For more than 400 years, Americans have been told the same story.
In 1590, Governor John White returned to Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, to find the English settlement deserted. There were no bodies, no signs of battle and only a single clue carved into a wooden post: the word ‘CROATOAN.’
That message would go on to fuel one of America’s greatest unsolved mysteries, spawning theories that the 118 colonists were massacred, starved to death, succumbed to disease or vanished into the wilderness.
But a new round of carbon dating may finally be rewriting the story.
Archaeologists have radiocarbon dated animal remains discovered alongside English artifacts at a site on Hatteras Island and found they date to the late 1500s, precisely when the Lost Colony vanished.
The findings add fresh scientific evidence to a growing body of research suggesting the colonists did not disappear at all, but instead survived and relocated to Croatoan, now known as Hatteras Island.
According to independent researcher and Hatteras Island native Scott Dawson, the mystery that has captivated generations of Americans is largely a myth that ignores both historical documents and the Native American people who may have taken the settlers in.
‘There was no mystery at all until 1937,’ Dawson told the Daily Mail, adding that the narrative had been ‘whitewashed’ and ‘made up.’
‘All you have to do if you want to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony is actually read the primary sources.’
When Governor John White returned to the colony in 1590 after a three-year absence, he found the settlement abandoned, with no bodies, no signs of battle and only a single clue carved into a wooden post: the word ‘CROATOAN’
An aerial view of Hatteras Island, once known as Croatoan, where English artifacts have been discovered buried alongside Native American remains
He argued that the narrative also erased the role of the Croatoan people, despite historical documents repeatedly mentioning the tribe and its close relationship with the English colonists.
‘They reduced a real tribe, a real people and a real place into a mysterious word on a tree,’ Dawson said.
‘As we celebrate our 250th birthday, maybe we should take a second to honor those who made it possible – the natives.’
To bolster the case, researchers conducted four separate radiocarbon tests on deer teeth recovered from the same layer of soil that produced English artifacts.
The remains were not human, Dawson said, because the team wanted to avoid any controversy surrounding the testing of human bones.
The samples were analyzed by the University of California’s Center for Applied Isotope Studies, one of the country’s leading radiocarbon laboratories, and all four tests returned dates consistent with the late 16th century.
‘You know, if you get one, it could be whatever. You get four of them in a row, that’s enough,’ Dawson said.
The results matched what researchers had already concluded from the site’s stratigraphy – the study of soil layers used to determine age – but provided an additional scientific confirmation that the settlement dated to the period when the Roanoke colonists vanished.
Scott Dawson stands in dug-out soil. He believes there is no mystery of the Lost Colony
‘It’s exactly what we thought, but again, you have to do that. You have to do the science even though it’s common sense,’ Dawson said.
Among the discoveries was also a deer jaw still containing an iron-cored musket ball, an armor-piercing round commonly used by English soldiers in the late 1500s.
Because lead ammunition cannot be radiocarbon dated, researchers instead dated the deer itself, reasoning that the animal and the musket ball had to be from the same period.
‘That deer has been shot with a musket ball,’ Dawson said. ‘Normally, you can’t date a musket ball because there’s no carbon, but you can date the deer, and they have to be the same age.’
According to Dawson, the notion that this was an unsolvable mystery exploded in popularity when a dramatic outdoor production called The Lost Colony debuted on Roanoke Island.
The play, which premiered in 1937, portrayed the settlers’ disappearance as a baffling enigma and helped cement the idea in the public imagination.
Dawson contended that over time, the theatrical version of events seeped into classrooms, history books and popular culture.
‘It’s a giant marketing campaign,’ he said. ‘The only reason it started was to make a mystery to sell tickets to the play.
‘Then, suddenly, it leaked into schools and kids started learning for generations that this was some great unsolved mystery.’
An iron key, which archaeologists found in the same layers of dirt as a number of Croaton and other English items
The disappearance of the Roanoke colonists has captivated historians since the late 16th century.
The group – sent by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587 to establish England’s first permanent settlement in the New World – included men, women and children.
Among them was Governor White’s pregnant daughter, Eleanor White Dare, who gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America.
Just weeks later, White sailed back to England to gather supplies, expecting to return quickly.
Instead, England’s war with Spain and the threat posed by the Spanish Armada delayed his voyage for three years.
When he finally reached Roanoke on August 18, 1590, Virginia’s third birthday, every colonist had vanished.
In 1587 a group of English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island. Three years later, more than 100 of the colonists vanished, though some believe they moved to nearby Croatoan Island (marked on the map as Hatteras)
A gun barrel found during the investigation on Hatteras Island
The only clue was the word ‘CROATOAN’ carved into a wooden palisade.
Croatoan was the name of both a nearby island – today’s Hatteras Island – and the Native American tribe that lived there.
The English had known the Croatoan people for years. One of their leaders, Manteo, had traveled to England with the explorers and served as an ally and interpreter.
Dawson said White did not treat the carving as a cryptic message, and neither should anyone who came after.
‘I greatly joyed that I had found a certain token of their being at Croatoan where Manteo, the Croatoan chief, was born,’ White wrote after discovering the inscription, according to the recovered pages.
The governor and his crew agreed to sail to Croatoan immediately, according to his account, but bad weather and dwindling supplies forced them to abandon the journey and return to England.
To Dawson, that account leaves little room for mystery.
A 16th century olive jar found on Hatteras Island. Excavation of the land revealed the natives and English built their homes side-by-side
Dawson argued that the Croatoan people were gradually erased from the popular retelling of the story, reducing a known destination into a centuries-old puzzle.
‘They act like it’s some strange message on a tree that no one’s ever heard of,’ he said. ‘It’s a real tribe, a real people and a real place.’
Over the last two decades, archaeologists working alongside Dawson have uncovered evidence suggesting the settlers may have survived by integrating with the Croatoan people.
Since excavations began on Hatteras Island in 2009, researchers have unearthed tens of thousands of artifacts, many of them English and Native American objects found together in the same locations.
Among the discoveries are swords, gun parts, copper rings, writing slates, beads, glass, cannonballs, earrings and an iron rapier mixed with Native American pottery, arrowheads and household items.
A clue, now known as the Dare Stone, was discovered in 1937 on the North Carolina-Virginia border. It is believed to tell the story of what happened to the settlers
Researchers have also identified English-style square post holes only yards from Native American longhouses, suggesting both communities occupied the area during the same period.
Another significant discovery came in the form of tiny flakes produced during iron forging known as hammerscale.
Because Native Americans living in the region during the late 1500s did not possess iron-smelting technology, archaeologists believe the material could only have been produced by English blacksmiths.
‘This is metal that has to be raised to a relatively high temperature… which, of course, requires technology that Native Americans at this period did not have,’ archaeologist Mark Horton said.
‘We’re looking at the middens, the rubbish heaps, of the Native Americans living on Croatoan Island, because we deduced that [the English] would have very rapidly been assimilated into the Native American population.’
Since last year, archaeologists have uncovered a dress hook made of red brass – a distinctly European object that suggests women from the 1587 expedition were present on Hatteras Island.
An archaeological dig at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in 2009
Another line of investigation centers on White’s famous map, La Virginea Pars.
In 2012, conservators at the British Museum examined a patch covering part of the map and discovered the faint symbol of a fort hidden beneath it.
The concealed location corresponded with an archaeological site in present-day Bertie County known as Site X, where researchers had already uncovered fragments of sixteenth-century English pottery and other European artifacts.
While subsequent excavations suggested Site X was unlikely to have housed the entire colony, archaeologists believe it may have served as a refuge for a smaller group of colonists, raising the possibility that the settlers split apart after leaving Roanoke.
Other clues, including the controversial Dare Stone, have fueled speculation for decades, although historians remain divided over its authenticity.
Archaeologists found bullets mixed in with arrowheads, along with English copper fittings for shoelaces, where the tribe had lived
Discovered on the North Carolina-Virginia border, the stone was believed to have been written on by White’s daughter Eleanor, and possibly tells the story of what happened to the settlers.
Scholars have since been able to transcribe the markings.
On the first side, below a cross, the message reads: ‘Ananias Dare & / Virginia Went Hence / Unto Heaven 1591 / Anye Englishman Shew / John White Govr Via.’
The other side of the stone tells the supposed story of what happened to the colonists after White left for England, claiming the settlers endured two years of ‘Misarie’ and that more than half of them died.
Many archaeologists remain cautious, noting that no single discovery definitively proves the fate of every member of the colony.
But with each new artifact, carbon-dating result and layer of soil excavated, researchers believe they are not solving a mystery so much as confirming what the historical record may have said all along.
Rather than vanishing, the evidence increasingly suggests that many of America’s most famous settlers may have done exactly what the carving indicated: gone to Croatoan.
