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Tonight, one of America's oldest mysteries.

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They're gone.

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The entire colony is just gone.

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A group of English settlers vanish without a trace,

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leaving behind only cryptic clues.

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The houses have been dismantled, taken down.

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And the letters C, R, O, carved into a tree.

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Now we'll reveal the top theories behind the entire colony.

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He admits that he had a group of English colonists

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killed many years ago.

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They could have perished on the small boat.

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The colonists survived, and they're in Georgia,

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taken in by natives.

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Can advanced technology finally provide answers?

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Something was covered up here, a small detail

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that may be hiding a big secret.

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What really happened to the lost colony of Roanoke?

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The Roanoke Island

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The Roanoke Island

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The Roanoke Island

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The Roanoke Island

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July 25th, 1587.

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Just off the coast of present-day North Carolina,

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three ships carrying English settlers land on Roanoke Island.

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About 115 men, women and children,

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along with John White, the governor,

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arrived off the coast of North Carolina.

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Their goal was to create the first permanent English settlement

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in the New World.

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Two years earlier, the English sent a group of mostly soldiers

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to try and colonize Roanoke,

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but it ends in disaster.

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With severe food shortages,

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attacks from the hostile Native American population there,

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many died, and they barely escaped,

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just getting back to England.

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Governor White is determined to do better this time,

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and he has more than just his life on the line.

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On this expedition was John White's very pregnant daughter,

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Eleanor, and her husband Ananias Dare,

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among other colonists who were there who were also ready

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to start their families and settle in the New World.

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On August 18th, 1587, Eleanor Dare gives birth to her daughter, Virginia,

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the first English child born in North America.

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Unfortunately, there's no time to celebrate

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because the colony is running dangerously low on supplies.

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You'd think they would have learned from their last expedition,

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but as they start to take inventory,

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they realize they're not going to have enough provisions last through the winter.

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The plan had been start growing their own crops and farming livestock,

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but there's just not enough time.

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So someone has to go back to England and secure more provisions.

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On August 27th,

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barely a week after his granddaughter is born,

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White volunteers to make the transatlantic crossing himself.

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It was quite a journey.

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It took him two and a half months to get back.

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When they finally arrived back on English soil, it was November.

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Governor White quickly loads five ships with supplies.

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They are pretty much ready to sail,

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but the problem with this is there is a stay-of-all shipping

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commanded by Queen Elizabeth I

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because the Spanish Amada are making the most untimely arrival.

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England is on the brink of war with Spain.

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That means that Queen Elizabeth's hands are tied

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and her money is more focused on war efforts than a failing colony.

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White has no choice but to stay in England indefinitely.

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Meanwhile, at the colony, they expect White to return in six months,

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and of course they don't know about the war news,

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but you can imagine their sinking feeling as six months go by,

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and then a year, and then two years.

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Ultimately, it takes White three full years to return to the coast of North Carolina.

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When he does, it's August 18th, 1590,

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the third birthday of his granddaughter, Virginia Dare.

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But Governor White doesn't return to his family.

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He returns to a mystery.

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They're gone.

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The entire colony is just gone.

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At some point in the previous three years,

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everything and everyone had just disappeared.

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There's no evidence that there was any kind of battle.

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There's no evidence of bones or bodies that might indicate

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an altercation between the colonists and the indigenous people.

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What's weird is that there's basically nothing left behind,

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and the town isn't so much abandoned.

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It's been dismantled.

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All of the buildings have been carefully taken apart.

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The tools, the boats, the provisions, it's all been taken away.

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The big mystery is, where do they all go?

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White and a few men spend hours searching the site.

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They turn up only two clues.

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They're carved into a fence post.

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White and the English see this word, croaton.

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And then carved into a tree, three letters, C-R-O.

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When White sees the word croaton, he's actually quite jubilant.

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He knows exactly where the colonists have gone.

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The croatons are a tribe located just directly south of Roanoke.

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John White assumes this was a full-scale relocation by the colonists

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to live with the tribe.

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Now, you might think, based on those carvings,

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that there's another option,

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that the colonists were attacked by the croatons.

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But John White doesn't think so.

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First of all, there's the careful dismantling of the town,

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and you don't do that if you're under attack.

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And secondly, White and the colonists have a plan

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for what to do if they are under attack.

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Prior to leaving, John White gave explicit instructions to the colony.

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If they were in distress, or if they were in danger,

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to carve a Maltese cross on a tree,

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but there's no Maltese cross.

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White returns to his ships, intending to sail south to Croatoan.

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White has come with two boats, the Moonlight and the Hopewell.

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But the crews are very antsy,

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and they don't want to spend any more time in this hostile territory

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than they have to.

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Imagine it from their perspective.

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These are people who had signed up on a resupply ship

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to come over to a place that they thought was going to be safe.

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These people had not been hired to go in search of lost colonists,

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who as far as they knew might have been held captive,

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might have been in the midst of a war.

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So they had much less enthusiasm than John White.

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At first, they're willing to give White another day or two.

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They plan to head to Croatoan the next morning, August 19th.

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But they run into problems.

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The Hopewell's anchor cable breaks,

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and there's no way that they can risk going out into the treacherous waters

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of the North Carolina Inner Banks.

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The waters are very shallow.

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The ship could be shipwrecked and cause an extreme danger for the crew

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and others on board the ship.

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A desperate White appeals to the crew of the Moonlight.

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The crew of the second ship, the Moonlight,

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are not willing to risk their lives in order to find the lost colonists.

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They don't have as much invested in this as John White does.

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Certainly he's thinking of his family.

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They're just thinking about making it back to England safely

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before the brutal Atlantic winter sets in.

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So the Moonlight goes back to England.

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But White is able to get a small team to agree to repair the Hopewell,

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sail to the Caribbean for the winter,

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and then return to North Carolina in the spring to resume the search.

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But it's as if this guy was cursed.

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After White and the crew repair the Hopewell,

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they set sail for the Caribbean.

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But then a freak storm comes up, get blown way off course,

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and they're forced to return to England.

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White attempts to raise the funds for another search and rescue mission,

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but fails.

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One can imagine how devastated John White must have felt.

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He's so close to finding his family.

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He's only 40 miles away, but he can't make it to them.

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And after three years, he passes away,

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never to return and never to know the fate of what happened to the colony.

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News of the lost colony spreads throughout Europe.

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And while White is never able to find out what happened,

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ships begin to visit the area again some seven years after his death.

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Occasionally, other European ships visit the Outer Banks during the 1600s.

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But once we reach the 1700s, it's a pretty heavily traveled area.

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And no one ever actually sees the missing colonists.

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But they do find evidence that perhaps they have blended in with the local tribes,

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just as White believed.

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One expedition reports native tribespeople with European features,

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fair complexions, light-colored hair and eyes,

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and some even claim to have European relatives.

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Additional proof can be found in architecture.

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One expedition reports a native village with timber houses built in the English style.

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It seems likely that these tribes had English settlers living amongst them,

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working together, intermarrying, having offspring.

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Now all of this is hearsay, but it is potential evidence that the lost colony moved in with the Croatoans.

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The Croatoan Archaeological Society, led by historian Scott Dawson,

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has been excavating the area since 2009.

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So the archaeologists who have dug on what is now Hatteras Island

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have found fascinating artifacts that definitely are made in the time of the lost colonists.

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They found the hilt of a rapier that is a kind of sword that was used during Elizabethan times.

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They found fragments of pottery and dishes, a copper ring, a brass gun, and European coins.

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But can we say that's absolute proof that the colonists moved in with the local indigenous people?

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Genealogist Roberta Estes thinks it's possible and is using cutting-edge technology to try and prove it.

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What she's doing is tracing Y chromosome DNA,

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analyzing people in the area of Hatteras Island who may have mixed native European ancestry,

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and who share surnames with the Roanoke colonists.

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Estes has turned up a number of intriguing candidates.

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These people may just have the right background to be descended from the lost colony,

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living proof that the colonists survived and mixed with the Croatoans.

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But the problem with this is to get an absolute match, we have to identify a matching family back in England.

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If Estes can find a match, a confirmed descendant of a lost colonist and a Croatoan native, that'll be it.

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It won't be the lost colony anymore, but for now, it remains just a theory.

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When 115 colonists go missing from Roanoke Island in 1590, the English are eager to re-establish a presence in the New World,

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but it takes them nearly 20 years to try again.

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In 1607, England finally manages to establish a settlement on the James River in Virginia.

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They call it Jamestown.

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Like its predecessor, Jamestown is also plagued by misfortune.

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The English can't seem to catch a break.

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Once again, they don't have enough to eat early on.

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They arrive too late in the year to plant crops.

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The English are starving.

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Food shortages get worse and worse and worse.

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The English resort to some fairly terrible behavior.

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First, they slaughter and kill their own animals.

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This is not a very good strategy for long-term since they need those animals to survive.

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And when those run out, they turn to eating rats, mice, and snakes.

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Then they boil and eat their shoe leather for sustenance.

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There's even some evidence they may have resorted to cannibalism to survive.

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Within three years, only 60 of the original 214 Jamestown settlers are still alive,

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including a well-known figure in American history, Captain John Smith.

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John Smith was such a fascinating guy.

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He served as a mercenary.

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He was captured by the Turks, sold into slavery, and then eventually made his way to England by way of Russia.

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Then he ends up in the New World and becomes the leader of the new colony at Jamestown.

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He is the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay.

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He then explores the coast of New England and gives the region its name.

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His books and maps aid English colonization efforts for decades to come.

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While he's struggling to keep his colony afloat in Virginia,

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he's also got a burning curiosity to solve the mystery of the Roanoke colonists.

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And it doesn't hurt that England's King James has issued an order to launch an investigation.

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Smith works with the Jamestown Colonies' Secretary, William Strayke.

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In his journals, we can see William Strayke's research into the case.

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Operating on the assumption that Native American tribes might be the only people left to know what happened,

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Strayke dives deep into a nearby local indigenous population called the Powhatan.

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The Powhatan are led by a man named Wahoon Seneca, more commonly known as Chief Powhatan.

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Chief Powhatan has a love-hate relationship with the English.

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On one hand, he views them as a threat to his people and their way of life.

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But he also thinks the English would be useful allies in the ongoing conflict between himself and the other tribes.

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Today, Chief Powhatan is best remembered as the father of Pocahontas.

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As the legend goes, Powhatan's men captured John Smith and ordered him put to death.

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But the quite extraordinary thing about Pocahontas was she does seem to have been quite smitten with John Smith,

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and she actually pleaded with Powhatan to spare his life, and so consequently he did.

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But Chief Powhatan may not have always been so lenient, because according to Smith and Strayke's investigation,

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he might be responsible for the destruction of the Roanoke Colony.

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Chief Powhatan speaks to William Strayke, and he admits that he had a group of English colonists killed many years ago.

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According to him, instead of migrating south to live with the Croatoan, the Roanoke colonists head north,

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and they stay with a different tribe called the Chesapeake.

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The Chesapeake are rivals with the Powhatan because they refuse to bend the knee to Chief Powhatan's authority and join the confederation.

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So when he gets word that the colonists are possibly allying with the Chesapeake, he claims that this fulfills a prophecy he's received.

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He's been warned that a great nation from the east is coming to overthrow his empire, unless he kills them first.

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So that's exactly what he does.

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After John Smith hears Chief Powhatan's confession, he digs deeper.

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Smith asks Chief Powhatan to prove his bold claim to essentially show me where the bodies are, but Chief Powhatan can't.

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Powhatan couldn't show him where the bodies were, but what he did do is show him items from previous colonies,

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and he showed them a mortar and pestle and a couple of other objects.

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But again, these could not be confirmed as coming directly from the lost colony.

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But when Smith sends back his report to King James, the evidence is enough to convince him that this is what happened.

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And if that's what the King believes, then the case closed, right?

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The Powhatan theory becomes the official version of events for the next 200-plus years.

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But today's historians question its accuracy.

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Some argue that the settlers that Chief Powhatan bows of killing aren't the Roanoke colonists all.

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Instead, he's referring to a different set of people, and the confusion happens because of the language barrier.

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Smith was specifically talking about the colony of 115, the last Roanoke colony that was established.

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But Powhatan could have easily been talking about the previous colonies that had come a couple of years earlier.

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Remember, there was a 1584 expedition too, just male soldiers, 15 of whom were left behind when that expedition failed.

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And that might be who Powhatan killed.

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It's certainly true that a lot of blood was spilled in this particular chapter of history, both Native American and English.

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But despite Chief Powhatan's account, we still can't prove that any of it belonged to the Roanoke colonists.

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North Carolina's island dotted coast is now an idyllic and popular tourist destination.

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But 400 years ago, it was largely inhospitable, as Roanoke's colonists discovered.

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When John White leaves in 1587, conditions among the colony were dire.

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Food was limited, and the farming was not taking hold as they had hoped.

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There was a famine going on. There was clearly a great deal of bad weather.

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And they're struggling with skirmishes with Native American Indians.

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We know they're not there when White returns three years later.

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So pretty much every theory about what happened to them starts with a relocation.

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They have to go somewhere else. But Roanoke is an island.

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So if they want to flee, they'll have to cross a body of water.

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Luckily, while they don't have enough food to eat, they do have a boat.

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The colonists originally arrived with three ships.

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One returns to England immediately.

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One is taken by John White, and one still remains.

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The boat they have left is called a penis, which is a small, nimble, flat bottom boat,

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mostly used for short trips and errands.

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You use it when your main vessel is too cumbersome or the water's too shallow.

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When White finally arrives in 1590, in addition to finding the community dismantled, the penis is gone.

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He presumably would have thought the colonists had gotten on it and went somewhere where he wouldn't have known.

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The point of them having this boat is for fishing or island hopping, foraging, or small-scale exploration.

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It's not meant to be a long-haul ship.

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But in a dire emergency with no other options, this has to be their plan A.

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It's either get on the boat or die.

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And this is where the theorists really start speculating about where they may have gone on the small boat.

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But this fails to take into account one other possibility that I think is definitely an option that they could have perished on the small boat.

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This is very noteworthy.

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So far, throughout history, really, all 400-plus years, searching for the lost colonists has been largely limited to learning.

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It's not limited to land, but I think it's just as likely that the answers are in the water.

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Unfortunately, this theory makes finding evidence almost impossible.

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First of all, you're not going to see any trace of what happened unless somebody's randomly diving or scanning the bottom of some body of water and luxe into a one in a billion discovery.

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It's complicated to even know where to begin to look for a wreckage for the colonists.

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We don't know where they left from. We don't know how far they sailed out. We don't even know where they're going.

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If the colonists had decided that it was time to sail somewhere, the most logical place to go would be to sail back to England.

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They could have taken a short trip to some other spot in the New World, but the New World isn't working out for them.

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So they valiantly try to go home.

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Think about it. You are stranded with no food and no hope in a violent, strange new land. What do you do?

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You try to make it back home to a place you're familiar with, even if it means risking death.

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They had survived the crossing one way. Maybe they had what it took to make it the other way.

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Another European colony also famously made the voyage home against even worse odds.

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The Roanoke colonists might have been aware of a very well-known story published in Europe 25 years prior.

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There was a group of marooned French colonists that shares many similarities to the Roanoke adventure.

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It's the kind of story that would have gone viral today, but even back then it managed to spread far and wide.

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In 1562, the French set out to establish the Charles Ford Settlement in what would become South Carolina.

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But by the following year, these colonists also run out of supplies.

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Their leader, Admiral Jean Ruebaud, sails home for more provisions, leaving two dozen people behind.

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Unfortunately, upon returning to Europe, Ruebaud is unexpectedly detained, leaving the settlers to fend for themselves in a strange land.

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Just like Roanoke.

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But unlike Roanoke, this colony has a much bigger obstacle.

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These French settlers don't have access to a boat.

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So in 1563, the Frenchmen build their own boat.

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And against all odds, logic and reason, they make it back to Europe. Just barely, but they do make it.

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The colonists are probably thinking, if the French can make it on a boat they built themselves, then surely we can make it with a boat that we have on hand.

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But the problem may lie in their numbers.

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The population of the colony starts off with just over a hundred people.

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And because the pinnets were so small, it's unlikely that all the colonists were on board that ship.

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But depending on when the colonists flee, some months have passed without supplies.

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Between starvation, disease and native attacks, there may be far less than 100 survivors to board the boat.

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Capacity might not have been an issue.

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But stability is.

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For any crew crossing the Atlantic, it was challenging at best.

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These colonists didn't have instruments. They were facing rough waters. And they also were facing challenging weather.

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In addition to that, this is not a seafaring boat. This is a shoreline boat.

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And with rough seas and the complications of the water surrounding the outer banks, it would have proved to be very difficult and very hard if they made it back.

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Surely they would have returned to their families. There would have been some evidence, but there's nothing to say that they made it home.

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Could the remains of the lost colony be buried underwater?

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So far, no such shipwreck has been found. But some researchers remain optimistic.

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To date, scientists have only been able to explore about 35% of the U.S. coastal sea floor. So there's a lot to go.

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Maybe someday with advances in technology, we'll find the remains of the lost colonists who make it off the island, but don't survive the journey home.

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By the 20th century, the leading theories as to what happened to the colonists were that, number one, they joined with the pro-Itoans to the south.

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And number two, they had gone north to the Chesapeake where they were murdered by Powhatan's people.

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Another possibility is quite simple, that they'd tried to sail back to England.

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There's just so little evidence. There's almost nothing that has survived. And we haven't even located the site of the colony.

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Roanoke Island is about the size of Manhattan, and we don't even know where they lived on that island.

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The primary surviving written source for the bulk of the information that we have on the colony is from John White's diary.

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And of course, he wasn't there for the disappearance.

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But in 1937, a new written account is found. And it's a bombshell.

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November of 1937, near Eatonton, North Carolina, about 60 miles west of Roanoke Island,

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a man named Lewis Hammond is hunting for hickory nuts along the Chowan River.

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When he finds a large rock, it's covered in strange inscriptions that appear to be Old English.

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Hammond brings the rock to Emory University in Atlanta to have a history professor named Haywood J. Pierce help him decipher what it says.

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Pierce takes one look and he can't believe his eyes.

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The carved stone purports to be a message from Eleanor Dare, John White's daughter.

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On one side of the stone, Dare report the sad fate of her husband, Ananias Dare, and their four-year-old daughter, Virginia.

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They apparently both die in the year 1591.

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Below that, Dare instructs whoever finds the stone to bring it to Governor White.

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She wants her father to know what happened to her family, and making the stone carving is the best way she knows how to do that.

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On the reverse side, there's an even longer message.

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Eleanor describes the initial departure from Roanoke and the route they've taken so far.

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They travel west about 50 miles and end up close to the spot where the stone is found.

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Next, she writes that after a miserable period of illness, starvation, and violent attacks from local tribes,

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the population of the colony, which starts off with just over 100 people, dwindles down to just seven souls.

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I've looked at this stone in great detail. It makes for a great story. It makes for a very plausible story.

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The problem is, there's no record of where they went.

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But she does provide a hint of a clue.

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After the seven colonists bury the remains of their peers, Dare writes that she's inscribed their names on a grave marker somewhere,

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along with further details of recent events.

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In other words, there may be a second hand-carved message with more answers.

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After reviewing it, Haywood J. Pierce, the history professor, knows exactly how important this rock is.

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So he buys it from Lewis Hammond and launches this obsessive search for the second stone.

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Pierce believes finding the second stone will authenticate the first stone, effectively solving the Roanoke mystery,

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and earning himself a permanent spot in the history books as well.

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00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:15,000
Professor Pierce offers a $500 reward to anyone who can find the second Dare stone.

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00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:23,000
By today's inflation, that's $10,000. During that time, the country was still in the Great Depression, so we know the hunt was on.

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Soon enough, Pierce's plan works.

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The next stone is found by Bill Eberhardt, a backwiz man from northern Georgia.

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He brings a 21-pound rock to Emory University that he claims he found in South Carolina.

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Sure enough, it has the names of the dead that Eleanor Dare mentioned that she carved into it.

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But Eberhardt's find doesn't end there.

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In total, within less than a year, Eberhardt finds several dozen more stones.

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Taken together, they finally paint a clear picture of what happened to the Roanoke survivors. It's an incredible tale.

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00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:09,000
They eventually make it to safety after a 500-mile journey to Georgia.

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Together, this evidence has become known as the Dare stones.

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According to the Dare stones, the colonists survived and they're in Georgia, taken in by natives, and Eleanor's husband passes away.

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00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:28,000
Eventually, Eleanor Dare is married to a Native American man in 1593.

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Together, they have a daughter named Agnes, and Eleanor dies in 1599.

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00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:43,000
After Eleanor's death, Griffin Jones and Agnes Dare leave behind obituaries for the other survivors as they die off,

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but nobody knows what happens to Agnes or Griffin.

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00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:53,000
And it's easy to say Professor Pierce was very excited about these findings.

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He hosts a scientific conference in October of 1940 inviting 34 academic experts to examine the stones.

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A panel of these experts issues a press release supporting the stones' authenticity.

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00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:11,000
Pierce submits an article of his findings to the Saturday Evening Post.

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When the article comes out on April 26, 1941, it's quite shocking, but not for the reason Pierce expected,

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because according to the article, the fact-checkers find all kinds of problems with the story.

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The Dare stones are our hoax.

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00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:32,000
After examining the stones, a linguist finds several flaws.

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They used words which were not in the English language at the time, like trail and reconnoiter.

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One of these stones even purports to the names of people, but those names don't appear on the ship's manifest.

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They seem to be just fabrications.

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00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:49,000
Then there's the handwriting.

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The 47 stones found by Everhart don't match the handwriting on the initial stone found by Hammond.

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00:29:55,000 --> 00:30:01,000
And they're carved into a different kind of rock. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

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00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:06,000
The timing of the 1937 find is also suspicious.

387
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:11,000
In 1937, it's the 350-year anniversary of the Lost Colony.

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00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:15,000
There's a lot of fanfare built up around this anniversary and the celebration.

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It's also an interesting time because the country is the middle of the Great Depression,

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so it's a wonderful way to live the spirits of the population.

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00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:27,000
In modern terms, Roe and O could be described as having a moment.

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00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:35,000
So if somebody were trying to make money off some bogus artifacts, this would be the time.

393
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:39,000
Is it possible that Everhart faked the Dare stones?

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00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:42,000
This never occurs to Haywood Peers.

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00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:46,000
Everhart to him is just some manual laborer with a third grade education.

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00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,000
There's no way he could produce such authentic forgeries.

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00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:55,000
Come to find out, Everhart has a history of forging and selling fake Native American artifacts.

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00:30:55,000 --> 00:31:02,000
While the 47 Dare stones forged by Everhart have been officially declared fraudulent,

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00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:06,000
some still believe the original is genuine.

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00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:13,000
There's still a chance that the original stone brought in by Lewis Hammond could be the 400-year-old work of Eleanor Dare.

401
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:19,000
Then again, Hammond may have just been looking to make a quick buck and earn 15 minutes of fame through a scam of his own,

402
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,000
which Everhart then took to an extreme.

403
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:30,000
Either way, apart from the Dare stones themselves, there's no evidence that the Lost Colonists ever ended up in Georgia.

404
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:42,000
Across four centuries, the writings of Governor John White are the only clue as to the final destination of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

405
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:51,000
John White leaves behind a journal that's very extensive, but just like the rest of us, he's in the dark about what happened to the colonists after they leave.

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00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:56,000
Although he was governor of the colony, he was first and foremost a painter by trade,

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00:31:56,000 --> 00:32:03,000
and it's because of his drawings and his incredible paintings that he produced during his time on Roanoke Island

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00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:08,000
that we know a great deal about what life was like amongst the Native American Indian population.

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00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:16,000
White also leaves behind one other potential piece of evidence, a hand-drawn map.

410
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:25,000
The Virginia Paws map is arguably the finest piece of 16th-century North American cartography there is.

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There were three expeditions to Roanoke.

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White made this map during the 1585-1586 Sir Walter Raleigh expedition a few years before the Lost Colonists.

413
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The map shows Roanoke Island, the colonists' eventual landing spot and its surrounding areas in great detail.

414
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:53,000
It's incredibly accurate. You can still look at that map today over 400 years later and define all of the key estuaries, the lakes, the islands.

415
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,000
It's a remarkable map.

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00:32:55,000 --> 00:33:03,000
In 2012, a research group called the First Colony Foundation examines White's map for new clues.

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00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:07,000
The First Colony Foundation, they don't even start by actually looking at the original.

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They go over a high-quality reproduction of the map and something jumps out at them, a small detail that may be hiding a big secret.

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They see a faint round shadow, which seems to have been overlooked.

420
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This could just be a topographical outline, but the team thinks it might instead be a patch. Something was covered up here.

421
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Maybe a spot where John White accidentally spills a blob of paint, makes an error, and it's just covered up with a piece of parchment.

422
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:42,000
Or maybe it's something more. There's only one way to find out.

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They notify the British Museum, which takes the original copy of the Virginia Pars map and scans it using advanced imaging technology.

424
00:33:52,000 --> 00:34:01,000
And sure enough, under the patch is not an errant paint blob, but what appears to be a large X symbol.

425
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:08,000
On maps of the era, an X is often used to mark the location of a fort.

426
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:15,000
The question is, what does this image of a fort mean? Was it in fact something that was built on a previous expedition?

427
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:21,000
Or maybe it was an idea that simply never came to fruition. We don't know.

428
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:31,000
But obviously, John White knows about it. And in theory, when he comes back with his Roanoke colony as their governor, he might have told the colonists about the fort.

429
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:37,000
Could this be where they head when things turn ugly on Roanoke Island?

430
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:44,000
The X is about 50 miles west of Roanoke Inland, along the Albemarle Sound.

431
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:50,000
This goes right along with the passage in John White's journal where he instructs the colonists to go west in case of an emergency.

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00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:57,000
Did the colonists follow White's instructions? A team is quickly sent to excavate the area.

433
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:09,000
The dig site gets one of the coolest names you'll ever find in archaeology. They call it Site X, a reference to the pop culture idea of buried pirate treasure.

434
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And it's not long before Site X unveils a treasure trove of new clues.

435
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:23,000
There are pottery shards and pieces of weapons dating back to the Tudor era. The exact period when this mystery begins.

436
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:29,000
English artifacts from the period of the Roanoke colonists definitely exist at this site.

437
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:36,000
The problem is, which English group did these artifacts belong to? They can't be dated precisely enough to tell.

438
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:44,000
They could be from the Lost Colony or the Walter Raleigh expedition or various other smaller teams that have visited the area before.

439
00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:50,000
Archaeologists expand their search to a second location nearby. They name it Site Y.

440
00:35:50,000 --> 00:36:00,000
At Site Y, there have also been finds of European artifacts, but again, the trouble is trying to tell whether they belong to the Lost Colony or to later English settlers.

441
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:04,000
They're not yet definitive. We need more evidence.

442
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:12,000
The First Colony Foundation continues their hunt through annual digs, led by historians, scientists and archaeologists.

443
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:21,000
And whatever they find is fully analyzed in a nearby laboratory. They're confident they know where the Lost Colony of Roanoke ended up, and it's right here.

444
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:26,000
Now they just have to prove it with that one elusive artifact that can establish the link.

445
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:36,000
We will know that we have a location with the Lost Colony when we find something that is irrefutably a personal effect of one of the Lost Colonists.

446
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:45,000
It has to be a necklace or a ring that might have an aim or note or something that positively identifies it as a Lost Colony.

447
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:52,000
But until we find more evidence, more hard evidence, we're essentially looking for a needle in a haystack.

448
00:36:53,000 --> 00:37:06,000
Croatoan, a strange word found in a strange place, carved into a tree near the abandoned Roanoke Colony in 1590.

449
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:10,000
But it may not be the only time this word is tied to tragedy.

450
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:21,000
Believe it or not, there's a theory out there that the word Croatoan turns up in several desperate places in history, not just with the Lost Colony, not by a long shot.

451
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:29,000
The theory speculates that when the colonists carve that word, it's not a simple message of their whereabouts.

452
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:38,000
It's a cry of fear, because in this case, according to the theory, Croatoan doesn't mean the friendly native tribe, or the name of an island.

453
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:43,000
It refers to some kind of supernatural force that is out for blood.

454
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:53,000
John White assumes that the carvings Croatoan and CRO means we've gone 40 miles south to live with our indigenous friends.

455
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:57,000
He goes home devastated, unable to find his daughter or granddaughter.

456
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:05,000
But we can assume that he has some degree of hope that maybe they were able to survive and perhaps even thrive with some help of the locals.

457
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:20,000
But John White might be very troubled to learn what allegedly unfolds over the years, because according to some reports, the next time Croatoan shows up in history, it appears to be a dire warning.

458
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:24,000
The word seems to resurface in 1849.

459
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:29,000
Shortly before his death, the great author Edgar Allan Poe goes missing.

460
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:36,000
He eventually shows up in a state of total delirium, and what happened to Poe remains another great historical mystery.

461
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:44,000
But something at that time causes him incredible distress that may have even driven him mad or may have contributed to his death.

462
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:50,000
Allegedly, one of the last coherent things he says is the word Croatoan.

463
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:57,000
There's another story about the word tied to an alleged incident in 1888.

464
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:07,000
The old West Outlaw, Black Bart, is a notorious stagecoach robber, and he's eventually brought to justice and serves four years.

465
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:13,000
But before he gets out, it's rumored that he carves the word Croatoan into the wall of his cell.

466
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:18,000
And after his release in early 1888, he's never seen or heard from again.

467
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:24,000
Is this word somehow killing people, making them disappear? What's going on?

468
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:27,000
The parallels don't end there.

469
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:33,000
In 1921, a ship called the Carol A. Deering crashes off the coast of North Carolina.

470
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:37,000
The entire crew goes missing, not found dead, just totally missing.

471
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:43,000
The ship was found abandoned, and the word Croatoan was apparently written in the logbook.

472
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:51,000
Ambrose Beers is a famous horror author who disappears in 1913 or 1914 on his way to Mexico.

473
00:39:51,000 --> 00:40:00,000
But one rumor has it that the last bed he was known to have slept in had the word Croatoan carved into one of its posts.

474
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:02,000
And this is a doozy.

475
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:09,000
Amelia Earhart famously disappears during an ill-fated flight over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

476
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:14,000
But the Croatoan theorists believe that she leaves behind a journal with the word scribbled in it.

477
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:19,000
It's unclear how or when this rumor started, but it continues to be widely reported.

478
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:24,000
Could there be an ominous link between these incidents?

479
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:28,000
In the mythology of the colonists' Native American neighbors,

480
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:37,000
Croatoan is the name of a vengeful spirit that inhabits their island and punishes those who displease him.

481
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:43,000
He can transform them into animals, trees, or rocks, or just kill them.

482
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:46,000
Is this what those other historical references mean?

483
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:55,000
Is there some vengeful spirit called Croatoan that has been out there transforming and killing people over these past 400 years?

484
00:40:55,000 --> 00:41:05,000
Of course, the idea of an evil spirit associated with the word Croatoan causing all these problems is regrettably still a legend.

485
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:12,000
Besides, if the spirit did transform the lost colonists, why did it then bother to dismantle their houses?

486
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:20,000
Much more likely, the colonists flee on their own, but what happens to them next is still anyone's guess.

487
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:32,000
It's the oldest missing person's case in America, and yet today, there are more people dedicated to solving it than ever before.

488
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:37,000
They're searching land, sea, and even DNA to find the answer.

489
00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:43,000
Perhaps one day soon, the lost colony of Roanoke will finally be found.

490
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:49,000
I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.