Did some or all ‘Lost Colonists’ go to the ‘other Croatoan?’

What really happened to the “Lost Colonists” from Roanoke Island, N.C.? 

When the colonial governor John White returned from England in 1590 to look for 117 colonists, he found the fort was deserted and the village erased. The settlers left him a “message” carved in wood that their destination was “CROATOAN.”

 

White knew that Croatoan was the homeplace of the native Manteo, who was so friendly and helpful to the colonists. But White never journeyed the 50 or so miles to Croatoan (Hatteras) to check on things in 1590. 

High winds and stormy weather in the Pamlico Sound as well as a cranky sea captain were to blame. The pilot sailed the ship out to sea and back to England. 

More than a century had passed before John Lawson, the English explorer, surveyor and author, visited Croatoan around 1701 to interview the “Hatteras natives.” They shared that several of their ancestors were white.

 

Lawson wrote that the natives “could talk in a book (read), as we do. The truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians.” 

Philip S. McMullan Jr., a historian from Hertford, N.C., observed that Croatoan “was very exposed” to the sea and did not offer much protection from invasion by Spanish sailors. 

Additionally, McMullan said, “These sandy banks could not feed a large group of colonists. Most of the colonists are more likely to have gone to a safer place with potential for feeding the colony.”

 

Another clue uncovered by historians throughout the years is White’s acknowledgement that the colonial leaders had discussed the desirability of moving “50 miles into the maine,” as in “mainland.” 

Apparently, White didn’t consider or even know about the “other place” named “Croatoan.” 

Philip Howard, an Ocracoke historian, cited an article published in The Virginian-Pilot in 1960. It revealed that “Croatoan” also referred to a region on the mainland west of Roanoke Island.

 

The way to get to this Croatoan from Roanoke Island was to sail north through “the narrows” into the Albemarle Sound and travel to the west around Durant Island, then go south, up the Alligator River. 

Proceed to Milltail Creek. Located about 10 miles up Milltail Creek in the middle of the deep woods was a village named Beechland. 

Marshall Layton Twiford (1876-1963) told The Virginian-Pilot that about everybody in Beechland had kinfolk who came from the Roanoke Island colony.

 

Mary Wood Long (1919-98) of Rock Hill, S.C., performed for many summers as Queen Elizabeth in Paul Green’s outdoor drama, “The Lost Colony.” She did a lot of research about Beechland. 

Long said that “the settlers found a grove of beech trees on a sandy ridge…approximately 11 feet above sea level…near an exceptional juniper swamp bearing giants of the forest comparable to the redwood forests of the West.”

 

“The land was rich in game; deer and bear were the most prevalent of the large animals, but smaller game such as raccoon, opossum, squirrel, rabbit, muskrat, mink and otters could be found. Wild turkeys were in the trees, and waterfowl and migratory birds crossed the mainland in season,” Long wrote. 

“Fish could be taken in the small streams and lakes as well as in the nearby (Alligator) river and sounds. Oysters, shrimp and clams were close at hand, in Long Shoal Bay” in the Pamlico Sound. 

“Wild berry vines were trained over fences, and swamp shrubs were planted as hedgerows, as in England. Bees filled the sweet gum trees.” 

Life in Beechland was good. 

“These settlers were inaccessible by choice; and research provided no records of their birth, death, marriage or property ownership,” Long said. 

McMullan said Long reviewed oral history reports from Beechland descendants. “She learned that they raised livestock, hunted, fished, cut juniper trees and made shingles” – without ever being discovered by tax collectors or census takers. 

McMullan also cited reports from Judge Charles Harry Whedbee (1911-90) of Greenville, who wrote about “a tribe of fair-skinned, blue-eyed Indians” at Beechland. 

Whedbee was the first to publish the story of a burial ground and the cypress coffins that were unearthed accidentally by bulldozers in the 1950s, according to McMullan. 

“The coffins were made in a form that can he best described as two canoes,” facing each other, Whedbee wrote.

Long said that “Beechland came to depend on stout boats of their own making for contact with the outside world.” They built up a brisk trade – bartering their cypress shingles, barrel staves and farm produce in the West Indies, sailing to Barbados, Jamaica and the Bahamas. 

She said: “They sailed home with sugar, salt, flour, coffee, cloth, rum and anything that would add to a more comfortable life at Beechland.” 

Howard said: “For many generations, Beechland flourished. At long last, tradition says, there came a day when the people paid little heed to spiritual things.”

Philip Howard

 

In the 1830s, the story goes: “Preacher Charles Mann went to Beechland to see for himself the life of the people. He noticed the absence of the Bible and heard no one speak of the love of God or the salvation of the soul. Preacher Mann warned the people that if they did not turn to the ways of God, the devil would take them.” 

McMullen said that some time after the clergyman’s visit, “a terrible plague they called the ‘Black Tongue’ appeared.” Most likely, it was brought into the community from the Bahamas. 

“The people were stricken, and many died. The settlement was decimated, and the people remembered the preacher and his warnings. By 1850, only Trimmergin Sanderlin’s family remained.” 

Tramasquecock was a Native American village on the opposite side of the Alligator River, roughly in the vicinity of Buck Ridge and Gum Neck. It is believed that some of the colonists went there, too, because of the abundance of the sassafras trees.

 

Sassafras was highly valuable, because “Europeans believed sassafras cured syphilis,” stated Scott Huler of Raleigh, an author and journalist. 

Huler said Frederick Lawson Willard (1940-2017), who founded the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research, believed the harvesting of sassafras was the “primary motivator for Sir Walter Raleigh of England to build a colony in the New World.”

 

McMullen said that in 1602 “Raleigh chartered Samuel Mace to look for the colonists and to gather sassafras and other valuable goods for sale in England.” 

Mace did not find the colonists, but he returned with a boatload of sassafras, which made a fortune for Sir Walter Raleigh.