What is your opinion to what happened to the Roanoke Villagers?

Question

Just asking. If you don't know who they are then here's a super duper link::

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony

If you're too lazy, the roanoke colony was a colony (duh) that settled in new england in the virginia colony in 1850's. Then they mysteriously disappeared. Nobody knows what happened for sure, but when people found their little town the word CROATON was carved on a door, and the letters CRO were carved into a tree trunk.

So what happened??

Please tell me your opinions.

Thank you!!!

Answer 1

I think that the adults were killed and the children adopted into the tribe. There were reports of blue-eyed Indians.

But your date for the colony are wrong. Roanoke was before Jamestown. Virginia became a state in 1776.  

Answer 2

I think that as things got worse and worse for the settlers due to drought, people began to slip away by twos and threes, only to die in the stinking tidal swamps.  The last person to leave carved CROATAN which was what they called one of the native tribes.  That's where the last ones were going:  to the Indians.  If more of the tribes had survived, I'm sure DNA would bear this out.

Answer 3

Uh, the Roanoke Colony, better known today as the Lost Colony, did not settle in New England or the Virginia Colony (the Virginia colony would come much later, after Jamestown and other such colonies settled in the area). However, the region was named Virginia after Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. And the 1850s? Try the 1580s, 1587 to be specific. CROATAN was carved on one of the posts of Fort Walter Raliegh's palisade, not a door.

Now Croatan refers to the Croatan Indians, which was the tribe Manteo was from. When Governor White was finally able to return to Roanoke (he had returned to England to get supplies but had been waylaid in England from returning due to the war with Spain and was unable to return until 1590) he discovered Fort Raliegh abandonned and the only clues were CRO on a tree trunk and CROATAN on the palisade post. As Manteo was friendly to the Roanoke colony Governor White took this to mean they had moved the colony to Croatan, which was located at Cape Hatterass, where they might be safe. However, low supplies and a Hurricane prevented White from travelling to Croatan to rejoin the colonists, which included Anansias, Eleanor (nee White), and Virgina Dare. Eleanor was John White's daughter and the wife and mother of Anansias and Virginia respectively. So White had an even greater stake in finding the colony as it would reunite him with his family.

However, the colony was never truely found. Of interest is the fact that the people of England were not intrested in giving up on the colonists. One of the goals of the Jamestown colony was to try to find the Roanoke colonists.

What happened to the Lost Colony. No one really knows, but there have been suggestions.. Some have suggested they were all massacred by either the Spanish or the Roanoke Indians. However others attest to the idea that they did infact survive. In 1709 the exploerer John Lawson spent time with the Hatteras Indians, who were the descendants of the Croatan. He said that it also appeared they may have been descended from the Roanoke colonists. A Hamilton MacMillian of Robeson County, NC, claimed in the 1880s that many of the local Pembroke Indians claimed ancestory from the colonists. Another is that the colony split in two with the largest portion settleing with the Chesapeake Indians to the north who lived on the south side of the Chesapeake Bay. However, the Powhatan are supposed to have murdered most of them and Chief Wahunsenacawh (better known as Powhatan himself) showed John Smith the supposed proof of this. Then you go back to MacMillian's theory thanks to the Lumbee Indians. Actually, the Pembroke were a Lumbee group. Their of particular intrest as they appeared to have more European features than other Native American tribes of the region.

If you really want to learn more about the Lost Colony, try visiting Fort Walter Raliegh National Historic Site. I highly recommend it, especially at this time of year since "The Lost Colony" is still playing. If you don't already know, "The Lost Colony" is the annual play put on at Fort Walter Raliegh's Waterside Theater. It was written by North Carolina's own Paul Green and has been playing now for 71 years. Going into my senior year of high school I actually suggested to my history teacher that he take his family (they were going on vacation to the Outer Banks) to see the play because it is an experience everyone who visits the Outer Banks should have at least once in their lives (it been twenty-four years since I saw it). Fort Walter Raliegh NHS is not only home to a recreation of the fort and the Waterside Theater, but also the Elziabethan Gardens.

Answer 4

Virginia is not in New England (Duh!).