabeth I ruled over this busy, crowded place and all of England and Ireland. She knew about the scarce farmland, cramped houses, and dirty water, but she had other worries on her mind, too. Spain was building a whole new fleet of warships that they could use to attack English ships.
Elizabeth''s powerful adviser Sir Walter Raleigh told her that if England could make a permanent settlement in the new land of North America, they could use it as a base to attack Spanish ships. England could then have the land and any valuable resources they found there, too. Raleigh decided that some ships should sail to the coast of what is now the Carolinas to explore the land and find the best place for a colony. In April 1584, almost forty years before the Mayflower would reach what we now call New England, two ships, commanded by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, set sail from England. On July 13, they landed on the barrier islands that are now called the Outer Banks. When Amadas and Barlowe saw what is now Roanoke Island, about twelve miles long and three miles wide, they thought they had found the perfect spot. They noted that the soil was wholesome, sweet, and good for crops. A group of people, who might have been Secotan or Roanoke, welcomed them.
The tribal leader, Wingina, was recuperating from a thigh wound in a distant town, but his brother, Granganimeo, offered to trade with the Europeans. Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1553--1618) Sir Walter Raleigh was born in the English countryside and served in the ar.