Random Utterly Fascinating Theories Behind Vanishing Roanoke Colony (17 items)

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  (#1) Local Native Tribes Absorbed The Colonists As Friends Or Slaves

  An island named Croatoan (now Hatteras Island) just south of Roanoke is home to a Native American tribe of the same name. Because the settlers developed a good rapport with the tribe and they carved “Croatoan” on the fort's gatepost, many assumed the settlers moved to the island and were absorbed into the tribe. As Scott Dawson's 2020 book The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island shows, this theory appears solid and solves the mystery.

  Previous researchers also considered other possible connections to Native Americans.  

  Some theorize they moved north to join the Chesapeake tribe, or perhaps the Chowanocs or Weapemeocs. In the years after the colony disappeared, many people reported seeing Europeans and European-made goods in the area, though it was mostly hearsay. The Zuniga Map, a chart of the area drawn aroun 1607 by a settler from the Virginia colony of Jamestown, states "four men clothed that came from roonock" lived among the Iroquois. Another English man claimed to see two-story stone houses at the Indian settlements of Peccarecanick and Ochanahoen. British settlers supposedly taught them how to build such houses. Contemporary archeologists unearthed evidence including a gold signet ring, part of a rapier, and a slate and pencil that likely belonged to the Roanoke colonists while living among Native people. 

  It's also possible the colonists met with Native people who were less friendly. Jamestown colonist secretary William Strachey reported seeing Native tribes with European slaves who were forced to beat copper. To this day, many Native people in the region claim to have European ancestry, but DNA analysis of present-day local families proved inconclusive.
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  (#2) The Colonists Fell Victim To Cannibalism Or Practiced It Themselves

  Unlike the Croatoans, other Native American tribes may have been more hostile to the Roanoke colonists. There's a theory that a cannibalistic tribe could have attacked and eaten the British colonists.

  If true, that would explain why no bodies were ever found.

  Many native cultures used bones as ingredients for healing remedies, grinding them into a powder form. Although it's a time-consuming task, they would've had time. White was gone for three years, and there’s no way to know exactly when the settlers started to disappear. There isn't convincing evidence that any tribes in the area practiced cannibalism, but there is proof that the colonists of Jamestown resorted to cannibalism in 1609. It’s quite possible their predecessors in Roanoke succumbed to eating human flesh as well. 
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  (#3) Edgar Allan Poe Had A Mysterious Connection to The Word 'Croatoan'

  The whereabouts of the Roanoke colony isn't the only part of this mystery: archeologists and historians are still trying to figure out why the word "Croatoan" was carved into that post. Were the colonists saying the Croatoan tribe would know what happened to them? 

  While we still don't know, the word "Croatoan" is connected to another strange event centuries later. 

  Not much is known about the death of author Edgar Allan Poe in 1849. After disappearing on a trip from Virginia to Pennsylvania, he turned up nearly unconscious and babbling incoherently in a gutter in Baltimore, MD. While on his deathbed, Poe allegedly whispered the word “Croatoan.”

  It's not clear what illness he suffered from, and his official cause of death is unknown. All medical records and his death certificate were allegedly lost. Could he have experienced what the lost colony did? 
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  (#4) 'Croatoan' Appears At The Site Of Many Other Mysterious Disappearances

  This mysterious word also reportedly showed up in other places.

  Infamous stagecoach robber Black Bart supposedly etched the word into the wall of his prison cell right before his release in 1888 and he was never seen again. Horror author Ambrose Bierce vanished while in Mexico in 1913, and the bed he last slept in allegedly had the word “Croatoan” carved into a post. The word also appears on the last page of the logbook of the ghost ship Carroll A. Deering in 1921, which ran aground without its crew on Cape Hatteras, near what was once known as Croatoan Island. And Amelia Earhart reportedly scribbled the word in her journal, found after her disappearance in 1937.
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  (#5) The Colonists Were Massacred By Chief Powhatan

  In 1607, members of the Jamestown Colony attempted to learn the fate of their unfortunate predecessors. Jamestown secretary William Strachey claimed the Native chief Powhatan confessed to leader John Smith that his tribe murdered the colony as payback for aligning themselves with a rival tribe. Powhatan allegedly possessed some items he'd taken from the colonists, including a musket barrel and a brass mortar and pestle.

  However, historians and anthropologists largely dispute this story, as the only record of this confession comes from Strachey. Smith never mentioned it in his own writings.
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  (#6) An Infectious Disease Drove The Colonists Mad

  Because of reports from Native American tribes claiming to witness internal warfare among the Roanoke colonists, archeologists also theorize the Roanoke settlers contracted a plague. The illness could have caused delirium, paranoia, or even complete madness among the infected. Those not infected would've wanted to vanquish those who were out of fear of contracting the virus themselves. 
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  (#7) Spanish Troops Murdered The Colonists

  England was at war with Spain when the Roanoke colony disappeared, and some think the Spanish were involved in the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists. Spain and England were locked in a rivalry over the colonization of the Americas, among other things, and there were Spanish troops stationed in Florida at the time.

  Did Spanish troops make their way to North Carolina and eradicate the British foothold in the area?
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  (#8) The Colonists Were Sabotaged As Part Of A Plan To Discredit Sir Walter Raleigh

  Anthropologist Lee Miller believes the colonists were victims of a plot by Sir Francis Walsingham, England's secretary of state under Queen Elizabeth I. In Miller's book Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, she theorizes that Walsingham intentionally stranded the colonists and left them to die because Sir Walter Raleigh, who funded the expedition to Roanoke, was granted a royal patent for all the land he settled in America.

  According to the theory, the colonists moved west into what's now North Carolina, where they became embroiled in a conflict between warring Native tribes. They were either captured or murdered. All of this would've been kept secret by the Crown, which would explain why no records exist.
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  (#9) The Colonists Tried To Sail Back To England

  Some theorize the colonists simply grew tired of waiting for John White to return and attempted to sail back to England on their own. But that might be far-fetched. Historians believe the colonists were left with only a small boat known as a pinnance, and it wouldn't have been large enough to carry them all. There's also no evidence of a shipwreck to support this theory.
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  (#10) The Croatoan Tribe Executed The Colonists As Suspected Witches

  The Croatoan tribe reportedly believed in witches, both male and female, who used black magic to do evil. The tribe could have interpreted the actions of the Roanoke colonists (like spreading disease and encroaching upon Native Land) as evil.

  While local tribes in that area did not regularly execute witches, they did condemn dangerous outsiders to death, and the colonists may have seemed dangerous.
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  (#11) Roanoke Was The Site Of A Zombie Apocalypse

  Another theory some folks like to share on the internet claims Roanoke served as ground zero for some kind of zombie apocalypse. This combines aspects of other theories that the colonists were diseased and became cannibals.

  According to this idea, the settlers became infected with a zombie virus that gave them an insatiable hunger for human flesh and hastened the decaying process of their own bodies. The remains would've been long gone and the infestation would've been over before White returned.
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  (#12) The Roanoke Colonists Were Transformed Into Trees

  The Croatoan tribe reportedly believed the island had a spirit who, if angered, had the ability to absorb the offenders into the woods - literally. The spirit could transform them into trees, stones, animals, or anything else in nature. If this lore is taken at face value, that means no one actually went missing. They just became a part of the land.
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  (#13) The Reptilian Devil Of The Woods Possessed The Colonists

  The Croatoans believed that “greater spirits” manifested themselves in the form of elements, and they reported a strange phenomenon that occurred at the same time as the vanishing of the colonists. Birds fell from the sky and large numbers of wildlife died abruptly in the area where the Native people hunted.

  The Croatoans told of an evil spirit that took the form of a reptile. They said it was able to attach itself to humans, causing them to demonstrate the demonic traits like violence, rapaciousness, and greed. The Croatoans warned the colonists that the evil reptilian spirit had infested the entire region and once the infighting began, they knew the settlers were infected with the creature’s evil and that’s why they turned on each other.
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  (#14) The Colonists Were The Victims Of North Carolina Witches

  If the Croatoans didn't think that the colonists were witches, maybe the colonists encountered witches already waiting for them. Many legends tell of witches who stalked the woods of North Carolina, and new arrivals only added to the lore. 

  Native peoples in North Carolina supposedly told stories of witches who use black magic to harm others, and early European colonists accused the Native people of being witches themselves. It's well known that later colonists accused each other of witchcraft, notoriously in the Salem Witch Trials. 
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  (#15) The Dare Stones Tell The Story Of The Missing Colonists

  From 1937 to 1941, people began uncovering engraved stones supposedly written by members of the Roanoke colony. A man claimed to have found the first stone, a 21-pound rock, somewhere along the Carolina coast. It's believed that Eleanor Dare used it to write a message to her father, John White.

  In the alleged account, Dare says the colonists moved farther away from the ocean a short time after White embarked for England, but they were plagued with illness and violent encounters with native tribes until only seven colonists remained.

  Through the 1930s, a North Carolina farmer came up with more than 40 more engraved stones, but those have been proven to be fake. The first stone is different, however, and it could be the real deal. 

   
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  (#16) Aliens Abducted The Colonists

  You know a mystery is extremely mysterious when an alien abduction seems like a logical explanation. Theories about extraterrestrial involvement range from reality shift that banished the colonists into another realm, to aliens beaming them up for a bit and then beaming them back down on the other side of the earth. They literally vanished. Who knows, maybe they’ll turn up back in Roanoke hundreds of years from now thinking they’ve only been gone an hour?
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  (#17) Virginia Dare Survived And Was Turned Into A Beautiful White Doe

  Many legends about the Roanoke colony center on little Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas and the granddaughter of the colony's founder, John White. When White finally returned to his colony, it was on Virginia's third birthday.

  In 1901, Sallie Southall Cotten wrote the poem The White Doe: The Fate of Virginia Dare, a fictional account of what happened to the little girl. In the poem, Virginia is taken in by a local tribe and renamed Winona-Ska. She's loved and accepted by the tribe and, when she grows up, she gets engaged to a young chieftain. Unfortunately, she also catches the eye of an evil witch doctor who turns her into a white doe out of jealousy when she wouldn't marry him.

  While this story is presented as fiction, many people claim to have seen a ghostly white doe in the area.

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