Amateur archaeologist answers lost Roanoke colony mystery

June 23, 2024

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Whatever happened to the lost colonists of Roanoke, Virginia?

The answer to one of America’s longest and most puzzling questions is now in a new book.

In “The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island,” author Scott Dawson surmises the colonial settlers were assimilated into the Croatan tribe on Hatteras Island. Later, the tribe was wiped out by smallpox. The upshot: the tribe was lost, not the colonists.

But the book’s bombshell is Dawson’s allegation that the truth has always been known but ignored because of racism, the Daily Mail reported.

The “mystery” started in 1587, when over 100 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Three years later, they had vanished. The only clue to their whereabouts was the word “Croatan” carved into a wooden post.

Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, claims there have been clues throughout the past 430-plus years about the colonists.

“The entire concept of the colony being lost is total fiction, Dawson told the British news outlet. “The truth of the Croatoan was lost in order to prop up a racist myth designed to hide assimilation… In 1937 the lost colony play was created and North Carolina was still 30 years away from being desegregated. If they had a play that ended with the colony assimilating with the Croatoan the public would have torn down the stage. Also it would be impossible to pretend the colony was lost if the relationship they had with the Croatoan was explained.”

Dawson insists the governor of the new colony, John White, knew the tribe lived on Hatteras island .

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The book showcases letters from White that suggest he knew the settlers had moved camp while he was back in England to get supplies. “I greatly joyed that I had found a certain token of their being at Croatoan where Manteo was born,” reads the passage.” Manteo had been the leader of the Croatan tribe that had befriended the settlers before White took his trip.

Dawson writes: “Only White had family in the colony and everyone else aboard the ship wanted to leave… What a shame because they saw columns of smoke coming from the island and that is how the story ends. No one ever went back – not until John Lawson 100 years later.”

Lawson, an English explorer, found native Americans who had blue eyes and could “speak out a book,” further evidence of assimilation between the settlers and the tribe.

“The funny thing is both the colony and the Croatoan became ‘lost,’” Dawson told the Daily Mail. “They are never mentioned in the story until there was the words on the tree… So much focus is on the abandoned colony, but an entire tribe was lost at least to history.”

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