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The episode details the mystery of the colonists who disappeared from Roanoke Island in the late 16th century, leaving only the cryptic word "CROATOAN" carved into a post. It explores various theories, including assimilation with local Native American tribes or an attempted return voyage to England.
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00:00This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
00:16The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
00:30116 people landed on an island off the coast of North Carolina.
00:37They established a foothold long before the Jamestown colony was founded in Virginia, before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
00:45But the fate of the Roanoke settlement remains a mystery.
00:50Is it possible for all these people, all these buildings, this entire community, to disappear without a trace?
01:00Great civilizations have flourished and then disappeared.
01:11The culture of Egypt testifies to man's skill in engineering.
01:16The ancient Greeks left us beauty in form and architecture.
01:23The Mayan pyramids pay tribute to a race that blossomed and then mysteriously disappeared.
01:40Modern archaeologists have used the remains to decipher how these civilizations began.
01:51But there is an island off the Carolina coast that even today still hides the secret beginnings of America.
01:58The story begins in England, 1587.
02:09Elizabeth has been queen for almost a quarter of a century.
02:13Her favorite courtier is Sir Walter Raleigh, a man of ambitious vision.
02:23Sir Walter implores Elizabeth to allow him a bold venture.
02:27Establish a foothold in the new world, which has until now been dominated by Spain.
02:33With her approval, he gathers 116 men, women and children to brave an ocean crossing.
02:42A colony is established on Roanoke Island, just off North Carolina.
02:54Barely are some of the first houses up when a problem becomes apparent.
03:13If the colony is to survive, more supplies are needed from England.
03:17On a clear day in August, 1587, Governor John White bids goodbye to his beloved daughter Eleanor,
03:32to her husband, Ananias Dare, and to his only grandchild, Virginia Dare, nine days old.
03:39The first English child born in this new land.
03:41Every colonist is aware of the dangers of an Atlantic crossing for a man of white's age.
03:54Meanwhile, the governor hides his anxiety about this handful of people being virtually defenseless.
04:00They are extremely vulnerable.
04:08The threat of attack by unfriendly Indians who had already killed one of their people.
04:13The specter of a long, cold winter.
04:17Could the colonists plant enough food to ward off starvation?
04:21Will Governor White or anyone else ever see them again?
04:25When Governor White arrived in England, he rushed about London, frantically trying to line up the necessary supplies and a ship for the voyage back.
04:39He wanted to return to Roanoke as quickly as possible to ease the colonists' worry about being totally isolated.
04:46The governor's timing could not have been worse.
04:51England is gearing up for a war to the death with Spain, whose mighty armada is poised to strike.
04:58Sir Walter Raleigh beseeches the Queen to send supplies, but she will not release a single ship.
05:12None of his pleading can force the Queen to change her mind.
05:21Spain's King Philip has assembled the greatest fleet the world had ever known.
05:31137 ships with 30,000 men aboard.
05:36He hopes to crush the English Navy.
05:38When the battle is joined in the English Channel, the unwieldy Spanish galleons are no match for the longer range English ships, whose captains include such famous seamen as Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and Frobisher.
05:57The Spanish Armada is soundly beaten.
06:02The English don't lose a single ship.
06:05The Spanish, more than 50.
06:08Britannia now truly rules the waves.
06:16Despite the victory, it is three years before Governor White can convince someone to take him back to Roanoke.
06:22John White is bravely concerned.
06:41Surely, by now, someone from the colony should have sighted the ships or heard the signals.
06:47Cautiously, they approach the beach.
07:00Cautiously, they approach the beach.
07:01After three long years and so many disappointments, White nervously awaits the realization of his dreams.
07:21But where are his people?
07:35Knowing the colonists would fear an attack by the Spaniards, White orders the piping of a familiar English tune to reassure anyone hiding in the woods.
07:43Still, there is no response.
07:44For the first time, a sense of fear pervades his thinking.
07:56Still, there is no response.
07:57For the first time, a sense of fear pervades his thinking.
08:09The trail inland is familiar, but empty.
08:34As they move deeper into the woods, the landing party fears the possibility of an attack by Indians.
08:53Governor White remembers that although the Indians were at first peaceful, a killing had created tensions that could well have flared into violence after he left.
09:06The first sign of any habitation is not familiar to White.
09:20He finds a stockade.
09:22Presumably, it encloses the village.
09:25His hopes soar.
09:27But as he enters the gate, he is stunned.
09:37There is no sign of life.
09:40Eerie silence.
09:59The compound is overgrown.
10:02Nothing remains.
10:05Even the sturdy buildings are gone.
10:08If the Spaniards had burned the buildings, where are the charred remains?
10:13If the colonists had been ambushed, there should be bleached bones.
10:18Something to tell the tale.
10:21There is nothing.
10:24Finally, one sign.
10:37A carved word.
10:38Croatoan.
10:39Croatoan.
10:40Before the governor had sailed, everyone agreed that if the colonists were to move away, they would leave a clue.
10:53Did this word mean they had gone to nearby Croatoan Island?
11:06The search continues into the night.
11:08Three more letters, C-R-O, are found carved on a tree, but nothing to tell what happened.
11:21Determined to go to Croatoan Island the following day, they return to their ship.
11:26A terrible storm comes up, driving them so far out to sea, they are forced to turn back to England.
11:36Governor White's anguish is unbearable.
11:39He was so near to those he loved, but kept from them by a cruel sea.
11:48Governor White later dies and is buried in England without ever learning his family and friends will one day be known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
11:58What did happen to them? Did they go to Croatoan?
12:04In Search Of explores the possible answers next.
12:11The single word Croatoan that Governor White found would seem to indicate that the Lost Colony attempted a move to the nearby island of that name.
12:20While the Governor never lived to search there himself, others who did, in colonial as well as modern times, found no indication that the colonists had ever even been there.
12:33No buildings, no bricks, no tools, nothing.
12:39What happened to the Lost Colony?
12:42This has been a matter for speculation by laymen and historians ever since that time.
12:47Author historian David Stick, who lives on nearby Cape Hatteras, has spent years trying to solve the riddle.
12:55There have been many theories.
12:58One, probably the most prevalent one, is that they were attacked by the Spaniards.
13:04The Spaniards, having settled in the West Indies with a number of colonies there, are known to have kept a close watch on the Raleigh colonists and what they were doing, but they did not attack.
13:14This has been proved by a thorough examination of the Spanish archive.
13:17Another theory, advanced by one of the leading historians of this area, is that they built a vessel and sailed back toward England and were lost at sea.
13:29This also is highly improbable.
13:33The treacherous waters in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras, known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, are not the type of waters in which you would want to begin a trip in a small vessel, built by people who were not shipwrights, heading back across with no navigational equipment.
13:52Today, approximately 1,000 people live on Roanoke Island, and the Lost Colony remains a controversial topic.
13:59The U.S. Park Service established a national historic site here, and Ranger historian William Evans has definite opinions about the mystery.
14:11I'm sort of torn between two theories as to what happened to the Lost Colony.
14:15One, I think that they either went south and lived on the outer banks with the friendly Hatteras Indians, became intermingled and absorbed into that colony, and disappeared with that group when it died of smallpox, generally, in the 1700s.
14:30Or that the colony moved north towards the Chesapeake Bay, began to live friendly with a small tribe of Chesapeake Indians, but were violently massacred, along with those Indians, just before the Jamestown colony arrived in 1607.
14:43The theory that they lived with Indians is given credence by a story from the journal of Captain John Smith of the later Jamestown colony.
14:55They enjoyed good relations with the local Indians through the efforts of Captain Smith, who took the trouble to learn the Indians' language.
15:04On a visit to Chief Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, Smith was told of white people traveling with friendly Indians, who were caught in an inter-tribal war.
15:21All the whites were slaughtered, except for a group of seven, four men, two boys, and a young maiden.
15:28The seven whites managed to escape.
15:55These seven could have survived only by living among friendly Indians.
16:02And down through the years, there have been Indians in North Carolina, some with blue eyes, who claimed to be descended from these first English settlers.
16:12If they did, in fact, live among the Indians, how can we trace their movement?
16:18In 1937, a number of stones were found that led in a trail from eastern North Carolina to northern Georgia.
16:28These stones were supposedly carved by Eleanor Dare as notes back to her father if he should return to look for the colony,
16:35that told what had happened to the colony, that her husband, Ananias Dare, had been killed by the Indians along with her child, Virginia Dare.
16:44And that she was being carried to North Georgia as an Indian princess to be married or to be given in marriage to an Indian chief.
16:53The musty basement of a small college for women may hold the long sought after answer.
17:02Something has been stored here that has been all but forgotten.
17:06In search of cameras traveled to Gainesville, Georgia, to Bernal College.
17:13In 1937, a tourist in North Carolina uncovered a stone with words carved on it.
17:19He brought it to Bernal's history department.
17:22A $500 reward was advertised for anyone who found additional stones.
17:29The school was besieged with stones and ended up with 47.
17:34Most were obvious fakes.
17:37A national magazine published a story claiming the stones were all fakes.
17:42Embarrassed, the college put the stones in a basement where they've been gathering dust for more than 40 years.
17:51The first stone may be authentic, according to the present head of the history department, Dr. James Sutherland.
17:58The stone purports to tell the story of what happened to the lost colonists of Roanoke.
18:07And here you can see much better the wording on the stone.
18:12It says that Ananias Dare and Virginia went hence unto heaven 1591.
18:18Any Englishman show John White governor Virginia.
18:22Seventeen months after the original find, a man from Atlanta, a stonemason and a stone hauler,
18:31found a series of stones near Greenville, South Carolina, along the Saluda River.
18:38The fourth stone that he found is supposed to be the other stone mentioned on the reverse side of the original.
18:47This stone does contain the names of seventeen dead.
18:53Fifteen on the back with Ananias and Virginia Dare on the front side making a total of seventeen.
19:00I believe that the stones that were later found were obviously fraudulent.
19:05The evidence seems to certainly support that belief.
19:09However, this original stone, to my knowledge, has never been directly disproved.
19:17The Smithsonian Institute examined this original stone and could not find anything fraudulent.
19:26Experts cannot agree on the authenticity of any of these other stones.
19:31It is intriguing to think that one of these stones could be, like the Rosetta Stone of Egypt,
19:37an important link, a key to our past.
19:46Today's Roanoke Island has its legend of the ghost of Virginia Dare, the grandchild of Governor White.
19:53Legend has it that beautiful Virginia was betrothed to a young Indian hunter,
19:58but she was also loved by a very jealous medicine man.
20:02To prevent her from marrying his rival, he changed her into a deer.
20:07Later, unaware of the change, her true love shot and killed the deer with an arrow.
20:14There are those who say the ghost of Virginia Dare, sometimes a deer and sometimes a young maiden,
20:21appears in these woods on moonlit nights, trying but unable to tell us the answer
20:28to the mystery of what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke.
20:33It would seem that a cruel fate was against the colony from the beginning,
20:45or at the very least, it suffered from a series of unfortunate coincidences.
20:50First, the lack of planning that did not properly supply them.
20:55Then, the stubborn queen who would not spare a single ship to help a tiny colony 3,000 miles away.
21:03Then, whatever event it was that caused the colonists to leave Roanoke.
21:09The storm that drove Governor White's ship away.
21:13And the probable slaughter of most of the remaining colonists.
21:22And finally, if at least some of the dare stones are real,
21:26that none of them were found for 350 years.
21:31It would seem that fate definitely was against the unfortunate lost colony of Roanoke.
21:43Coming up next, 20th Century with Mike Wallace reports on the impact of DNA fingerprinting
21:49and brings you an exclusive interview with O.J. Simpson trial attorney Peter Neufeld.
21:54Then, Weapons at War marches into the horror of the Western Front
21:58with the young Americans they called the Doughboys.
22:01And later tonight, Vanishing Act Week begins on History's Mysteries
22:04with an investigation into the disappearance of Teamster kingpin Jimmy Hoffa
22:09at 8 here on the History Channel where the past comes alive.
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